But modern human aspirations include not only liberation from exterior pressures which prevent fulfillement as a member of a certain social class, country, or society. Persons seek likewise an interior liberation, in an individual and intimate dimension; they seek liberation not only on a social plane but also on a psychological. -Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation.
On Friday I was at the pub with some friends. In that pub, there was a guy that most everyone avoids like the plague: he smells and he is "too far gone". Upon bumping into him, that was my thinking too: "OMG, he's a goner".
This type of encounters always leads me into big metaphysical reflections: Why does God let that happen? Why do we have such hellish alienation in our midst? Why is it that even the nice guys I was with avoid him like the plague? Why do I want to run away too?
I dwelled in my own thoughts for a while, half an hour or so. Quakers have a policy of always "waiting for leadings" anyway, they're very wary of premature action. So there I was. It was the twentieth such guy I've encountered, and I did not want to engage. I wanted to stay out.
At some point, I did feel able to engage, but I knew I had to have rock solid boundaries in place. I don't mean boundaries as in not allowing myself to like the guy. I mean boundaries as in being able to step out before it started feeling wrong, to step out while I was still unconditionally supportive. And it would start feeling wrong. Hell, this guy "felt wrong" to the entire pub!
So I did that. I flirted with the guy for fifteen minutes, sending out my "love vibes" and sustaining eye contact. It sounds like a tiny achievement, and God knows it is, but this guy hadn't looked anyone in the eye for -what do I know?- a week?
There's a human being underneath it all, and damn it, if we're not giving out any love, is he to blame? One's got to start somewhere. And if that somewhere is sustaining unjudging eye contact for ten minutes, then so be it!
"Stay tuned to what you feel", I thought. And I could feel my jedi powers starting to run dry. Time to exit. You can never "carry the whole guy". You can't even fully carry your friends for very long, let alone alcoholic strangers. "Great to meet you" I said.
For this short time, I was truly starting to like the guy, it just didn't last very long. I knew it wouldn't: the guy is not easy to love, practically everyone else has given up, and this is a very friendly pub that usually welcomes strangers into its social dynamics.
I got myself a pint and went back to my group of friends. I knew what would happen then. The guy would want more. A hell of a lot more. At this point stay firm. Supportive but firm. Convey that you want time with your friends and that's it.
Maybe start again next time. Say "hi", strike a chat, move out before you run out of jedi powers, remain supportive and start again a week later. Give little. Give very little. But give cheerfully. Genuine pleasure in the company of others. If that's not "love", then at least it comes pretty close, or so I tell myself.
9 comments:
Um, it doesn't take "Jedi powers" to look at, or talk to, street-involved people... but I suppose that it might take conversion. Is it really so exhausting to make eye-contact with smelly guys? Maybe I've been doing this for so long that I've forgotten what it's like on the other side (of the barricades -- the side that can go slumming every now and again but then return back to their places of comfort). Good grief, if it's really so difficult, then what sort of hope can I maintain for "mainstream" Christianity?
It's easy to give cheerfully when you give little. That's pretty much what everybody does. I don't call that love -- I call that the self-absorbed form of "charity" that makes me feel good about the fact that I'm not really doing anything about anything.
Hmmm... this post seems to have struck a chord with me. I'll stop venting.
No, sometimes it’s not easy, and in this case it certainly isn’t. Even you have sometimes described difficult characters as “leeches” –while you do affirm that there is nothing wrong with them, it’s just you personally can’t connect with them, so you should let someone else connect-.
I’m not talking about street-involved people in general, with most I have no problem at all, I’m talking about this guy at my pub, with whom I -and seemingly everybody else- find it very hard to connect.
Sometimes you don’t hit it off straight away. This is one of the principles of arranged marriages in China: they don’t see the point in marrying when the pot is boiling, and then spending your life watching it cool down. They’d rather start with a cool pot and spend their lifetime bringing it to boil. You can start with a cool pot.
It’s the way I operate, I guess, by giving others my genuine appreciation. The reason I give little (initially) is because I want to exit before it stops working.
Not exit forever, note! I will keep engaging. And it’s worked well in the past, as some of my closest friendships started like this. They were awkward as hell to start with, they're the most beautiful things now. When I chose to reach out I don’t usually fail, but I acknowledge that we are starting out as complete strangers.
I’d be curious to hear what you would have done in that pub. Including him in my group of friends right there would not have worked right there. But it will, if you’ll give me a couple of weeks. Because by then, I’ll have found a way to present him to my friends in a way that will ensure they like him.
I know you’re not big on setting boundaries. Now it makes me wonder whether my reaching out “for ten minutes” and setting very clear boundaries means I’m not converted. In that case I’m pretty stuck I guess.
But if we're gonna go anywhere with mainstream christians, we need to address their initial preconception that some people might be "beyond reach" and that nothing they can do will change this.
Because that inital preconception is not 100% irrational, and just dissmissing them ad hominem as a bunch of apathetic assholes is not gonna help.
You know, I really do enjoy heated discussion. A few rejoinders:
(1) Sure, I've spoken of 'emotional leeches'. I think having spent the last ten years doing what I do(well, it's been longer than that if you count my own experiences with homelessness as a youth), there's nothing wrong with identifying people that I've found especially difficult to come alongside of. However, if one has not spent the requisite time and energy with such people, it appears at least a little presumptuous to, say, meet a smelly person at a bar and quicky conclude, "Oh, yep, just one of those 'emotional leeches'"! Indeed, this whole post struck me as quite presumptuous and it seemed out of character... not what I expected of you.
(2) By speaking of conversion, I wasn't suggesting that you were not converted. Far from it! I was conceding the point that a process is involved here. However, by moving from "Jedi powers" to conversion, I was suggesting that what was needed was the Holy Spirit (not other powers), and thus implying, with Paul, "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by..." (cf Phil 2).
(3) I'm not dismissing "mainstream" Christianity. I was asking you to give me some hope as I've been feeling a little discouraged lately (see my latest post about the dead fifteen year old girl... she was either hot-capped -- forced to take an overdose -- or beaten to death).
I haven't got lots of years of working closely with street involved people as you do, but I have some experience of volunteering in shelters during most of my undergrad and of renting a flat right next to the homeless centre. At that point most of my social circle were homeless, smelly and addicted. I did not have any “normal” friends.
You are questioning my immediate appraisal of the situation, and of this guy. I did not think "Oh, yep, just one of those 'emotional leeches". Indeed I rarely feel that way about anyone. But it does happen. Sometime I'm a poor judge of character. Sometime I start out with very negative prejudices about people I have never spoken to. It's unfortunate, and when that happens the first thing on my mind is: "What the fuck is that now? We need to find a way beyond this".
And yet I've only felt like this a couple of times, three times if you include one guy in Peru – so me writing about twenty was a hyperbole of sorts, the idea was to state that it’s probably not that uncommon. There, right from the start I thought: tricky. I couldn’t sense the guy at all, he seemed sunk into a pit of despair, his conversation was very superficial, with no emotion involved except underground pain and an enormous cynicism. He wasn’t warming to human presence and no-one was warming to him either.
If I sound cocky and presumptuous, it is to hide from my looming despair, to hide from my gnawing doubts that say: “you’re going to fail. you’re going to live your life having changed nothing, worse you’re going to resent this guy, you’re going to avoid this pub, you’re such a fucking uninspired loser, incapable of brotherly love, you never were a new creation and you never will be”.
When these doubts start creeping in I get defensive. I won’t fail, I won’t fail. I can love whomever I want. I know what I’m doing, I’ve got a method, I’ve got a plan, and I’m even going to write it up on the blog as a note to myself. Keep the doubts at bay. Death has not won, death has not won. I said I can enter into a love relationship with whomever I want, see if I don’t and FUCK YOU ALL.
But love is a two way road. It makes no sense loving someone if they don’t love me back, because the love in their heart is what’s important, that is the true gift. And What I really wanted is to give the gift of a community. I really wanted him to fit in. So I did what I thought would help, which involved remaining centred among my friends and reinforcing my friends. If I’d started acting “saintly” and being judgemental of my friends they would have resisted me. At the end of the day, he’s the one that’s got to do the fitting in, but I can be a gateway, someone who fits in with both elements of the equation. And that, oddly, involved making it clear that I was also somewhat uncomfortable with the guy. See my “mission field” is not the guy, it’s my friends.
Give you one reason to hope in the mainstream? The mainstream lacks heroism. They turn up every Sunday singing their Kyrie, saying to the Lord that they’re sorry they fuck up and they’re also sorry they can’t stop. They really believe that. They really believe that they are mediocre and that reaching out to the homeless is the affair of saintly fellows like yourself. They’re not just saying it. It’s learned timidity, that’s what it is. Timidity is not humility, that’s the message that needs to get across.
Theresa of Lisieux once said to her superior: “I want to be a saint”. She was told that was a lack of humility and she should repent immediately. At the end she was made a doctor of the Church for that kind of stuff. Of course once you start doing it, you realise it’s not very heroic, but how many times have radicals acknowledged that we do in fact like the heroic mystique, a la les miserables? We need courage, and courage involves a form of pride.
In terms of influencing the mainstream, I used to think that example was everything, and indeed example sometimes suffices. I know of one guy who changed career to work in a mission within three weeks of starting to read your blog. But my point here is that example sometimes doesn’t suffice. Sometimes you’ve got to put your friends in the Spotlight, without warning, so their timidity won’t stop them. Invite the homeless to your birthday party, and into your home generally. Hell, I did that with my dad! He rose to the challenge, he realised that my friend was decent and ended up lending him transformative sums of money and being his guarantor for banks and flats. And my dad is as mainstream as it gets.
But one thing I have which you do not have, and that is the absence of a scary aura. I’m no theologian, and I’m not known to be very saintly, so if I can do things, people around me think they can do it too. That’s why going out with a bloody priest is the bummer, because in a way that sets me apart and I hate it. I made huge efforts never to be different from the mainstream. I love them. And if they’re my friends, initially I love them more than alcoholics strangers, yes I do.
Hi Dan, Well you obviously have access to a PC and a bit of free time to use. I really don't think we ever hear from the REAL heros out there, certainly not to play, "Can you top this." They're too busy managing 2-3 kids and a job without a partner, or showing up day after day to work with and bring some cheer to nutty, (and, yes, "smelly") old folks for the same pay they would recieve for nursing sweet-smelling cute , cuddly babies, or, as do you, work the streets to help. ALL THE TIME.
Too busy to tell strangers and compare chops.
As for you Dany and your priest (I assume Anglican) boyfriend:
"Alb be down to getcha in a taxi, honey,
Biretta be ready 'bout half past eight..."
Stuckley, d'you mind cooling it on this one? Dan is a good friend, fairly easygoing IRL, and this post is just a really good discussion.
In my opinion, working a job and managing a family is never enough, we need to make room for others, c.f. the works of mercy. I'll agree that personal life uses up your time and money, of course it does, hopefully not all of it though.
Man I've been thinking about this post for the past four days now. I can't seem to let go of my position, I really did trust my instinct on that one.
I'm trying to be reflexive and all that but it just raises more questions: What do I mean with tough love? What is the relationship between the principle of neighbourly love and immediate personal sympathies (and/or lack thereof)? What do you do with people whose whereabouts you can't predict, and who will therefore disappear from your world without warning, giving you no chance of long term interaction?
OKAY, Yeah..I know you're right. Learned something as a beginning blogger...:it's not a good place to get personal. Which is probably as good an answer as any to your last question above. Not sorry for what I said, but I certainly DO apologize for horning into a conversation that did not involve me.
Sincerely.
Wing Commander Chew Humble-Crowe
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