Random Acts of Generosity: Spitting in the Wind or Casting Bread on the Water?

This past Friday, I kicked off my birthday weekend. Here are some highlights of the transition into my 56^th year: I baked three cakes and gave two of them away; I gave away three lunch bags, each to a homeless stranger (one was a veteran who had served in Iraq); I wrote three letters, each one to someone with whom I had not been in touch with for some time.

I seldom talk about the things I do for others; I really believe that the things you do secretly for others makes it more about them. But today is my birthday, and I have decided to make confessions.

For many months, if not the past several years, there has been a sense of unease growing inside me, mainly resulting from the quickly growing economic disparity within my community. Throughout the region, the numbers of homeless have grown. Housing for many is threatened by decreases in availability and increases in cost, while wages have been stagnant in most sectors except tech, banking, property development, and a few others. The drum is beaten against the sensibility of tying minimum wage to a cost of living index; even at a rate $15 an hour, who can survive on it?

There is unrest; there is violence; there is anger.

During the 1960s, when I was a kid, there was a “can do” attitude. There was a notion that we could tackle problems like illiteracy and hunger and solve them. Not only could they be solved here at home, but throughout the world. People were committed to this notion.

What happened?

The simple answer is greed happened. Institutions of all shapes, sizes and purposes have been carved out. Corporate stockholders are less likely to invest, more likely to sell off. Municipality, transit and utility boards have been deferring maintenance for decades, so that people at the top can make more and more money. The centralizing, commodifying, chartering and privatizing of everything is squeezing our institutions for every dime possible, while delivering their missions less sustainably and reliably. The so-called “sharing” and “gig” economies are merely code words that mean “we can’t make it with one job alone.”

Humanity bought capitalism and capitalism is failing humanity.

All of this makes me angry. My family struggles to make more and more money, and we have much, much less. And we look around and see that we are not alone in the struggle.

Of the issue of homelessness, people are quick to say that millions and millions of dollars have been applied to solve it and have not done a thing. “Spending money on homelessness is like spitting in the wind” is a sentence I have actually seen in the editorial pages of my regional newspaper. This is too frequently an excuse to do nothing, or worse, to criminalize vagrancy. “If we must have homelessness, I don’t want to see it” is the attitude.

So the can is kicked down the line to the next generation.

People, this just will not do.

But it is my birthday – this is my party. I could “cry if I want to”, as the lyrics from Lesley Gore’s 1963 song suggest, but I’m not going to do that.

I am going to live more audaciously, as the sermon I heard last night invited (thank you, Rabbi Judy Shanks!). That impulse to brazenly, if in haste, pack some food into flimsy lunch bags and hand it out my car window when encountering someone in need – I want to live like that, casting what bits of bread I have on the water, sharing it with a stranger.

The truth is that each of us has the world; we don’t need more than that. But what we possess, we must responsibility to uphold and steward. There is plenty, if we will but share. But this giving, we have to do it, we have to live that, every day.

Today is my birthday (and the birthday of the world!). It’s my party, and I declare it’s our party, and I invite you all to join me, in whatever way you can.

What you will do? How will you cast your bread on the water? What random acts of generosity will you perpetrate?

– Wait, don’t tell me. Let it be a surprise!

Good Neighbors: 1. Monday

All you who pass by,
don’t judge what you don’t understand.

Please, don’t walk away;

        Any small amount would help
            a homeless,

        hungry

and sick-to-my-very-bones me.

My soul suffers, and has for a long time;
how much longer can I hold on?

You could stop, you could help;
you could save me, for Humanity’s sake!

Instead, you just walk on by;
you show me your back.

           Words of gratitude are not spoken by the dead,
but I might sing your praises

           if you’d relieved my dread;
any small change could help.

Riddled by sleeplessness,
           I drench my tattered coat in tears
that could flood the very streets
           with a river of my shame.

My eyes are weary,

because I fear for my safety.

You’ll ignore me and move on,
            but what goes around comes around;
your indifference will bring the shame on you.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem is part of a cycle based on the seven Penitential Psalms. The subtitle of the cycle is "Psalms from the Streets." This first entry is based on Psalm 6 and an all too familiar passage from Lamentations; it could be subtitled "The Homeless."

Down in the Tube Station At Midnight (or anywhere, anytime of day)

Every so often, I have a guest commentator on my blog. Today, my guest is my husband, Rick Dougherty. At the dinner table, Rick related the story you are about to read. I felt it was vital and important; a story that needs to be shared and thought about deeply. This is a story about people in the Bay Area, about homelessness, about addiction, about suffering. It is also a story about intuition, compassion and engagement. I hope you will take this story to heart.

***

I was coming home from work in San Francisco today, heading down the escalator to the BART station, and noticed a young man in a grey hoody and jeans standing near the turnstile. His backpack lay against the column behind him and, as people walked past to head down to the trains, he was asking for fifty cents.

Normally I would have walked past, but something about him caught my attention. He had a very gentle demeanor, a soft voice and spoke very well. He was very thin but didn’t seem to be ill or worn like so many of the homeless do. I had taken this all in as I put my ticket into the slot and walked through the stile, and was about to move on but instead, just out of curiosity, I turned back and asked him where he was going. For a moment he looked a little puzzled, so I said that fifty cents wouldn’t take him very far. Then he gave a slight smile and a conversation ensued that moved me deeply.

He told me he was just trying to get enough for something to eat, and when I asked him where he lived he said he was from Danville but hadn’t been home in three years. He had been sleeping on benches at the airport along with many other homeless people. The police would walk past them every night on their way to eat but so far didn’t seem interested in them. I asked why he didn’t go back to his parents and he said that they had thrown him out of the house because he had become hooked on heroine.

Before it all fell apart, he had seemed to have a great life in store. He loved baseball and was a great pitcher, a lefty with a 90 mph fastball, and had received a full scholarship at St. Mary’s. But at the end of his sophomore year a teammate saw him shooting up at a party, and when the news got out, he was not only off the team but was expelled from the school.

He said that in the past three years he had overdosed eight times and that each time the medical team had been able to revive him, the last couple of times only barely. You’d think having gone through that he would have learned his lesson, he said, but within half an hour of being released he was out looking for his next fix.

I told him my own family had been riddled with alcoholics and I had learned that the only person who can save an alcoholic, or an addict of any kind, is themselves, so there was nothing I could do for any of those family members but walk away. I said that it was because of that experience that I was reluctant to give him any money. To my surprise he said, “No, don’t give me any money. I’ll just go buy heroine with it.”

I asked if he had looked into any treatment programs that could help him, and he said that he didn’t think he could make it through the twelve-to-fifteen month programs. But if he didn’t even try to grab onto a rescue line, I replied, the there was no chance at all that he could change his fate. But if he took that very first step, he might begin to feel the confidence that he could control his life and could regain the determination to see it through and pull himself back up on his feet.

He shook his head again and said he wasn’t sure he could do it. I told him that in the end there were parts of him trying to run his life, his body and his mind, and that he would have to decide which one would run it in the end.

He nodded solemnly, as did I. I wished him well and we shook hands. Then I headed down to the trains.

***

This is a simplified version of the story from the way it was told at our dinner table, but that is the whole story.

There are a great many things that could be said about the story you have read, but the one aspect I want to draw your attention to has to do with engagement. 

I know that I have had similar encounters with people, over the years--people who were, for all intents and purposes, struggling to deal with something. Who knows what it was that made Rick turn back? I can only think there is some sort of intuition involved. 

We will never know if anything Rick had to say to this young man will have a lasting impact (he has survived overdosing eight times, but cats only have nine lives), but I cannot help but feel that when we follow the intuition that tells us to engage,--that it is not only okay, but we need to engage--this opens a pathway for positive change.

In your dark night, whose face was it that made you smile? Whose warm hand touched yours? Whose kind word or funny joke? How was the darkness dispelled? What unexpected encounter changed your life? 

When you pass people huddled on the street or in the tube station or in the airport, what is it that will make you talk to one of them? Are you tethered to a virtual muffler, or are you tuned to what is happening around you?

Whose life might you unknowingly influence for the better?

One last thought: We shall all be changed, of that there is no doubt. If we shall all be changed, let it be through compassionate, caring engagement.

The Jam: Down in the Tube Station At Midnight