K and I were walking our dog towards British Park this past Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful Fall afternoon. We walked by a vacant lot in which two men obviously homeless were standing in the middle of it eying it with puzzled disappointment, because the owner had bush-hogged all the underbrush so that people could not sleep on the property unseen. I don’t blame the owner, because as the critical mass of homeless people gather at this site, after a while in our experience as neighbors a few doors down there is an inevitable fight, and we have to call the police to unravel the human mess, these tangled and broken stories….The problem of homelessness is as complicated as it is persistent.
We walked further down Government Street and passed two men in dingy clothing carrying worn backpacks. Their faces and hands made leathery, tanned and chapped, by the brute force of living from day to day in the outdoors. They were walking at a steady pace as if for some purpose…what purpose they could be about I could scarcely imagine….but it crossed my mind that each had a mother and a father, like me…that both of them had a story, like me….perhaps they had siblings….children…maybe they were on their way home….maybe just trying to escape the impending cold….perhaps being on the move, traveling persistently the road of life, quite literally keeps one open to survival….Perhaps that was what I saw in their earnest singularity…the will to live…They traveled as if they saw a hidden road unseen to the rest of us leading them to someplace or some thing….and that it was of dire importance that they arrive there…maybe there was hope between them.
I’ve noticed over the years that the homeless among us usually travel accompanied. I imagine it is because of safety, but perhaps more importantly, it is just being able to simply take care of each other. The light that gutters against the dark is the light of community, even if only two. No matter our wealth or lack thereof…no matter the stories of our lives, all part comedy and all part tragedy, we cannot make it down the road without each other…that is our singular purpose: to take care of each other…to bear each other’s burdens…We are our brothers and our sister’s keepers….It is at the heart of the teaching of Jesus and of all the world’s religions that for the world’s sake we must love our neighbor…Love the ones given to us along the way.
I imagine that each of those two men on their seemingly despairing journey, are most thankful for the company of each other…and we should be as well…We should be thankful to have companions along the perilous journey we call life. Surely hope is engendered in our relationships, in our companionship; and surely some meaningful purpose as well….if nothing more than to just love one another….and perhaps that is just enough purpose, enough light by which to travel the dark….Let us hope, as we hope always this time of year…. that it is enough.
