By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

9 Responses to “Lost in Identity”

1. Mark IV Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 11:34 am

   Here is something I’ve wondered about. Your observation is correct when you say that people often are unwilling to engage panhandlers as human beings. But I am starting to believe that much of that unwillingness is not due to contempt, but rather to fear. I’m not afraid of the down-and-outer as a person, but I’m aware of a lurking realization that there is very little that separates me from him, and that scares me. A traffic accident, a subtle shift in my brain chemistry, any of a dozen other conditions that really could occur, and I might well find myself competing with other homeless people for the “good” spots on the sidewalk.

   I visit a retirement home as part of my home teaching visits. The majority of those people will die alone, broke, and in pain. We are all just a generation behind them, and I don’t expect much to change in the meantime.

   All of this makes me grateful for our Savior, who descended below all things. Happy Easter to you, too, Sam.
2. Gary Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 12:38 pm

   Mark: I am not so sure it is fear, or at least fear that they too could find themselves in the same situation. Rather, I think it is guilt. People feel guilty when confronted by another in need. Sometimes it is the guilt that the lucky often experience, just knowing that others are not lucky. Sometimes it is feelings of guilt knowing that we can and should do more to help, but also knowing that we really have no intention of helping. Sometimes we feel as though we would like to help, but don’t know how. These people force us to confront our own failings. We try to make those feelings disappear by not looking and turning away. Maybe the resident geneticists can tell us whether we share that gene with ostriches.

   The homeless people with whom I have spoken have told me often that people simply looking away and refusing to acknowledge them is the most painful part of their lives. You don’t have to give money. Simply saying hello and engaging them in conversation, however brief, means a lot.
3. Sam MB Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 1:27 pm

   For me at the time, the experience was so visceral that it may easily have clouded my ability to interpret. In my weaker moments of turning away, it is a recognition of the distance between my Christian ideals and my self-absorbed life, which these neighbors bring to the fore.
4. hpm Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 1:45 pm

   Sam, thanks for publishing this essay–I remember with fondness the fellow who wrote it–and focusing our attention on the people around us.
5. molly bennion Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 6:53 pm

   Thanks, Sam. Your story is a lovely Easter challenge.
   Once my husband had the record for the largest debt owed by a student to Harvard. We felt poor. We lived for a time in a Boston ghetto. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the Neighborhood Youth Corps, a failed Johnson War on Poverty program and tutored housing project kids. I tried to understand poverty both institutionally and interpersonally. However, I could never really stand in anyone else’s shoes because, however poor we were, we had endless promise and hope thanks largely to our educations. For us poverty was a sign of hope and for them poverty was a source of despair.
   A line in my patriarchal blessing says “the poor mourn and the rich are filled with fear.” I’ve spent 40 years trying to understand the fear. I have come to believe some of that fear is born of the confusion of our inability to understand the poor, the causes of poverty and the solutions to it. We fear for our souls should we do too little (inevitable), but we also fear we will not do the smartest, best things to make a meaningful contribution to economic justice and mercy. Thanks, Sam, for prodding me to consider all this afresh.
6. smb Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 7:42 pm

   thanks, molly. i find that my encounters with tuberculosis and being a parent have made me more timid. This Easter has felt special to me in terms of rekindling my youthful commitment to soulful Christianity.
7. molly bennion Says:
   April 7, 2007 at 9:21 pm

   smb, Tuberculosis? I have had glandular and 2 of my children have had lung. I sincerely hope and pray whoever has it does not have a drug resistant type, is cured now or will be soon. And your use of the word timid absolutely fascinates me.
8. Sam MB Says:
   April 8, 2007 at 12:52 am

   Sorry, didn’t mean to be confusing. No TB in our family, but I meet a lot of people with TB, and the specter of infection is enough to make me timid. Homelessness is generally considered a risk factor for a variety of reasons related to malnutrition, incidence of HIV, and close quarters in shelters with ample cross-talk with prisons (speaking epidemiologically, not Christianly).
9. Tatiana Says:
   April 8, 2007 at 7:27 am

   Thanks for this essay! Before we can help, first we have to notice. I have a sort of superstition about panhandlers, that if I always share something with them, maybe only small change, if I have little, then I will never have to be a panhandler myself. (Unless they’re aggressive and threatening, in which case I don’t give them anything.) Sometimes I give more than they’re expecting just to see the look of confusion on their faces turn to understanding and then joy. Whatever joy I could possibly get out of $20 is nothing at all compared to how much that is for a homeless person. To me it seems like a sound economic transaction. I guess I have a Santa Claus complex.

   I’ve tried imperfectly to imagine what it must be like to be a panhandler, what would have to happen to me before I became one. I haven’t come as close as you to really understanding. But I think they must feel the distance between us as being enormous. Perhaps that does come from us (the way we treat them) much more than from them. I don’t feel I can change their situation, really, or fix the problems that lead to their status, but I do feel a need to share with them some of what I have, and to acknowledge their existence with a smile, a nod, and a “good luck”.

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