the weapon we have

Happy Valentine's Day, all.

This post is going to be a little depressing, but not because I'm single. :-)

As everyone knows, Valentine's Day is all about love. This ranges from romantic love to family love to friendly love to probably lustful love in many cases. And while all of those are worth mentioning, I'm instead going to write about homeless love.

Homelessness is something that has been mulling around in my head for a long time. Months. Years, even. I have started many, many posts about it but never finished them. I was first challenged to consider the causes of homelessness in 2001 when I spent a week serving at a shelter particularly directed to help HIV-positive homeless individuals on Staten Island in New York City. I have yet to fully or even minutely grasp what the causes are, but I have learned since then that the causes are often very complicated and always very...sad.

Not only do I not understand the causes of homelessness, I don't even really understand what it is to be homeless. I can't imagine. I feel cold in the winter...I walk into my home where it is warm. I am hot in the summer...I walk into my home where it is cool. I feel distressed and discouraged...I walk into my home, where it is calm and familiar. I apply for a job...and I write my home address on the application. I meet someone new...she asks me where my home is located. How would it be to deal with all of those and NOT have home be part of the answer? I just can't imagine. I try...but not very hard, because it is scary and hard, and if I really understood, I bet I would feel I need to do something for those who don't have homes.

That's part of the problem: an unwillingness to give. One day last year, a cold evening after a long day at work, I was waiting for the bus. I had just popped inside Starbucks, which just happens to be located just at the corner where the bus stop is, and bought myself a nice, warm, comforting latte. As I stood outside bundled up and gazing down the street awaiting the 61C, one of the ladies who asks for money approached me. I can't always say that the people who ask for money in Oakland are homeless - there are some who are KNOWN to not be homeless, who get driven to Oakland from their homes in another part of the city day in and day out to do their "job" of begging. Thus comes some inherent reservation to dole out my money. Combine this with the underlying thought (which I know is false) that "It's their own fault that they're in this situatiion!", and I am generally quite stingy with my money and (the bigger issue, because usually I don't even have cash on me) with my emotion. Regardless, here was the lady at the bus stop, and she approached me and asked if I had a quarter so she could buy some coffee at the shelter on this cold night. I shook my head, said no. And took a sip of the latte.

Could I please just rewind to that day and replay it? Could I please make it so I would not act like such a snot and be so hard-hearted? Could I please have just an ounce of compassion and not revel in my plenty? Ugh. Disgusting!

Even though I don't understand the causes of homelessness or what homelessness is like, I do understand that the root of the trials of every person is an unsatisfied need for being loved. And while I cannot provide homes for every person on the street or fix the underlying causes of homelessness, I can love. I know how, I bet I could be pretty good at it...but as is apparent from the incident with the lady outside Starbucks...I don't.

That's not the saddest part of the story, though. Here's a tale from this year on January 25, straight from my journal:

(...After a long day at work, I saw my regular bus go by and knew the next one wouldn't come from another 20 minutes and I would much rather get on a different bus and take a longer ride on the warm bus than stand in the 20-degree weather to wait for the right bus. So, I walked to the alternate bus stop...)

"I heard a 'pop' - an on-drugs-appearing man popping open a small bag of chips. He had on boots and a coat and a hat, but I noticed as I passed his shuffling and wandering path that he had no gloves. Something about his lost-ness, his obvious social outcast-ness, his chips, and the cold stirred something in me: give him your mittens. The Thinsulate-lined ones with the flip tops? I like them... 'Yes, but you can get new ones. You have more at home - two other pair that you knit! He has none. He needs them. It's so cold.' So...as I stood at the bus stop, I said to him as he started to walk by after finishing the chips, dropping the bag on the ground and standing pointing at it for a long moment - I said, 'Do you need some gloves?' I held them out and he took them, shuffling by. He walked about 30 feet, then turned around and came back. He set down the bag he was carrying and took out a bottle of Lipton tea from inside - all that was inside. He held it out to be. 'No, I have enough,' I said. He looked at me. Then he held out the bag. I held up my hand - 'No - they're a free gift. I want you to have them.' (By this time I was getting tears in my eyes.) 'Thank you,' he said. Again and again. 'You're welcome.' He finally shuffled off...and I had half a mind to run after him and take him out to dinner somewhere...and I wished I had a fifty dollar bill to have slipped into the mittens...

"I kept waiting for the bus, now mittenless. I rode home, walked to the apartment, and cripes were my hands cold! Oh - to have known for that brief 45-minutes only a fraction of the chill that man had surely had in his hands! It made everything so much sweeter. For when I returned to the apartment, I could turn on the heat and boil some water and curl up in a blanket...

"How I wish I could have all clarity to know what to do for people such as he. Oh, how I hope I touched his heart simply by noticing him and talking to him!"

Now, I don't write that to make me seem all great, because really I'm not, and I walk by so many people every day for whom I have absolutely zero empathy. I hope that as you read it, you grasp the reality of the fact that I did almost NOTHING for this man, and he wanted to give me EVERYTHING that he had back in return. That was the value of my gift. It felt like very, very, very little, something that surely isn't going to save the world or even the city of Pittsburgh from the despair of homelessness -- but it did do something. And something is a lot better than nothing.

Harry and the Potters, one of the few bands I actually listen to, sing songs about the Harry Potter books. Although they aren't Christian, I have been struck by how the core of their message aligns with one of the cores of Christianity: love is it. The Potters aren't talking about the love of Jesus or loving God or any of that, but they've got it right, that the second greatest commandment in the Bible is to love others. Love is powerful. It can heal, it can encourage, it can give hope. It can be manipulated and abused to hurt others or control others. But in the end, in our fight against everything evil - be it jealousy or anger or war or unforgiveness or self-doubt or homelessness - as the Potters so aptly put it in their song "The Weapon" (from the album Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock:

the weapon we have is LOVE!