"Hi; who are you?" I asked the young man sitting at a drop-in center table with Brother Bernard from Holy Cross Monastery.
   "I'm Tom."
   "Well, Tom, I'm Steve . . . it's good to meet you. What are you doing here?"
   "Homeless," he shrugged. "I was at the library and I met Leo who brought me here . . . I didn't know this place existed . . . Thank you."
   "Glad you're here . . ."
   Leo beamed. Although he currently has a place to live, Leo knows what it's like to be on the street with no place to go, he knows there is no freedom in having nothing left to lose, in not knowing where you'll spend the night, get a meal, find an available bathroom, or where you can get a clean pair of socks to replace the ones you've been wearing for a week or more . . .
   You get the picture.
   Back in 1965, The Fortune's made a hit out of a song which began "I see that worried look upon your face . . . you've got your troubles, I've got mine." You and I might have a place to live and plenty of food in the pantry, socks in the drawer, and a bathroom or two at our disposal but that doesn't mean we don't have our troubles, worries that awaken us in the middle of the night and seem to plague us when we're not being too busy to think of all we have to worry about.
   Maybe I'm being presumptuous. Maybe it's not true for you. Well, it is true for me. In fact, it happened last night. At about 3 a.m., I woke up worrying about phone calls to return, bills to pay, another of our boilers that's not working so well, a grant application that needs to be written, when I'll find time to fix the men's room faucet at the drop-in center . . . what I was going to write about in this column. Sometimes it's as though I wake up to discover that I'm Dr. Richard Thorndyke, administrator of The Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous in Mel Brook's movie High Anxiety. I keep giving my worries over to God and taking them back . . . maybe because I'm not trusting enough to know that, like the old hymn says "God Will Take Care of you." So, of course, I worry about my lack of faith . . . I want to be Alfred E. Neuman, not worry at all . . . and relieve some of the guilt I feel about not being like the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.
   Of course, the good news is that all that worrying is exhausting so I go back to sleep feeling thankful.
   So, I sit here staring at the scripture lesson -  Matthew 6:24-34 - knowing that when Jesus was talking about worrying, he was right (of course). All the worry in the world won't add a moment to my life or fix the faucet or get the grant written or give any assurance that the old boiler is going to keep on cranking out heat. All that worry will do is fester and keep me awake in the middle of the night and distracted from the reality of God's presence in my life, that God will, in fact, hold me close through all the mishegas. I think that was a big part of Jesus' point - Don't sweat the petty things; keep your eye on the prize, do justice, love mercy. walk humbly and you will have done your part to help build a better world.
   Now . . . if i can just remember that if I awaken at three o'clock tomorrow morning . . .