I Was Hungry...And You Gave Me Something to Eat

What signifies, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco.

'And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence? It is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths.'

(Samuel Johnson, as recorded in Piozzi's Anecdotes)

Moral quandry time.

Downtown where I work, as in many large cities, the rising temperatures of spring and summer bring a proportional rise in panhandlers. When I'm sprinting down Nicollet Mall to catch my bus in the dead of winter, I pass no outstretched hands or tattered signs. But come springtime, the Down and Out return from wherever it is they shivered through the winter, and once again sit hunched over their cardboard tales of woe and supplication.

This is only my second summer in the Twin Cities, but it definitely seems as though there are more homeless people on the streets than last year. I don't know if it's the recession or what, but the requests have increased and the situations seem to be more dire.

There's all kinds. Some people seem to be really plucky. There's the man who sits in the skyway by Macy's, singing spirituals and praises to Jesus at the top of his lungs, slapping his knees to the beat and shouting out cheerful "Good Morning!"s to everyone who passes. There's the trumpet player who finds the best acoustics in the tunnel by the used bookstore and who plays the most beautiful Stardust. There's the artist who labours over his charcoal drawings, ensuring the smudges are just so before he lays them out in hopes of selling them.

Then there are the weary. The Vietnam Vets. The ones who have lost jobs. The wanderers. The ones whose minds have clearly turned on them. They don't even bother loooking up, but stare down at the cement, just putting in the time.

The worst are the ones with kids. There was a single mom out there every afternoon for months last year, reading stories and playing with her little daughter in between holding her sign detailing destitution in the face of domestic abuse. I would get so very, very angry at her for subjecting her child to a life on the street, but then berate myself for judging where I didn't know the situation.

I never know what to do when I pass someone who is down on their luck. (Aside: is there a politically correct term here? Beggar? Homeless person? Street person?)

If I avert my eyes to avoid staring, I worry that it looks like I'm trying to pretend they don't exist. But if I meet their eyes to demonstrate my belief in their dignity as a person, I feel as though I'm objectifying. I feel guilty walking past with a Target bag, as though I'm flaunting my possession of disposable income.

In the face of so many never-ending requests, it's so much easier to ignore than to be drawn in every time. When I am drawn in, I remember that I rarely carry cash, and if I do it's way in the bottom of my purse (God forbid I have to actually stop and dig for it and embarrass us both). Plus there's always memories of admonitions like "don't give them money - they'll only spend it on drink" or "don't think they're poor - beggars actually make hundreds of dollars a day - I read it in the Reader's Digest" competing with my more generous impulses.

I was discussing my quandry with a church acquaintance on Sunday. She pointed me to a book she'd read detailing one man's six-month experience as a homeless man.

(I haven't read it yet, so I'm going to categorize as preliminary my inital reaction that I can't imagine anything more objectifying than playing at homelessness for six months just to see what it's like. We shall see.)

She suggested I try something mentioned in the book: a soft granola bar and a bottle of water. There's decent nutrition there in a usable form (homelessness tends to come with a pretty paltry dental plan), it speaks to an immediate hunger while (hopefully) being representative of a different type of fulfillment. Plus, if you're the cynical type, it can't be spent on booze and if the person's only faking it (seriously: why would anyone pretend to be homeless?), you're only out a few cents.

So I tried it today.

(Aside: please don't think that I'm sititng here pleased as punch with myself, thinking I am all that and a barrel of monkeys. I've walked disdainfully past many fellow citizens of this world and I'm not proud of it. Simply relating that I've done this has ensured that I will receive no heavenly reward. But there's nevertheless a point here.)

On my way to Target to make the totally unnecessary purchase of a second yoga mat (because I am so spoiled I don't want to have to lug mine back and forth for my class on Wednesdays), I passed a man whose sign said he was a single father of 6 kids and was out of work.

Now I can't imagine being homeless or hungry or having no support network. But I do know what it feels like to feel like I'm not doing well by my kids. Now multiply that times a million and maybe that's what it's like to not have food for your kids. To bring them to shelters at night. To pawn them off for the day so you can sit at the feet of the fortunate and wealty, enduring their scornful glances, to scrape together something for the evening's supper.

So along with my yoga mat, I bought granola bars. A whole box. Soft ones, just in case. And Kashi - the healthy ones, full of protein and real fruit.

My heart got all fluttery as I approached him. The most I've ever done is chucked some coins at someone in an attempt to assuage my guilty conscience. You can chuck coins and keep walking, pretending that it didn't happen. But you can't just chuck granola bars at someone. To give someone a granola bar is to acknowledge their hunger and acknowledge your own intention. It is to acknowledge connectedness and invite intimacy and mutual vulnerability, however brief or disguised.

And so I walked up to him, Kashi box in hand. I looked him in the eye, mumbled, "These are for you and your kids" and handed them to him. He said, "thank you," and immediately turned his attention toward the other woman who came up to him (at exactly the same time! my moment of not-so-spontaneous philanthropy ruined by someone else!) and gave him a cigarette.

I expected to feel humbled. I expected to feel exultant that I Had Helped. I expected a rush.

I didn't expect to feel normal. Like it was just part of a day's work. Or, later, when another guy came up to me and asked to show me a magic trick, that I would do my usual polite refusal and pretend my bus was imminent. (Although I did fish out a dollar when he came around the second time and caught me in my half-truth.)

But maybe it should be just part of my normal day. Maybe I'm going at this backwards. Maybe this isn't about me. Maybe this isn't about him. Maybe it was just God seeing someone who was hungry and then seeing a girl who was walking to Target and reminding her where the granola bar aisle is.

I don't know if anything's changed. They'll all still be there tomorrow. I'm sure I'll want to walk by, and even if I don't, I won't be able to stop for every person, every time. The sheer magnitude of the task is really, really daunting.

But maybe there'll be a Kashi bar or two in an easy-to-reach place in my purse. And maybe that'll be enough for now.