homeless – Ripples in the Font–Spiritual Reflections and Poetry

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Collect of the Day for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary

One of my paid jobs is working as a bookseller at the largest independent bookstore in Texas. We’re open for a few hours on Christmas Day, and I volunteered to be one of those who work that day.

Yesterday, a regular customer (who might have dementia) approached me to ask if we were open on Christmas Day. “Yes, we are; noon to six pm.” “That’s a sin,” she says, no hint of humor in her voice, no skip of a beat.

Today, when asked what I’m doing for the holidays: “I’m working at the store.” Friend says, “They’re open on Christmas? I don’t know how I feel about that.”

I do know how I feel about that. I don’t feel it’s a sin.

Yes, the store isn’t doing this for purely altruistic reasons, and to be honest, neither am I (double-time pay and lunch courtesy of the store).

But. . .

We will have people come in to the store who have nowhere else to go, especially when the libraries are closed for the holiday–homeless people, in other words.
We will have people who’ve come in to sit at the cafe to have space with friends and open gifts.
We will have lonely people who are just glad that we’re open and welcoming. They can come in and feel connected.
Yes, we’ll have the people who are happy we’re open because they want to return a gift or may need to still buy one and don’t need anything further than that.
We will have people who aren’t celebrating the birth of Christ, for whatever reason, and those who are, like myself.

On Tuesday, I’ll strive to be present to the people who come in to the bookstore for the reasons listed above and more, smiling and answering questions, getting frustrated with some of them, I’m sure. I’ll have a good day with my co-workers, whose reasons for being there are similar and different than my own. I’ll be out in the world, doing something I love, in a place I love, for agape’s sake.

Christmas is a celebration of a birth that took place in a lowly, to become holy, place to a couple who couldn’t find anywhere else to be. Care for our neighbors happens anywhere and everywhere, no matter what day it is, and should happen in the most unlikely places, especially at times when it seems that capitalism and consumerism are holding the most sway over our lives.

I don’t feel conflicted about sharing the gospel in any space I can. Where do you find yourself making space?

Art: Visitation, 20th century?, Church of Saint Elizabeth, El Sitio, El Salvador, http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56718.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. Genesis 3:7

Part of my daily ritual most mornings involves stopping at my local 7-Eleven convenience store. Freedom and spontaneity abound in my breakfast or lunch choices—planning a week’s worth of meals can be so inconvenient. Sometimes I stop at one on the way to my other job when I feel the guilt of a McDonald’s craving—exchanging one convenient corporation for another. Convenience stores have an abundance of those conveniently healthy food choices—individual packets of nuts, yogurt, power bars, and more. Convenience stores are also convenient oases for homeless persons, have you noticed?

I have a hate/love relationship with the words convenient and convenience. They have become such self-focused words—as consumers in a largely corporate economy, we measure the world in terms of our own “coffee spoon” comfort: how quickly and easily can we gratify our desires? No frustration must enter our lives, heaven forbid that we must wait in line at a grocery store, let alone interact with others who (might) thwart our ease of access. Convenience means little or no human interaction.

In seminary a few years ago, I became enamored of the now obsolete usage of the word, the original Latin conveniens, which means “fitting.” This usage forms the basis for many of Thomas Aquinas’s arguments in the Summa Theologiae. When I first read it, my eyes opened, not to a brave new world, per se, but to knowledge that there were others like me in the world–scholars, theologians, poets–using reason to understand God; faith was seeking understanding, to borrow St. Anselm’s phrase.

I had found my kindred spirits. Seemingly, the practical world has little use for mystics, though, let alone poets. And yet, I would say that even these head-in-the-cloud saints still had their hands and feet in the world.

***

Adam and Eve

God’s economy
begins in this convenient
car wash; by spurting spigot,
the man fills plastic water jugs
crafted by a nameless
corporation.
the woman produces eclectic plastic
ware–squares, saucers–from ubiquitous
black garbage bag carryall.
Synthetic black clothes her corpus, too,
leadenly animate in the chill.
Giving each dish a quick rinse under
the gushes, she then lays
them out on the grass.
No shame in either frame
as each performs their corporate chores.
Store’s red-shirted clerk ignores
their theft.

Gas pump clicks, banishing me
from this Eden, not them.
Conveniens? I whisper, a Thomist
ghost flitting ‘round
my reasoning heart.
Fitting, I murmur–
this is the wisdom of the world.

***

In my off-kilter, poet-theologian mind, I hate that we speak of, say, helping the homeless, in terms of inconvenience, as I’ve heard some priests preach, trying to wrestle with that word. Get out of your comfort zone (such a convenient cliche)! And I don’t disagree with the thought, but . . . if we are all children of God, all imago dei (made in God’s image), then should we not re-frame the wisdom of the world in terms of the fittingness of opening our eyes and truly seeing each other in that light? Inconveniencing ourselves may be the most convenient action we can take.

Image: Välko Tuul – Art Museum of Estonia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61409440