October 27, 2002

October 27, 2002.
Lending to God

My priest is the kind of man who lives close to the earth. He has a big heart and a small wallet. He lives in a part of town where men come knocking on his door all the time, asking for food or money. Maybe they ask him because they know he's a priest (the big black robe and giant silver cross that he always wears are pretty hard to overlook). Maybe they figure that someone who professionally represents God won't turn them away.

My priest taught me a lesson last week at church during confession, when he asked me if I had done anything kind for the poor that week.

I had to pause and think about my answer for so long that the pause became my answer. My answer, if I had spoken it aloud, would have been: Well, of course not! I was too busy with all the other crap I gotta do to care about any stinking poor people!

Truly, that is a sad state of affairs for someone who calls herself a Christian. If I call myself a follower of Jesus, doesn't that mean I am supposed to pay a little bit of attention to all those teachings about caring for the poor and watching out for orphans and widows? (Have you read the Gospels? Do you know how much Jesus talks about caring for the poor? My gosh, it's a lot.)

The book of Proverbs suggests that "someone who is kind to the poor lends to God." I find that to be a distressingly beautiful thought.

Somehow over the past couple of years, I decided that it was okay for me to disregard the people asking for money on the street because who knows, if I gave them money, they could just go buy some drugs!

Well, sure. The concern that someone could do something destructive and dumb with the money is certainly legitimate. But when I encountered any opportunity to care for someone on the street, I hijacked that concern and decided to use it as my one-size-fits-all excuse for not lifting a finger for anyone (except for myself and the people that I want to admire me).

I've always wobbled horribly on this question of how to treat the poor. I go through these phases where I really like the idea of quitting my job and just peeling potatoes and serving hot meals all day to the folks at the mission. I can see myself, beaming like a saint over the steam trays, serving green beans with a gentle smile to gruff men whose faces have forgotten how to smile back.

But then, inevitably, I get caught up in my job, and my own important busy-ness, and I start thinking about how important it is to save for retirement now, while we're still relatively young, and then I start to worry about my parents' retirement, and how I need to set up some sort of fund for that, too, and then I start to get really frustrated with how I'm never going to get to visit Florence, and life is way too short to stay stuck here wasting away in the continental U.S.—

The priest asked if I had done anything kind for the poor that week, and the truth is, I can't remember the last time I did anything kind for the poor.

I was talking last night to my friend Gabe who seems to be a very wise person, especially in matters relating to faith and the church. I asked him my little question about how to deal with people on the street and he pointed me to an early father of the Orthodox church, St. John Chrysostom.

Apparently, someone asked John Chrysostom this very question about 1600 years ago. Back then, St. John was living in a civilized society not entirely unlike ours today, and my modern concern about a beggar using my money for something awful was just as real then as it is now.

(Incidentally, St. John apparently had a way of turning little questions like that inside-out. He had no problem with answering your question in such a way that you sort of felt like you got your ass handed to you. I suspect he was a bit of a firebrand.)

St. John's response to this question of how to give to the poor was to explain that whether your money buys bread and milk or beer and cigarettes, the effect it has on you is the same. Giving money away breaks its power over you, and it reminds you that God owns everything.

On Friday morning, just five days after my sobering conversation with the priest, I was hurrying in to the office. It was early in the morning and the wind was whipping around me and making a wretched mess of my hair. I walked by the coffeeshop and there was a man standing on the sidewalk asking aloud if someone would buy him some coffee.

People were breezing by him in a rush to get out of the nasty weather. I almost did the same but then somehow I mustered all my mental capacities and put it together: Hey! This guy is standing in front of a coffeeshop, asking for coffee! Hey! I have a dollar in my pocket!

I think it was God's way of poking me a little bit.

I bought the guy some coffee, and a pastry, and it worked out just fine. He felt better, and I felt better, and then I went on to the office, and I thanked God for the chance to do a small kind thing.

After you work downtown for a while, you start to notice a lot of the same faces again and again. I'm trying to learn the names of the people on the street corner. I'm going to make an effort to actually stop and try to help next time someone asks me for money. I may give money. I may try to get them some food. I may fall flat on my face and snap back into Career Girl Mode, and think only of myself and all the stuff I gotta do.

But then I'll see my priest on Sunday, and then I'll remember our conversation all over again, and I'll pick myself up, and do a little better next time.