Stories
I met a woman who most would label a crack head. She told me a story about how when she was on the streets, one day she felt an overwhelming sadness and despair. She sat on the corner of Hastings and Main and cried and cried and cried, and people walked past. She said if just one person had of stopped and looked at her, seen her person hood and ask her how they could help, she would have felt like she was not so alone. She would not have attempted to take her life that day. Now many years later, she has found her purpose, and the love of another, is in recovery and struggling to recapture the dreams she once held, intentional about making them come true. I thanked her for honoring me, for letting me into her circle and telling me her story. From now on I will step outside of my fear, take a risk, and see, truly see, that person on the street. I will endeavor not to just walk on by, pretending distraction to something more important than them, judging that they actually must want to be there or they wouldn't be, and assuming that they have the capacity to change if they wanted it badly enough.
I met a man who was out on a weekend pass from his sentence. He was born into a gang family, and has an early memory that won't leave him alone...being tossed thru a wall by his father. He spent his childhood running scared, beaten with words and fists. He spent his teens and adult years scaring others, beating with words and fists. Now he spends his weeks sleeping under one sheet, on the top bunk of a little cement room, crammed in tight with three other guys and one shared toilet. Some would say he got what he deserved. Some would say this is justice. Some don't care that he is a fellow created one, dreamed up by a spectacularly creative God who breathed the same worth into him as He did everyone else. I thanked him for honoring me, for letting me into his circle and telling me his story. From now on I will remember that those big grey bleak buildings along King Road house humans, many of whom just want someone to risk recognizing the good in them, and give them a second - or seventy times seven - chance.
I met a woman whose parents threw her out when she was 13. She ended up on the streets then in foster care, where she too was beaten with words and fists. She witnessed things no 13 year old should ever see and did things that no teenage girl ought ever to do but somehow, with nothing but determination and grit, she got through it, finished high school, went on to university, got a degree, then a masters, and finally, a PhD. She is beautiful, smart and successful. She spends her weekends teaching convicts and community members how to communicate and do all aspects of life in non violent ways. I thanked her for honoring me, for letting me into her circle, for telling me her story. From now on I will not assume that everyone who is highly educated and successful had good fortune, or got a hand up or a hand out or a head start on the rest of us, or simply were graced with the kind of beauty and ease with others that wins them things the rest of us have to fight for.
I met a man whose mother died when he was 8. His heart broke and his dad told him to stop blubbering. In the pain of loss over his mother he started to wear her cloths. His dad caught him and so began the cycle of sneaking, getting caught and being beaten and shamed. Now, in his 40's, he longs to be a woman, in fact, he says he already is a woman, though not manifestly so. He is not gay. He has a girlfriend who does not know who he is. While he calls himself a man but feels like a woman, he proclaims that if he had the money he would transgender. He cried as he talked about all this. I did too. I thanked him for honoring me, for letting me into his circle and telling me his story. I thanked him for understanding that I did not understand but that I see him, his struggle and his utterly delightful humanity. From now on I will leave these questions to God and remind myself that we do not war against flesh and blood but against every self-righteous, bigoted, judgmental attitude and belief system that convinces people to think of themselves as better than those they do not understand, or know, or care to know, or refuse to know; those whose stories we deem less valuable than our own.
Something happened to me that weekend. Life and love and living and having being does not fit within a narrative of "us and them" but rather only thrives in the "me and you". My eyes were opened to the possibility that the moral high ground is not where I want to be. I would rather take the love graced into my heart by my own story and in gratitude and the realization that "me and you" are not all that different, simply be present and available when "you" need kindness, and acceptance.
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