Sometimes I’m so over poor, homeless, mentally ill people.
I admit it.
We live in a city that is straddling extremes: one street looks like something out of a movie and two blocks over, there are people shooting up in the alleys, homes with broken windows and filth.
Our city went from wealthy to rundown in a few decades. Now it’s being revitalized (okay, gentrified) which means that it’s full of young families like us because it’s the only place we can afford on this side of the river. There are a few groups of people here: the young family (us), the elderly and then the transient, the poverty stricken and the poor immigrant.
This means that when we go out for a walk, I chat with everyone from young mothers with strollers that don’t speak English to pensioners at the Legion to a guy without teeth outside of the London Drugs that stinks of burnt eggs.
It’s uncomfortable at times. After all, I’m not simply listening to a sermon from a passionate, idealistic young preacher about justice and love and mercy, romantisizing the poor. (I miss those days.) I don’t want to have to avert my eyes everytime I try to cross 6th Street, looking anywhere but at the man begging by the crosswalk. It’s always in front of me now. There is no escape.
Can I not just get a cup of $5 coffee without being bothered by you people? The city should do something about THIS.
Then the dirty, smelly homeless guy with his mangy pooch looks up at my daughter and grins.
“I sure like your purple coat,” he says. “Thanks, I like your dog,” she says.
Another day and I wait at the Tim Horton’s for my coffee. A man, filthy and friendly, wants to talk. He’s just chatting away harmlessly. I’m uncomfortable because he’s talking so loudly. And he’s standing a bit too close. He thinks I’m in high school (bless his heart!) and wants to know what subjects I like because “I never got to go and I think about it sometimes.” The girl at the Timmy’s counter looks embarrassed and asks if he’s bothering me. She can “get rid of him”. I shrug. “Not bothering me. It’s fine.”
I walk to the library with my tinies. A woman comes racing across the street, on a beeline for us. “I just want to see the babies! I love babies!” I try to shield the tinies from wayward kisses from lonely ladies with snow white hair with blue streaks in it. She wants to tell me about her kids, long gone now. I’m fascinated by her outfit: enormous military fatigues, sparkling shoes and a poncho. The tinies proclaim her shoes are “nice like a princess.” The lady beams.
My husband and tinies picks me up at the SkyTrain station. He’s chatting with a guy he introduces as Josh. Josh is scarfing down three pieces of pizza and a pop while he talks with his mouth full. He tells a story about being laid off from construction because he got hurt. Brian decides to seek him out everytime he picks me up; he’s full of hope that this is a guy down on his luck, just needing some help. Next few times, he buys him those pizza slices when they visit and Brian shares the Gospel with him. Then for about a month, every time we see Josh, he’s high as a kite, foul-mouthed. He admits that he actually got fired because he’s addicted – not because he got hurt. And just doesn’t care anymore since he lost his kids to his ex-wife’s parents.
So (expletive)in’ get lost. And we do.
We’re at the playground and the tinies have made a few new friends. I’m hovering close by since it’s a city park and the last time we were here, I saw a few used items that ought not be laying around a children’s playground. Usually, the city is pretty great about keeping this park clean and family friendly but you can’t be too careful. Their new friends are a group of kids that escaped from the Sudan with their parents. They are sad-eyed and wearing crisp white headscarves. My tinies think that they are beautiful and follow them all afternoon. They’re very kind. Their mother won’t look me in the eye when, like an idiot, I try to chat about the rainy weather just after she mentions moving here to escape from the war.
I’ve realised that those that are marginalized by our society, the ones we call “the least of these” – the broke, the immigrant, the mentally ill, the addicted – are just, you know, people to my children.
Because now they are no longer “the poor” or “the immigrants” or “the mentally ill.” They are people, my neighbours. With faces and names and stories and a claim on the spot by the library so we see you every Tuesday.
Sometimes I think that it might be nice to live in a sanitized society, where you never meet the people that live on the cusp. I think it might be nice to live a gated community without a crack in the sidewalk. And a pool. And people that look like me, think like me and consume like me.
But that is not necessarily the Kingdom of God with the wide table laid for all of us – the elderly, the mentally ill, the poor, the immigrant, the young family and even people like me, just now learning that I, hard-hearted and selfish, am among the least of these.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Tough stuff. . . well-written. And so much easier to talk through the issues than to live and walk through them. Your kids are learning at young ages, before their own prejudices have a chance to develop, how to walk and live among those different from themselves. It is a beautiful thing, and a gift, really.
I love this. Perhaps because my sister also lives in the city I’m pretty sure you are talking about… and I have friends who live in a permanent intentional Christian community near ‘Needle Park’ by Gastown just so they can do outreach to the local ‘street’ people. I love that you are reaching out on a daily basis.. although it’s definitely NOT easy. My dad used to always stop for a chat and joke and to give something to the homeless people we passed, be it a Big Mac or a bit of change. I now work with homeless young people. Your example will, I’m pretty sure, stay with your kids. Sounds like they are doing pretty well already
Have you read The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Clairborne? I thought of it immediately and throughout your post. It’s ironic how we want to protect our kids from those marginalized but society and they teach us about love without judgement.
Please continue to keep your heart open to the marginalized people in your community. And thank you for writing this.
Joan Baez wrote this very poignant song, called “The Last, Lonely and Wretched”. It’s about the homeless. She expressed in the song how much more we have in common with the homeless than we think we have. This is the refrain of the song:
“For once, you were a child
Your cheeks were red
You were well fed
You laughed and played
Til you were teary
Ran to your mother
When you were weary”….
Janet
It kind of amazes me that the biggest differences are that they speak their mind… and we often keep our thoughts to ourselves… it’s good to listen. And to actually hear them.
Loved this post… will be thinking of it the next time the kids and I encounter someone on a walk that I would try to hurry past…
Thanks for your vulnerability by putting your honest thoughts and feelings out there. Thank you for helping me think about how I treat others.
Wow! Really good stuff. You really made me think and rethink some definitions of the least. Thanks.
wow, do you live in philly? i do and can relate to the post. i love city life and the fact that it’s not as isolating as suburban life, still how to relate to the homeless can be tricky……
I am a woman who lives in a small rural mountain town. I can’t remember seeing a homeless person since I moved here. I don’t live in a gated community but I do live in a neighborhood if you can call it a neighborhood. The thing is I NEVER see my neighbors. Truth is I only know 4 of them scattered through the “hood”… It’s sad but true. I don’t know how I would respond in your shoes. But in my shoes… I get REALLY lonely.
What an amazing gift your children have and are giving to you. I love that about children’s eyes. They see so differently than we do.
Beautiful post!
This post really spoke to me!! This issue has been on my mind SO MUCH in the last few years. Our church group would help out at the soup kitchen and nobody else brought their kids, but we started bringing ours, even the little babies. It was beautiful to see the faces that lit up.
Lord, open our eyes and our hearts!
Thank you for this. I grew up in an area a bit like you speak of, but just on the other side of the tracks. We certainly encountered The Least every day, but I wasn’t raised to engage with them really or get to know them. I did a bit of tutoring some kids in a government project and certainly saw them just as kids, but rarely interacted with their parents. Now I live in a completely and wholly sanitized neighborhood…a master planned community in fact. I thought it was a dream when I chose it, and I still marvel at how it is a bit like being on vacation at a resort all the time. But recently I’ve realized that because I literally NEVER encounter those living on the cusp anymore, I do not have the same opportunities to meet Jesus in The Least that I am now ready for. So I’m torn and conflicted. I doubt we’ll move any time soon, but my perspective has certainly changed.
I realy like the way you wrote this article. It is pleasant to see that you feel safe and your children are safe in this neighborhood. We lived in a similar neighborhood in the midwest. We always had pretty flowers in our front yard. People, similar to what you described, stopped by to compliment on the flowers. I made a point of it to tell them about Jesus love and what He can do for us. The people enjoyed the flowers and a few minutes of caring conversation person-to-person.
One thing I love about A Deeper Story is the authenticity of its writers. This post is no exception. “After all, I’m not simply listening to a sermon from a passionate, idealistic young preacher about justice and love and mercy, romanticizing the poor…” Too often I find myself falling into that exact category. In the past couple of years, though, my eyes have become opened after my husband befriended a homeless man in our community. Our relationship with him has been a roller coaster — we’ve watched as dipped snuff during communion and listened as he called us drunk one night to tell us he loved us — but it has taught me that we are all far more alike than different. Much like you, I am learning that “I, hard-hearted and selfish, am among the least of these.” Thank you so much for opening up your heart and your story. This is why I keep coming back to this place. It’s rare to find a place on the internet where people are genuinely seeking truth and sharing stories: Thank you.
This was on my facebook page when I opened it up, so I clicked on it and read the whole thing. Tinies are wonderful and Jesus said we are to be like little children (in this respect anyway) Thanks for pointing out how better to be aware.
San Leandro, California
I just want to wholeheartedly agree with all the encouragement above. Thank you for writing. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for challenging us all in a loving, respectful way and having the courage to admit that life isn’t a neat, easy, or pretty package…but that love is still worth the risk.
Sarah, you always write with such grace. I struggle with this a lot lately….I so want to be like Jesus….but really, it can be awfully uncomfortable sometimes, and people keep telling me I need boundaries, that I have to protect my family, that I’m being “enabling”….I can’t even buy a guy a bagel because in my head I”m beating myself up about it….I mean really…it’s a 1$ dollar bagel and I’m drinking a 5$ coffee….what if he didn’t want a bagel? Maybe he wanted a muffin….but then I look into his crystal clear blue eyes, I smile at him and my baby wave’s hi….and I realize, maybe he didn’t need a bagel today…maybe he needed someone to acknowledge he exists….maybe he needed the sweet smile of a baby upon him bestowed without a smidgen of judgement….who knows? God I guess….
Sarah,
I’m adding my voice to the resounding chorus today that says, “Thank you.” Thank you for being honest. Thank you for showing the authentic, passionate struggle to straddle two realms: the ideal and the real.
It is one thing to talk about loving the poor (I can wax eloquently with the best of them), and quite another thing to actually DO it, as you said. I think most of us are too embarassed to just admit–they smell, their feet are dirty or whatever else we get hung up on internally–what’s really keeping us from embracing “the messy” (or the least).
But I, like you, am very aware that I am messy too. I am as messy as the best of them. And I sure am glad that the tribe in my life has gotten past my icky smell and dirty feet to love me. I am still learning what it looks like to do that for others…
Thank you so much for sharing. By doing so, you have re-kindled an urging in my spirit to reach out to “the least of these”. I really needed this
Mmmmhmmm. Funny how easy it is to focus on the ways we are different, when we all have a Creator Father in common.
Great post. I shared it on my facebook wall. One of my friends asked what do you mean by “immigrant”?
Really really enjoyed reading this, and the details you put in about the specific outfits of the people, especially the sparkling shoes, made it all so real, because, people are just people, as we realize through the eyes of our children.
Oh, I want to know what city you live in now. You could have been describing mine. Though I live in the States, so it probably isn’t.
Gosh, this is such a hard topic for me. I have the heart that wants to save the world, that struggles to sleep when I know there is suffering. I live in a city with lots of desperate people, homeless, addicts, and such. And I feel so powerless to do anything. I don’t talk to them, because of a piece of my history which makes it unwise for me. Vague, I know. Take my word for it. It kind of forces me to acknowledge the world for as broken as it is. To be compassionate, volunteer and do civic duty but leave some of it to our Creator. Lifting up the marginalized must be a collective effort.
You just reminded me completely of when we were living in East Van and I had 2 littles. They are good memories.
thank you for writing this. its so true. we are all the least of these.
Believe it or not, Jesus called me to move to one of the wealthiest communities in the world. And homelessness is a huge problem here, particularly as related to mental illness and/or addictions. The first full year I was here, every week I had to leave this rarified atmosphere where we live and our church is located, the church where I became the associate pastor. I literally drove ‘over the hill’ just to see more of the kind of businesses and people I was used to in the city from which I came. I have done some volunteering at a family shelter and will do more of that in this first year of my retirement. But….your honest words just slapped me upside the head, big time. Driving by? So I could feel a little more comfortable about the embarrassment of riches I am privileged to enjoy? Oh, ouch. Lord, have mercy. I’ll work on it, I promise. Thank you for this thoughtful and real post. I always love reading what you write.
I loved this, too. I especially love the learning from our children’s acceptance and the commitment to expand your children’s worldview beyond middle-upper class suburbia and its comfort and predictability. Great words, great challenge…
Great post. I live in a similar area. My life has been touched in so many ways by the homeless, poor and mentally ill that have populated my world over the years. We share the same great need for love and mercy. It makes me cry now to think about all the things I’ve learned from our relationships. I was part of a church too that was able to open it’s doors every friday night to feed and house about 200 homeless men, women and children. One of my favorite things to do when we were doing music before lights out was to sing them a lullaby… God’s heart to them. I’m so thankful for those times and for God’s mercy for us all.