Begging: the Question

After my recent liturgy-inspired posts, I was especially interested in several articles in today's Trib. A cover story highlighted homeless youth (7-21): roughly 15,000 in Chicago (and 215 shelter beds allocated for them). There was also a second-section story highlighting a woman in her 60's, head of Catholic Charities for the Joliet diocese, who has been active in addressing the needs of the poor since early in her married life, when she was inspired by a local parish which had bought a housing unit to provide free housing to women with children who needed a place to live while the mother learned work skills or simply got things together with a bit of tutoring.

How do you help? A few years ago, a couple of our sisters were coming out of a grocery store when they were approached by a man who asked for $2 so he could buy bread and peanut butter. The sisters gave it to him, and as they were pulling out of the parking lot, they saw the same man emerge from the store. He was holding a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Weeks later, the same man encountered them again. He was beaming with hope: he had a job interview lined up at a local eatery, and told the sisters that their help reached him when he was at his very lowest. It changed his life.

Our paper cup guys here on Michigan Avenue would really like your quarter or dollar.  They know and you know that it just helps them continue another hour or day in the same half-life. But I doubt it will help change their life, really. And yet not to give is also problematic. Maybe it will help someone hit bottom sooner, but maybe these souls are so lacking in a sense of self that they will never hit bottom at all. Unless, perhaps, they are touched in some personal manner: a greeting, eye contact, an offer of lunch.

What I really hope is for a greater strengthening of grass-roots action like that of the parish in Joliet: meeting the needs of fragile families so that more children do not end up wandering the streets of Chicago's "Boys Town," and growing up (if they live that long) into cup-shakers on Michigan Avenue. Donations to Catholic Charities and other social service networks go farther than a quarter in a cup. Volunteering as a tutor for a child or unskilled adult would help change lives. So would welcoming foster kids, where that is a possibility. (I read a book last summer that indicated that the chief difference between the despots and the artists of the 20th century, of those who had traumatic childhood experiences, was that the despots had no one in their young life to "model" healthy, caring behavior, while the artists received some notion of stability and fidelity from some grown-up in their neighborhood, if not the extended family.)

There was a third article in the Tribune, or maybe it was a letter to the editor following up on yesterday's article about substandard housing. See, Chicago has been closing down housing projects and sending the poor with vouchers into private housing. But many of these units are unfit for habitation: lead paint, leaking sewage, etc. And the landlords get away with it! So housing is an enormous need over here. As Paul VI pointed out decades ago, when families have inadequate housing, the effects are felt for generations.

So. Now what?