Reflection by a Staff Member

by Emma Fenton-Miller, May 2013

Over the long weekend I saw a news article about a homeless man who died on the sidewalk around noon on May 10th at the corner of Market and 3rd. The article made clear that while crowds passed by this man who obviously needed medical attention, no one stopped to help him or called 911. Instead, at least one person used their phone to take a video of him as he bled to death. Help was finally called, too late, by a sanitation worker whose job it was to keep that piece of sidewalk clean.

I think most who hear this story are disturbed by our collective "back-turning" on those living in extreme poverty. It probably stuck in the minds of a few, brought them down a little and reminded them that the world is kind of messed up, adding to their cynicism but perhaps not to our collective action.

My first reaction was to wonder if the man who died was someone I knew, since when I left work on Friday a friend told me of how he was very sick and had been vomiting blood, which brought the situation close to home. This is the case for many, such as those who have family members living on the street, those who work with or are friends with someone who is homeless. For many who know someone who is homeless the cardboard thin abstract that is "homeless person" no longer distances in the same sort of way.

Instead of a depressing parable of the disconnection in our society or just a sensationally sad story, it is actually what happened to a real person. While I think it is important and needed to keep looking at the big picture in such an instance, it occurred to me that I should first simply and deeply feel for this person because in a profound way that's what was lacking.

Opening Remarks at Martin Sheen Fundraiser

by Laura Slattery, Executive Director

My name is Laura Slattery and I am the current Director of this Project, the Gubbio Project, that provides sacred sleep during the day to our brothers and sisters without homes in this neighborhood. The Gubbio Project is a sanctuary of sorts from the violence and disorientation caused by life on the streets that was started by Fr. Louie Vitale 8 years ago when he was pastor at St. Boniface.

We have asked Martin Sheen to share with us this evening on the topics of Social Justice and Sanctuary drawing on his faith journey. We thought that a fitting subject given the Gubbio Project's mission of offering radical hospitality and challenging societal, and sometimes church, notions of who belongs and who is worthy or sacred, combined with Martin Sheen's long history of social activism fueled by his deep convictions and values rooted in Catholic thought and practice. We first had the idea of inviting Martin Sheen to share some reflections with us when his recent movie, The Way, came out. We saw connections with the pilgrimage in the movie of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela to the lives of many of our guests and our own lives, of course. Finding sanctuary and kindness and ultimately transformation along the way.

I feel honored, or maybe humbled, to introduce Fr. Louie, who will then introduce his good friend and fellow activist, our guest this evening, Martin Sheen.

I've known Louie for almost 15 years now. I know many of you, including Martin, have known him much longer. What draws me to Fr. Louie (and to this Project he started) is his vision, the way he sees the world and the way he sees people. He looks at folks and sees sacredness and woundedness, doesn't matter their station in life, their wealth or lack of it. He can, and does, talk to the Nancy Pelosi's of the world the same way he talks with the homeless - attentive, caring, and not afraid to call out the BS when he hears it.

He looks at the world, and sees how we could be doing it differently - without nuclear weapons, without wars and torture, putting people before profit, seeing that it is up to us, to each one of us, to bring about the world that we want to see (he would use more religious words if you pressed him - the reality of the incarnation). He takes that insight seriously and stands up to the powers and principalities to make that a reality.

While I have known Louie for a long time, I just met Martin tonight. It is Louie's job to introduce and to interview him, but I wanted to end my remarks by reflecting on what I see as similarities between Mr. Sheen and Fr. Vitale.

Both are men that believe that one person can make a difference, and at the same time that we are nothing without community or without the Divine, the Holy. (Jump in here and correct me if I say something wrong about you). Both have been arrested (66 times for Martin, 200+ times for Louie, if Wikipedia can be trusted), arrested in the pursuit of justice for the earth, for those on the margins (be they homeless, glbtq, Palestinians, victims of torture), for an end to nuclear weapons. Both bring a refreshing humility to the work (one that is actually a requirement of nonviolence, right, because as Gandhi says - in the end if you're wrong you are the only one who has suffered because of your actions) and a passion to calling out injustice and calling forth a new way. They have chosen different professions, but they have the same call and are surely on the same path/camino. Folks, please welcome Friar Louie Vitale and Martin Sheen.

Help

In her book Traveling Mercies, author Annie Lammott wittily asserts that in all the world there are really only two prayers:

"Help me. Help me. Help me."

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

I think she's right, and I appreciate how these simple words acknowledge the essential impulses that are at the core of everything we do. We are tender towers of flesh moving through a bright, harsh landscape - nearly every day each of us needs some kind of help to do something we want, or get something we need, however small. And when the need is big, and the help comes, the relief and gratitude that floods out of us is as primal and potent as the need was.

Now while I think of myself as a generally compassionate person, I'm not one of those people who go out of their way to help others too often. I mean to be. And sometimes I am - sometimes I actually do get it together to bake a lasagne for my new-parent neighbors, or send a card to an ailing friend even though they're not expecting it. But mostly I do easy things, like take my old clothes to the Goodwill and send small checks to Amnesty International. Mostly I stay safe, and clean, and just think about helping in the bigger, messier ways.

And one of the things that makes giving help so messy is that it exposes you to other people's pain and sadness. If you actually look and listen to another person and truly tune in to their deepest needs, it can be uncomfortable, if not overwhelming. Most of us are only willing to make that dark journey into a few people in our lives - a partner, a sibling, a best friend - and maybe not even then.

Last week, I had an encounter that reminded me how fulfilling the impulse to "help" is not simple or easy. There is a homeless woman in Chiswick, the town I live in. Notably, she is the only homeless person I have ever seen here (except for a male drifter with an aging back-pack who hung around on a corner with his guitar for a week), which seems remarkable for a city neighborhood. She is an almost quintessential figure of a bag lady - 60ish with wild grey hair, completely hunched over, and dressed entirely in black cloth. She wears "shoes" on her swollen feet made of plastic bags, newspaper and rubber bands, and she drags behind her a wheelie-cart loaded down with plastic bags, boxes, bits of paper and string. She is often seen walking up and down certain streets by the tube, but even more commonly, she resides in a secluded bramble-patch at the edge of a parking lot behind my building. In that spot she starts cook-fires, feeds the pigeons, and spends a lot of time screaming. I think she is probably schizophrenic. But I have never seen her bother anyone, or be violent in anyway, or do anything other than hang out alone in the bushes. Intuitively, I think she has chosen to remove herself from society - to go to a place where she can be as she is without really bothering anyone.

I walk through this parking lot nearly everyday on my way to the tube or the shops, and I see this woman at least 3 times a week. When my mom was visiting, we had many conversations about her. I think to my mom, who had just turned 60, this woman was a terrifying figure - a kind of doppelganger of what she could have or possibly still could become if her circumstances shifted for the worse. For me, she was part of the landscape - something I had come to accept as part of the neighborhood, like the brick houses and the tall trees. Here's how some of our conversations went:

Mom: "I can't believe that a town as wealthy as Chiswick can't get it together to help this woman."

Me: "Maybe she doesn't want help. Maybe she's content living as she is."

Mom: "It's obscene that no one does anything for her. She could be any one of us."

Good point. And one that we all know deep down, but easily ignore when we past dirt-encrusted folks with tattered hair and no teeth on the street. "There but for the grace of G-d go I," quickly gives way to "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That she isn't me."

So I mulled on what my mom had said, and simultaneously I cleaned out my closet. I had an old pair of super-soft slippers that I no longer liked and a working (albeit slightly annoying) umbrella that I was prepared to give to the Charity shops. And then I thought, "Maybe I should give them to the Pigeon Lady. Maybe these slippers would feel good on her feet, and she probably needs an umbrella." And I put these things in a bag, and set them aside, and did nothing for many weeks.

I fantastized sometimes about walking up to this woman and handing her the bag. I tried to imagine the conversation we would have - maybe she would be happy about being approached and we would chat about the weather, the pigeons, the beautiful hyacinths blooming in her bramble patch. Maybe it would be a silent exchange, but I would catch her in the eye for a moment and we would see each other. Maybe she would yell at me and be alarmed by my trying to talk to her. There seemed to be a lot of plausible scenarios, and at the bottom of each was a cold little blob of fear - fear that she would do something to frighten Gabriel if I brought him along, fear that she might curse me or worse attack me, fear that I might not like looking in her eyes and really seeing what her life is like.

So, I did nothing. But I thought about it all the time, especially when I passed her on the street. It became a kind of secret I was keeping - my desire to help and my fear to do anything. Finally, I decided that I would leave the bag with a note for her to discover. I added a box of lovely chocolate cookies to the slippers and umbrella, double-wrapped them so the rain wouldn't get through, got out one of my nicest notecards, wrote her a little letter, and stapled it to the front of bag. Here's what it said:

To the Woman Who Feeds The Pigeons:

Hello.
I thought these things might be useful to you.
I hope you are well.
Warmly,

Your Neighbor

I dropped the package off in the bramble patch on a sunny Tuesday morning, pleased that I was finally doing something. Later that morning I passed through the parking lot and saw the woman busy organizing her belongings in the bramble patch, so I knew she had seen my package. At the end of the day, I passed through again, and I noticed what looked like the bag, with the note still attached, sitting on the asphalt beside the bramble patch. There was no sign of the woman. I went over and inspected the bag. Both the bag and the card were unopened. On one side of the envelope, she had scribbled this note back to me:

You are not kind. And you waste your time.
I never take anything from anyone.
See?

A.R.

Tuesday, June 19th

I was startled. I had not considered this as a possible outcome. I felt embarrassed and caught. I put the bag down and started to cross the parking lot, but then it occurred to me that leaving the bag there might cause her distress, so I picked up the lot and carried it with me to the tube station where I tossed it in the bin. So much for good intentions.

Perhaps my initial instinct about this woman was right - she might be living outside on her own by choice - perhaps as a form of protection against past troubles. She was checked in enough to know the date. Or maybe she was offended by being offered something she hadn't asked for - perhaps she feels completely self-sufficient and my clumsy attempt to "help" made her feel angry because it challenged that sense of autonomy. Perhaps she is paranoid and distrustful of others and doesn't like being approached. There is no way to know for sure - no way except maybe trying to talk to her.

So for now, I'm pondering the experience, letting it sit in my heart, and waiting for inspiration to strike and when/how/if I should try to connect with this woman. If I do anything else, I think I will have to stretch much further out of my comfort zone than I am accustomed to. I will probably have to get a bit messy, a bit involved, and open myself up to the truth of this woman's situation, whatever it is. And I'm not sure if I'm up for that. I might be. On a good day. I'd like to be. We'll see.

Wait and see.

Look before you leap.

WAIT.

LOOK.

SEE.

LEAP.

What could be simpler.

Be well.

An entry from Christine Young's Blog: Minkgirl Muses
http://minkgirlmuses.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html