“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”
~~1 Corinthians 12: 4-6
[taken from Daily Word, published by Unity, May, 2008]
This blog received a comment on the post entitled “Broken” from a friend in my church, Church of the Incarnation (Episcopal) that I hope you’ll go back and check out (May 15, 2008. Click on ‘Comments’ at the bottom of the post.)
May I just say…I love my church, not only because it is a beautiful, old building with lovely, reverential services, but because of people like English, who care enough to ask the hard questions and to show up on Christmas Eve at the Hyatt Regency Dallas for the SoupMobile’s Christmas Angel Project — and to go to Honduras to build schools, and to New Orleans to rebuild houses, and to fight poverty in Belize, and to mentor in areas of poverty around our very blessed church property, and on and on (it requires an entire book to list all of the outreach that is done out of Church of the Incarnation, thanks to Outreach Director Martha Lang and many others). My fellow parishioners and our priests put their love on the line constantly all over the place.
Anyway, I hope you’ll read the comments of the “Broken” post where English asked an important question:
“Do we have a middle-class homeless crisis in Dallas?”
and read the response from David Timothy, AKA SoupMan, of SoupMobile Mobile Soup Kitchen.
I would love to know what readers think. What is your experience and what are your observations?
KS
Journal Archives
Thursday, 12/22/05
I was out with the mobile soup kitchen on a feeding run tonight, and unlike most nights, the vibe was strained on the truck. For starters, I’d arisen from my sick bed to show up for the commitment I’d previously made, realizing that in the past few weeks I’ve been writing about the homeless, thinking about them, talking about them a great deal… but that I needed to see them, touch them, talk to them — that being with them is what I love, not doing politics about them.
I felt ill on the run, alternately sweating and freezing, thinking I might pass out. There’s nowhere to sit on the truck, and the floor was slimy with spilled soup, so we volunteers slipped and slid around as it bumped along through the downtown streets. One of the regular volunteers was tired, which made her very sharp-edged. When she was rude to the rest of us one too many times, I came within an ace of walking away and hitching a ride back to my car. It was an unusually wretched start and middle to the run, and I was determined to just endure.
Then I began talking with Joe, a homeless man we picked up at the first stop to ride with us and help us feed. Wanting to get the real lowdown, I was asking him how things were out there. It was a grim, unflattering and unsympathetic portrait of who was out on the street and what was going on.
As the van clattered and lurched along, between bouts of bending over to slop scalding soup into paper cups, as I sweated and froze and felt I’d faint, as the grouchy volunteer barked irritable orders at everyone, as an uncharacteristically-rowdy, block-long line of ragged people milled and pushed and shoved and shouted outside the truck in front of the Day Resource Center, I thought to myself, “Now, exactly why am I doing this?”
Joe offered to do the ladling, and I stepped away to rest my back. He was so kind to notice I was tired. Then the director asked me to come outside the truck and ‘work on the ground,’ which I love, so it was a relief to get outside and hand people food and talk to them a little. “How are you? How’s it going?” “God bless you all for being out here!” they’d say, or “I’m OK, but I could sure use some work.” “Joseph, I’ll pray for you.” “Oh, thank you.” A man getting mock angry when I let a woman be served ahead of him. The woman giving me a hug, and then another. “Why do the women get to go first?” a man asks. “Does it make you men feel like chopped liver?” I joke with him. “You call them ladies, but you call us men.” “OK, we’ll call you gentlemen from now on!”
I was starting to loosen up, to remember, to feel what this was about.
And then I began to look into their faces, one by one, as they stepped up in line to receive their soup, sandwich, cookie and banana. A young woman with cerebral palsy, looking brave and dignified, not wanting to meet my eyes. A man who could barely stand, trying to signal something as he swayed away, almost as if he were crossing himself. A woman deathly pale with a yellowish pallor to her skin and a cap pulled down that barely covered the absence of hair. People with skin leathered and hands swollen from the cold. Someone blind. Someone on crutches. So many of them thanking us, blessing us, wishing us Merry Christmas. Loving us for loving them. Dark faces, pale faces, every kind of face in the world.
Broken faces. Broken, as we all are.
Beauty. Real beauty.
We left, and as we rumbled back toward our starting point, I thought, “This is why I do it. To be near them.”
But, still, why? What is the Grace that’s near them, that spills over onto me, that makes me want to be out in the cold, ladling soup, giving away sandwiches? When I try to pin down a reason, it slides away, like mine and Joe’s tennis shoes on the soupy metal floor of the catering truck.
And then, sitting here in Barnes and Noble, drinking my hot cocoa, feeling less at odds and less resentful of the middle-class Dallas culture than I did in my first entries into this journal a year ago — accepting it, even, and my place in it, and the fact that I drive a nice car while many people have no homes… Remembering that driving here, I drove all the way down Beverly Drive looking at the stupendous displays of Christmas lights and didn’t need to turn away in frustration, accepting that that kind of wealth is part of life, too — just observing, not judging…
Anyway, I got it, sitting here, remembering the beauty, the desperation, the softness, the fear, the humanity, the love, the blankness, the greed, the need — in those broken faces in the crush of people outside the Day Resource Center — giving to them out of my own brokenness, as they gave to me. I got it…
The beauty, the grace is in the brokenness.
But it makes no sense! And when I once read that Henri Nouwen said it, I thought, well, my great hero is just wrong on this one. Beauty in healing? in unconditional love? in service? Sure. But in brokenness?
The only connection I can make is with Christ’s broken body on the cross. But wasn’t the beauty in the resurrection? The brokenness of Christ’s body I find devastating! Do we have to be broken first in order to be healed? Is it because only through brokenness comes the possibility of Grace?
The Spirit of Love is out there on the street, for sure — in the people themselves — surrounding them, hovering near them. I feel the intensity of Christ’s Love there, have always felt it.
It a mystery, a magnificent mystery.
And our street people show it to me. Every time.
KS
“Do you wish to honor the Body of Christ? Then do not allow it to be scorned in its members, in the poor, who have nothing to clothe themselves with. Do not honor him in church with silk and then neglect him outside when he is cold and naked….
What does Christ gain from a sacrificial table full of golden vessels when he then dies of hunger in the persons of the poor?”
~~St. John Chrysostom, Fourth Century
Thanks for the quote to Father Bob Johnston, Church of the Incarnation (Episcopal) newsletter, The Angelus.
Dear Readers,
Here’s a link to the website of a group of people who have generously allowed me to work with them on Friday nights at the Day Resource Center for the last couple of years while they serve dinner and give away clothing. They provided me with a way to give away the clothing I like collecting, which opportunity I lost when the homeless camps were razed by the city in 2005.
The post gives a list of the services to be provided by the new homeless assistance center, The Bridge, when it opens in May.
http://www.ourcalling.org/2008/04/25/the-new-center-will-provide-what/#comments
KS
Suffering and Compassion
“Compassion is a mind that removes the suffering that is present in the other…We can nurture the unconditional love that does not expect anything in return and therefore does not lead to anxiety and sorrow…. The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the…suffering of others, to put ourselves ‘inside the skin’ of the other. We ‘go inside’… and witness for ourselves their suffering…. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the object of our observation. When we are in contact with another’s suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, ‘to suffer with.’”
“We have to find ways to nourish and express our compassion. When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.”
~~Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step (81-83)
Giving Freely
“…a nun once said to me, ‘Mother Teresa, you are spoiling the poor people by giving them things free. They are losing their human dignity.’
When everyone was quiet, I said calmly, ‘No one spoils as much as God himself. See the wonderful gifts he has given us freely. All of you here have no glasses, yet you all can see. If God were to take money for your sight, what would happen? Continually we are breathing and living on oxygen that we do not pay for. What would happen if God were to say, ‘If you work four hours, you will get sunshine for two hours?’ How many of us would survive then?’
Then I also told them, ‘There are many congregations that spoil the rich; it is good to have one congregation in the name of the poor, to spoil the poor.’
There was profound silence; nobody said a word after that.”
~~Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World
Journal Archives
Monday, 5/9/05
When the subject of the homeless comes up in general conversation, people frequently want to discuss ‘Unworthy Homeless Persons I Have Encountered.’ Often that single, and sometimes unpleasant, experience with a street person becomes a certain knowledge of the ‘ubiquitous homeless.’ The shiftless mother who, babe in arms, asks for money for formula and takes it straight into a liquor store somehow becomes every woman out on the street who has a child and asks for help. The stories may well be true, but they miss a couple of points.
Helping the homeless is not about their worthiness. It is about our giving. If receiving blessings were dependent upon worthiness, would you and I have all that we have?
If you see someone misusing a resource they’ve been given, that’s not a reason to refrain from helping the person in need that comes along. What if she’s in earnest? If you give aid to five women in a row who buy liquor with the money and meet a sixth who’s on the level, would you deprive that sixth hungry child of the help she’d receive from you? Or, if you want to be sure of how what you give is used, you could go and buy formula for the child yourself.
This is one of the reasons I have liked working with mobile soup kitchens, who go to feed the homeless where they live. There are no questions asked, as Jesus asked no questions when he helped the poor and the sick. The worthiness of the recipients is not at stake. The work is about compassion. There are no qualifications required except that a person be hungry, thirsty, cold, in need of solace. “Ask, and ye shall receive.”
There is no single profile for a homeless person. There are hustlers, manipulators and thieves on the street, yes. Ditto drug addicts and alcoholics. There are also veterans: about 40% — people broken by war in body, mind and spirit, the same people who were heroes when they went off to war. There are families who lost their jobs and missed a few house payments, finding themselves on the street. There are mothers with children who ran from an abusive husband in the middle of the night and didn’t know how to seek out a shelter or couldn’t get in. Do I want to feed and clothe these people if I have the opportunity? Yes. Do I want the woman who lives under a bridge because her ex-husband tied her up in their basement for a long period of time and she can’t bear confinement to get treatment for her trauma? Yes. If she doesn’t or is unable get it, do I want to offer her a sandwich? Yes again.
Do I want to interview each of these people when I encounter them to determine whether they fit someone’s profile of worthiness? Definitely, no.
KS
“Compassion is something other than pity. Pity suggests distance, even a certain condescendence… Compassion means to become close to one who suffers. But we can come close to another person only when we are willing to become vulnerable ourselves.”
~~Henri Nouwen, Here and Now
Journal Archives
Christmas Day, 2004
Christmas Angel
I went to noon Christmas Mass by myself today, the first time in years we haven’t gone to Christmas Eve Midnight Mass as a family, as my grandchildren, at age two, are too young to be out that late. Church was lovely, and, as I drove away, I took with me the special joy of receiving the Christmas Eucharist amidst the radiance of the beautiful sanctuary, awash with green pine garlands and banked with red poinsettias and white candles.
At the intersection of I-75 and Mockingbird Lane, I pulled up near a stop light beside a woman who was begging. I happened to have some extra blankets and sweatshirts in the car, so I rolled down the window as I approached the light and offered her a stack of these things.
The most beatific smile crossed her face as she took them, and, as she tried to thank me, I realized she could make sounds but was unable to speak. It seemed as if perhaps she was missing part or all of her tongue, I couldn’t be sure. But she opened her mouth and attempted to thank me, taking my hand warmly in her weathered palms. I was able to understand, “God bless you! God bless you!”
I pulled forward to the red light and turned to watch her as she walked away. She went over to a low concrete wall and laid the stack of clothes and blankets on it. Bending over the pile and beginning to sort through it, and evidently pleased with what she found there, she suddenly raised her arms and face toward the sky and began a joyous, wordless dance! I will never forget the look of bliss on her face, the brilliance of her smile, the ecstacy in her body over the stack of clothing.
I began to cry as I headed to meet my daughters and their families for Christmas lunch, and I couldn’t stop. There was something about this woman that stuck with me, the image of her wordless praise, her arms reaching toward heaven. She broke my heart and touched me so deeply that, opened by church and the Eucharist, I was suddenly emptied of whatever concerns I’d had before I’d met her, to be refilled with a scalding mixture of pain and joy that would sting me for weeks whenever I thought of her, which I often did — this miraculous Christmas angel.
KS
“My Father, open the eyes of my soul. Cause me to see that any issue that causes distrust or anger between me and another…even my own iron ‘rightness’ on matters of faith…can cause me to make a desert ‘in the name of the Lord.’”
~~St. Augustine
I have long wanted to have guest writers on this blog — especially people who live on the street — but never got down to figuring out how to implement it. Perhaps this will be the way!
Today I received this comment on ‘Blogger Profile’ from my friend, Reagan, with whom I work on Friday nights at the Day Resource Center. She is one of a very dedicated group of people from Northwest Bible Church, who bring dinner to over 200 homeless individuals every Friday and have done so for many years.
These people do much more than serve dinner, however. They befriend street people in a very personal way, pray with and for them, and many of their number support homeless individuals quietly and without fanfare, helping them in countless ways with transportation, doctor visits, clothing needs, paperwork issues, and, above all, love, support and genuine friendship. The word ‘volunteer’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. They enter into real relationship and commitment with people from the street. [Website: www.ourcalling.org]
“Hi, Karen-
I’ve been thinking about you lately and have missed you the last couple of weeks at the DRC Friday nights!
I met a woman tonight, Sherry, who lives on the street and writes about her experiences. Prose and poetry, and I really enjoyed hearing some excerpts. Do you know a way or a connection so that her stuff might be read? either on a blog or in a publication? Just a thought.
Reagan”
“Hi, Reagan,
It’s great to hear from you. I’ve missed being there on Friday nights the past few weeks, but will be coming next week.
I would love to invite Sherry and other people who live on the street to write guest posts on this blog! What do you think? Leave it to wonderful you to help create another level to this blog which I had in the back of my mind when I began it but hadn’t thought how to implement! Synergy and Spirit, eh?
Blessings! — which you and the amazing Friday night crew from Northwest Bible Church bring in spades to our friends at the Day Resource Center!
Karen
“…Are you willing to be transformed? Or do you keep clutching your old ways of life with one hand while with the other you beg people to help you change?
…It is not a question of willpower. You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way. You know that inner voice. You turn to it often. But after you have heard with clarity what you are asked to do, you start raising questions, fabricating objections, and seeking everyone else’s opinion. Thus you become entangled in countless often contradictory thoughts, feelings, and ideas and lose touch with the God in you. And you end up dependent on all the people you have gathered around you.
Only by attending constantly to the inner voice can you be converted to a new life of freedom and joy.”
~~Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love
Journal Archives
Saturday, 4/23/05
Church and Candace
When I last saw Candace a couple of weeks ago, she asked me to take her to church with me sometime, and I said, “Sure!” There is something unique about Candace. She feels like my daughter. And Patrick is someone I think I might be proud to have as a son-in-law. But I can’t help but wonder, is it wise to take a virtual stranger in my car, even one who feels like family?
I asked my friend, David, for his opinion, as he is familiar with street culture, and he responded:
“You asked if I thought it would be a problem with you taking Candace to church. No, I don’t see a problem there. I think this would be a very kind thing to do for her. However each case is different. There are definitely some individuals on the street that I would not want you to take anywhere in your car. My sense for Candace is that it would be fine for you to take her to church.”
So I’m going to try to arrange to take her to church with me on Wednesday.
Wednesday, 4/27/05
Losing Track
This early evening, during which I’ve done a fair share of crying, proves the point of the above Henri Nouwen quote on transformation, it seems to me, with unusual clarity. I’ve lost track of Candace and Patrick, and the impact of the loss feels overwhelming. Now they’re gone, and I have no way to find them.
I had asked David to tell Candace when he went by their camp yesterday that I would pick her up for church today at 5:30 P.M. But he didn’t see her, so I drove to their little house at that time to see if she could go. I pulled up beside their lot and they weren’t there, so I stopped to ask two people who were sitting on the Stairs Going Nowhere, waiting for the bus.
“Candace isn’t here,” they said. “Are she and Patrick still staying here?” “No, she and Patrick have sort of split up for a while.” “Do you know where she is?” “No.” “Is Patrick still here?” “He’s around.” I knew they didn’t trust me enough to say more. The street’s a closed society until people know you. “Please tell them Karen said hello,” I said, as there seemed nothing else to say.
I pulled away and began to cry — ‘the ugly cry,’ as Oprah calls it, face all distorted, nose running, the works. On my mobile, I tried to call both of my daughters for comfort — no answer.
I drove around, feeling I’d lost track of something of irreplaceable value, feeling so lost myself, drowning in the conviction that I’d missed something vital with which I was supposed to connect. So odd and inexplicable, how one can love certain strangers after knowing them such a short time. I had met hundreds of people while going out on the street to give away clothing and food, but Candace and Patrick had drawn me to them and their little home like a magnet. Our meeting on that Holy Saturday seemed providential.
It had taken me two weeks to get around to taking my new friend and surrogate daughter to church with me. I had kept thinking about it but not getting it done. And my friends who felt like family had slipped through that small crack in time.
[to be continued]
KS
“It’s not about whether people are deserving. It’s about our compassion.”
Journal Archives
Tuesday, 12/23/03
To my surprise, feeding the homeless is controversial. I did not know this, although, being oppositionally-defined as I can sometimes be, it would only have encouraged me. Nonetheless, I’m surprised that not everyone thinks hungry people should be given food.
‘People should get their needs met through the institutions and organizations we’ve already created to deal with the problems of hunger and homelessness,’ an acquaintance recently told me. But what if they’re not going to? What if the organizations, excellent though they may be, are woefully inadequate to the scale of the task, which is clearly the case in Dallas? What if significant numbers of people fall through the cracks? Some are not going to get their needs met with current resources; some are unable to; some — many — do fall. And for those, another approach is required.
To me, feeding the hungry seems self-evident, especially as a person who calls myself a Christian. “Feed my sheep,” says Jesus in John 21. He doesn’t say, “If my sheep are employed, or at least job hunting,” or “If they can conform enough to live in a shelter,” or “If they promise to take their antidepressants and visit their psychotherapists on a regular basis.” Jesus states simply, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Lord…you know that I love you,” Simon Peter replies. Jesus: “Feed my sheep.”
And even more direct is the bit in Matthew 25: “…I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me…as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” Then follows the horrific fate awaiting those ‘goats at the left [hand]’ who decline to offer these kindnesses to their brothers and sisters — read that passage if you want to tremble!
The argument that feeding street people enables and perpetuates homelessness confuses me. Can you look for a job when you’re starving? Dirty? Freezing? Without an address? Did Mother Teresa perpetuate starvation by going on the streets of Calcutta and feeding the ‘poorest or the poor?’ Did she encourage the sick to get sicker because she tended to their medical needs?
Or does our plenty somehow shame us, that we are willing to let children live cold and hungry on the streets of Dallas while we buy designer tennis shoes and IPods for our own kids? Is this moral? Is it correct human behavior, religion aside? Is it even reasonable?
If rational self-interest is our guiding principle, does the terrible reality of homelessness and poverty in our own city and around the world serve that principle? Sometimes I wonder if our collective anger towards street people has something to do with their reminding us of the ludicrous, wasteful splendor in which most of us live, and perhaps also of the ubiquity of vulnerability all humans share.
True, feeding the homeless is only one part of the puzzle. A comprehensive plan is required to get people off the streets and into housing. Enlightened self-interest tells us that to do everything we can to solve the problems of homelessness and hunger in our city benefits us all. It tells us that that there are many paths to this desirable conclusion, that all kinds of help is needed: shelters, job training, treatment centers, rehabilitation programs, housing — yes, but also, surely, the simple service of alleviating people’s suffering directly, wherever they are, by giving them food when they’re hungry, a smile, a hug and a kind word when they’re lonely, a blanket and clothing when they’re cold.
KS
“Today I stand before you to make a just, useful, and suitable intercession, I come from no one else; only the beggars who live in our city elected me for this purpose, not with words, votes, and the resolve of a common council, but rather with their pitiful and most bitter spectacles.”
~~St. John Chrysostom
Journal Archives
Wednesday, 8/27/03
I walked out of church last night and came face to face with a stained glass window I’d been passing for years but hadn’t noticed. “Feed my sheep!” it fairly shouted. Felt it was an Executive Order — that I was meant to begin volunteering again — this time with people who live on the street, the homeless people in Dallas.
Talk of ‘callings’ often sounds pompous, but I’d been feeling this prompting for some time, (though maybe not in such a clear way as a church window jumping out at me.) Then, tonight, I passed a shelf in the bookstore where I often go to write, and I was arrested by a book entitled The Heart of Henri Nouwen. When I took it from the shelf, it fell open to this passage:
“Jesus did not say: ‘Blessed are those who care for the poor,’ but ‘Blessed are the poor.’… Here lies the great mystery of Christian service. Those who serve Jesus in the poor will be fed by him whom they serve… We so much need a blessing. The poor are waiting to bless us.”
~~Henri Nouwen, Here and Now
Serendipity. Time to act.
KS
