Perched on some crumbling front yard retaining wall, his body shook and shuddered like a bedeviled puppet. His arms hung slack, his head stared vacantly, and from his open mouth came stuttering moans that turned my stomach.
It was Christmas morning, and I had run out to grab a paper. Everyone else in the house was still asleep, gifts gleaming beneath the tree, and I wanted to be certain I was back before they woke.
After briefly looking over the paper at the 7-11, it occurred to me that the world was much the same as it had been the day before, so I left empty-handed. That’s when I saw Joshua sitting across the otherwise deserted street. It was 36 degrees, and even at that distance I could see that beneath his jacket he was bare-chested. His breath formed a halo around his anguished face as he grunted and exerted himself in his convulsions.
Walking briskly across the road I pulled my coat tight and watched for him to notice me. But even as I drew quite close, his gaze continued fixed in front of him while the rest of his body undulated with a mind of its own. He sat in the shadow of a pleasant looking home and was enclosed in a field of urban filth: a dented can of bean dip, a broken light bulb, a walker hung with damp clothes, some dried up lasagna, a crumpled surgical mask, and numerous wrappers, each bearing the rotten marks of their former contents.
I sat down next to him, and the odor was overpowering. “Good morning,” I said cautiously. He gave no response, ankles rolling about as he pushed out muted gutturals. I continued. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m fine,” he said, suddenly ceasing his gyrations but keeping his face forward. There was ice in patches around his feet, but his voice was clear and lucid.
“Do you know what day it is?” I braced myself for his reply. I couldn't decide what would be more tragic, his knowing or his not knowing that it was Christmas Day.
“Wednesday, I think.”
It was Friday. I would have to ask again. “Do you know what is special about today?” I noticed a half-eaten, unwrapped sandwich leaking from his pocket. There was some sort of crust on his face and neck. The street was so quiet.
I stared at the side of his face. Here was a breathing, stinking piece of human waste amidst the garbage of a convenient store, a fast food restaurant, a gas station, a supermarket—and the society that spawned them.
The Jesuit theologian Ellacuria, martyred in El Salvador during their civil war, employed a pregnant metaphor in thinking about the poor who persist in the midst of a prosperous society: coproanalysis, the study of one’s excrement to diagnose disease.
Admittedly, although the analogy is indelicate, it is telling. The suggestion that the poor, the destitute, the needy are the societal equivalent of excrement offends our sensibilities, but that is generally the extent of the offense. We might believe in the equality of all people, but we allow thousands of our neighbors to subsist on garbage; we might believe in inalienable human rights, yet we allow thousands of our neighbors to wallow in their own filth, sleeping in soiled clothing on sidewalks or in the mud beneath an overpass; we might believe that all humankind is endowed with inherent worth and dignity, yet we allow thousands of our neighbors to languish with untreated medical conditions.
Those whom I encounter on our streets, while possessed of many wonderful qualities, are also sick, lonely, frightened, hopeless, weary, cold, hungry, betrayed, abandoned, dejected, afflicted, and in some cases longing for death. The question that coproanalysis poses is this: what is this disease, this plague that infects us? What malady would produce such symptoms in our resource-rich society? What disorder would lead us to go about our daily lives while such suffering continues all around us?
The truth is that these children and adults are treated just as unclean, just as untouchable, and just as unholy as human feces. While we might do our best to place the blame for their conditions on their own shoulders, pointing to their inherent qualities, character flaws, personal proclivities, poor judgment, the result is all the same. And maybe it’s true. Perhaps human waste is just what they are, and we are otherwise relatively healthy.
I waited for Joshua’s answer. It was freezing, and I was close enough to see the goose bumps on his chest. I thought about my wife and children, warm beneath their covers. They would soon be waking.
For the first time since I had seen him he turned and faced me. His eyes were bright and alert. He smiled and answered, “It’s Christmas.”
Todd - You write really well which helps, because much of what you write about is hard stuff but so smack center into God's heart.
ReplyDeleteOn NY Eve, some friends and I were talking about what it's been like to feed and serve the homeless on a weekly basis at our home church, Church of the Chimes. We got to thinking ... might it not be possible that we don't actually serve them, as much as they serve us? This is because so much of God's deepest truths are upside down from what we think and, at least from my own experience, most of His deepest truths are upside down, paradoxical avenues that help me to end up where He wants me to be.