“Is anyone on this bus good enough for heaven?,” a woman asked while walking up and down the bus aisle this morning. I thought she was a drama student honing her craft, but five seconds later I realized she wasn’t practicing.

When she got on the bus I noticed her. She was short with short hair, wearing a camel colored winter coat, and holding a coffee cup. She shuffled down the aisle making noises with her feet.

A few moments later she started her good morning monologue with something like, “Ladies and gentlemen sitting on this bus…,” and then she proceeded to share with us her story—”a woman, a junkie, a whore”—about how her husband left her in the cold serveral days ago.

The looks on peoples’ faces were unchanged from before she started her story. Blank. One guy made eye contact with me and smirked. I rubbed my nose to catch myself from smirking back.

This was no laughing matter, but the situation was darkly comical. because it was happening at 6:50 a.m. on a crowded metro bus headed for downtown Seattle. No one was awake yet; everyone seemed to be anywhere else but on that bus.

I figured if she walked on the bus that early, addressing other riders in a stage voice, while pacing up and down the aislway then she must be crazy or destitute. Honestly, I could not tell. Sometimes desperation drives people to do humiliating things. The primal extinct of self-preservation overrides all social norms.

Her question—”Is anyone on this bus good enough for heaven?”—jolted my bleary stare inward. Everyone on that bus should have stood in unison and shouted back to her in chorus: “No, none of us are good enough for heaven.”

That would have been the pefect ending to the live, urban play in one act. Crazy or not that is a question we all must ask throughout our lifetimes. James, Jesus’s brother, said, “Faith without works is dead.” If I gave her a dollar would I be any closer to heaven?