Holy man on the plane to Salt Lake City
While I was waiting in the aisle, I looked down the row to my right and saw him in the middle seat. Even without the obvious signs of religiosity—white woven cap on his shaved head, unpretentious reading glasses sliding down his nose, long scraggly beard, white robes hemmed with ornate gold lace—I would still have recognized him as a holy man, because of the way he had his arms crossed, hands tucked under his armpits, eyes closed, head nodding slightly forward. He wasn’t sleeping. He couldn’t have held that posture if he was. While everyone else watched their screens, tapped on them, listened to their headphones, he sat there in silence and prayed for us all.