My friend Danny* called last Monday morning and said he was passing blood. He told me he had thrown up blood yesterday. I told him to catch the bus and I would meet him at the Emergency Room at the hospital.

Thirty minutes later, I show up – no Danny. Undaunted (Danny is always running late), I pull out my laptop and fire it up, hoping to get a bit of writing done while I wait. Three hours and two cups of hospital coffee later… No Danny.

Worried, I call some people who know him to see if they know where he is, but they have not seen him. We call the other hospitals, but he is not there either. We call the free clinic and we call the shelter he had called me from that morning, but no Danny. That night, I go to the soup kitchen and the shelter, but no sign of him in either place.

At some point, you realize you have done all you can, and I was at that point. He was either fine or he was passed out somewhere from loss of blood, but either way, there was nothing I could do about it. So, I went home. And worried.

The next day I heard a third-hand story about his being OK and some alleged confusion at the hospital…all of which sounded very fishy.  I was mad at being stood up and he was embarrassed at standing me up, so we avoided running into each other the rest of the week.

Yesterday morning, I saw Danny at our Sunday morning breakfast we do in the park. He tried to avoid me and do his ‘stupid shuffle’ (he acts stupid as a defense mechanism when you corner him) but we have been friends too long for it to work on me.

I let him have it. Both barrels. I told him that he really ticked me off by standing me up. That I had been worried sick about him. That he caused me to waste a whole day worrying about his stupid self and… you get the idea.

And he took it, and said he did not understand why I had been worried.  I explained to him that, while I sometimes wish I did not, I love him and was worried about him, and you do not treat people who love you the way he treated me. He apologized, and we hugged, and we are OK. For now. Until next time.

Danny has a hard time understanding that I could love him for no reason other than I love him. In his world, relationships grow out of mutual need: I watch your back, you watch mine. That I would be his friend and expect nothing but his friendship back is a concept so foreign to him, he has no words for it.

Sadly, many of my Christian friends are in the same place Danny is. They want to know what my agenda is, what the results are, what change is occurring in these people’s lives, who is getting “saved”, etc. They just do not get it. I don’t love him so he will change. I love him because he is worth it.

For 52 years, Danny has been the victim of brokenness & abuse, hatred because of his blackness, received practically zero education, been in and out of the county jail and struggled with drug abuse. There is no quick fix here, and some days I wonder if there is any fix at all. I pray that love is powerful enough to overcome all of that and to give him some sort of future.  But even if  loving him doesn’t make a difference, loving him matters. And even if he doesn’t change, he is no longer alone. And neither am I.

*Names are changed to protect my friend’s privacy.

After writing yesterday about how we do what is basically a feeding program every Sunday, I have to admit I am generally not a fan of feeding programs. There are several things that contribute to my bias.

1. Most feeding programs are designed to feed as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. That means making dishes that no one has ever ordered in a restaurant, like chicken hot dog spaghetti, or mashed potatoes and tuna casserole.

Generally speaking, I think that if someone would not order it, I cannot in good conscience feed it to someone.

2. Most feeding programs are designed with a goal in mind that often has nothing to do with the person being fed.

The street preachers feed folks to share the ‘gospel‘ with them. The city feeds people (or tolerates the soup kitchens that do) in order to have all the homeless in one spot, so they can more easily arrest people with outstanding warrants. (No kidding).  Many (but certainly not all) churches feed folks in order to have a nice page on their website, telling about how they are loving ‘the least of these’, or to justify the 5 million dollar building campaign for new Sunday School classrooms.

Our Sunday morning breakfasts are all about the person being fed. There is absolutely no goal or agenda, other than to be able to engage with people, to share a meal with them, to recognize their human-ness and love them without preconditions.

3. Sometimes, the goal is feeding people. In other words, it becomes a process, with a clearly defined outcome, and then the priority is to do ‘it’ as quickly and efficiently as possible. This means you measure the cost, control the portions, move the line along and get the food out there.

About once a month, some church or another will come out with food while we are out there. And honestly, sometimes it is really good food. I have seen fried chicken, sub sandwhiches and more. And our friends, being human, run over to where the free food is being passed out and take it. Then they run back to where we are drinking coffee and eating fruit and hang out with us, often resuming the conversation where it left off.

Feeding programs are not the problem. But neither are they the solution to anything. At their best, they provide opprotunities for engagement and conversation with no expectation of return. At their worst, they are manipulative, abusive and cruel.

People matter. Their stories matter. Their lives matter. They have hopes, dreams, fears and birthdays. It is our goal to only do programs that not only recognize that, but celebrate it.

Most Sunday mornings find me in Moore Square in downtown Raleigh. Moore Square is located near two homeless shelters and the city bus station, so it tends to be a magnet for the homeless population of Raleigh. I jokingly refer to it as my office.

On Sunday mornings, myself and somewhere around seven or eight others bring biscuits, coffee and fruit down to the Square and share breakfast with our friends in the park.  No goals. No agenda. No preaching, no tracts, no loud ‘praise’ music, no four spiritual laws, no… well, you get the point.

Instead, we hug folks. We laugh. We give Danny* a hard time as he tries to ‘pick up’ a new girl he just met by the coffee pot. I joke with Dave* because he is jealous of my new boots someone gave me. Suzanne talks with transgendered people and helps everyone find clothes. Donna passes out biscuits. Greg does whatever Donna tells him to do. Chad is taking orders for work boots, so people can get back to work. I agree to go to court with Irene*, so she can get a divorce from her alcoholic, abusive husband. And somewhere along the way, we get lots of hugs, and listen to sad tales of how ‘this’ happened to them, and we learn that we are not much different than they are.

In fact, after you do this a while, you learn that there is no us and them. There is just us.

Note: It costs us about $75 to throw breakfast in Moore Square each week. If you would like to underwrite breakfast one week, you can donate $75 via PayPal (you don’t have to have a PayPal account) by clicking here. If you would like to donate a different amount, go to our donate page. Thanks!

*As always, I change the names of our friends in order to protect their dignity and privacy.