If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? – James 2:15-16
After breakfast Monday, I delivered a short stack of pancakes that the diner mistakenly made to a couple of street parishioners who sleep on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. They were just waking up and grateful for the food.
A woman on a bicycle was waiting for the traffic light to change. She looked at the couple and said to me, “I thought they weren’t supposed to sleep on the street anymore?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” I said. “I most certainly do,” she sniffed. “Well, I don’t,” I replied. The light changed and she pedaled on her way and I walked on mine. Here’s what I might have said, had she and I time to talk:
Lamp and Jeremy and their dog live on the street. They are trying to get a place to live, but it’s not easy. They tote around a lot of stuff … stuff that they pick up curbside and fish from dumpsters and sell to make money (they don’t sell stolen goods). Because they are a couple and have a dog and a lot of stuff, they are not suited to the emergency shelter system. Until they find an apartment that is safe and that they can afford, they will continue to live on the streets and move about as they get rousted by the authorities.
In retrospect, I suppose I do have a problem that Lamp and Jeremy live on the streets, because they would prefer not to – just as the morning cyclist would prefer not to look at them and their stuff. But here we all are. Neighbors. Brothers and sisters. Children of God.
God’s blessings and peace,
Dan +
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