Street Reflections

I recall several friends asking me to let them know if/when I wrote a blog entry about my homeless experience.  I thought a lot about what I could write about during the trip.  I expected to have a blog post up within 24 or 48 hours at the most and I had loads of ideas during the trip about angles I could take.  However, in retrospect none of them can capture our experience with the justice it deserves.  Moreover, I really do not want to capture the experience in writing or at least I do not want anyone to live vicariously through our experience on the street.  I even cringe writing that last sentence knowing that it can come across as prideful, but “so it goes.”

Tomorrow it will be three weeks since 8 of us from National Community Church decided to experience what it is like to be homeless.  We walked into National Coalition for the Homeless dropped off our cell-phones and wallets and left with the clothes on our back, a black trash bag containing two blankets, a journal, Bible and a pamphlet from Pathways to Housing that lists locations for services for the homeless.  That pamphlet was our meal ticket if we could not glean locations to eat from those on the streets.

In the weeks since the trip I have had numerous people ask me about my experience.  And I have enjoyed those conversations.  It seems that most think this decision to go homeless for 72 hours was at least a bit out there.  Oddly, I do not see it that way at all.  Based on the scriptures, particularly the Gospels and Jesus’ life, we decided to be with those that Jesus would have been with.  I am now back in my comfortable home in front of my laptop and life actually seems a bit off kilter.

Moreover, there are just as many homeless in DC at this moment as there were before we decided to go on this “plunge.”  For those interested the number is close to 6,000 for the District of Columbia.   So, really, what was it we accomplished during our time?  This, I think, is a great question to ask.  For one, I believe all eight of us have a better understanding of what it feels like to be homeless.  We all were required to panhandle and seven of the eight of us thought it was the most humiliating experience of our lives!  Personally, I had several takeaways from this experience.  One is this: there is a really good chance that saying “Hello” and asking the name of someone who is panhandling and not giving them any money at all just might be the bright spot of their day.

In DC there are many services available for the homeless community.  The spectrum of these services is broad, and I continue to learn more about them.  There are currently food deliveries at 5:30 and 7:00 on weekdays at Murrow Park located at 18^th and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.  And on weekends just a few blocks away at Franklin Park located at K street and 13^th there are food deliveries as well as clothing distribution.  Note: these details are included in case any of you may want to stop by and find a new friend.  There are shelters and quite a few places that have hot meals—some secular and some faith based.  I did not visit any shelters but heard some nightmare stories about the conditions of many of them.  Another takeaway is that I am confident that I would prefer living, i.e. sleeping on the street rather than in a shelter if I were homeless.

In my opinion, too many of the services provided for the homeless in DC lack a relational focus.  I recall getting breakfast at one place and feeling like I was herded in and out.  There was something inhuman about this.  That is why I feel so strongly about the power of acknowledging a person panhandling.  Moreover, this is what Jesus does over and over in the Bible; acknowledging someone’s humanity.  Acknowledging someone’s humanity is the centerpiece of the “Good Samaritan” Parable.  Jesus acknowledges the humanity of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.  He acknowledges the humanity of the woman caught in adultery while helping those that want to stone her to recognize the humanity in themselves in John 8.

The woman in Luke 8 who had a problem with bleeding, making her a major social outcast in Jesus’ day, touched Jesus cloak and was healed, yet Jesus does not allow her to just be healed he longs to interact with her.  Verses 46-48 are worth quoting here—again the scripture states that she has already been healed yet:

 Jesus said, "Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me."

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace."

In calling this woman “Daughter,” Jesus acknowledges her humanity—she is no longer the outcast that society has made her.  This is what I hope my time on the streets allowed to me to learn—that I can acknowledge the humanity of anyone and everyone.

6,000 is a large number, but not insurmountable in my honest opinion.  How amazing would it be if we could put all of the homeless NGOs in DC out of business in our lifetime?  This is a God-sized dream, but one I want to be a part of.

While I was on the streets there were so many experiences that I thought I might share, but they are the experiences of our group.  I kind of see them as sacred and am now reluctant to share them.  Besides, for $50 you too can have this experience—it will be the cheapest vacation you ever take and you will have your own sacred experiences as well.  So perhaps that is my biggest takeaway—more people should step into the shoes of the homeless—experiencing what life is like from the other side is one of the best bridge-builders out there.

A Lot to Learn From a Small Town in Iraq--Review of The Gospel of Rutba

I finished Greg Barrett’s “The Gospel of Rutba” yesterday.  I imagine that I will be processing this book for the days, weeks, months and possibly years to come.  It evoked sadness, anger, disgust, guilt, as well as joy, hope and peace within me.  In Rutba, Barrett juxtaposes the macabre realities of war with one of the most amazing stories that you will ever hear of grace, friendship, forgiveness, inclusivity, hospitality and peacemaking.

After reading about the lives of Shane Claiborne, Cliff Kindy, Weldon Nisly, Peggy Gish, Logan Mehl-Laituri, Kathy Kelly, and Sami Rasouli, the primary subjects from the West in the book, and their demonstrations of loving the enemy I am embarrassed to self-apply the term Christian.  Reading this story has challenged me to my core.

With a ridiculous amount of research—the endnotes amount to about a 1/3 of the text—Barrett exposes the tyrannical “Domination System” that the United States has become.  Rutba is the story of Iraq that you do not get on CNN or Fox or even Al Jazeera for that matter. However, it is the stories like these that need to be told.  If enough of them were told we might begin to see the humanity in people—even those that we call our enemy.  It is far from an easy read, but every American needs to read this book—and not just the chaptered section, but endnotes too.

In fact, I plan to buy a case to give to friends for Christmas presents—perhaps it will help “sow the peace.”

Reasons I am Going Homeless This Wednesday Through Saturday

I have been part of a church small group that is led by my friend Jill Carmichael (who will be joining us on the streets as well) and focuses on social justice issues for a little more than a year now.  In August of last year this small group took a trip to visit The Simple Way located in one of the poorest parts of Philadelphia known as Kensington.  The Simple Way is…well it is hard to explain exactly what The Simple Way is other than to say that is a group of subversive friends that have a heart for social justice.  Shane Claiborne is one of the founders of the group and has called Kensington home for more than 10 years now.  He is also a best-selling author.  Our group read one of his books together and we were interested in learning about how The Simple Way approaches Social Justice.  It was on the ride home from this trip where I mentioned, to Jill, “You know, it would be a good, potentially life-changing, experience to see what it would be like to be homeless.”  Jill, being a social-worker for Friendship Place, immediately responded with, “You know National Coalitionfor the Homeless (NCH) does something called a “homeless challenge” where you do exactly what you have mentioned.  You should try to get this approved as an A1:8 trip.”  A1:8 based off of Acts 1:8 and summarized by National Community Church as: “Ordinary people, empowered by God’s spirit, doing what Jesus did, together, wherever they are” is the title for their missions programs.  I did not have to think more than a second at Jill’s chiding.  The next day I was pushing my pastor about doing the trip.

I have several reasons for wanting to do this trip.  Personally, the more I study scripture as a Christian the more I see Christ as a social revolutionary who was relational and had a heart and passion for the poor as well as someone that welcomed interruptions to his daily routine.  Oddly, I have called myself a Christian for more than 20 years, but only in the past couple years would I say that I have seen, or at least gotten glimpses of who the real Jesus is.

I see myself as someone unique in that I am pretty much a classical type A personality and an introvert at the same time.  I am not all that comfortable initiating relationships—I run from most of them.  Also, I am someone who is very task-oriented and who really dislikes being interrupted from my tasks.  These are two personality characteristics that I do not see at all in Christ.  I see the Homeless Challenge as a huge interruption to my daily routine as well as a huge opportunity for initiating relationships with homeless people in my own city—a chance to develop qualities I see in Christ that I lack in myself.

Also, our church is incredibly missional, locally, nationally and internationally.  I believe our faith community can be much more involved than we are locally though.  However, if I make a statement like that, than the finger-pointing needs to be at myself.  My hope is that this trip will be something that our church does every year.  Perhaps, together with NCH, Street Sense, Mariam’s Kitchen, Loaves and Fishes and every other NGO working with the homeless in our city we can put ourselves out of business!  What can I say…I wear a bracelet that our lead pastor had made that reads: “Dream Big, Pray Hard, Think Long.”