Timothy and Mary, part 2

Timothy and Mary live under the bicycle underpass five minutes from my house. A little-used bike path that runs alongside Escondido’s drainage canal suddenly dips down under a somewhat-more-used highway, and there in the shade, with the concrete of the canal yawning to one side, the couple has set up camp.

“It cost the city millions of dollars to build this underpass,” Timothy tells me, then laughs, “We were the first ones in.”

I laugh too. Its a quick moment of shared acknowledgment. There’s some sad irony here.

We have been accidentally generous to the broken people on our streets, have acted out an unintended grace. How sad that it was an accident, that it was not meant.

We, the outwardly clean, respectable world of Escondido, like to forget the broken people are around, hiding the night away somewhere ‘out there’, somewhere beyond the automatic lights and locks that mutely proclaim unwelcome at every door.
When sunlight returns, we would prefer and would insist if we could that they remain in those distantly close shadows and not follow the sun out to wait inconveniently with their cardboard signs at impatient intersections.
Perhaps we fear them like we fear the grit that spoils the delicate smoothness of the well-oiled machine. You see, we respectable people have a cardinal rule that keeps everything running on. It’s the very oil that slicks the mechanisms of our word.
The rule is this: “Like proper Victorian children, all problems must be kept hidden and under control.”

Scandalously, these people cannot hide their problems. They have committed the unforgivable crime of blatantly being needy for grace- because the one thing we cannot bear is to be reminded of the human brokenness that in pride we refuse to admit in ourselves, and that in fear we refuse to confront with trust in a God greater than ourselves.

We are not broken. We do not need.
(Smooth oil of pretending, greasing the death of souls…
Repelling against the sincere transparency of water, its cleansing honesty.)

Nonetheless, in direct violation of the unspoken rules Escondido has unwittingly provided a shelter for these people. Again, accidental generosity, unintended grace.

“It’s cool here all day,” Timothy explains, “Never gets above 80 degrees.”

Of course, the city is repentant for such a slip in judgment, and makes stern-faced atonement in the form of 4 AM evictions and laws banning bikes in the park.

But here I will end this self-implicating rant, such as it is, and attempt once again to start from the beginning, such as it is.

As I explained in part one, it had been my plan all summer to step out from my outwardly clean and respectable world into the shadows, to see what Christ might teach me there. As I also explained, my confidence in my own resolve to do so was more than it should of been.

And so it wasn’t until my last week in Escondido that anything happened.
On that morning, my friend Riley and I woke early, having resolved to make the best breakfast sandwiches we could and then head out into the streets to find people to give them to.
We made our way sluggishly to my kitchen, and with our rudimentary cooking skills set to work, hoping that good flavor would be an emergent property of the various elements we had assembled: a hefty loaf of bread, butter, eggs fried in an oiled skillet, salsa, brussel sprouts (for vitamins).

Half an hour later, sandwiches now made and wrapped, we approach the couple in the underpass with a bit of nervousness. The woman in the sleeping bag struggles to sit up, rubs her eyes. We say hello, apologize for waking her up, introduce ourselves, shake hands. Her name is Mary.

I say, “We’ve made sandwiches. Would you like one?”

This is the awkward moment. Here we are, with our desire to in some way be generous and loving to “those in need.” And, of all things, this desire has become incarnate in the form of an egg sandwich.

Timothy and Mary, part one

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this summer, it’s a deeper appreciation for the difficulty of translating ideals into reality, plans into action, the exciting and imaginative conceptual into imperfect and everyday concrete.

I think of the lines T.S. Eliot penned in “The Hollow Men,” chilling but all-too-true:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

And so I’ve been reflecting on the last two months, trying to discern where the shadow fell, and why.

I think that my capacity to dream -to hope- is greater than my capacity to enact, greater than my capacity for the elements that form the foundation for action: persistence, patience, faith, sacrifice, love…

And I think that to some degree my hope itself has been mis-founded, resting more on an overconfident estimation of my own ability than on Christ’s ability to form me as his disciple, that process I so frequently resist, that life-long journey I wish could be done in a moment. One day there may be such a moment, a “twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51, 52), but that day is not now, and I remain myself, imperfect and needy for the outstretched arm, the loving rebuke, the spirit of the cross: that mundane, everyday sort of resurrection. In short, needy for the wiser guidance of real love amidst all my dreams of heroism.