November 18, 2016
For 31 years, I have lived at the Paulist Fathers Motherhouse on West 59th Street on Manhattan’s West Side in New York City. It’s my home base as I travel the United States and Canada giving parish missions.
On the sidewalk outside the Motherhouse front door is one of the city’s ubiquitous coffee carts. It’s been there as long as I can remember. The cart provides coffee and a quick breakfast for countless passersby in a hurry, including regulars from Mt. Sinai West Hospital (across the street) and John Jay College (just down the block).
“Give me an egg on a roll, bacon, no cheese. Coffee light, one sweet and low.”
“Is the danish fresh?”
Before you can get the $2.50 out of your pocket, your meal is already in the bag.
The two young guys working this cart steps from our front door are all Muslims, mostly from Afghanistan and Egypt. A finer group of short order cooks you couldn’t find: efficient, polite and always with a word of friendly greeting.
I usually stop by daily to say hello, often sharing a cup of tea, especially in the afternoons around 2 p.m. Some of the guys who worked in the cart have become friends as we exchange stories of our lives, sometimes with humor and sometimes not. The hardships these guys have faced are woven into our conversations.
And, maybe, it’s something I can appreciate in some small way because the immigrant experience of my Irish parents is part of my history – as it is for so many of us.
The guys in the cart are married men trying to make a living in the country they have adopted as their new home. In addition to the cart, many have second jobs in the evenings and on Saturdays, often as Uber drivers.
Some of the guys have become American citizens. Those who aren’t yet citizens are looking forward to the day they can swear alliance to this country.
These guys love this country. They no more support the violence committed by a handful of extremists than any other American. They want what America offers to all of us: the promise of a good life which comes as the fruit of hard work.
As the son of immigrants, I see in these guys the same drive that led my father to become a New York City police detective and my mother to work as a waitress. Like my parents and every immigrant, they want opportunities to succeed, a good education for their children and a safe place to live.
Meet a Muslim. Have a coffee or even an afternoon tea. If not at a New York City coffee cart, perhaps at coffee shop or wherever people of good will get together and talk.
You will be in for a pleasant time.
Paulist Fr. John Collins works in the Paulist Fathers preaching ministry. A native of the Inwood neighborhood of northern Manhattan in New York City, he was ordained in 1970. Among his past assignments, he was director of the St. Thomas More Newman Center at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH; pastoral associate at St. Austin Church in Austin, TX; and associate director of the University Catholic Center at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA.