The Homeless Man in the Courtyard

I’ve been around a lot of homeless people.

Oh, I’m no Mother Theresa. I don’t have that gift of connecting with everyone no matter their situation, patiently listening to their story and figuring out how to console and connect. I do great with handing people what they need – socks, underwear, a bag lunch – and having casual chit chat but I’m not comfortable knowing too much. I’m a “Hi, how you doin’?” kind of helper.

So when the homeless man came into the courtyard of the church after services and knelt down in front of the coffee urn, I hung back and watched. It was, I told myself, my daughter’s church. She and her fellow congregants would know what the custom was with folks from the street coming to the after-service coffee and donuts time. I was just a visitor from out of town. And I was glad for that, not to be the one who ought to respond. Or so I said to myself. This is not your turf, I said to myself. As if I have turf.

I will tell you this. I have never seen a more homeless person. He was a handsome man, maybe late thirties, streaked with dirt and grime. He wore a t-shirt and shorts, sneakers without laces. He held his cup of coffee in both hands, but first ran each hand up and down the side of the cardboard cup like it was the first heat he’d felt in months or a sacrament he’d waited months to receive. He looked to me as if he hadn’t been inside in years.

Church members brought him cake. He drank his coffee fast, set the cup down on the courtyard stones, and ate the cake. I watched while the people around me were talking.

Why am I not reaching out to him? Doing my “Hi, how you doin’?” thing? Haven’t all the years of being involved in Street Angels prepared me to encounter an extraordinarily homeless person? I didn’t freeze exactly. I just didn’t move. And in that moment, what I expected from myself and what I was doing seemed further apart than I could reach.

When my daughter and grandson and I got up to leave, when we were about halfway out of the courtyard to the street, I turned to look at him and I caught his eye. “Take care,” I whispered, and I want to think he nodded. I think he did. Acknowledge me at least. That much.

I guess I just wanted him to know that I was thinking about him.