Originally posted on the Ruminate Blog on 1 February 2017: "Seeing Sideways"
It was raining again when I walked out of church—a
slow spritz that would invoke a guffaw
in the saturated NorthEast. But in California it was, Oh yay, rain! I smiled, raised my umbrella, and headed across the
street.
And
I saw him standing there. Facing the church, holding a
ragged cardboard "help" sign. My first thought: Panhandling, of course. He
knows how to 'guilt' people! Get them coming out of church, stoked with a good
sermon on 'doing unto others.' But
he was directly between me and the parking lot, and to evade him would have
looked obvious. Yeah, evasive. We know it well.
So I walked directly up to him. I was almost
surprised to look into the face of someone as alert and "normal" as other
folks zigging past us. Not one of the usual street people. His eyes were intensely
blue, clear, observant—the word benevolent
occurred to me. Strangely, because he was seeking
our benevolence. Here he was, slightly shivering, damp and uncovered, and he
might have been handing out bonbons or tracts, for the look on his face.
Not a
tinge of down and out.
"Hi, my name's Jerry.* I'm an ex-Marine, on disability, and the checks quit coming.
I'm trying to get through the legalese and straighten it out. I'm supposed to have
more surgery." His declaration was quiet,
well-modulated. He stopped and lifted the cuff of his knee-length khakis. His
leg was distorted, and a thatch of scarring ran from ankle to mid-thigh, where
it disappeared under cover. He looked straight at me. "Afghanistan. I survived. Got patched up, discharged. And lost my
home, lost my address, pension, medical . . . lost it all." It was
matter-of-fact, direct. "I need a
bus pass to go get help. A monthly pass—so I can go back and forth and deal
with all the government paper work and stuff." He explained it all carefully, his reason for
asking.
"Where are you staying?" He obviously
wasn't rumpled and unbathed, unshaved.
He gestured behind him. "Oh, there's a shelter a few blocks down. No computers, nothing but a
free bed. Me and 250 other guys." He smiled ruefully. And then he
grinned. That surprised me—the way he shrugged off the hardship of his predicament.
"God
knows where I am. The bus will take me where I need to go." He said it quietly, carefully. He
was watching me closely.
And I knew: He
was a believer. Jerry came to us, to
believers—not complaining, but directly presenting his need. Directly
focused on what we could do to get him through. Our brother.
We talked a bit more about that—the Connection. I
dug in my wallet and handed him a small wad. My husband came by, assessed the
basics and added another bill. A sister scurried over, carrying a jacket, and helped
him into it, adding a bright purple "girlie" umbrella and a quick
hug. We all laughed at "purple." With a suddenness that amazed me, we
were a small, brief family—HIS people standing there, damp and undampened by
weather or "whethers." It was a meeting of Minds, of mindsets that were timeless, that were
set in Place, in focus, over 2000 years earlier.
This man wasn't a beggar wheedling. He was our
brother, setting himself before us, whole and broken, trusting in our broken
wholeness. Jerry was our unfamiliar friend who needed a daily ride to the right
place for the right reasons.
Because
God knows where he needs to go.
Our adult class this morning focused on indifference: What it has done to the
world we live in, to the people we live with—nearby or distant. The Jerry's of our world have been defeated
by indifference. By bureaucracies that regularly ignore/avoid too many
"Jerry's." By nations preoccupied with real or supposed exigencies, and
cities that have grown apathetic about the "dregs of humanity" that
litter their sidewalks and make everyone uncomfortable simply by being. And we, by our preoccupation with the nitty-gritties of our own lives, and
yes, by our own care-less-ness. I have often been guilty.
The Good Samaritan comes to mind here. His inner eyes
weren't focused on his own pending situation—the why's and wherefore's of his
journey, the occupation and preoccupations of purpose. The man, a pariah
himself, had "sideways vision" too.
He
checked the ditches, walking by.
The things that compel us, distract us, attract us, and
fret us—these effectively bind our larger thoughts, blind our wider vision, dim
our compassion, our rightful determination. The barriers to our benevolence. We do not clearly see the peripheral "other."
Not really. Only smelly, messy, chronic, dysfunctional other. We measure lives by what they have become, and seldom wonder
how they got "there," how their lives unraveled, how the right people
crossing the street at the right moment (one infinitesimal example) might have
changed the outcome.
We overlook the poverty that hovers over the
Appalachia's, the dead-end tenements in too many cities, the hovels adjoining
crop-fields, the wretched encampments that metastasize beneath freeway
overpasses and spill onto our urban avenues.
And
the why's and wherefore's escape us. The endless poverties
spin on and out―all for
the want of a
horseshoe nail.**
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
"For
want of a battle the Kingdom was
lost?" Yes! Yes, it was, is that. His Kingdom lost.
Indifference
is the missing nail. We fail to see sideways,
and then perceive attentively, the deteriorating state of humanity—the poverty,
home-grown and world-wide. Here, it has become simply a familiar backdrop to
daily life. Across the barrier of seas, the tide of refugees rises and never
wanes. It begins to engulf everything.
When humanity is ready, ultimately, to fight the
right battle, to face the inner myopias, to call out—cry out to see through a glass less darkly, to wage
peace against the war within and with-out . . . HE will raise us up from the
dust of our ploys and pretensions, from the honest griefs and struggles that
engulf us. His Kingdom will take shape before us, finally, our eyes
clear-seeing.
This is my ultimate "take-away" from a
brief encounter with Jerry, a solid-wounded man standing in a drizzle on the curb across from where I
worship. Where I head every Sunday to celebrate and petition the GodMan who
sees everything—sideways and inside out.
Everything.
The One Who rescues because He lay flayed and
splayed in the dirt, finally, before the nails—helpless and spat upon. The
Rescuer whom we abandoned at the cross. Who comes to us over and over to heal
both our abandonment and abandoning, to awaken us, His hurting
and hurtful world. To save us from this long indifference.
HE
knows where and who we are, each of us. He will take us where we need to go.
* * *
*Name changed for the sake of privacy.
**This ancient proverb, in various forms, has been
quoted and repeated for varying uses over the centuries, particularly in Early English
writing. Benjamin Franklin also made note of it.
