Richard Burchfield's Blog
keep your quarter, I need change / 11.18.08, 12:17 PM
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to see what it means to be homeless for a day. I was given an opportunity to leave my money, my house, my warmth, my food, my comfort and trade those in for ratty clothes and a day and half of extreme poverty.
We started with a few rules (go here but not here, these are the boundaries, you’ll have a partner that you pick, you have to spend at least one hour by yourself), a video called The Homeless Home Movie and a sack dinner of a peanut butter and jelly sammich and chips. The group of us then went to a very old church to spend the night with the understanding that we could only bring three things with us from the M.Y. office to the church we would be staying the night in (i.e. toothbrush or pillow or blanket or backpack or toothpaste…whatever we brought was one of the three of our items). I brought a jacket, my pillow, and my blanket with me for the coming night. We got to the church to sleep, walked in to no lights, no heat, no way to get around the church, and no real feeling of security. That has to be the worst night of sleep I have ever had in my life, and to think that homeless have to sleep that way or on the street or on a bench is beyond my ability. I woke up every 20 minutes or so freezing and pulling the person beside me closer in efforts to get warm enough to fall asleep again [thank you Aaron and Chris].
We wake up to the promise of jelly donuts and orange juice but it was really another PBandJ sammich and a few more regulations for the day, given a token for the subway and told to meet back at Love Park at 5pm that afternoon and that lunch was on us to find. Keep in mind that right now, I have on pants that are probably 8 or 9 inches too long for me, too big, and a shirt that smells like something died on top of it, jacked up hair, and probably smelling pretty rough, and riding the subway to center city Philadelphia to walk around homeless for the day. Our first encounter with a homeless individual told us his story:
His name is Tyrone and he had been “wrongly” diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2003 and hasn’t been able to get a job since then. He told us (us being Aaron and me) that the doctors had given him a “knock out” drug one night when he became unruly and he awoke to a man in the hospital doing something physical to him that he didn’t like and got mad and hit him or shoved him and they got in an altercation, was kicked out of the hospital and has been homeless ever since. He sued the hospital and won over 13,000 or so, but couldn’t receive the payment because the court determined him to be “too hard to contact” and wouldn’t make him a payee.
Long story short: I’m pretty confident that after talking with him for an hour and a half that the diagnosis wasn’t a wrong one. However, he can’t get a job and that directly means that he can’t eat.
After spending time with Tyrone, Aaron and I decided to try our hand at pan-handling to try and earn some money for some grub for lunch. We sat on a corner of an intensely busy street for about 2 hours. We got some cardboard for a sign that said NO MONEY, NEED FOOD and a cup we found on the street to beg for some change. It took me several people to pass by and very many “almost did it” tries to finally work up the courage to ask someone for some change. I felt the immediate shame that a person feels when they have to beg for something. I worked up the nerve and finally asked a person that walked by if he could “spare some change for us to eat” and that person just continued to walk like I had never said a thing. Naïve me thought that I hadn’t spoken loud enough for them to hear, so the next person that walked by I decided to talk louder to be certain that I was heard. Surprisingly enough, that person pretended not to hear me either, and person after person for the next hour or so would pretend that I wasn’t a human, that I hadn’t just asked them for something, but that I was invisible. And with every person that passed and acted like I wasn’t even there, I got upset. EVERY PERSON. Every person that ignored me that day sent out a clear message to me:
“You are beneath me; I can’t even look at you. You don’t matter and if you don’t eat then I could not care less. You are no longer a person.”
The message affected my thoughts, my actions, my heart, my fears, my awareness, it affected me way down deep in my soul. I stopped being able to look at people in the face, but instead had to look down at the street or at the curb or over somewhere so I didn’t make eye contact. We saw a large group of people wearing red tee shirts that said, “GOD IS…” on the front and “LOVE” on the back that were in Love Park and asked every single one of them for change with a resounding response of no, we don’t have any money on us at all. With every person that passed and ignored me I became more and more aware of the times that I had done the same, the times when I tried to avoid these people, when I ignored and while they weren’t often, they were certainly there. We continued to sit and ask and watch how people would cross the street so they didn’t have to pass us, or how they would squeeze through a space way to small for most so that they could avoid our requests. For 2 hours we watched people hear us, see us, and decide that they didn’t want to be bothered by us or our questions, and commit to the idea that Aaron and I were both just worthless. After we decided to quit, we passed a Wendy’s Restaurant full of red tee shirts that say “GOD IS” sitting in the window, eating huge cheeseburgers with a lot of french fries and really big drinks. It’s amazing that Wendy’s would give them these things, seeing how they could’ve have bought them with no money.
Later that day, we met another man, Lester, that had been robbed of his money and credit card and needed to get home [somewhere in east PA] and needed a train ticket that cost somewhere around 27 or so dollars. He told us about the people in Philly being jerks and not helping or even acknowledging his presence (something we could identify with) and how if he didn’t get some help soon, he was going to start robbing people himself. We had earned around 3 dollars and decided to get him some food. We learned that he hadn’t eaten in 2 days, so Aaron and I decided that it was more important that he eat than if we eat, which he REFUSED.
“Three dollars gets three double cheeseburgers at McDonalds. There are three of us, and that means that all of us are going to eat today. I’m hungry, you’re hungry, let’s go eat.”
Amazing, this man who hadn’t eaten in way too long was concerned about us. He was adamant about the three of us eating together. And we did, he then went on his way and so did we. We walked down to the library to get out of the rain. [It had started to rain while we were pan-handling and we tried to find places to go but couldn’t] We got to the library soaking wet and tired and hungry (one cheeseburger doesn’t do much when you haven’t eaten a real meal in 24 hours), got to the bathroom and tried to dry our clothes with the hands dryer in the bathroom, got done there and decided to try and find some more guys to talk to. That’s when we met Ronnie.
Ronnie was a man that was on the streets of Philly intentionally to learn as much about anything he could. He told us that he plans to be off the streets by January of 2009 and that he’s already got an apartment lined up and he is currently working at a body shop somewhere in Philly. [I REALLY hope that all of that is true]
I didn’t spend a lot of time with Ronnie; I met a man named Mike who I spent some time with. Mike had lost his wife about a year ago and has been homeless ever since
Mike had a job; he met a girl, and married her. They both were into drugs and stayed that way for 20 years. Mike told me that one day he woke up and came to his senses and asked himself why he still was doing drugs at 45, and decided to quit. He and his wife quit doing drugs together and he has been clean for 6 years. Well, like I said, about a year ago his wife got sick and after 4 or 5 days in bed, Mike called the ambulance to come and take his wife to the hospital. Before they got her out the door, she had died. Since then he began to drink. He drank his way out of a home, out of a job, and out of many homeless shelters. He paid for a week in a hotel the Friday I met him, and got himself kicked out on Monday for fighting while he was drunk. It was a sad thing, but it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me.
Mike and Ronnie kind of took us in and showed us the ropes, they made sure we got food [and my god, with them did we eat 5 meals], and made sure that we got into warm, dry places. They accepted us without even knowing who we were, why we were out there, or what we were doing. Of course, we told them what we were doing, but they didn’t care, they accepted us wholly.
Let’s look at this:
None the people on the street knew me, and none of the homeless people knew me.
People from the street couldn’t even look at me or acknowledge me, but my homeless friends accepted me as I was.
The people on the street couldn’t or wouldn’t spare a penny to help me eat, but the homeless made sure that I ate like a king.
The people on the street stared at me from McDonalds or Duncan Donuts while they were warm, to then walk out with their umbrellas to shield them from the rain, but my homeless friend made sure that I was warm, and dry. They showed me how to get and stay warm and dry.
All of this ends with a revelation:
I found where Jesus lives, He lives on the streets. He helped feed me, He helped keep me warm, and He helped me find my value in community and not in shame. I saw Jesus that day. He was nowhere near people in suit and ties but instead in people with long beards and rugged clothes.
That’s a lesson I needed. I am grateful for my time acting as a homeless person.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask
Love wins
-bubby
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Ok – let me try this again. I already type this massive response, and posted it (I thought) and now it is missing. I want to go off, like Bubby on a credit union customer on a Friday at 4:30pm…
Anyway…First, this whole idea was awesome. It seriously makes me wonder how we could all be apart of doing something like this. It is one thing to go and eat and hang out with the homeless for a few hours – but something else altogether to experience what they experience on a daily basis.
When I first read the blog, I thought about Romans 12:2 – ‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind’. I believe Jesus is the one who transforms us, by helping us change the way we think. It sounds like through this experience, Christ is changing the way you view people…and transforming your heart because of it.
Many of those people, who passed you by, need the same transformation. We need to pray for it. Some of them may have passed you by because they themselves are walking through the valley of the shadow of death: a sick child at home, a potential job loss, a crumbling relationship – and they were focused inward. Some of them were probably just selfish, tied up within themselves as we all have been at times. Others may have truly been Christians, lovers of Christ, who just need to be transformed by pursuing Him deeper. The church (the body of Christ) must fall in love with Jesus deeper than ever. We can’t pass people by, and leave them to crumble and die – without the Hope of Glory.
I asked you what you would have thought if someone just walked up to you and said, ‘look, I really don’t have any money – but I would love to get to know you for a few minutes and maybe pray together about your situation.’ How would you have responded? I bet you would have been encouraged. YES, we need to feed and clothe the poor. YES, you were starving. But – to love and to be loved is the GREATEST need even beyond nourishment. People need to feel community – they need to feel love. I say this because too many Christians pass by the homeless saying ‘if I give them money they will go buy booze with it anyway’. Well, then fine I say. What will it cost us to go and talk to them, and pray with them? What will it cost us to let them know that we can’t take away all their trials – but we can share with them the one who can….
Oh well…it was something like that.
Love you man
Grace and Peace
David
By David McConnell / Nov 19, 12:12 AM / #
i was moved by this. thank you for writing and feeling and for giving this year to learning about God and His people.
By kris / Nov 20, 01:28 AM / #
Bubs-
I am constantly amazed by all you are learning and your amazing ability to express it so profoundly. I know you will be a changed man the next time I see you. I can’t wait to see all that you have learned in your year. It doesn’t change the fact that I will miss you immensely during the summer though! Love you….Brittany
By Brittany Mackey / Nov 20, 02:01 PM / #