I’ve heard of people keeping their money in a mattress. One of my grandmothers had a mayonnaise jar full of cash in her top dresser drawer. But I saw the oddest “banking” arrangement the other day that I’ve seen in a long time.

Stopped at a stoplight on a busy city street, I saw a shabbily-dressed, dirty guy reach into a hedge at McDonald’s®, pull out a blue plastic cup, and remove from it a wad of one dollar bills. He counted the bills (there were four) and replaced the cup in the same spot in the hedge.

As the light changed and I drove on, I tried to imagine how the “system” worked. Did other people know about the blue cup-bank, or was it this man’s own private account? Did he make deposits, and then return later for withdrawals – or did someone else keep the kitty filled? Was it a common pool? Did other folks know about it? Was it a give-what-you-can, take-what-you-need arrangement?

Close to 100 name tags were spread on the table near the door of the event – the invitation to which I’d affirmatively responded over a month before. So although I’d almost rather be pushed out of an airplane at several thousand feet than walk into a room full of strangers alone, I approached the welcome table without fear. I’d received an invitation, I’d said I would be coming, and I was confident that I could at least navigate the name tag bit without much angst.

My bolstered confidence quickly vaporized when I didn’t see my name.

The facts didn’t matter so much anymore. Because I didn’t have a pre-printed nametag like all the others I saw, I suddenly felt awkward. Undeserving. Like I was sneaking into a movie I wasn’t big enough to see. Like my invitation had somehow been a mistake.

On about rep 11 of a set of 15 exquisitely-designed tortures devised by my half-my-age-but-twice-as-buff trainer, I was struggling. He noticed. (He always does.) My arms were beginning to wobble a little, and I couldn’t see it, but I’m pretty sure my face was red.

“Come on,” he said, “breathe. Push through. It’s the last three that count.”

These are the sort of words you should never say to someone who “does words” for a living, and is in just enough pain to be a smart aleck. I immediately found the breath to say, “If only the last three count, let’s just skip the first 12.”

Out of the fifth floor window of a downtown hotel room, something in motion caught my eye. I was only vaguely aware of it before I looked, the way you’re aware of an insect buzzing nearby: you sense it, but unless it lingers or comes closer, you don’t turn in its direction. The peripheral distraction continued, though – so I set down my coffee cup, laid aside the newspaper, and focused my eyes on it, instead of on the day’s headlines.

“It” was someone on the balcony of a nearby building – across the street and just slightly below me. At first I thought the person was a child waving his arms wildly at someone just inside the glass…but a closer look revealed that it wasn’t a child at all. It was a child-sized woman doing what must have been her morning workout, dancing with all the verve and energy of an NBA cheerleader – skipping and leaping from one side of the balcony to the other in fast time and flinging her arms up and out as she went.

My taste in reading could be politely called “eclectic,” or more critically challenged as “schizophrenic.” I’m all over the map. During any given week I’m likely to have several books “going” at once. Between my desk, the night table by my bed and the living room ottoman, the present inventory includes a two-pound biography of Pope John Paul II, a novel about the Sudan, another Pulitzer-winning novel I’m re-reading slowly because it was so good the first time, a stack of miscellaneous news magazines and an old Nancy Drew book. (I am not kidding about Nancy.)

But the book that keeps moving with me from room to room is titled “Bono.” It’s a Q&A interview of Irish U2 rocker Paul Hewson, known for decades by a single moniker, and it’s a fascinating read.

It was an event that had been a long time in the planning, and those responsible had planned well. Nearly a year ago I agreed to travel to another city to speak at a conference for single adults – and when the week arrived, I felt prayed-up and ready to go. There were four other speakers on the agenda – and I was most decidedly NOT the star attraction. Others whose names were readily recognized were slated to speak before me, and I was glad.

Well – I was glad until I saw them illuminated on a gi-normous (that’s giant + enormous) big screen behind the podium while each of them spoke. Not that they didn’t look great. They did. What unnerved me was that in a few short hours, I’d be that big and looming down on my real, smaller self – and I didn’t want to be super-sized in front of a lot of people I didn’t know. (Who would, really?)

It would be impossible to count the number of words that have been spoken and penned in the last few days about the poet, philosopher, priest and prelate who died on Saturday. News networks have opined non-stop: from interviewing almost anyone who would sit still long enough for questions about what the pontiff’s legacy might become, or what their single, shining moment in his presence had been like, to the value of the Vatican’s vast art collection (one euro on the Holy See accounting ledger; inestimable according to Christie’s and Sotheby’s.)

Much of the information offered about the life of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II was fascinating; bits of it were endearing – almost all of it was inspiring. But the news “factoid” that stopped me cold was this one: the Pope, since his most recent hospitalization, had been undergoing speech therapy. At the age of 84, with muscles frozen by Parkinson’s, a fresh tracheotomy scar and a new feeding tube, the old man was quietly and resolutely working to regain…his voice.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s The St. John Passion was first performed on Good Friday in Leipzig, Germany, some 280 years ago. I heard it for the first time this week in a small Lutheran church in Houston, Texas.

The libretto combines the text of John’s Gospel, stanzas of old church hymns, and poetic text. It is not known who ordered the words to accompany Bach’s achingly beautiful score – perhaps he had some hand in selecting them; perhaps not.

As they were sung in German, I followed the English translation in my lap, but I could have closed it – and my eyes – and still understood. The familiar story unfolded on a current of sheer emotion, carried along by the music’s inflection and intensity, and the sometimes harsh, sometimes hushed interplay of voices.

A few months back (late August actually) I wrote a piece called “Finding feathers,” because for a week or so I was. Finding feathers. They made me think of hope, and they still do, thanks to Emily Dickinson’s lovely line: “Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches on the soul/that sings the tune/without the words/and never stops – at all.”

Oddly, I’m seeing feathers again. Only now, instead of spotting them one at a time, I’m finding feathers in scatterings of seven. Seven perfectly matched feathers; all within a few feet of one another, at various times and places. I’ve found five sets of them so far, each slightly different from the one before it. I know this sounds ridiculous and strange, but at the risk of being thought ridiculous and strange – bear with me.

Every Friday morning between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. I meet my Dad for breakfast at a drugstore/café called the Avalon Diner, a short drive from my house. Unless one of us is out of town or under the weather, it’s a standing deal. We only call if we can’t make it – not to be sure the other one is coming.

We haven’t always met at the Avalon. For a while we convened at a diner closer to my old apartment, then at a trendier place that dad endured but never really liked, near my former office. The place has shifted over the years, but the routine hasn’t. It’s become something reliable I can count on.