"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door." --Emma Lazarus, quoted on the statue of liberty"
Blessed be daylight savings time! The last two weeks have been a lot easier because of the time change, in fact, I have left to come home with it still being light out. I just ran out of time last week to write about the trip, so I'll do what I did the last time and write about both last week and this week.
Let me start with last week's trip and admit that nothing memorable, that I can remember, happened. But something happened that night when I got home and the next morning that impacted my understanding of the trip (and all of them for that matter) that I'd like to share. I had given out a dozen sandwiches and at least four blankets and jackets and sweaters. Pretty much the usual stuff I see on these trips and meeting the needs of the people I saw. Since I've done this so many times I tend to forget how much it can impact the people on the receiving end. Most all the blankets were given out in the alley off 25th and San Pedro where a group of people were hanging out. They picked through the clothes pretty well and after I left them I finished the trip by helping mostly single people here and there who were alone. So I got home and after a couple of hours was ready to go to bed. My wife needed a few minutes to put the clean sheets and stuff back on our bed. We have a new puppy in the house and he can get under foot just like a toddler. He has a tendency also to nip at your feet. So I volunteered to take him outside in the backyard and wait with him while my wife got the bed ready (there's coyotes out at night around here). It was now cold out so I put on a heavy jacket and went outside with Buster. We were only out there for 10 minutes max, but I started thinking about the folks I had just seen downtown who were spending the night on the sidewalks and in the alleys with little comforts. I had a fairly heavy jacket on, but if I was spending the whole night outside and trying to sleep, it wouldn't have been enough. No doubt about it, I would have been miserable and sleeping very long would have been difficult at best. The story doesn't end there though. because the next morning I had to make a trip to a recycler in Pomona. As I left the recycler, I saw what appeared to be a homeless man sitting on a curb on Mission Blvd. It looked like he had slipped off the curb (while sitting) and was readjusting himself back on the edge of the curb. He had a big smile on his face and the 'look' of being intoxicated. It was somewhere between 8:30 and 9 am. I thought, "Wow, he probably was drinking just to get through the cold night!". There are many people who live in nice homes who drink or use drugs to get through their nights trying to medicate their way through whatever pain they are feeling in their life. The homeless are no different. They probably don't have $20 for a warm blanket, but they may be able to come up with $2 or $5 for something to dull the pain of cold air. No, I'm not condoning the action for either, but its far easier to understand for someone cold on the sidewalk at night.
OK, yesterday's trip. There were two memorable encounters that will always stay with me. I drove to the burned-out church first to pray and then went on over to the alley by 25th and San Pedro. There were only three people there this week, Becky and a couple of other men, one I see there all the time and the other man I'm not sure I recognized. I didn't take any blankets with me this time (I want to make sure my supply lasts a couple of more months at least), but I did take several sweaters and a couple of jackets and a lot of shirts. It is supposed to warm up this week and perhaps reach the 80's by the end of the week. I had opened up the back of the car and Becky and the man I knew were going through it. Finally, the other guy saw that there were clothes they were getting so he gets up and comes over. He and Becky had been sitting together when I drove up and had some shopping carts in front of them. I figured out the man was smoking drugs behind that barricade. A few minutes later when he was by my car I asked him what his name was. He said he goes by the name of "Wash". He was thanking me for the clothes when I asked him if I could pray for him. Initially, he declined saying he "just wasn't right" right then. I understood what he was getting at. There are times when we all are estranged from God. Whether its over something we're doing or not doing, thinking or feeling, we can feel the 'distance' between ourselves and God and his desire for our lives. Well by now, you probably know me well enough that his 'no' wasn't going to stop me from praying for him. To be sure, he probably still felt uncomfortable, but when I prayed I asked for Jesus to 'help' him see God's higher purpose and will for his life and I said nothing about "help him stop doing drugs". It was short and to the point, encouraging and not condemning. As I always say about times like this, it was a privilege to pray for him. I've always prayed about being a light in a dark place and that alley is a dark place. When I drove up I saw several lighters on the ground. This is the alley where Billy died just a few weeks ago. Drug abuse is prevalent, not with everyone, but with a lot of people around there.
So after I left there I drove around quite a bit looking for people to help, but one man I helped is an old friend of mine. I've seen him off an on for probably 5 years down there. His name is Allan and he is easily the most pitiful man I see down there. He is the picture of homelessness. He is small, with a full beard and matted hair. The clothes he wears he's probably had on for a couple of years. He never talks and the most I get out of him when I see him is a smile when he see's me and if I'm lucky a "Yeah". That's the most he'll ever say at one time. Obviously, there is an element of mental illness here. I usually see Alan around Olympic and Central near a MacDonald's on the corner. He will have a shopping cart that's overloaded with a high mound of 'stuff''. I'll be driving by and see him pushing his cart in the middle of Olympic and call out his name and hold out a burger or something. When he comes over I'll ask him if he wants some water and that's when he'll say "Yeah". It's always a quick drive-by encounter because he's usually on the move in the middle of the street. Yesterday was no exception except he was more downtown on 9th. Instead of a big overstuffed shopping cart he had one of those small two-wheeled carts that you see older women taking to the grocery store. He was dragging it with both hands behind him. His head was down and the hair from his beard and head was covering his face, but I recognized him anyway. I had to circle back around to catch up to him and when I did I handed him a sandwich and a bottle of water through the window. I told him I loved him. As I drove away he immediately walked over to the sidewalk leaving the cart in the street. There was some sort of a table on the sidewalk where he started unwrapping the sandwich. Apparently, he was so hungry nothing else mattered. After driving away I couldn't get this encounter off my mind and drove back looking for Alan so I could give him some more food, but unfortunately, I couldn't locate him again. It was a heartbreak. I'll have to do better the next time I see him. --Until then. John
Monday, March 21, 2016
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