Ugly Reality

A powerful memory from my childhood was when I was 9 or 10 and I read an article in Time magazine about hungry children in New York City. I remember the pictures of the poor huddled around the fires that were set in barrels and reading about those children, my age, who didn't know where they would sleep or what they would eat. I remember that it was around Christmas and I was so sad for them. It was the first time that the reality of poverty struck me. I wanted to make things ok, but I couldn't. My mother tried to console me, but I sobbed.

Fast forward 16 years.

When I was a paid chorister in the Presbyterian Church two blocks away from here, I remember waiting to enter the sanctuary and reading one of the many mission posters describing the work being done around the world. This one read 'Two thousand miles away, someone is going to bed hungry'.

Somebody had scratched out the word 'thousand' and written 'blocks'.

At the time I lived in another section of town and I was much younger than now (22 years younger, to be exact), so even though I knew the edited poster was probably telling the truth, it was still very much an abstraction, something that happened 'somewhere else', no matter how close 'somewhere else' was. There was a twinge of concern somewhere in my gut, but the wrenching emotion that I had known as a child was not there.

Fast forward another 19 years, to three years ago. I had been living in my present house for 10 years. It was around this time of year, maybe a bit later, because I had first started to ride my bicycle to work.

One particularly frosty morning I had stopped at an intersection and there was a latino in a light jacket pushing a shopping cart with cans and bottles across the street. I nodded hello to him, but his eyes were distant and hard, perhaps he was drunk or mentally ill, I remembered thinking. On to work I went.

Later that day I drove the store van to my house to drop off some slatwall, and as I drove up I saw that man going through my trash. I parked some distance away and watched him. People had been leaving trash outside of my bin after going through it for the cans, etc. and it was pissing me off. Then I became suspicious because I saw him get something out and look at it closely. I thought that maybe he had one of my financial statements and might try to defraud me somehow.

Then, ... and I'll never ever forget this... he ate that thing that he had been looking at. It was a cantaloupe rind and he had been looking at it to determine if it might be safe to eat. I felt dirty and fat and callous and mean and cold and so very wrong, but I did nothing. I hurt on the inside, but I did nothing as the shame poured over me. Later that day that I remembered the poster with the edited phrase '2 blocks away people are going to bed hungry'. I realized that this was no longer an abstraction.

The universe had given me an opportunity and I blew it.

I'm writing all of this because today I listened to the message over at minuscar about 'being beautiful' and it talked about this very thing. I don't buy the whole 'do it for the kingdom' angle. I believe that we should be kind to our neighbors because it is the right thing to do. I hope the next time inequity is put so honestly in front of me that I'll not be paralyzed with inaction.

Being beautiful - Be beautiful - beautiful

this message is kicking me hard from the inside.