Blessed is the Kingdom

Streetwise sounds brilliant.

One of my problems is that I grew up in New England and generally do not look anyone in the eye, and certainly do not say “hello” to strangers. Now I live in the Deep South and am trying to figure out how exactly I am supposed to be friendly. It is not so much an issue of encountering the homeless as it is racial division. And so I struggle between being my(reserved)self and risking others thinking that they are invisible so long as they are not white, and trying to get over my natural tendencies to be friendly to others.

Beautiful poem. A reporter here in Phoenix stood on a corner for 8 hours and did a story on panhandlers. He said the most depressing thing was not the heat or physical strain, but at the end of the day it was all the people who wouldn’t even look at him, it was existentially and spiritually devastating.

This is a wonderful poem. Thank you for posting it. I know people generally don’t have the time, but a short conversation — or inviting a homeless person to lunch — can be an eye-opening experience (no, they have nothing contagious; one will not “catch” poverty from them — and, by the way, aren’t we told that poverty is not a dreaded disease but rather that the poor are loved by God?). I have had some very touching conversations with people asking for help: the motorcyclist bound from Ohio to San Diego to move in with his son’s family after having lost everything that he owned and who had miscalculated, running out of food just one day short of there (I took him into the grocery story and told him to choose what he wanted; he was so frugal in selecting that I added a box of local strawberries that he never would have asked for but I had seen him eying); a lady in Moscow right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union who had moved onto the streets with her young daughter because her alcoholic and abusive husband refused to feed them (fortunately, it was my last day in Moscow and I had a lot of leftover rubles from unused per diem; they probably carried her through an entire month); the young man I met while waiting to be picked up at the metro station when I accidentally arrived an hour early (we had a long lunch at the Roy Rogers’ across the street, found out we shared a lot of common interests, and I learned a lot about how one can survive on the streets even in a cold climate; except for his choice of home — in this case it was a choice — he was like any other neighbor I might have met). Like Rae, I am from New England and was taught never to talk to strangers, but living in California has undone that teaching, thank God, and I talk to strangers all over the world, assuming that God will protect me when necessary. I find it easier to approach the homeless when I consider that they, too, are made in the image of God and have a piece of God within them. So, passing them by, looking down (and yes, that does tend to be a cultural trait of New Englanders), to me, anyway, would be like walking past God and looking the other way.

Sorry for the length of the comment. The post was obviously inspiring.

Thanks, Fr. Christian. I hope you don’t mind, but I linked your post to one I wrote for my Hungry and Homeless blogsite: http://hungryandhomelesshelper.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-panhandle.html. That poem touches one deeply, doesn’t it?