DD 9/27/04 STORY ABOUT MY DAILY BLESSING

My Daily Blessing
My morning routine, about which I'm pretty devoted, involves staggering out of bed at 5:30 or 6:00 am, throwing on some gym clothes, and driving off to the gym for an hour's workout before the rest of my day begins. Every morning, I stop at the Sunoco station on Erie Boulevard for a cup of dark roast coffee and my daily blessing.
Rao is a little, energetic man, a Christian from the south of India, who works the graveyard shift at this all-night gas station on the edge of a very tough neighborhood. He knows thousands of customers, not by name, but by the ways he and they have connected over the years. "Good morning, sir!" he shouts to me from the back of the store when I enter. "How is madam this morning?" "I don't know," I sometimes say, she's not up yet," or "She's great, she'll be in soon," or "She's out of town." (Sometimes my partner and I both come in together, and he treats this like an event of great importance. "The sun will rise in the west today!" he says.) After we talk about "Madam," I ask him, "How are you today?", and we both smile, because his answer is always the same. "Ah, sir, I am awesome, by the grace of God!" "That's wonderful," I'll say, and sometimes, emboldened, I'll add, "I'm awesome too!" I pay for my coffee, and as I leave, I always hear, "Thank you, sir! Have a blessed day, by the grace of God!"
Some days, I am leaving the station just as Rao's shift ends, and I drive him the two miles to his apartment. I know little more about him than that he has a wife and two sons in India that he supports, and that it will probably be a few years before he will see them again. We never talk theology - somehow it has never seemed important.
I leave each morning, coffee in hand, feeling the cloak of grace about my shoulders. I am always smiling, knowing that whether or not I can believe in Rao's God, it's the easiest thing in the world for me to believe in Rao.