Seven years of my life were spent in the East
Liberty area of Pittsburgh. My old church is right
around the corner. To many people East Liberty
is an inhospitable, dangerous place. And it is
foreboding. Drug dealing is probably the most
prosperous business in the area. Prostitution is
openly practiced, and gangs flaunt their colors
on street corners—at Shaky Frank’s corner. Once
upon a time a friend of mine, a homeless man
named Frank (no one on the street had a last
name), tried to make a living at Penn and Negley.
Alcoholism had permanently damaged Frank’s
nervous system, so he constantly shook. Therefore,
Shaky Frank was his appellation. Day after
day, rain or shine, Frank stood on that corner,
sold
Pittsburgh Gazettes, and finally died there one
cloudy spring day—but not before Frank visited
my former church’s drop-in center for the homeless
and heard the Gospel. He was my friend until
he died. Palestine, surely, is not the Garden of
Eden. But, like East Liberty was to me, it was
Abraham’s promised land. It was the place he
met God. And that made it a Holy Land.