today we arrived at the church to drop off some Living Hope photo display boards for Avril to pick up later today. as we drove in the parking lot, a leathery-skinned white man with bony arms and fingers, a bright green tshirt, and a pair of dirty old khaki shorts hanging off his frail waist stood under the awning of the church. like a rickety old fence, he stammered from one leg to the other, as if the plastic bag in his hands was too much weight for his weakened body. his hair, the color of his skin, was messy and dirty.
as he approached our open window, something inside of me froze. i tried looking into the man's eyes but it was as if none existed in his face. for behind the surface of his eyes, nothing seemed to exist. and smothered on top of these empty eyes was a thick film of disillusionment, so thick it made his eyes appear transparently white in color. had he pricked his eyeball with a pin, it seemed that water would pour forth for ages, perhaps the tears of lost years that had never been let loose. for a man such as this, tears might be the only thing left he had to hold on to. shedding them would be to loose little of the nothing you have left.
i stuck my right hand out the driver's window (which is the right front window down here) to shake this man's hand. instead of a hand shake, he only stared at my hand, up at my face, and then down at his own scarred and cracked hand. "I have AIDS", he said. "I won't let you shake my hand."
His name is Collum. He's from Dublin, Ireland, & living in Cape Town for a reason I'm not sure of. He need 3 Rand (50 cents) to get home. He has just drawn the letter "J" in the ground to represent his belief in Jesus. He had no belongings with him. He claimed to have just come to the church to receive drug counseling and a bite to eat. He had been "wasted" the night before, which he translated to us to mean that his girlfriend had stolen all his money and ran off. He claimed to have nothing left.
Physically, the man looks like a cracked-out drug user who might or might not have AIDS. He hadn't showered in a long time. Mentally, he wasn't all there. He had fragmented sentence and thoughts. But his words were convincing.
What do you do?
3 comments:
I had the chance to help a couple of "homeless" folks, and did not, because I was too busy trying to do the right thing. Or was I? Perhaps this was a built in excuse to be "let off the hook". I thought, they will just use this money to buy drugs, and then I will be contributing to the problem.
Collum, in the economy of ministry, seemed to be one that could do nothing for you, but you could do much for him. WWJD probably does not work here, as we do not know what Christ(the great surpriser) would ever do, but I think we, as the arms, and legs, and in my case..the asses of Christ, are to do all we can to bring about a kingdom of healing, hope, and reconciliation. Outside of counseling, what does your agency do for folks like him ...people that we could be, with just a few bad breaks?
you know, one of desmond tutu's favorite lines is "there, but for the grace of god, go i." living in his country, i see the truth of that more clearly. in a world where left became right and black became white and acceptable became homeless and homeless became...well, more homeless back in 1994 after apartheid "fell", i dont' know how you can't see the truth that "it could be me, but for the grace of God". race, money, gender...it doesn't matter here when it comes to poverty.
living hope gives us cards to hand out, b/c our various branches serve these people more fully than i can. i am able to say, "no i won't give you money, but come here and we'll feed you, we'll let you take a shower, we'll listen to your life, we'll give you a reason to stop smoking crack, etc."
collum was a drug addict, no doubt. he walked across teh street with my 30 cents and bought a bag of something. i watched him, and he watched me watching him. i regret it, i'll be honest. but in that moment, collum wasn't walking away without some money from me. and in that moment, i couldn't seem to walk away from collum at all.
it's a process of learning how to respond. you can tell usually whose going to take your money to the streets and whose going to take it to buy food for their wife or child. but when that person is glaring into your eyes, reason goes out the window.
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