I usually listen to NPR on the drive home from work but today I just could not take any more politics. Click. The next station was playing Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and as I learned later, it was performed by the Barcelona Symphony. Good stuff and I cranked up the volume in the mighty Prius. So there I was in my cocoon with Gershwin's Rhapsody easing away the stresses of the day.

Driving down the freeway off ramp, I spotted a young woman with a cardboard sign that read, "Hungry and homeless, please help." She did not have that "on the streets for a long time" look; in fact, she looked like she may have had a home and/or a job not too many days ago. Coming to a stop at the end of the ramp, I rolled down my window and turned down Gershwin and grabbed my leftover lunch from the back seat--a chicken tarna plate from Zankou. "Want some chicken?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "awesome." I think even at the reduced volume, she recognized Gershwin, because she smiled, I think not at me but at the music. She said, "May God bless you." And I said, "May God bless you as well." And while my light was still red, she half ducked behind a "one-way" sign that didn't provide much cover, and tucked into the chicken immediately. Then the light turned green and I was off. I instinctively reached to turn the volume back up but then I hesitated and said out loud, "But for the grace of God, there go I." Then I turned up the Rhapsody, which was soaring at the moment. I tried to say it again out loud but only got as far as "But for the grace..." before the lump in my throat stopped me from saying another word.

After the Rhapsody ended I turned off the radio and thought disjointedly about hunger, blessings, luck and random misfortune the rest of the way home. With 47 million people on food stamps, but simultaneously, an epic obesity crisis, we must do better as a country. Despite our debt, we live in a rich land with almost unfathomable resources; just go to a Costco or a Whole Foods and think about the bounty that is available under one roof.

I have no pithy answers tonight but I do have a haunting memory of a hungry woman in distress, standing in the dirt next to a freeway off ramp on the West Side of Los Angeles, in the United States of America. It takes a certain measure of courage and desperation to actually stand outside with sign declaring you are hungry; this young woman had both, in abundance. Once again, I have come away from an experience like this, feeling blessed, and certain that I got far more out of it than she did.