I broke up a fight. I ran towards it. Two homeless men whom I have befriended this last year. Ricky, a small man, drugged up sometimes, crippled with AIDS and other diseases, but friendly, most of the time coherent and with an adorable cat named Van whom he loves and uses to get money as he panhandles from the kindhearted business ladies who walk by. I trust him in the sense that he is trying to live life the best he can. I don’t trust the words or the stories out of his mouth but I try to accept them as his feelings or what he hopes for. I love him and buy him Hawaiian pizza with a Mountain Dew every so often or if its morning, crumble cake and milk from Starbucks. We also often pray together. He often asks for these prayers.
The other man. He told me his name once a while ago but I don’t remember now, so let’s call him Fred. He is clean, no physical ailments, doesn’t look drugged up ever. He switches between a cap that proclaims JESUS and a cap that shows he’s a Vietnam vet. Always with a button up shirt tucked into clean jeans. I once asked him why he comes out here and he said it was his therapy: To get out and see people. He is not interested in food, only money. And since I have vowed not to give him or Ricky money, I try out conversations, prayer requests and smiles. He keeps asking when he is going to get a quarter.
Today Ricky was in front of the 7th + Fig mall first, I missed the initial interaction because I was in Starbucks buying a crumble cake. But it ended up with Ricky moving down the street some and each of them yelling about how the other one was a crack head. Fred also yelled out that he had been here for 20 years (some sort of street seniority, I guess). I said my goodbyes to Ricky. And as I walked passed Fred he didn’t want to joke with me as usual, I tried to smile. I wanted to tell him that I don’t know the whole history, but there was a definite lack of Christ’s love in how he was yelling at Ricky. I wanted to tell him so badly, that after I had passed him my feet became glued to the cement as I figured out how I would phrase it. But I turned around to shuffling noises and angry voices. The two homeless men were in each other faces. If they had actually gotten in a fight, Ricky would be down in one push. He is wiry, but frail. All hesitation was gone from me. I ran over between them. They continue to yell at each other. “Excuse me, Excuse me! You both claim to be Christians. This is not okay!” My words are far from perfect but they are words and I think my presence embarrassed them and they backed down. A security guard came as well and walks Ricky back to his spot. I walk Fred back. He is talking about how Ricky is a “dope fiend and hides behind his cat, I know I live in the medical motel too.” I tell him, “I don’t give Ricky money. The sermon at church yesterday was on loving your neighbor and he is our neighbor. Neighbors aren’t always pretty and don’t always have it all together.” It seems kind of odd that I am telling a panhandler this, but so it is. I am not sure he cares. But he thanks me, calling me a peacemaker and preacher, and he’s sorry I had to get involved. As I walk away, I feel like I am almost shaking with all this unexpectedness. I wait on the corner for the light to turn, and I look back. Fred is walking toward Ricky. I think “oh no....” But I feel like it is no longer my place to see how they are doing. I just pray quickly. Ricky doesn’t look agitated. There is some conversation and Fred walks back. In my hopes, I imagine that Fred apologized in some way, or asked to see the new baby cat Ricky just found in a dumpster. Something kind, something inspired by the Holy Spirit and not the spirit of self-preservation. I won’t know.
But I will see them each again some other morning. And we will have the conversations we always have. And nothing will change. They will still be panhandlers I must learn to love when there is no change, trust God with their lives and pray for them. And trust that the 2 minute prayers, the overpriced crumble cake, and the smiles and handshakes mean something to them, and mean something in to God.
4 comments:
P.S. I talked with Ricky at lunch. A drug rehap center in Tarzana has accepted him for a detox program. Methadone, Crack and Heroine are all devils he's got to kick. I don't know if he will make it to Tarzana or stick it out. But PLEASE pray for him.
praise god that he is going to try and "kick those devils" and "fred" is right, yesterday you were a peacemaker. keep looking at those men through god's eyes.
I just read your blog and cried and still feel like the watery channels of my eyes and nose and throat are vulnerable to another flood. It is hard to pinpoint what exactly it triggered inside of me.
Maybe it’s because I saw G, my old neighbor lying across the sidewalk on mid N. Broadway in LH and feel the helplessness of trying to love well, and in his case that means boundaried, absolutely hurting for the drugs that oppress he and his wife and make them crazy and irrational and destructive and scary. Maybe it was for all the yelling and profanity that assaulted my ears and the ears of the children that were being fought over who were curious about me as I planted oldish plants in fresh soil yesterday, tenderly inviting them to be reborn as it were, to be renewed in their new homes.
Maybe it was because your interaction and subsequent renderings via the post are that sort of beautiful that only interactions of a young woman trying to be faithful in a cold mean world can be. In the way that grass grows through old ally cement, watered with the blood of violence. It is beautiful in this gut-wrenchingly sad way. It is beautiful that you did something. And to be honest… I think your verbage was perfect. Because it was real.
I'm a young fool who doesn't necessarily follow or believe in God, Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity. I'm an atheist who feels at mercy of the world and is a slave to my own misfortunes and shortcomings.
However.
I hope you take it as a sincere compliment when I say that if God does exist somewhere, and if he does, in fact, care, it's mainly through your writings and our exchanges that I have witnessed Him. To paraphrase another poet, if God can inspire the kind of person you strive and have become, I don't care if he doesn't exist.
Post a Comment