Every time I speak somewhere, people always want to know practical things they can do to help people who live outside. I resist this, because I do not like to perpetuate the idea that there are easy answers, because the answers are not easy.

But today, I have one simple thing you can do. It will cost you less than $5 and it has two parts:

1. Buy a case of bottled water and put it in your car.
2. Give a bottle of water to people you see outside holding signs.

It is scary hot outside. Here in Raleigh, it is in the triple digits. People who are outside holding signs are usually not in the shade and stand out there for hours at a time. They are a heat-stroke looking for a place to happen.

If you want extra credit, you can ice it down in a cooler, but that is not really necessary. The important thing is that they get  water inside their body.

And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward. ~ Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 10:42)

One of our volunteers and I were talking the other day, and he mentioned how it seemed every single guy we knew that lived on the streets was not only a veteran, but had been in “Special Opps”. No kidding – I had one guy tell me, with a straight face, that he had served in Delta Force with Chuck Norris.

Or there is the guy I know who is always carrying paperback books by intellectual authors – but I am pretty sure he has about a fourth grade reading level. Or the conversation I had with Martha right before she died, where we talked about Jazz musicians. She made it a big point to tell me about the artists she had seen in person.

If you spend much time out here at all, you hear about the hot ex-girlfriend, the car they used to own, the job they used to have or the college they went to. In other words, they want you to know that they are special.

“I just want you to know – I am not like these other guys out here. “

I have heard that line, or some variation of it, hundreds of times. I used to think it was a hustle. But I have come to see it for what it is – a cry for respect, a way to scratch out some way that they are unique, while living in the midst of people society says are all the same.

Even more than they want housing, more than they want jobs, more than they want the fundamental right to take a shower or decide when to use the toilet, my friends who live outside want their dignity. They want to know that they matter, that they are not a wasted life. Despite the fact that society gives them their leftovers (leftover food, leftover clothes, leftover time), they want to know; they need to know that they are not leftover people.

In the Judeo-Christian story, we are told that humans are made in the very image of God – that we all hold something of the Divine in us. Whether we mean Mr. Slocum the bank president or Blind Willie who lives under the bridge – we all bear the image, the imprint of God. This means we probably owe an apology to Blind Willie for the way we treat him.

Dignity is not something we grant, but something we recognize in each other. But first, we have to be willing to see that the person living under the bridge is special – not because he was in Delta Force with Chuck Norris, but merely because he exists.

About a month ago, the local paper interviewed me. It was a good interview, and they told our story pretty well. But the reporter opened the article by saying that Love Wins is best defined by what we do not do – we do not proselytize, we do not push people to church and we do not distribute tracts. All of that is true.

Several people told me they could no longer support our work financially because we do not “share the gospel”. Others accused me of being ashamed of Jesus and said we should be much more up front with the “good news”.

Let me tell you a story.

She’s 24, but could pass for 16. She’s rail thin, with prominent cheekbones and dusty brown hair cut almost as short as mine. She grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, but for the last year has lived in a tent south of town. Let’s call her McKinsey.

When she was 17 years old, she told her mother that she thought she might be gay. Distraught, Mom went to her pastor, who told her that the thing to do was to exercise “tough love” and put McKinsey out – to shun her, if you will – until she repented.

Since then, she has lived by her wits. For the last six years, she has survived mainly by turning tricks. Somewhere along the way she picked up an alcohol addiction. She has been sexually assaulted more times than she can count, and sleeps in her tent with a steak knife under her pillow for protection.

My question for you is this: If you are McKinsey – Who do you get mad at? Do you get mad at your mother, for throwing you out? At the preacher for telling Mom to do it? Or do you get angry at the God that preacher is supposed to speak for?

If you are her, and you see God as having caused all this, you probably won’t react well when someone comes up to you and tells you God loves you – however true that might be.

So I did none of that. Instead, I sat with her on the park bench as she held her cardboard sign. I listened for hours as she talked about all the anger she held for her mother and for God. She laughed when I told her a joke she had already heard the day before, and I laughed when she described me to someone else as “her preacher”.

And earlier this week, I was looking very out of place in the woman’s section of Wal-Mart using your money to buy size small sports bras, while trying to not answer embarrassing question from the clerk about cup size and so on. Because McKinsey had no one else who would go for her.

After all this, McKinsey still is not a Christian. And in truth, she has been so burned by the church, I’m not sure that is ever going to happen. But had I “Led with the good news”, I would have eliminated any opportunity for the friendship McKinsey and I now have. And if I had let that happen, you couldn’t call me a Christian, either.

Not sure if you have seen it, but you ought to catch the book excerpt in this week’s Independent. It’s the second chapter of Dick Reavis’ book Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers.

I haven’t read the book yet (But it is on my Amazon wish list – hint, hint), but the excerpt was spot on with my considerable experience with day labor pools. If there is any thing more depressing than not being able to work, it is the horror of investing 14 hours or so only to walk away with something like $35, assuming you actually get picked to work today.

Without a doubt, my most frequently asked question involves panhandling. What should I do? How should I do it? Are they going to use the money for something bad?

I submit that most of our questions along this line are not really about panhandlers, but about our need to hold onto our money and our service to the false gods of convenience and control.

Huh?

I unpack that a bit over on my friend Karen’s blog, where she asked me this question:

I recently pulled out of a parking lot and there was a line of panhandlers at the stop light. How do I help? Who do I help?

Go see what my answer was.

Imagine, for a moment, that you have a fairly normal life. You have a job, an apartment that is just a bit too expensive, you have some credit cards you really ought to pay off and a car payment, along with the insurance, tags and so on that come with it and, of course, no real savings.

And then you lose your job. It was outsourced, or your company filed bankruptcy, or your department got shuttered. Whatever. You are out of work.  And on your way to becoming quickly out of money.  Because you recently moved here for that job, you don’t have any local friends that would let you live in the spare bedroom until things turn around. You have family back home, 800 miles away, but they are struggling too. There is no real money to send you – they are trying their best to just survive. So you keep putting in applications, buy cheaper and cheaper food, start researching the food pantries and the soup kitchens. And at night, you cry.

They repossess the car first, because you chose to pay the rent instead of the car note. Luckily you live near a bus line – not that you have ever ridden the bus before, but you are learning to do lots of things you never did before. The college degree on your wall in the bedroom mocks you when you wake up in the morning to face yet another round of rejections from people who still have jobs.

By now, you have quit being choosy – you are applying for jobs at fast food joints and retail stores. Collection agencies are calling your phone nearly nonstop because you quit paying the bills to hold on to the little cash you have left. Yesterday you tried to charge the groceries and your last credit card was declined. You come home to find the a note on your door, telling you to be in court in seven days. You are being evicted.

You’re an educated, intelligent, normal person. You’re not an alcoholic or drug addict. You’re not a bad person. But you are 27 years old and homeless.

I have personally seen this very scenario at least 5 times in the last three months. People who all say the exact same thing to me – “I am not like this! This is not me!”

This is how homelessness happens. It is not one bad decision you made – it is a process.

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It is worth noting that there are at least five places (I see nine)  in the scenario above where the church could have played a role in keeping this from happening. Can you find them?

Photo Credit: tombothetominator

Rick and Karen* have been in town about two months. They came from New Jersey, drawn here by the promise of work that did not materialize after they put all their stuff in storage and rode the bus down. Six months ago, he was a hard working construction worker and she was a housewife. Now, they are just two more homeless folks, trying to get out.

After the first month on the street, they lost the stuff in storage back home because they could not pay the bill anymore. On the bus ride down, their luggage was stolen, along with their Identification – making work impossible to get in our post 9/11 world. Shortly after getting his ID straightened out, he was working a temporary job and hurt his leg, putting him on crutches (and unable to work) for the next two weeks.  My grandfather would say they were snakebit and my Social Worker friends would say they have “Multiple Conflicting Issues”, but either way, they just can’t get a break.

Some folks adjust to homelessness better than others. She is not adjusting well. She spends most of her nights in the shelter, thank God, but seperated from her husband, who sometimes, but not always, gets into the men’s shelter. Apparently it never occured to the powers that be that a childless married couple could ever be homeless, or, if you are cynical, you have to assume the powers might have thought about such an incident but they just do not care or value keeping such a family together.

Monday was my day off. I had no business being downtown at all, but I was looking for a friend of mine who had offered to help me move into the new place when I saw her, surrounded by police officers, crying and shaking. Her husband, Rick, was across the street, talking to another police officer. I walk over to investigate. The officer does not like this, but it is times like this that those pastor credentials come in handy.

Rick had went to fill out job applications. Normally they travel together, but since they only had the one bus pass she stayed at the Cat Bus station downtown. Surrounded by people, she felt safe while he went and tried to find work.

While Rick was gone, a guy sat next to Karen, in broad daylight, and assaulted her, groping her and putting his hand under her shirt. She screamed and he was stopped from running by some folks who came to her aid. The police were called and Rick arrived. She was hysterical. After the police arrested the guy and left, we talked for over an hour – trying to do a passable example of trauma counseling while surrounded by well wishing, but testosterone filled, men, all of whom were intent on exacting revenge for her honor. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know getting her out of there would have been a good plan. I called several of my female friends, hoping to find one who would take her to the gym, so she could shower and change there, and maybe have conversation with someone who is not the same sex as her agressor, but all my friends were in voice-mail mode, so we had to make do with convincing the shelter to allow her to come inside two hours early, so she could shower and change clothes. Unfortunantly, this also cut her off from her husband, who is not allowed inside the shelter.

Being out here is so dark at times. And if I did not believe that God still reigns and that one day Karen’s suffering would be redemed and made right, I have no idea how I would go on. And on days when I just cannot believe it any more, I still have at least the hope that it’s true. According to the author of Hebrews, being sure of what we hope for is the definition of faith. So, in faith, I go on.

Lord, I believe. Please help my unbelief.

*As always, names are changed for privacy purposes.

The wind whipped through my sweater this morning on my scooter. Lately, I have been sleeping with the windows open. These are harbingers of Autumn, a time of beautiful leaves and crisp weather, of bobbing for apples, trick or treating and the anticipation of Thanksgiving break…

Unless you live outside. If you live outside, it means finding another blanket or two, so you can sleep warmly at night. It means wearing three pair of pants and four coats. It means looking for a warm place to sit and wishing you could store the warmth, somehow, for later, when you will be in your cat-hole, shivering, feeling the cold from the concrete soak through the 5 blankets and into your bones.

This will be my third winter among the very poor of Raleigh, including those who live outside. Going home to my warm house never gets any easier.

People who live outside or in their cars have trouble getting very basic hygiene items – things we take for granted like soap, toothpaste and shampoo.  Love Wins Ministries provides travel size Freshpacs to the people we feed every weekend in the park.

What is a Freshpac?

A Freshpac is simply a quart sized sealable plastic bag that has the simple things you use every morning – soap, shampoo, razor, etc.  The items are travel size because the people who need them don’t have storage facilities – they travel light.

How Can We Help Provide Freshpacs?

Here is a list of things that go into the Freshpacs that we provide to people who need them.  We encourage you to put out a call to your congregation, service club or small group to help gather any or all of these items.

People acquire these things in different ways: Some collect hotel-size items when traveling, others buy travel
size goods at department stores when they do their shopping and some people have reported success asking
dentists or local hotels to donate travel size items.

• Toothbrush (Dollar stores often have 2 and 3 packs of these for $1)
• Toothpaste (Travel size – Target and Wal-Mart are good for this. Also, dentists are a good source, and
can order these in bulk, should you happen to know a dentist)
• Shampoo (Travel size – also, encourage friends who travel to save theirs)
• Soap/ Body Wash (See Shampoo notes. Body wash is preferred)
• Razor (Disposable. Dollar stores have 5 packs for $1)
• Feminine hygiene products (Regular pads are best)
• Deodorant (Travel size)
• Body Lotion or Baby Oil (Travel size – Baby lotion works well)
• Wet wipes (Travel packs of 10 or so are good)
• Chap Stick (Generic works fine)
• Quart size ziploc-style bags (Check the dollar store)
• Single Use hand warmers (8-10 hour type – look in sporting goods dept. – These are most needed in the winter, but anytime you see them on sale, grab them!)

What about full size items?

We do have a need for bigger items – we use them for shoe boxes we fill with hygiene items for low-income
households. (Like bottles of shampoo, packs of razors, etc.)

What do we do with this stuff?

If your congregation or small group would like to donate items on the list above OR are looking for a service
project to do as a group (like assembling these kits for us), please contact Hugh.

Note: We really do need your help in filling these up. It would tickle me if your church or small group could get behind this and collect this sort of stuff for us. You can go here and download a printable copy of this post, to share or email.

Sometimes, the people I meet in my work here  make an instant impression – and sadly, sometimes they all just run together. Martha fell into the latter category. I no longer remember when I first met her, or the circumstances.

She had sporadic bouts with homelessness. Sometimes she would go into longer-term programs and sometimes she would stay with friends and sometimes she slept outside. My friends and I were talking about her the other day and decided she must have left town for a while, because there was a long stretch when we did not see her for about six months.

Since her reappearance several months ago, she has been a regular at our Saturday and Sunday morning breakfasts in Moore Square. She would always be happy to tell you what was going on in her life, or, her favorite topic, what she used to do professionally before she became homeless.

According to Martha, she had worked for the government (in various, unrelated, positions), been a nurse, been a CPA, a radiological technician, etc. Almost every time you saw her, a new career would manifest itself in her history.

On the 26th of July this year, we had a long conversation. She was telling me how she had been forced out of Moore Square the day before, because she had been eating her lunch and outside food is not permitted in the park when they are having concerts. She told me of her career in the music industry and then how she had, after finishing her lunch, came back to listen to Charlie Daniels, who she really enjoyed.

Somehow, we began talking about wine, and she told me her favorite was sauvignon blanc. She went on to tell me how relaxing it was to come home from a long day at the hospital and turn on some relaxing jazz and put your feet up and sip some sauvignon blanc…

“When you’re doing that”, she said “you feel like everything is going to be ok.”

Last Tuesday, Martha was found dead outside Sacred Heart Cathedral downtown. The police have now determined it was murder, and while speculation is rampant on the streets, no one really knows anything.

The one thing everybody remembers about Martha was all the careers she claimed to have. Several folks have pointed to this as evidence of mental illness. I’m not so sure.

Imagine being in your fifties and you live in a world where you sleep outside and no one calls you by your name and your life consists of struggle to find food and clothing and shelter. When that’s your life, maybe imagining a world where you come home from a hard day’s work and listen to jazz and put your feet up and sip white wine and know that everything is going to be ok may just be the sanest response possible.