The new year has not diminished the amount people of who greet us from the side of the road. In my childhood, our nation took on the horror of poverty, pretty much ended homelessness and began an admittedly unfulfilled process to eradicate generational poverty. But the desire was there. The nation had a heightened consciousness and a determined moral resolve that America truly would be a land of opportunities and a place where one could pursue happiness.
But today we live in an age of austerity and fear. We might see the beggar, but all we can muster is momentary pity before cocooning ourselves into moral numbness. It’s not that we’ve become bad people. Rather we’ve become a traumatized people overwhelmed by our own sense of powerlessness. There are so many beggars that one simply shuts down and pretends not to notice, not to feel. One looks away and hopes that the beggar doesn’t catch one’s eye, doesn’t stake a claim based on our common humanity. For those whose morality is informed by God consciousness, the beggar is the very presence of divinity hidden in human rags. How we respond to the hidden God reveals the real truth of our spirituality. It reveals the real self we’ve become.
But what can we do? Does every beggar on every corner have a claim on us? Are we responsible for all? I think so. This doesn’t mean that every beggar has a claim on my every dime or every morsel of food. But it does mean that every beggar has a claim on my solidarity, my affirmation of our mutual existence, my responsibility as kinfolk. It does mean that I am not to pretend that the beggar isn’t there or hope that the beggar doesn’t notice me. Rather, because of God consciousness, that is, because of the assumption that the human being is the canvas upon which God paints the divine image, because of God-sight, one is stimulated by curiosity to overcome passivity and fear, willingly embracing the beggar into relationship.
Practically speaking this can take many forms. A woman I know carries little packets in her car that include a snack, a coupon for Subway and a note of encouragement. She gives these away to those who beg from the side of the road. Another friend carries spare coins in his car for the purpose of handing out, along with a smile and an encouraging word. Another rolls down his window for the purpose of a few words of conversation, often an encouragement to become a Real Change vendor. The point being that the poverty underneath poverty is isolation, condemnation and rejection. We can all break down those walls of hostility, and open up, if even for a moment, a sacred space of love and, dare I say it, hope.