"Hey man, got any spare change?"

People ask me all the time: 

“What should I do when approached by a homeless person for a handout?”

 

And, of course, I have no idea!

 

Oh, I have ideas, but no standard idea or answer.  Everyone is unique, including people without a place to call home.

 

So, I follow "my gut" most of the time with no predetermined, stereotypical response, just like I repsond to others who do have homes in which to live. I realize this deficency on my part drives lots of people crazy, especially professionals!  But, so be it. 

 

One thing I do know from lots of experience: I find it hard to walk on without at least “knowing"  or acknowledging a person who asks me for a little help. 

For me, my entire duty as a person is to come to know God, and in the process, come to know the people I encounter for meaningful engagement with both. 

Every encounter should be considered worth a response of kindness. 

Every person is worthy of my repsect, even if I decide not to honor their requests by providing exactly what they seek. 

What I  always can do is respond with gentleness, attentiveness, openness and respect.   

 

 

 

 

No such thing as a "bum". . .human first!

Respect among friends

Here's a video shoot of the giant meal we enjoyed last week just down the street from "the Porch."

The idea originated during a conversation I was having with a homeless friend.  

"You know what?" he declared as we spoke.

"No, what?" I replied.

"We need to throw a big-ole party out here for everyone!"

So, we did!

The event included about 300 homeless neighbors, construction workers from across the street, local business owners, students from Abilene Christian University, CitySquare team members, folks from bcWorkshop and passersby!  In all, thanks to Edd Eason and his amazing, gigantic smoker on a trailer,  we provided a great lunch for about 400 folks.

But the event wasn't about feeding.  It was all about enjoying real friendship.  It was a luncheon thrown in honor of RESPECT.

Simple as that.

Talk, and then there's talk

"Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately it is not as fashionable to talk to the poor."

--Mother Teresa

Word selection matters

When employees are seen as customers. . .

Tom Peters has been a guide of mine for years. I love reading his stuff. I like his Tweets.

He makes sense in a very down-to-earth way.

The two-minute snippet below is worth watching. I apologize for the bad fit on the screen, but you will get his message.

Let me know what you think.

Poverty and self-awareness

John Greenan, one of my partners here at CDM, sent me a link to Chris Kelly's creative essay that appeared last Sunday (August 19) on The Huffington Post (Learning to Loathe Yourself: Peggy Noonan and How To Be a Conservative Pundit).

What impressed me about his post was not the embedded political debate, but his commitment to understand the reality facing people who live in poverty.

At the end of his lengthy comments, Kelly quotes George Orwell from The Road to Wigan Pier:

At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her--her sacking apron, 
her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold.... She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and 
looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have
ever seen.

It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that "It isn't the same for them as it would be for us," and that people bred in the 
slums can imagine nothing but the slums.

For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her--understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe."

______________________

The assumptions we make about others can be powerfully positive or downright crushing. It is essential that we come to grips with and take seriously the self-understanding of others.

Orwell's insights are brilliant. They afford the subject of his analysis the respect she had earned by living in her very concrete, extremely harsh and well-understood reality.

Frankly, many of us middleclass types just don't get it.



.

Homeless

A few days ago I received an email from Karen Shafer, a woman who lives in suburban Dallas.

Over the past many months Ms. Shafer has developed a keen interest in the homeless population of Dallas. Beyond simple interest, she has made friends among the men, women and families who live on the streets of our city, making regular trips into their world.

Most recently, she has been instrumental in arranging for mayoral and city council candidates to join her on "night tours" of our streets to meet and to hear from this special part of our community.

But, back to her email message. She was forwarding to me an email she had received from a homeless woman, Tami. I thought it worth publishing. While my posting is not intended as an endorsement of all that she says, it is an honest effort to allow her to be heard, as she requests.

Here's what Tami said in response (slightly edited) to Ms. Shafer's question, "What do you need?"

Dear Ms. Shafer,

hi, it's me, Tami. we talked this past weekend about what the homeless
need/want. well here's what i would like to see happen for the homeless.

first, what we talked about, the city has five million dollars for the
homeless, and they are wasting it. they need to take that money, buy
up a lot of these empty houses and give them to the homeless.

Secondly, all these people that have all the power, the mayor, the
security guards, . . . need to stop treating us like trash. all we are to them is a reason to get up in the morning and get paid.

Thirdly, the rule of two sessions a day on the computers at the library should be changed. the homeless don't have anywhere to go all day (the ones that don't work) and if we aren't hurting anything by using the computers then we should get as many sessions as we want. Lets face it, the homeless make up the business at the library. The rich people don't hardly need to come to the library because they have personal computers at their homes.

back to the second item, we want to be heard, we all have voices and needs and no one is asking us what those needs are. i know that most of the homeless have given up, they go to work and then they smoke and or drink up their paychecks, but the rest of us just want to be heard, we want to belong.

the only reason i'm homeless is because i was a victim of the government. i was on hud in abilene, i had an apartment for almost a year. HUD send the landlords/owners of those apartments a small list of things that needed to be fixed, but the landlords/owners refused to fix what HUD told them to so they kicked me out of the apartment. i was going to move back to Plan, (where i grew up), but my husband and i ran out of money and we got stuck here.

I have never been treated so badly in my whole life as the way i've been treated here. anyway, that's what's going on on the streets. the homeless are being treated very, very badly and the points i outlined above need to addressed.

thank you for letting me tell you what's been going on. and i hope you can help. we are people, not animals, and not trash.

Thank you,
Tami

You may not agree completely with Tami's assessment of things on the streets of Dallas, but her opinion, based on her daily experience, should not be dismissed lightly.

Listening to one another is the first step to solving our problems. Dallas is a city accustomed to seeking out and paying attention to "expert opinion." Given that cherished community value, being willing and even eager to hear the homeless talk about homelessness seems like a no-brainer to me.

Community development 101: to solve a vexing community problem, consult the people who know most about the problem.

Churches, Poverty and the Inner City

Church leaders often remark to me, "What can we do to really be involved in the work you are doing? We don't want to just write a check."

I understand and appreciate the sentiment behind the question, at least I think I do.

Of course, there are some clear facts to consider in this discussion.

First, churches don't write many checks to support our work here in Dallas. We project, based on past experience, that contributions by churches to Central Dallas Ministries during 2007 will total a good bit less than 5% of our operations budget. So, you will understand that from our perspective, in view of the needs and opportunities we face every day, it is not a bad thing for a church to simply write us a check, or better yet, a check a month!

Second, getting churches involved in inner city neighborhoods can be a little tricky. For one thing, lots of church folks want to lavish lots of stuff on poor people. This can be useful at times, if we are talking about the right stuff, delivered in the proper manner. But for the most part, free stuff is not what is needed or even best for our communities.

For example, putting low-income persons in a position to control the process of, say, hunger relief or clothing distribution, may be much better than having church folks from outside the community deliver the goods directly to the poor.

If your goal is community and human development, you look for ways to avoid the creation of dependence or a neo-colonial approach to relief and compassion efforts. If the community senses that it is being assisted by its own members, things seem to work better and lead somewhere beyond the venue and limitations of charity. Churches that are mature enough to entrust resources to inner city leaders and community organizers without the demand to be involved in the delivery process usually are doing much more than they realize to promote health in distressed communities.

Third, churches from outside the inner city can make a big difference if they are willing to simply work on developing authentic friendships. Churches may want to "adopt" a neighborhood, not to shower it with material gifts, but to come to know it, the environment, the challenges and its residents. As relationships form around various projects and meetings, friendship will lead naturally to joint action.

Such an approach takes time and commitment that includes and goes beyond check writing.

One of our best supporting churches is in the process of adopting the community formed by one of our apartment complexes. Church members have spent weekends painting and repairing apartments. They have had picnics and they have erected a much-needed fence around the front yard to protect the children who play outside from their rather busy street. I know his group plans to stay with it and get to know the people who live there.

Such an approach is key to really being involved in a way that goes beyond checks to friendships and community connections. The benefits are mutual and reciprocal. Both groups benefit from one another. This is key.

If an action does not result in reciprocal benefit for both groups and everyone involved, it likely should be reconsidered or redesigned. Including neighborhood folks in any planning for such activities will be a step in the right direction from the get-go.

Not every church is ready for such a commitment. That's okay.

Checks placed in the hands of community and ministry leaders are crucial to our continued progress. If more follows on from the financial commitment, well and good.

Please though, don't underestimate the importance and power of simply writing a check!