Pamela J. Henshell

I work in a fairly ugly place: downtown Grand Rapids--where one finds cafes, specialty shops, and restaurants next to convenience stores to buy smokes, condoms, and booze. The doorways smell like urine; the sidewalks are littered with trash. And the people aren't so beautiful either: the homeless, the diseased, the mentally ill, the prostitutes, the addicts, the drunks, the hungry, the thirsty. I carry this place within my heart and these people who know nothing but ugliness--iniquity, disease, death, rejection,…