Pieta

I was walking up Seventh Avenue today when a fellow flew past me on a bicycle. He nearly knocked me over. That figure speeding up the road cracked open an old memory and all of the emotions that accompany it started to leak out. A fellow who often stayed at the shelter came by one evening and snatched a bicycle right in front of me. Donated bicycles are like gold at the shelter. People use them to look for work and get around to appointments. We were in the process of moving some of them when this inebriated man staggered up and reached over the fence to help himself to a bicycle. Dynamite went off in my head! I was so angry that he had the nerve to do that with me watching. Without even really thinking I found myself running and screaming. I have no idea what I was going to when actuallyI caught him. I was not even thinking that far ahead. He glanced back over his shoulder and smiled that silly, toothy, exaggerated smile that can only be pulled off when someone blows over 2.0 on an intoximeter. By the time he hopped on and started pedaling I was almost on top of him, but not for long.

It should not be all that hard to run down a drunken man on a bicycle---but it is! My size did not help the situation. He would slow down, look over his shoulder and then flash that ridiculous smile at me. I would sprint and get almost close enough to strike and then…whoosh, he would speed up again. By the time we started up the hill I was screaming unintelligible things in short bursts of breath: “Mwahhwaha!!” Shehhmahaaa!”
I am pretty sure that by that point I was so angry that I was cussing, but I caught a break because no one, myself included, could manage to make out what was coming out of my mouth. By the time we got to the meat market, I collapsed. He shot one final mischievous grin back at me and I shook my fist at him like Snoopy used to do when yelling, “Curse you Red Baron!”

Today when that bicycle flew by me on that same stretch of Seventh Avenue, I could not keep from laughing at the thought of what that scene must have looked. The wispy figure of a drunken man wobbling back on forth on a bicycle in front of out-of-breath, overweight man yelling things that sounded like he was speaking in tongues on a deserted street in the dark. That man, my friend, did not look like that the last time I saw him. My last memory of him was when he was dying.

I never knew any murder victims until I came to work at the Rescue Mission. I knew very few people who had committed suicide. Now, I have know far too many. I lose count when I stop and try to recount them all and remember their names. Ironically, I can still see their faces---all of them---with haunting crystal clarity. I happened to meet one lady coming out of a convenience store after I got off work one night. She had often stayed at the shelter. The last words I spoke to her were, “Be careful.” That is not something I normally say to anyone. In fact, the words sounded strange coming out of my mouth. Less than three hours later she was dead. A drunken boyfriend stabbed her to death. Another man showed up at the Rescue Mission with a video camera that had footage of his prodigal son on it. He wanted to know if anyone had seen his son. He had heard that he might have stayed in our shelter at one time. No one wanted to break down and tell him that his missing son would remain that way. He had committed suicide about six months prior to that in another town just down the road from ours. When homeless people die, it is often a takes a while to track down family to come and claim a body. I once worked for nearly two weeks and chased numerous futile trails in order to finally connect with a family member of a deceased homeless man.

However, not every person who stays at the shelter dies violently or alone. The disease that consumed my friend’s body caused him to slowly suffer all manner of indignities at the end of his life. He would come to the door with his head shaking and tears in his eyes. He was so embarrassed to have to tell someone that he had soiled his clothes again. As I would help him to the shower and then get him some clean clothes, I could not help but wonder where my vigorous friend who had been able to evade me on the bicycle had gone? The frail little body in front of me slowly lived and moved, but his being vanished a little bit more every day. He was outrunning me in a whole different way.

The last time I saw my friend he was not conscious. He had tubes and flashing monitors hooked up to him. Somehow he had held on until he mother arrived, even though he never regained consciousness. She sat there wiping his brow as intently as a mother gazes at her newborn. I felt a bit of relief that there would at least be someone to claim his body. The whole heart-wrenching scene reminded me of that famous Michelangelo sculpture of the Pieta. It has always been one of my favorite works of art. Whatever the theology of the scene, that image of Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus has always whispered to me that no mother should ever have to outlive her child. Watching that Pieta moment in front of me in the ICU caused me to see my friend in a whole different light. He was someone’s child. We all are---and that’s often too easy to forget. It’s absurd just how easy it is to forget…

My Dad

"That they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.” ---Revelation 14:13

Sunday was All Saints Day. For every Saint that has a feast day in the Church Calendar, there is a literal army of unnamed Saints who left deep footprints in this world, but now God alone knows their names. All Saints Day is a wonderful catch-all to remember all those departed people who helped us live, move and have our being in God.

At the Holy Eucharist on Sunday morning, I was overcome by a profound sense of just how many lives have touched my own for good. They have departed, but they carved deep gorges in my hard heart as they passed through this world. The small portions of compassion that trickle through my life are traveling in channels that they made. I also am aware of the fact that I have not done nearly enough with such a gift as the one I received in the sum of their influence.

One particular person who was on my mind was my dear Dad. He is not on any official register of saints, but he will always be one to me. My story is more his than my own. I suspect it always will be.

When my father was six, he was diagnosed with a disease that came with a death sentence. His parents were told that he probably would not live to be an adult. He told me that when he was 14 he prayed and asked God to let him live long enough to have one child. It never struck me until years later just how strange a prayer that was. Despite all the odds, he grew up, married and began to work. However, in 1972, when I was three, both of his kidneys failed and he was sent to Duke Medical Center. It was there at the Duke University Chapel that he had a deep experience of transforming faith. Somehow, he knew that despite having “one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel” (his words) he would live to raise me. Over the years, while my father was at his monthly medical appointments at the hospital, that Chapel became my second home. It was a different world back then. No one seemed to notice a little boy playfully exploring the vastness of its sacred spaces, especially during the quiet of summer. I was always treated with a dignified kindness there that I never experienced anywhere else. God lived in that big place and it would forever be my spiritual home.

Dad became one of Duke’s first experimental kidney transplants. It was a barbaric process that only lasted a year and actually crippled him even more. He would go on to receive two more kidney transplants at Duke during the course of his life. He would also encounter many more challenges along the way. The catastrophic health crisis that year struck our family like a meteor. It obliterated any sense of material security that existed prior to his kidneys failing. In 1976, my mother left us. She walked out of my life for good without ever even saying goodbye. I came home from school one day and found out that she was gone. Even as a child, I had a sense of just how fragile and illusory our security is in this world. It has been a vital part of understanding the lives of people who come to my shelter everyday.

Back then single parents were viewed with suspicion. Single male parents were even more of an oddity. A single male parent in a wheelchair was thought to be especially incapable of rearing a child. Dad defied everyone’s expectations. He had a vibrant faith, a truly incredible sense of humor and a contagious zest for life. Nothing could stop him. As a small child, I watched him mow the yard with a push mower (with a very bizarre technique of pulling it backwards with one arm while rolling the wheelchair in reverse with the other one), wash clothes, fix meals, etc. He did it without complaining because he was just grateful to be alive. He would eventually have both of his hips replaced and walk again. However, he always stood tall in my mind whetehr eh was walking or rolling around in a wheelchair.

Dad’s theology was very simple: God is real and God is love. When we prayed for daily bread, it was often more than simply something nice to say during the Lord’s Prayer. Somehow, God always provided daily bread. Over the years he shared as much of that daily bread as he received. He had not been able to work, but he volunteered his free time driving elderly people to grocery stores, drug stores, and doctor’s appointments. He would relish just sitting with them and listening and he would pray. I have never met anyone else who prayed for people like my Dad did. Even though we were poor, my Dad always managed to find someone who was poorer than us. He would then give that person any excess we had. I used to joke that Dad could make me feel rich if I had two peanut butter crackers and someone else had none. I am positive that my vocation would have been very different if my Dad had not given me the eyes to see others who have less as worth much in the sight of God.

As was fitting, my Dad passed away at Duke in 1996. He passed just the way he lived: quietly, peacefully and with dignity. I visited him as he was dying. One of the last things he told me was, “always remember that God is real and God love.” I went over to the Chapel to pray and I took the tiny elevator to the top of the tower. There, as I looked out over Durham, I prayed and thanked God for what was initiated so long ago at that Chapel. I knew my many visits to Duke were ending with his passing. It was like I was saying goodbye to two friends that day: one a person and one a place. Both retain a special living presence in my heart.

Sunday was All Saints Day. During the Holy Eucharist my mind kept drifting to the top of that Chapel tower and the man who found in its shadows the quiet faith to rear his little boy from a wheelchair. Saints are holy, not because of some false cardboard piety that springs from their “perfect” lives. Saints are holy because they help make God real to us through imperfect lives. I thank God for one saint, in particular, who could laugh at a bawdy joke and pull a lawnmower backwards with one arm while rolling in a wheelchair and in doing so, he taught me that God is real is God is love.

Swords of fire

“Why do you think God really had to put an angel with a fiery sword at the entrance of the Garden of Eden?” I was dumbfounded for a moment. Sometimes I forget that I still inhabit a world where people ask questions like that. The fellow who asked that question was a member of the 12 Step group that I facilitate every morning with the men in the Mission’s recovery program. I thought about the setting I was in and answered, “I guess it was to prevent relapse.” Then I said, “Human nature being what it is---I imagine that once the forbidden fruit was consumed, we would certainly find a way to smoke it, snort it or shoot it over and over again.” Some of the fellows began to nod in agreement. I continued, “Don’t you wish we could put an angel with a fiery sword in front of your favorite crack house?” My question was met with unanimous affirmation.

“Guess who is peeing on the pawn shop window?” I looked up from my desk and stared at the bearer of this strange question. My mind tried to grasp what was being said. The Mission resident seemed to take a perverse delight in telling me that one of our recovery program participants was “taking a leak on Smiley’s window.” I slowly absorbed the tragic news. It was more than a public health violation or an act of public indecency. It was more than a damaging blow to our efforts to be a good neighbor to the Pawn Shop that used to be next door to the Rescue Mission. It meant that one of my fellows had relapsed. Another guest of the shelter came running upstairs to confirm my suspicion. He said that my program man was “pulling up the flowers in the planters on Main Street.” One by one they came, like ancient runners bearing bad news from the battlefield: he had tried to “grab a lady’s butt in Texaco.” Finally, the inevitable report came in: “The police are looking for him.” Long before the advent of online technology, the streets had their own version of streaming news feeds. By the time my program participant arrived at the shelter I knew that he had started drinking again and that he was in a heap of trouble.

I oversee a pretty intense alcohol and drug recovery program at my shelter. I pour a big part of my life into it. The participants stay for eight months and they do not leave the property, unattended, for the first ten weeks. Two and a half months of guaranteed clean time is nothing to sneeze at. Then the day finally comes for them to emerge from their protected cocoon and go out into the real world. I walk around on pins and needles like it is my child’s first day at kindergarten. It is hard to push them out of the nest to face the moment of truth. Some come running back and ask for more restriction time, but others instantly flourish. Some come back like my fellow who had the law on his heels. Some never come back. In the world of hardcore addiction there is no such thing as a mild relapse. When my program men fall off the wagon, they often just keep on rolling. We see both spectacular failures and spectacular successes, but not much in between.

This fellow’s relapse was a bit more flamboyant than I was used to. He was barely able to stand up when he arrived at the Mission. He told me, “ I was just trying to test myself.” “Did you pass the test?” I asked. Then we both started laughing. No, it was not a laughing matter. Part of me wanted to cry, but I have found that people who lack a sense of humor have no longevity in this type of work. Sometimes it is hard to swallow the fact that months of progress in recovery can be wiped out in a single afternoon. It cuts into me like a sword of fire.

I am grateful that not every relapse ends badly, but the tragedy is that once a fellow in my program starts binging, he often never makes it back to try again. The legal, physical and emotional consequences simply overtake him. Some of my men have relapsed and ended up in prison. Some have died. The worst part for me is when someone does come back and request to try again, but that original spark has been extinguished and replaced by a dull, half-hearted effort that now approaches the hard work of recovery as a perfunctory task. I want to shake people like that and ask, “What have you done with that fellow who was so intent on reuniting with his family?” The look I get is unfocused. I no longer exist. Their eyes often gaze through me---into the garden, where the forbidden fruit has just recently been sampled.

My drunken friend and I both heard the sirens approaching. He said, “I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while”. I agreed. Then he said something only an intoxicated mind could come up with. “Eric Rudolph hid for years in the woods. I could hide on your roof and you could feed me.” I replied, “Yes, but Eric Rudolph did not urinate on Smiley’s window.” I knew Smiley; my relapsed friend would be safer in jail.

I only wish that I had an extra angel or two, with flaming swords, to hang around at the Mission and help me prevent the tragedy of relapse.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?'

A while back, my oldest son told me that he wanted to float down the Mississippi River. I was happy to oblige. We set off together on a father-son weekend adventure in Memphis, where we “touched down in the land of the Delta Blues” to sample its gritty flavor: lip-smacking ribs, Beale Street, Elvis history, and most important of all---a paddleboat cruise down the Mississippi. I thought it would be the perfect vacation from the daily grind of dealing with homeless issues. The many signs conspicuously posted all over downtown stating, “No panhandling after dark” hinted that I might be wrong.

We encountered one of the legally permitted daylight panhandlers on the free Trolley ride around the city. He announced to the group that he needed money to get his heart medication and that he would happily act as our tour guide for tips. He also claimed that he was a specialist in Civil Rights history. He showed us what he said was all that was left of the “Underground Railroad”. My fellow tourists stared in astonishment. It was a set of modern railroad tracks leading into a tunnel. Hey, you have to give him credit. It was a “railroad” and it was indeed “underground”. I had to roll my eyes when he pointed out the building where slaves were auctioned off until “1925”. I was shocked at how many of my fellow tourists seemed to be unaware that slavery had ended prior to 1925. When we went under a large highway overpass he yelled, “Look, look at all of those homeless people asleep under the bridge. Isn’t that pitiful? Have y’all ever seen anything like that before?” I could tell by the way the crowds gasped and the way the weight shifted to that side of the trolley that most of the tourists had never seen anything like that in person. I remained seated, so he looked at me and asked, “Have you ever seen anything like that?” I assured him that I had. I have a front row seat everyday for that.

In fact, I see often see it on the way to work in the mornings. Even with room available in my homeless shelter, there are still people who occasionally sleep under the overpasses just outside the Rescue Mission building. Some are mentally ill and tell us that they cannot sleep in a building with other people. They sneak up there under the cover of darkness and usually try to leave with the first breaking light to avoid the attention of the police. Others are battling addiction...and losing. They often do not even remember climbing up under the overpasses the night before. The ledges they sleep on are at the summit of concrete structures that rise sharply at such steep angles that I have never quite figured out how people who are disabled or drunk can ascend them with ease, but they do over and over again. I can barely do it sober and in good health. One morning a fellow rolled all the way down to the bottom in a blanket. We thought he was dead at the end of his descent. He bounced up and took off walking!

I did not need to look at the people sleeping on the ground under that bridge in Memphis. It was a sight that was burned into my soul long ago. 20 years ago, when I was in college, I worked at a local upholstery shop during summer breaks. It was just across the street from the Rescue Mission in a building that now houses a wonderful Jamaican restaurant. In those days the entrance to the bathroom of the old building was located on outside back of the structure. Many times I would have to move stealthily to the restroom to avoid waking up the people sleeping in the tall grass outside of the place in the early mornings. They usually disappeared with the daylight. I still remember as a young man trying to figure out what to do with his life, the deep impact those ghostly homeless figures sleeping outside made on me. I wanted to help, but felt completely powerless to do so. In fact, the little homeless shelter that eventually grew into the big one that I oversee now was located in the same place it is today. One day I went over and asked the fellow working there if I could volunteer. He was rude and condescending. He basically told me to “get lost” because a young person had no business trying to work with the homeless. I refused to believe that back then and I still refuse to subscribe to that notion. If he worked for me today, I would send that man packing! The vision of those people sleeping outside had taken root in my soul. I could no more refuse to do something about than I could refuse to speak with my southern drawl!

I have left the shelter late at night and heard numerous conversations, laughter and even a few sounds that would make you blush coming from up under the overpasses. One night as I went to my car, someone yelled out my name. I looked up into the darkness and heard someone shout, “God bless you Timoteo!” It was probably the most sincere blessing ever given to me. Whoever it was wanted nothing from me and did not even seek to be identified. I waved my hand up to the anonymous gallery and prayed, “God bless you …God bless all of you.”

Yes, "Mr. Memphis Tour Guide", I have seen people asleep under bridges and they have also seen us