Piles of Change

While in Dallas for the Komen 3-day walk, I couldn't help but notice the increasing amount of homeless people that appeared since I had been there 2 years prior. 

Large cities typically attract people that need resources and those that have been homeless for years. Each person I saw was someone that made me wonder what happened to them and who was looking for them, if anyone. Thoughts that have taken up residence in my mind for years now.

I wasn't sure I was even going to mention the thoughts I had this year along the route, but it always seems so important. It seems needed, especially after reading this poem again I wrote a few years ago. I've shared that again at the end of this musing.

It's so easy to pretend there's no suffering outside our own. It's understandable to want to escape it, but I myself always find I'm circling back, even when I don't want to. I can't help myself. What I have now seen, I can't unsee. I will always see the people walking down the streets, the highways, carrying packs or pushing carts or baby strollers filled with the only things on earth that belong to them, or they scavenged from a dumpster. The people riding bikes, the people talking to themselves, or screaming at the power lines, I see every single one of them. I don't always know what to do or feel that there's anything to do in those moments, but I no longer divert my eyes. I no longer refuse to see. I no longer dismiss their pain.

There have been times I've begged God to take away that awareness so I myself don't have to feel or acknowledge that pain or to think about what people have experienced or lived through or live in every day. One particular man that I can't seem to shake from my mind after my weekend in Dallas, was a guy I couldn't adequately talk about or describe when I returned home. Every time I pictured him in my mind, immediately I was choked up, tears welled in my eyes. 

We were walking along the route and again, in the city of Dallas, near the downtown area, there's no shortage of homeless people. People were around me as we approached, so I didn't see this man until I he was right in front of me. Over the years, I've witnessed many things, but there are still so many times I'm still caught off guard.

He was skinny and visibly frail. He was wearing some silky, women's bottoms, pulled up as far as they could go near his chest. I say bottoms because I have no idea if they were underwear or really tiny sleeping shorts. He seemed to have them layered over another pair of underwear or shorts, but I found myself not wanting to investigate too much.

He stood there, other homeless people were behind him, some sitting on a bench, and he appeared completely out sorts. It was like his brain was half turned to the off position. I noticed he was trying to say something, as he held an old, white plastic ash tray in his hand. I tried to lean in more to hear his whisper, as I walked past. Very muffled I heard, "Do you have change?" as he moved the ash tray back and forth. It almost seemed as though his joints needed to be oiled, like the tin man in Wizard of Oz, as he was either unwilling or unable to move too much.

I adamantly despise those moments. My initial instinct is to wish I had a pile of change that I could give them that they could swim through like Scrooge McDuck. The other part of me is just shattered, knowing I can't help in a way that I consider meaningful. I can smile. I can offer water or food or even change, but that man will still be there tomorrow, mostly naked and frail, completely lost in his own mind. 

I kept walking. My eyes welled up with tears, and I thought what I always think, " Damn, it's just too much." 

We don't live in a 3rd world country and yet, in any major city you visit, and honestly, any small town if you know where to look and you're paying attention, you can find 3rd world-like conditions. In Mississippi, I can take you to many of those places. There are people who are covered in filth, in clothes that haven't been changed in weeks or months sometimes, wandering from place to place, with nowhere to call home. It's never just about a roof over their heads, it's about them feeling as though they don't belong anywhere, with anyone, anymore. Home has become an illusion.

How fortunate are we, if we have any sense of belonging, in a world that has shown over and over again how relentless and unforgiving it can be. The only thing I can hold on to is hope. That's it. Hope that more people will come along to plant the seeds needed for people suffering to want to get better. Sometimes it takes a lot of seeds and a lot of people to cultivate those seeds. Hope that small encounters allow people to see a small bit of love in the world while they're here. Hope that we always see people and not their addiction, disease, crime, or downfalls as the entirety of who they might be.

Until then, I will try to keep in mind that our worst moments should not be the only ones that define us, and that I will always stive to never be unmoved.

Unmoved

Not just a mental illness

Not just an addict

Not just one without a place to call home 

One that has faced countless traumas

One that has suffered through rejection and abuse

One that has been a child of poverty, a child of a broken home, a child of abandonment 

Countless losses 

Over and over, the cycle continues 

Walking by the dirty man,

the man that screams absurdities, nonsense

the man with the broken spirit , the broken heart, the broken mind 

Instincts say he is dangerous, unworthy, irrelevant 

Grace knocks

Will we give it

Will we acknowledge the lost

Will we honor our neighbor 

Our eyes divert

We step over the bodies

We crush their humanity

Another day begins and we have been unmoved

-Kim Townsend