Anything Helps

I drove by a shopping cart as I turned onto my street, full of someone’s worldly goods, brown cardboard sign poking out from the top. It was haloed in light from the street-light above. I didn’t see anyone nearby.

Last night I passed the same shopping cart piled high as I got off the highway. It was just a few hundred yards away from where it sat tonight. 

Someone “lives” in this area, parking all their belongings as they try to catch a few moments of rest. Likely struggling to truly sleep, racked with anxiety their cart will have been taken away come morning. I wonder, as the owner flew their sign earlier today, did they make enough money to find a cheap place to stay? Some shitty motel with a low rate, anywhere slightly cleaner and more comfortable than the hard concrete. 

I simply cannot fathom keeping everything I own in a shopping cart. Honestly, I can’t fathom owning so little it all fits into a shopping cart. 

I can’t imagine what it is like to have to fly a sign all day, standing at the corner of the exit off I-25, not only wanting to make some money, but also longing for someone to look my way and acknowledge my presence, my humanity. Standing there as people are waiting at the red light. Awkwardly fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, praying the light turns green so they don’t have to sit here and pretend I’m not there because they don’t have any cash, or they don’t want to give it, or they think I’m a lazy bum, or they just feel guilty that they have while I have not. 

I can’t imagine what that’s like. 

Yesterday I was driving back from my shift at Network, a coffee shop centered around providing a safe, humanizing space for Denver’s homeless. A place to just be present, enjoy friendships, drink too much coffee. I’d just spent hours practicing presence with the homeless, and as I drove down Grant and turned a corner, I realized there was a homeless man standing on the corner with his sign who I had barely seen until I’d already passed by. 

I spend my weeks engaging with the poor and building friendships with the homeless and I still barely saw him. 

We’re so conditioned in our society to ignore what makes us uncomfortable, to pretend that which is not right simply does not exist (for to acknowledge it would mean having to address it). It’s far easier to dehumanize the “other,” because if I have compassion and begin to actually see another human being, I can no longer excuse their suffering. 

There is so much injustice in this broken, hurting world. When these injustices are happening to a far-off group of “others” who I have no personal connection with, I can speak in lofty terms, pass judgments, and create grandiose hypothetical solutions for the human beings I’ve never met. But when someone goes from a nameless, faceless being to a person I know by name, the hypothetical solutions and lofty conversations are now about my friend. 

We must begin to see the Imago Dei in each and every human being we encounter - whether we love them or not. There are people in this world who I would rather hate. I want them to just be evil, because that would be simpler. Bad people are bad, therefore I do not have to love them. This releases me from humanizing my enemy. But the truth of God is that every single human being in this world is a Child of God, made in God’s Good Image. Even if they are deeply broken and twisted at this time, the core of humanity is still a Good Creation. And when we acknowledge this, that we are all Beloved Children, then I can no longer demonize the other or the perceived enemy. I can no longer hold those I deem bad at arm’s length, because we have the same core identity.

When I see the shopping cart glowing in the late-night street lights, and I pause to think about the Child of God who pushes it around, holding a cardboard sign reading, “Anything Helps,” I must begin to also see myself. 

I too am a beggar. While my physical needs are met and I have been afforded much in my life, my beggar is within. What would my sign say if I stood there on the street corner? My shopping cart full of my insecurities and bad relationships, piled high with poor decisions and all the ways I try to earn love, affection, and worth, all covered up in a blanket of doing good things for the wrong reasons because I’m afraid I won’t be loved if I don’t. My sign begging for love, pleading to be wanted, asking for security and success. “Help, I’m addicted to affirmation. Won’t believe I’m enough on my own. Can’t seem to get clean.”

We are all human beings created in the Image of God. We’re all beggars in some right, suffering from loneliness and racked with addictions trying to fill the void. The question is if we will choose the humility to see it. 

That shopping cart could so easily be mine, on the corner of lonely and hopeless under a street light in the foggy night. 

Overdosing

We’d asked him to leave a few times, given a 15-minute warning, a 5-minute warning, and finally a we-are-actually-closed-now-please-leave warning. He wasn’t going. I left the room for a moment and when I came back, he was in the cleaning closet, facing the wall.                                                                                     

“Come on, Charlie,” Margo said as she gently grabbed his arm and steered him out of the closet. She guided him, stumbling, out the door. I followed, carrying his jacket and scarf, which had fallen to the floor. Ryan was on the phone, “No, no, we don’t need you anymore. Looks like he is leaving.”

We try not to call the cops on our Network folks, but if a client is clearly and possibly dangerously under the influence of alcohol or drugs, is violent or using violent language, or refuses to leave after being asked and warned, sometimes we have no other choice. This is never to get one of our folks in trouble. It is a last-resort when we have no other options.

We walked Charlie outside and kept checking to see if he was okay. I wasn’t sure what, but he was clearly on something and long-gone. I tried to give him back his stuff. I wasn’t sure he could keep ahold if it, his arms didn’t seem capable of grasping the bundle. His eyes wide open were only half visible from under the black beanie pulled down low, and they didn’t seem to really be registering what was in front of him.

He stumbled off, veering and tripping down the sidewalk. He didn’t seem okay. I felt worried. I watched for a moment, and was about to turn back inside when I saw him stumble while crossing the street. He pitched forward, falling headlong across the white lines marking the crosswalk. He didn’t move.

I froze for a second, then sprinted over to him with a sense of panic. He was lying on his back, feet on the ground and knees bent to face upward, eyes open wide and unmoving. I tried to grab his hand, but it was limp, he wouldn’t grab on so I could help him up.

It was like he wasn’t there, just a wide-eyed body with no mind operating it.

I’ve quite possibly never felt so helpless in my life. Laying in the middle of the road, he was clearly in danger, and I could not lift him out of the way. I thought maybe he'd had a seizure, with the wide, unseeing, unmoving eyes. I hollered for someone to get Ryan and then Brad came over to help Charlie to his feet. I again gathered all his fallen things and we walked him over to a building where we could prop him against the wall. We tried to help him sit down, but I don’t think he could. So Brad just stood here, holding him so he wouldn’t fall back down. He couldn’t even stand on his own.

We waited while Ryan called 9-1-1.

Charlie was a shell. He never looked at us, his eyes still wide and just staring off. He looked paralyzed or petrified, like I imagine a character from Harry Potter would look under a spell or enchantment. It was as though the human inside his body had disappeared.

When the fire truck finally came and the medical responders piled out, I felt oddly reluctant to leave him. I asked multiple times if he’d get to keep his things, which I was still clutching like a safety blanket. Hesitant, I finally handed them over.

My mind went to Michael Lee Marshall. My memory selected the buried image of frail Michael Lee restrained by a number of large police officers in the sheriff’s department where he later died from asphyxiation induced by the brutality of his restraint. I recalled a comment by a Network staff guy about how hard it is to call the police when sometimes our guys don’t make it out of the jail alive.

I know paramedics and fire department aren’t police, but they all have sirens and authority and I get worried and scared sometimes.

How to navigate this broken world?

Where Charlie was getting high on an aerosol can of Old Spice and there’s nothing we can do but call 9-1-1 because we aren’t trained to help someone who is overdosing. But sometimes the very ones tasked to “serve and protect” don’t because the system is so deeply riddled with racism and injustice, and you never know what could happen to in those places, especially to someone black and homeless.

How awful, to be the one who called the cops on someone who just needed help and detox and ends up dying in custody. I couldn’t live with myself.

All those thoughts raced through my mind as I tore myself away from the red and blue flashing lights and the men in navy blue shirts checking Charlie’s vitals.

What are we to do? When we aren’t equipped to help someone overdosing, mentally ill, or violently reacting to their fear or mental illness, we should be able to trust the people we call. I’ve met some really amazing people serving on the police force, like the homeless outreach officer who drove two of our folks to Network a few weeks ago because she didn't want them to have to walk such a long way when they've been sick. But in a world where policing is run by a system so deeply entrenched in systemic racism and oppression, people get churned out reflecting those systems. So what sort of cop will show up when we call, and will this homeless black man live?

It’s overwhelming.

I’m left unsure of where to go and what to after days like this. I want to curl up and cry in my hopelessness, I wanted to while I stood beside Charlie. Standing there with this far-gone man, this precious human being in front of me who I so wanted to help, yet all I could do was stand by and obsessively ask the paramedic if Charlie would get his things back before I surrendered them.

How to be the living room of Christ in this hurting world wrecked by racism and injustice? How to be the living room of Christ in a world that doesn’t often see our homeless folks as humans? How can I trust my friends to actually be cared for if they are viewed as dispensable nuisances?

Sometimes all I can do is cry. Submerged in an overdose of my own helplessness and weakness in moments of incredible brokenness, all I can do is speak out the one thing that’s left…

Jesus.