Phyllis Cole-Dai's Blog

Emptiness of Our Hands Series Still Available

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Though I'm falling silent for the foreseeable future, my special series of posts on this blog about The Emptiness of Our Hands will remain accessible. The series ran from February 22 through April 12, 2009. If you wish to read (or reread) those posts, just click on the appropriate archive page(s), listed by date at the right.

If you wish to purchase a copy of The Emptiness of Our Hands for your own use or for use by a group to which you belong, please visit the Store at www.phylliscoledai.com. You may also contact me directly through that site for special rates on bulk orders. Remember, 20% of all sales proceeds support programs benefiting homeless persons.

Thank you.

Deep peace,
PCD

Blog Suspended for Now

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:16:00 +0000

Time for me to be quiet, at least for the foreseeable future. With gratitude for your readership, I wish you

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 47: The Emptiness of Our Hands (From "Sage" and "Silence")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Note: Since Wednesday, Feb. 25, I've been blogging through The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, which I co-authored with James Murray. This has been in observance of the ten-year anniversary of the 47 days James and I lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's 15th-largest city. More so, it has been in recognition that nearly four million people experience homelessness every year in this country.

To read the brief portion of the book's text on which I'll be reflecting today—the last day in this special series of posts—just click on its thumbnail. You can then read the text and, if you'd like, print it out using your browser's "Print" command.

Such a strange thing. Here we are, on the last of our 47 days, and I can't write a single sentence about this final portion of text. It demands I let it stand without comment; let the end be the end. Say nothing more than what's already been written: So it says to me.

Read it. Perhaps you'll understand.

Today is Easter, 2009. Butterflies alight on lilies. New life strides forth from the grave, starts dancing to a penny-whistler's jig. Hope arises, indestructible.

What shall be done with it? Where shall we go from here?

I can't answer these questions for you. At the moment, I can't even answer them for myself. After ten years of public speaking about my streets experience—ten years I never planned, ten years that just happened—it's time for me to stop. Not stop caring, not stop working, but stop telling the story. It's a difficult thing to do, when millions of people in this country are still experiencing homelessness each year, and millions more are walking the edge. The story is as relevant as ever; my compassion, as deep and unrelenting. But The Emptiness of Our Hands will have to do the storytelling now.

I don't know what I'll be doing next, except staying home. Home, where my son and husband are. Home, where I can rest, and tend my health. Home, where I can walk across the street to a feeding ministry and help tend its guests. Home, where I can be in community, seeking to address local (as well as national and global) needs and injustices. Home, where I can love and write and compose and play and garden and wash windows and ride bike and meditate and (did I say love? did I say play?) just be there.

This then, is the word with which I want to leave you today, on Easter, this last day of these 47, at the close of these ten years:

Just be there, and the Thing will come (as indeed it came for James and me, leading us to the streets, and into deeper presence there). Just be there, and always, always, it will come: The Thing that calls your soul out in the service of love; the Thing that, though you didn't seek it, you recognize when it crosses your path; the Thing that, when you see it, you reach out for and seize by the hand, and trust, and go along with.

The Thing comes again and again, even in the space of an ordinary day, wearing this face or that, taking this form or that. Be vigilant. If you're watching for it, you can't miss it. Believe me. It won't let you miss it.

So watch. See. Go. Wherever the Thing takes you—someplace near, someplace far—you'll never be the same for it, and neither will the world.

And now, I must thank you. Thank you for walking the way with me during this Lent and Holy Week. Thank you, too, for walking the way with me over the past decade. Wherever you may be on this holy day, and whatever the Thing may ask of you tomorrow—a holy day of its own—may you always be filled with

Deep peace—
PCD

This is my final post about The Emptiness of Our Hands,
though I'll be happy to answer any questions
or respond to any comments you send my way.
It will also be the final post
of my "Practicing Presence" blog,
at least for the foreseeable future.
It's time now for me to be quiet.
Someday, perhaps, it will be time again to speak.

Day 46: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Fire")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Day 45: The Emptiness of Our Hands (from "Spikes")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Day 44: The Emptiness of Our Hands (from "Staying [4])"

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

What would you choose to take with you if you had to leave behind the life you'd always lived, and all you could take with you is what you could carry?

Perhaps what is truly yours, to keep and to give, can't be carried at all....

In today's portion of text, I find myself staring at a teenage girl from Kosovo as she wipes away the tears of her much younger sister, the two of them finally safe (I hope) but all alone in a Macedonian refugee camp. I look closely at this teenager's face, and I know nothing: not her name, or whose eyes she has, or the lullabies she heard as a baby, her favorite color, the childhood toy she'd kept hidden away while pretending to be all grown up, what she wants to be someday, or whether she'll always be mother to this crying little girl....

I look closely at this teenager's face, and I see a story not known. And in her story not known, I see the stories of homeless people, not known. Stories that make them more than statistics. Stories that make them human.

At different times over these past years, I've searched the Internet in vain for the photograph of that teenager and her baby sister. Let me set before you, instead, this nameless, story-less child, who for all we know might have been that teenager's relative, or friend, or neighbor. She, too, took refuge in a Macedonian camp in April, 1999. Look at her. Imagine her life. Wonder about her. Ask questions of her. Hear the stark silence in response, and grieve.

The newspaper's accounts of the war in Yugoslavia and its great throngs of refugees broadened my perspective while I was on the streets. They reminded me that however much I was suffering, my suffering was a small thing, and not only because my own choices had helped create it. No, my suffering was a small thing because all of humanity suffers. Every single person on the planet. Our suffering doesn't make us special. It makes us the same.

It's my place in the world, as I understand it, to do what I can to help alleviate suffering. Self-pity accomplishes nothing, I reminded myself as I stared into the faces of those refugee children, as I looked into the eyes of my homeless friends. Neither does sadness. Feel the sadness, then give it up. Give it up, and get going. There's work—much work—to be done.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Photo credits (in order of appearance): United Nations, Roger LeMoyne/Liaison Agency.

Day 43: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Goodbye")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Note: From Wednesday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, April 12, I'll be blogging through The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, which I co-authored with James Murray. This is in observance of the ten-year anniversary of the 47 days James and I lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's 15th-largest city. More so, it's in recognition that nearly four million people experience homelessness every year in this country.

To read the brief portion of the book's text on which I'll be focusing my comments today, just click on its thumbnail. You can then read the text and, if you'd like, print it out using your browser's "Print" command.

Jake and I meet up in the chaos of Holy Family Soup Kitchen. Our exchange is brief. His eyes are sunken; his voice, dead. He's still in terrible danger from Rooster, and we both know there's no escaping it. Not for long. Not if Jake stays on the streets.

Perhaps his fear of Rooster lies behind Jake's decision to enter rehab this afternoon. But I want to believe there's more to it. Jake has so often expressed dissatisfaction with his life, has so often wished aloud for a different sort of existence, and despaired of ever having it. Maybe, just maybe, he's hit bottom now, and he's finally giving in to hope, letting it carry him away.

This is what I want to believe, but there's no way of knowing for sure why Jake's going into rehab or if, in fact, he'll actually do it. Like most human beings, Jake's not above telling a lie, even to himself, if that's what it takes.

I hug Jake goodbye. Twice. I can think of nothing to say. The moment's too short, my heart too full. He walks away from me, and even as I watch him go, the thought circles like a vulture: You'll never see him again.

As it turned out, I was wrong about that. I did see Jake again, though he never knew it. A couple of months after leaving the streets, having sufficiently recovered from the ordeal, I started socializing again. One weekday I agreed to meet two women friends for lunch at Columbus's North Market, a popular place to shop, eat, mingle and people-watch.

Arriving at the Market before my friends, I wandered the place, trying to decide what I'd like to eat. Trying, too, not to panic. The free-flowing crowd, all the noise, all the aromas, all the colors—it was overwhelming. Sensory overload: one of the chief symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, for which I was being treated.

Then, all at once, I saw him, waiting in a line of customers at a merchant stall. I couldn't believe my eyes. Obviously Jake had gone into rehab, as promised, and as Harold and Ada Martin had eventually confirmed. He radiated good health. He'd put on a little weight, as well as a little class, all dressed up in a clean, spiffy suit. I rushed to greet him, zigzagging through the crowd until I was standing right next to him. As yet, he hadn't noticed me.

Heart racing, I touched him lightly on the arm. He looked at me then, and I rejoiced to see his eyes large and full of light.

"Jake," I gushed, "how ya doin'? When'dya get outa rehab? You look terrific!" The words came out so fast, I hardly knew what I was saying, or how loud.

He gazed at me a moment, then smiled a little, said gently, "I'm sorry. I think you've mistaken me for someone else."

The world stood still. My mind spun. I stared at the man, dumbfounded. I looked him up and down, then backed away, stammering an apology. What had I been thinking? This man bore little resemblance at all to Jake; just a slight likeness around the eyes, and the mouth, and something brotherly in his bearing, as he stood there.

Not much of a resemblance at all, yet the instant I laid eyes on him, I'd been certain he was Jake, and hurried to say hello. Now that he wasn't Jake, I couldn't get away from him fast enough. I ran, to nowhere. My eyes were hot with tears. I was terrified and confused, trembling, wanting to retch.

It wasn't just embarrassment. It wasn't just disappointment. It was grief.

In the weeks and months after the streets, my mind and heart were trying so hard to piece together a world in which I could feel safe again, and trust again, and thrive again. But sometimes, no matter how strong those stitches were, they just couldn't hold. When they ripped, what I felt, more than anything, was grief. All kinds of grief. Grief for those I'd left behind on the streets. Grief for the person I'd once been, and would never be again. Grief for a life that was gone. Grief, grief, grief....

Sometimes, despite our longing, there's just no way to say goodbye.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Photo credits: Mary Dimercurio Prasad (North Market); http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/3333819066_9cce617138_b.jpg (bottom photo).

Day 42: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Custom")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Day 41: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Fences")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Day 40: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Doomed")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Day 39: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Neutrality")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:28:00 +0000

When we try to help somebody, we can't invest ourselves in a particular outcome. We can't even hope for a grateful response. If we want to help, we just try to help—period. Without conditions. Without expectations. Sometimes we'll make mistakes. Sometimes we won't be appreciated. Sometimes we might even get hurt. That's life. Still, we do it. We offer ourselves up in the service of love, like bread upon some altar....

What I learned from Grace on that trip, I learned again this Saturday night from Sabrina Martin, when she walked by the thin light of a flashlight into the dark of the woods, straight into Rooster's camp, carrying supper in styrofoam—big-hearted, open-handed, kind-spirited, with pluck and guts to spare....

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 38: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Hostilities")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:28:00 +0000

We're all in this together. Everybody watches out for everybody's stuff. Just try to keep your place neat, and don't make a big fire or the people up on the hill will call the cops. Don't use water from the river—it's damn polluted. If ya scrape up enough money for a night at a motel, invite everybody to come and clean up, hang out, watch tv, that kinda thing....

Everybody out here's gotta story. You don't need to know ours, and we don't wanna know yours.

But what would a community be without gossip? So that last rule was immediately broken, as Jake and Rooster began to speculate, affably, on what might have brought James and me to the riverbank.

Over time, James and I came to trust Jake and Rooster and our riverbank community—not altogether, but enough, and more and more, as life on the streets ground us down, we tended to trust our homeless neighbors more than "ordinary people." Nobody on the riverbank ever harmed us, or treated us with disrespect. Those who kicked or shoved or insulted or ignored or rousted us were always "from the world," not from the camps.

Still, this community was very fragile, the connections among people very tenuous. James and I recognized this, but as we became accustomed to camp life and better acquainted with our neighbors, our anxiety about living among them receded. It didn't go away. It just became our new normal. Most of the time, we didn't realize it was there.

When Rooster viciously attacked Jake while he was sleeping in his own bed in the middle of the night, the undercurrent of our anxiety erupted with full force. The reason for the assault varied, depending on whom you talked to. James and I, who even at our distance from Jake and Sarge's shack had been awakened by Rooster's crazy-making, didn't much care about the reason. We were just relieved that Jake and Sarge had survived it, and terrified of what Rooster might do next. By his own confession, he'd already committed murder. Twice.

The morning after the attack, just as James and I were about to set off for Holy Family Soup Kitchen, Jake stopped by our camp, carrying two heavy duffel bags and a sleeping bag. He intended, he said, to set up a new camp for himself, somewhere along the river where Rooster couldn't find him. He didn't want to tell us where—"Rooster might lean on ya to say."

Though we didn't know it at the time, Rooster's trespass into Jake and Sarge's home, his violence against their property and Jake's person, was a turning point in our neck of the woods. When Jake retreated into hiding, much of the sense of community that had existed among our near neighbors went with him.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 37: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Dictatorship")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Note: From Wednesday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, April 12, I'll be blogging through The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, which I co-authored with James Murray. This is in observance of the ten-year anniversary of the 47 days James and I lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's 15th-largest city. More so, it's in recognition that nearly four million people experience homelessness every year in this country.

To read the brief portion of the book's text on which I'll be reflecting today, just click on its thumbnails. You can then read the text and, if you'd like, print it out using your browser's "Print" command.

Being present to someone is to meet them as mystery. It's to honor what is sacred in them—what is "of God." It's to acknowledge that just by virtue of their existence, no matter who they are or what they've done in their life, they're worthy of basic respect, even reverence, as children of heaven walking this earth.

Easier said than done, as today's portion of text illustrates.

It was a Thursday. The man in charge of the day's crew of volunteers at Holy Family Soup Kitchen invited us all to pray with him before the meal, forgoing the customary Lord's Prayer in favor of shared silence. I appreciated this change in routine. As a contemplative sort, I value silence very much, but it was generally hard to come by on the streets, and ordinarily impossible to come by in that soup kitchen. So I welcomed the man's invitation.

But then the fellow concluded our time of silence with a prayer I'll probably never forget: a prayer expressing gratitude for everyone who'd had anything at all to do with the food about to be served—except those of us who were about to eat it. For us, apparently, there was only the need to plead forgiveness.

You see, to this man, whoever he was (bless his heart, he was probably doing the best he could), we who were there to eat were no mysteries. We were problems. A multitude of problems. And on this particular day, we were his problems.

James and I both felt slapped by his prayer, and believe me, we weren't the only ones.

Now, you may be wondering, So what? The poor fellow screwed up, used an unfortunate choice of words. What's the big deal?

Well, as you'll read in the text, just seconds after this "unfortunate choice of words," the crowded hall erupted in a riot. It started right in front of the servers, right in front of "the little dictator." There was a burst of noise, and a surge of bodies, an all-out brawl, a swarm totally out of control. It seemed forever before some down-on-their-luck middle-aged men, employed part-time to help run the food line, managed to break up the fight, just before the police arrived.

James and I have always believed that the riot on that Thursday would not have happened if it hadn't been for the prayer. Yes, that's speculation on our part. But Holy Family Soup Kitchen was a tough, tough place, and we ate lunch there nearly every weekday during our 47 days on the streets, yet that was the only riot we ever witnessed there. Tell me that's just a coincidence.

People are raw when they're suffering. We all know this from our own experience, don't we? When we're suffering, everything gets magnified. Little things become huge. And this is astonishingly true when you're without a home. When you're without a home, and someone shows you the least kindness, it seems like an absolute miracle. You don't soon forget it. In the same way, when you're without a home and someone slights you in the least, it seems a downright tragedy. You don't soon forget that either.

Let me put it another way: When you're without a home, and somebody welcomes you in as mystery, honors you as part of the sacred web of life, you instantly feel more significant, more that you matter, more that you belong. But when somebody shuts you out as if you're nothing but a problem, nothing but a sinner, you feel that you could easily disappear without the world being any less for it, without the world even noticing you're gone. That's how you feel, and the sad thing is, you might very well be right.

So, depending on just how raw you are in a given moment, someone's "unfortunate choice of words" might just be enough to push you over the edge, make you shout an obscenity or throw a punch, start a brawl. In one's choice of words can lie the creation or destruction of lives.

Words matter. They're acts. They're forms of energy; they have effects, create consequences. They can do good or cause harm, not only to people we're speaking to, but even to people we're speaking about. Therefore, I believe in exercising great care in our choice of words about others, and being as respectful as possible with our language. The way we speak is simply another aspect of practicing presence, another way of honoring every child of heaven walking this earth.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 36: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Missing")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Day 35: The Emptiness of Our Hands (from "Neanderthal")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Day 34: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Zippers")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:27:00 +0000

Christopher Adams, Gabriel Arnn, Jerome Bannister, Eric Blakey, Kevin Bryant, Tracey Burgess, David Cornwell, David H. DeVore, Alonzo Dowdy, Violet Daisy Edwards, Kenneth Freed, Arnold Gray, Renee Hickey, Jimmy Edward Hicks, Thomas S. Hill, James Kuisel Jr., Robert Leitwein, Eva Lowery, Moses Nixon, Levie Peoples, Robert L. Phipps, Jr., Beloved Quail, Clay Rinearson, Cynthia Ross, Mark Sanders, Ricky Sidders, James Skag, Antonio Stith, Robert Stump, Trent T., Max Turley, Vivian Vance, Wendell Ward, Ralph Wellman, Larry D. Wesley, Jack Woodward

May we commit ourselves ever more fully to the care of those without homes—indeed, to the care of all who suffer, whoever and wherever they may be—that they might live abundantly....

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

List of homeless persons who died in 2008 in Columbus, Ohio, provided by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless.

Day 33: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Answers")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:27:00 +0000

For one thing, I was searching for spiritual lessons, and I didn't wanna miss somethin' important by goin' home early. I'd also made a commitment, and I like to finish what I start. Then, well, y'know, I'd look weak if I went home early. If nothin' else, I did have my pride.

There's no shame in any of this. The reasons were just—James being James. But somewhere along the line, as days passed on the streets, James lived his way into a different sensibility, much more aligned with my own:

Now the Thing's got me. Just when it got me, or how, I can't say exactly, but it has, and now all those old reasons don't matter so much anymore. Bein' here, stayin' here—it's not about reasons. It's about Joseph in that wheelbarrow. It's about Susan, Don and Mad Dog, huddled around that bonfire. It's about Maddy, missin' her kids.... It's about—presence.

There's no glory in this. It's just James being James, in a new way....

When we're motivated by a desire to be present, when we actively cultivate that desire within ourselves and devote ourselves to the practice, it changes us, little by little. We start making different choices (or making the same choices for different reasons). We possess a different sense of purpose. We carry and convey a different spirit.

We engage our lives anew, here and now. Wherever "here" is, whenever "now" is, we try to live it to its utmost.

And you know what, once that start's happening to you, it doesn't really matter whether anybody understands what you're doing, or why you're doing it. They either get it, or they don't. Either way, you're with them.

There's nowhere else to be.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 32: The Emptiness of Our Hands (from "Gravity")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:26:00 +0000

Day 31: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Feast Day")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Note: From Wednesday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, April 12, I'll be blogging through The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, which I co-authored with James Murray. This is in observance of the ten-year anniversary of the 47 days James and I lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's 15th-largest city. More so, it's in recognition that nearly four million people experience homelessness every year in this country.

To read the brief portion of the book's text on which I'll be reflecting today, just click on its thumbnail. You can then read the text and, if you'd like, print it out using your browser's "Print" command.

Ah, so much food, and so few people to eat it.

Today James and I have foregone our usual late-morning visit to Holy Family Soup Kitchen in order to dine at a "luncheon for the homeless" being served at St. Joseph Cathedral. This is the Feast Day of the church's patron saint.

Serving tables in the undercroft have been spread with white linens and adorned with silver service. White candles flicker in silver candelabra above crystal platters overflowing with homemade bread, chunky chicken salad, assorted deli meats and cheeses, fresh fruit and sweets.

After dallying over our choices at the buffet tables, James and I sit down with mounded plates. From across the room a priest hollers us a greeting, then compliments, in good humor, the size of my sandwich—chicken salad heaped high between two slabs of homemade bread. Familiar with this priest's generous spirit, I laugh. He's one of the very few people, among the twenty or thirty gathered for lunch in the undercroft, who tries to make James and me feel more at ease.

It isn't difficult to feel out of place here. Linens and silver and exquisite food aside, only a half dozen of us who are seated at the tables look remotely poor; the rest, dressed in Sunday finery, are chitchatting about church matters, family concerns and business affairs. They and we don't mix. We who don't fit in say little, keeping our eyes on our plates. That, of all things, is easiest. Hunger will do that—help you stay focused on what's in front of you.

After the meal, when the tables are beginning to clear, somebody from the church remarks on how few homeless people showed up to eat. Sam, a church staffer, observes that this is an improvement, as none came at all, last year.

When a streetwise anglo contends that the church doesn't "think the way homeless people think" when organizing, publicizing and holding this event, James and I silently agree. Though our experience of the streets is limited, we can readily identify many of the misguided assumptions about homeless people that may well have been operating here. For instance: The only way a homeless person could have learned that the cathedral was hosting this luncheon was by reading the announcement in the church's Sunday bulletin, as, in fact, had James and I. Therefore, the organizers of the luncheon must have assumed either that a lot of homeless people attend mass at St. Joe's (not the case, in our observation) or that the few who do would spread the word to large numbers of other homeless people.

By publicizing the event only in the bulletin, the organizers must also have assumed that all homeless people can read, and that if homeless people do read a piece of information, they will retain it indefinitely, whether by carrying it with them, writing it down, or simply remembering it. Such is a false hope. Homeless people, especially those living on the streets, tend to carry with them only what they absolutely must. They also tend to lose things. And they constantly forget things. Exhausted, hungry, struggling against all sorts of difficulties, they can't help but forget things. In short, homeless people don't handle information the way other folks do. It's simply impossible.

The luncheon's organizers also seemed to have thought that homeless people would feel comfortable at, even honored by, an elegant feast in a fancy church, eating among finely dressed, beautifully coiffed and expensively perfumed parishioners. Furthermore, they apparently believed that the best time of day to serve such a feast would be around the noon hour. Yet most soup kitchens in the city were already providing weekday lunches. By choosing to host a midday meal, St. Joe's put itself in direct competition with other feeding ministries. What if, instead, the church had chosen to serve an early supper, thereby providing homeless persons with a meal they might otherwise find difficult to obtain?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. While their Feast Day luncheon seemed to be based on some mistaken assumptions, the folks at St. Joe's were at least doing something for the poor and homeless, and their efforts weren't limited to once-a-year buffets in the undercroft. James and I, along with countless other people, often obtained sandwiches and apples at the rectory door.

So please don't misread me: even after all these years, I'm still grateful to St. Joe's, just as I am to Take It to the Streets. But I'm also trying to make a point, which by now you may be tired of hearing on this blog: Too often when we wish to help someone, we don't sufficiently communicate with them. We don't partner with them. We don't bother to ask, first of all, if they desire our assistance; furthermore, we don't tend to ask what that assistance might be and how it might best be rendered.

Maybe we don't ask such questions because it takes time and effort. Maybe we don't ask because we don't want to deal with inconvenient answers, preferring to do things in our own way, in our own time, for our own reasons. But I'd rather believe that we don't ask those questions because we're a little sloppy. Sometimes we're just not thoughtful enough, not deliberate enough, in how we reach out to other human beings. We're not present enough to those whose needs we would serve. Instead, we're standing like the mustached monsignor against the far wall of the undercroft, stiff as starch, looking formidable, saying little, hands tightly clasped together.

Those who are without homes, without food, without hope, don't need linens and silver. They don't need candelabra and crystal. They need nourishment for their bodies, for their minds, for their hearts. Let's make sure full sustenance, deep presence, is never missing from the feast.

Perhaps then, so long as need remains, the chairs around the tables will be full.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 30: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Dust")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Day 29: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Kinship")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:24:00 +0000

My eyes, before I hit the streets (above),
and 47 days later (below).

As today's brief excerpt suggests, I'm feeling increasingly alienated from human society—detached from family, suspicious of strangers, distrustful of people who would try to help me, afraid of people who seem contemptuous of me, resentful of people who studiously ignore me, whose empty gazes make me nothing. I don't know which is worse, feeling despised or feeling erased.

These days, my life on the streets is becoming almost solely about my own survival—not only physical, but mental, psychological and spiritual survival. Despite my humanitarian motive for going to the streets in the first place, despite my ongoing efforts to reach out to others with compassion, I'm becoming ever more self-protective and self-absorbed.

Years later, I'll describe this experience as having gradually become enclosed in an eggshell of thick concrete. That eggshell was still intact when I returned home from the streets. For a long time after, life was a matter of slowly trying to peck my way out of that eggshell. Sometimes it still is. But at least by now the eggshell is full of cracks, and significant fragments of shell have fallen away, and I know for a fact that there are people who love me, chipping away at the concrete from the outside. We peer at each other through this hole or that, and mostly now, we can laugh.

So, you see, a strange thing happened to me on the streets. I went there to be present to people who were suffering. But before it was over, I realized that I, too, was suffering, even though I was there by choice, and I desperately needed someone to be present to me.

This, I think, is the human condition. All of us, at some point or other, suffers; all of us, at some point or other, need someone to be present to us in our suffering, even if we don't like to admit it. Suffering is just a part of life; so, too, is the need for compassion, and the ability both to receive and to express it, if only we'll allow ourselves.

A few days ago, somebody asked me, "But how do you know if somebody is suffering, and needs you to be present?" I don't know if my answer was right, but I believe it to be true: "Just assume they're suffering," I said. "Everybody who lives, hurts. Let's be in the habit of handling one another with care."

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 28: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Pick-Up Line")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:24:00 +0000

Note: From Wednesday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, April 12, I'll be blogging through The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, which I co-authored with James Murray. This is in observance of the ten-year anniversary of the 47 days James and I lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's 15th-largest city. More so, it's in recognition that nearly four million people experience homelessness every year in this country.

To read the brief portion of the book's text on which I'll be reflecting today, just click on its thumbnails. You can then read the text and, if you'd like, print it out using your browser's "Print" command.

Tonight, James and I will appear on the Channel 4 evening news. Not that we'll want to. We'll be forced to.

It's a long story, consuming a half-dozen pages in The Emptiness of our Hands, but it begins on the riverbank, where in late afternoon, as James and I hitch along the railroad tracks toward camp, we're approached unexpectedly by a Chevy Blazer, bumping along the railroad bed. Inside are Harold and Ada Martin, organizers of Take It to the Streets. Despite our weariness and our desire to just be left alone, the Martins' friendly invitation to come with them and "chill out," eat a little, watch some television, and yes, even take a shower soon seduces us into their car.

It's not until we're well on our way to wherever the Martins are taking us that Ada turns around from the front passenger seat to casually mention that "some tv people" will be there, once we arrive. When James and I emphatically protest that we don't wish to be interviewed, she reassures us that we won't have to, but we don't really believe her, especially when she keeps asking us to reconsider.

What James and I don't know is that the Martins are taking us to a halfway house for formerly homeless people that's run by the Take It to the Streets organization. As we'll eventually learn, the house sometimes also serves people still living on the streets.

Channel 4 News arrives late, just after James and I have each enjoyed a long, hot shower, and just after a male resident of the house, obviously dispatched by Ada, has tried to supply me with clean clothes: flare-legged jeans, a tight sweater, and high-heeled boots—none of the clothes practical for the streets, all of them meant (I suspect) for a tv camera.

It isn't Harold or Ada but the Channel 4 reporter who tells us why the Martins' work, relatively well-known in the city, is being featured again tonight. They must raise $40,000 in the next two weeks to prevent the halfway house from being repossessed by HUD. "All we want the two of you to do," the reporter says, "is tell us how important this place is to you."

How important this place is to you. James and I didn't even know this house existed, until tonight. Why, we wonder, isn't this reporter interested in interviewing some of the residents of the house who could speak with credibility on the subject? Is it possible that she's not interested because those residents (the ones we've met, anyway) are African-American, but she and the Martins are after green money from a predominately white viewing audience?

James and I are basically hostage to the situation. We're on the opposite side of the city from camp, with no transportation. We finally agree to be interviewed, using the aliases Jonathan and Mary Ingalls. (Just this afternoon we were told that neighbors on the riverbank have nicknamed us "Mister and Missus Ingalls," after the characters on Little House on the Prairie.) We ask the reporter to respect our privacy and not ask any personal questions. All we'll do, we inform her, is say what we know—that it felt great to come to the house tonight and take a shower.

I refuse to talk on-camera. James tries to do the same, but Harold prevails on him to show his face, whining and begging until James finally breaks down, sick at heart, and agrees. He pulls his knit hat down over his eyebrows, slumps on a sofa. Every ounce of him wants to get up and walk out the door, but there's nowhere to go. On the verge of tears, he answers the questions put to him, never looking directly into the camera, tv lights hot on his flushed face.

Around 10:00 p.m., more than four hours after they first picked us up, the Martins drive us home to the riverbank. As James and I get out of their Blazer along the railroad tracks, Ada reminds us that "we're family, and will always be family."

We fall into bed, totally spent. There's no sleep, though. So many unresolved feelings: regret that we ever got into the Martins' vehicle; resentment, even anger, at being exploited; guilt over our own imposture; fear of being exposed; hope, despite everything, that these strange doings might yield some good—

And, in fact, they do. In a few days we'll learn, not from the Martins but from my husband Jihong, that an anonymous donor has pledged to purchase the halfway house from HUD for $40,000, the exact amount needed. Ada Martin will be shown live on Channel 4 receiving the good news from the same reporter who taped the appeal.

James and I will be pleased by the outcome, yet the sense of betrayal, of having been used, will remain. If only the Martins had been straight with us. If only they'd explained the situation they were in, and then simply asked us to help. Who knows? If we hadn't been coerced, James and I might have readily cooperated.

We never had the chance to find out.

The Channel 4 fiasco ended happily for the Martins and for those people being served by their halfway house. But at what price? Do honorable ends justify dishonorable means?

When we're present to one another, we're at least as mindful of the means as we are of the ends, and in my view, even more so. We respect the process more than we value the product, because the product—the end result—is never guaranteed. It's not in our control. All that's in our power, truly, is the spirit we carry and convey in this moment, in this place. When we sacrifice the integrity of what we do "here and now" for what we hope will happen "there and then," we lose a little of ourselves; sometimes, even a lot. We deprive ourselves of our connection to whatever and whoever is right here, so desperate is our reaching, our straining, for something and somebody else.

Goals motivate, hopes inspire. These things have their place. But I'd like to suggest that these things just be kept in their place. I'd like to suggest they be kept in the service of people, rather than people in the service of them. Otherwise, too high a price is paid. Not just by some, but by all.

In our remaining time on the streets, Harold and Ada Martin will never again mention the halfway house to either James or me.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Day 27: The Emptiness of Our Hands (from "Houseplans")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Day 26: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Robin Hood")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Note: From Wednesday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, April 12, I'll be blogging through The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, which I co-authored with James Murray. This is in observance of the ten-year anniversary of the 47 days James and I lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's 15th-largest city. More so, it's in recognition that nearly four million people experience homelessness every year in this country.

To read the brief portion of the book's text on which I'll be reflecting today, just click on its thumbnails. You can then read the text and, if you'd like, print it out using your browser's "Print" command.

The very first thing I ever ate on the streets, the very morning James and I left home, was a single bite from a half-eaten Granny Smith apple found lying in the middle of the sidewalk. Before tossing away the core, James, too, took a bite. With those two nibbles of dirty apple, we were both officially expelled from the Garden of Plenty.

Since then, James and I have been wandering the Land of Too Little, fantasizing about food, scavenging for food, begging for food, standing in line for food, knocking on doors for food, sitting through sermons for food, waiting in camp for food to be delivered, buying food as a last resort. Sometimes we’ve saved food when we wanted to eat it. Sometimes we’ve eaten food when we should have thrown it away.

And now, in the middle of the night, we’ve even had food dumped outside our shelter door, courtesy of Robin Hood, better known as Rooster. Packages of hot dogs and sausage links and processed hams lie in a pile, gleaming in moonlight, loot from some convenience store Rooster’s just robbed. Steaks can be had, too, Rooster exclaims. Just say the word, and he’ll hightail it back to the store, get us some.

Tomorrow, at first light, James and I will wake up, hoping that the whole Robin Hood episode will have been a dream, only to crawl out of bed and find those 40 pounds of meat still heaped on the ground. James will look at me, and I’ll look at him, and neither of us will say a word. It will simply be understood. We won’t partake of the spoils of a crime. Well-intentioned or not, Rooster took what wasn’t his to take, gave what wasn’t his to give.

I can’t say whether Rooster stole anything else that night from that convenience store. But his obvious thrill at having ripped off that meat—his dancing a jig under the moon because he made off with a mess of hot dogs and hams—does suggest that by his theft he was striking a blow, however unwise, on behalf of the hungry inhabitants of the Land of Too Little.

Rooster’s theft, by implication, was more than criminal. It was symbolic of the fact that in the Land of Too Little, food is almost always contested. No food in that Land is ever truly yours, with the possible exception of public garbage (e.g., a half-eaten apple found on a sidewalk). Even food or drink you discover in a dumpster isn’t really yours, because by either signage or statute (I’m not sure which), if you’re digging in somebody else’s trash, you’re trespassing. You have no right to be there, and no right to keep what you find. So if you rummage around in trash bins, you do so at your own risk, one eye always peeled for the cops.

In the Garden of Plenty, you’re entitled to eat almost anything you wish. Food is always available, always accessible. You never have to grovel to get it. You never have to compete for it, unless, of course, you’re not the only person at the table wanting that last remaining piece of death-by-chocolate cake.

In the Land of Too Little, you have scarce control over the food you need to survive. Its availability and accessibility, not to mention its quality, are almost entirely determined by others. If you accept their help, which is almost indispensable if you’re on the streets, you subject yourself to their mercy. You may well feel humiliated by your own powerlessness. Finally, at some point, you may lash out at the indignity of it all, and strike a blow against the system that’s not only keeping you alive but also, ironically, keeping you in your place.

This is what I believe: Access to food should be a right, not a privilege. The “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is no more than empty rhetoric if people have no right to food, on which all else depends.

Therefore, I call on all of us—whether we live in the Garden of Plenty or the Land of Too Little—to recognize the right to food as a fundamental human right, and to do whatever we can to make sure that right is upheld. I call on all of us to work on behalf of those who hunger, until that day when the Garden of Plenty and the Land of Too Little become one and the same—

The World of Enough.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD

Photo credit: Stephen Mitchell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenliveshere/483840217.

Day 25: The Emptiness of Our Hands ("Home Movie")

noreply@blogger.com (Phyllis Cole-Dai) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:22:00 +0000

My husband, Jihong Cole-Dai, in Antarctica.

He's no ordinary husband.

When speaking publicly about my time on the streets, I'm often asked why Jihong ever "let" me go. I always smile a little at that question. After all, in Jihong's many years of doing field research in the treacherous snowfields of Antarctica and Greenland, nobody has ever asked why I let him go.

My relationship with Jihong has never been about "letting". It's always been about supporting. That's why I married him. Years after my parents seemed to have given up hope of ever seeing me married, I finally found the right man; a man who understood that love doesn't hold back or tie down, but sets free. Together, we vowed to be life-mates. We vowed to help each other do what we felt inspired to do, for the rest of our days, even when it was difficult. Even when it meant going to the streets, or to the bottom of the world.

As I said, no ordinary husband.

I may smile at the form it takes, but I appreciate that question so often asked about Jihong, because I believe that it arises from genuine concern for him, and for what he must have felt, staying behind when I went to the streets. I always feel unequal to the task of trying to answer that question on his behalf.

Of course, once I came home after those 47 days, Jihong told me stories. He told me how he'd sometimes driven the city streets after getting off work, hoping against all odds for a glimpse of me. He showed me hard copies of the many emails he'd sent, his "status reports" to out-of-town relatives, sometimes no more than a weather update, having no other news to share about James and me. He described for me his helplessness, his inability to protect me, his simply having to wait for the end of it all, not knowing when the end would come, exactly, or what it would look like when it arrived. But no matter what Jihong told me, I could never really know what it was like for him during those 47 days, just as he could never really know what it was like for me. No matter how well told, stories can't tell it all. They can't make everything plain. They can't make what belongs to one belong to another.

Jihong played a vital role in organizing "family day," introduced by today's text. It wasn't a reunion that James and I had sought, but, understanding its importance to our loved ones, we didn't resist the idea when proposed. On Day 25, just past the halfway point of our time on the streets, James and I met privately with Jihong and some of our closest family members, all of whom had traveled far to be with us.

Both James and I wanted to be with them. We just didn't know how. Who were we, now, with them? Who were they, with us?

Intimate strangers.

By the time it was finally over—all the touching, all the tears, all the catching up on family news, all the questions about our life on the streets and our health and our spirits and our states of mind and our reasons for going on—I was dried up. Scorched like a tea kettle left too long on the stove.

James left. I left. Left Jihong with all the others. I don't remember saying goodbye to him, but our parting must have been modest, and not just for lack of privacy. By then all touching, all caressing, was something to be endured. I wanted more of it, I wanted none of it: The tension tore me apart.

I returned, alone, to the riverbank. Once back in camp, I replenished our pile of kindling, built a slow fire. Then, using a jagged piece of brick, I worked at scraping the charred remains of noodles out of our cookpot. A little housekeeping. The labor was simple, requiring attention but not thought. Just what I needed.

I wanted to be with them. I just didn't know how.

Many of the men and women James and I met on the streets spoke of their families. How they'd hurt them, how they'd burdened them, how they'd failed them, without ever wanting to, or meaning to. How they missed them. How they loved them. How they didn't know how to talk to them. How they didn't know how to be with them. How they'd given up trying to go home to them.

Some of them still told precious stories about loved ones they'd not seen in years. Stories, especially, about children. One woman, missing her children, regularly cut herself, inflicting on her body the pain of her heart, and would sometimes speak of suicide....

The longer you're on the streets, the vaster becomes the gulf between yourself and anybody you love who's not there with you. The widening gulf was evident whenever I was in Jihong's presence, as I was on family day. It was there, too, every time I called him collect from a payphone, always in early evening, after he'd returned home from his teaching and research at Ohio State. Though I might have daydreamed about him throughout that entire day, even seeing ghosts of him turning the corner or getting on a bus or walking into a building; though I might have imagined my fingers touching his cheek, or my arms and his wrapping our bodies tight, I'd hear his voice on the phone, and not know what to say.

How do you talk to each other? What do you talk about? What words suffice to close such distance?

I tried to reassure myself that the two of us weren't as distant as we seemed. Separation is, at the heart of it, an illusion; nothing, nobody, in the world stands essentially apart from the rest. Still, the illusion of separation is convincing, sad, sometimes almost unbearable. Only love helped me withstand the strain of it—

Only love brought me home.

Love, and no ordinary husband.

Deep peace, until next time—
PCD