That Man on the Corner: Where Ideology and Spirituality Meet
I have often felt conflicted in situations where there is a person on the street corner holding a sign, asking for something. Do I, or don’t I have a quarter for this person, and do I or don’t I want to give it to them? Now, I was raised a religious person, and I am an American. You wouldn’t think that these two aspects would oppose each other. But, strangely, they do. I don’t consider myself religious any longer, but I do my best to uphold spiritual values. Up until recently this man on the corner scenario was posing quite a dilemma for me.
There is a prominent political ideology in this country influenced by Darwinian ideas, that if one person helps another, it actually does them a disservice, as it merely perpetuates their weakness. It enables the weak and incapable to remain unproductive as they continue to leech from the rest. Rather, for their own sake and for society’s benefit, they must be left in the struggle or they will never grow and develop to provide for themselves. Then, there is what I was taught in church when I was a child. Jesus washed the feet of the meek, clothed the naked, and fed the hungry. He was a great teacher of not only charity, but also compassion. And like the other teachers of compassion, Buddha, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, there is the teaching of opening one’s heart and comprehending the inherent oneness of human beings trapped in an illusion of separateness from one another and all things. To overcome such an inauthentic view, we are taught to love one another, have compassion, forgiveness, and to open up our hearts. As such enlightened beings, we are God, and there is no division, no fear, only unity everywhere. In such mode of being, the right thing to do was help this poor man out.
But ugh, to give out spare change! I really many happen to think that I need it myself. That I have my own bills to pay, and etc. and etc. But the sign that I saw that day, the sign that the old man sitting against the traffic-light pole was holding, did not say, need change, anything helps, need 50 cents (such an insignificant amount there’s not even a cent symbol key on my computer), Jesus saves, need beer, or whatever. It said, HUNGRY.
I’ve heard these people can make a reasonable dime on the streets panhandling like this. People do help the poor. But should I? Before, pretty much everyone went to church and the church passed out the collection plate, and the community shelled out to the church, for charity, and to provide for the church’s coffers. In a more and more atheist society, pan-handling seems like a surrogate for the collection plate, or an accompaniment thereto. Then there are the poor, penniless mystics who wander the cities and villages in other parts of the world; a whole priestly class who eat whatever sustenance is placed in their collection bowls, dedicated to a life of poverty and spiritual focus. Indeed, the Franciscan monks upheld the modest lifestyle and service to the poor as the true lifestyle of Jesus. However, in the 12th century when the church was trying to establish the official line of the church in such matters, the Dominicans felt that converting others to Christianity was more important than the ideal of poverty, and pope’s final word on that subject was that although poverty was Jesus-like and cool in theory, it was not necessary to practice. (Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing CO., Inc, 1975.) Interestingly, now, this American culture finds poverty repugnant. Now, should I help this person?
Another way to look at this beggar is that he is an enlightened being. Maybe he is Jesus, or Buddha. And his sign said that he was hungry. I was about to give some change, but found that I did not have any lying around my car. I did, however, just discover that I had a bag of tomatoes in my grocery bag with the pork tenderloin I was making for dinner, with the milk and eggs and such. One had been a little crushed. I noticed that it even had a tiny little bit of mold on it. Hey, better this than nothing, eh? I was about to cut off the bad part but the arrow turned green at the stoplight. So I just held up the beautiful red, otherwise perfectly healthy tomato, and saw the man’s eyes light up as he sprung into action dodging cars and traffic. His eyes looked at me gratefully from over his tan, crow-footed cheeks. And I felt good. Sort of. If this guy was Jesus, I should have given him the best tomato I had. What kind of energy work would that have been. It might have made that man just a little healthier, so that he could help himself.
I concluded that this guy just needed a friggin’ tomato. Why would you not give the guy who says he’s hungry something to eat? Because you don’t know him? Because he’s not your blood brother? He doesn’t deserve it? So either you are strong, capable, lucky and deserving; or weak, ineffective, unlucky, and deserve to die (unless you figure out a way to help yourself)? Sure, people do things that causes them to be ostracized from the community, and left to go fend for themselves. But these days the land is all bought up and we live in cities, so there is no just going off and living off the land and trying to make it on your own. Here, all that’s left is jail, or the street. So people on the street try to survive the best they can. Maybe some chick rolling up to the stoplight will give the bum a quarter, a sub-par tomato; maybe she will slip him or her a 100 dollar bill, or a cigarette, or better. Or he or she could just get a job. There’s always a job to be had, right?
Maybe it was this man’s job to demonstrate that we have a choice– a choice in how we live; a choice in whether we choose to give; a choice in the way we see the world. Maybe it was his job to exemplify the stark differences between us and another, and to show us how good it feels to help a brother out anyway. Maybe it was just his job to teach us compassion in an otherwise hostile and conflicted world. And for this, I grateful.
Yoga-mat psychologist and Crohn's disease warrior, Nina-Lois Turtledove is deeply interested in philosophy, analytic and somatic psychology, peace studies, nutrition, tradition, and progress. This is her public journal where she spills her thoughts, and records her dreams, rants, and reflections.