Lifeletter #194: Love & Death in the Promised Land

Canada is now the promised land for millions of refugees. We are the country they would choose to live in, if they could. After the terrorist attack in Nice last July, my aunt, who lives in the south of France, told me that her friends also feel this way. When she asked them where they would go if forced to flee France, they named Canada. Oh Canada, glorious and free, you are beautiful; and darkness and despair live here too, even in the promised land.

Canada is a tough place to be homeless, in the winter. I live in Victoria, where it is warmer; we have the largest number of homeless people in Canada. When the Olympics happened in Vancouver, the government sent all the homeless people across the water to Victoria, so our homeless population is even larger than it was.

Have you ever asked yourself what your relationship is with the homeless? Why it’s so difficult to include them in your heart, to meet their eyes when you pass them on the street? Do you avoid them? Do you believe they are dangerous? Do you think of them as less than you, mentally ill, broken and flawed? Do you think of yourself as an open, caring person, and still find it difficult to love these particular people?

The San Francisco Homeless Project (https://sfhomelessproject.com) has a website where you can go and meet some of their homeless people. You can see them, listen to them, hear their stories. It was a powerful experience for me to find out how many of them were people just like me, before a few things unravelled in their financial lives, one after the other. Do we like to believe that we are somehow immune from ever sliding down that same slippery slope?

I’ve talked to a lot of people about this. I believe the prospect of being homeless is so terrifying for most of us that we push it far far away. It’s a nightmare that lurks in the back of our minds. It speaks to us of failure, and a complete loss of safety and dignity. And it carries with it the fragrance of our fear of death.

On Douglas Street, downtown in Victoria, there is a spot where eight or ten homeless people sit in a row, asking for money. When I am walking past them, it’s difficult for me to stay present. I feel like I am running a gauntlet. I practice slowing down, looking at them, not turning away. It’s a challenging practice. I feel a flinching movement in my body, a desire to speed up and get past them, so I can breathe again. I don’t want to give all of them money, so I also notice how it feels to look in the eyes of the ones to whom I do not give money. One day I did that with a beautiful black man on the corner. I just smiled at him and he smiled back, full of light. He was so beautifully free that I came back a few minutes later and gave him some money. As he took it, he smiled again and said, “You didn’t have to do that-your smile was enough.” It’s not always that easy, however. Sometimes I look in their eyes and I see a world of pain, loneliness and darkness.

A while ago I was downtown, walking the gauntlet, when I saw a woman up ahead of me. She was my age, in her 60’s, crouched down on the sidewalk, talking to one of the homeless men. I could see from their body language that there was a real connection happening. Drawn toward them both like a magnet, I moved closer so I could hear what she was saying. I couldn’t hear every word, but it was clear that she wasn’t giving him a lecture or some good advice. They were in fact having a genuine conversation. I was amazed at the friendliness and vitality they were sharing with each other. As she was walking away, I wanted to follow her down the street and ask her, “How did you do that? How did you step into his world, and find a way to be so naturally intimate with him?”

Her face told me the answer. It was a face full of kindness, strength and radiance, a well-worn face that had  drunk deep from the well of life. Just seeing her on the street like that, for three minutes, changed something in me. I cannot unsee how she was with that man. She poured a drop of light into my heart; that possibility lives in me now. She called me to become more human, more real, more available to life.  She invited me to step right through my bubble, through the frightened, contracted places in my heart and mind, into the simple wide open space of love.

 

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing
in the dense forest of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.

-Martha Postlewaite

 

with love,
Shayla