The preamble to this post is that I had already written a post about Lent and discarded it.  I also have flushed two different titles.  Have you ever heard that thing about sticking an angry letter or memo, (today it would likely be an email), in a drawer, and if you still feel the same later, or the next day, go ahead and send it?  It wasn’t an angry post, but the tone just didn’t feel right.  I’m trying to write something that I feel strongly about, but I fear sounding preachy.

Many years ago, one of my favorite priests gave a pre-Lent homily that has always stuck with me.  In it he seemed to also struggle with not wanting to sound critical of people who want to use abstinence during  Lent as a time to sacrifice something they enjoy.  Ok, hold that thought and let me back up to what is now almost a week ago.  It occurred to me as I was walking about in Antigua that I could be in no better place for alms giving during Lent.  It sounds weird to say it that way.

Now, back to Fr. Michael’s homily.  I know, I know, just stick with me a minute.  Here’s the part that stayed with me all the way to today and beyond.

Nowhere that I know of in the Bible does it suggest or encourage us to spend Lent giving up wine, chocolate, music in the car, vegetables, or anything else one could think of to abstain from.  It does tell us to pray, fast, and give alms.  Enh, enh, enh, preachy alert.

I have many friends, good friends, who abstain from something during Lent.  And like Fr. Michael, I have no criticism or sense of condescension toward that practice.  I have been in conversations with people about this subject, who have very thoughtfully chosen something to abstain from during Lent.  Often it’s because they think it may have become to important to them.  And at least part of them is wanting it to be a springboard of sorts toward some real change.  How great is that?

And we can’t forget the whole Fat Tuesday thing, and the Mardi Gras tradition of having a big blow out before the sacrifices of Lent.  Here’s some kids and teachers having a little Fat Tuesday parade.        

At the risk of sounding like I think it’s noble, for many years now I have taken the prayer, fasting, and alms giving approach to Lent.  And it has in fact instilled a new life habit with me in how I view and respond to the people who ask for help on the street. I feel the need to quickly add, that doesn’t mean I give money to every person I pass.  I don’t always have cash.  I’m hurried.  Or how about this one, the light is green and traffic is flowing.  All interruptions to kindness.  Jesus never pretended these people weren’t there.

This is Matila. (pronounced, ma tee la).  He sits in the same spot everyday.  He walks, and even stands with great difficulty, and he’s older than he looks in this picture.  He dresses proudly but has no great sartorial supply.  Let’s just say I’m very familiar with this red shirt.  He’s of the generation of Guatemalans who were in their teens or twenties during the civil war.  His cardboard sign, as with the woman in the first photo, is the little plastic dish that he holds in his lap.

There are hundreds and thousands of people on the streets in Guatemala.  And everywhere.  That’s every where.  I had this  thought along the way.  I wonder how many gringos, who travel in what people like to call the third world, easily drop coins into plastic dishes, but somehow view the people on the corners in America, the ones with the cardboard signs, differently.  That thought is driven by the seemingly hundreds of conversations I’ve been in about the “cardboard sign guys”.  I know what people think or fear.  That if they give them money it will go towards drink or drugs.  I know that people actually think that they are out there because they are lazy, and working is somehow inherently harder.  I listened to one guy tell a group of people I was in, that he wasn’t going to give money to a guy standing on the corner asking for money in a $200 pair of Nikes.  Really?  I’ve been trying to find that one guy in a half a million that fits that narrative.  I don’t think he exists.  And I don’t personally believe that they’re out there because they are lazy.  I don’t think that they woke up one morning, back there somewhere in their life, and said, chuck all this stuff, I’m just going to make me a sign and go stand on the corner.  While maybe sometimes true, let’s be honest, those things are really more about us than they are about them.

Recently a friend told me that she gave a 5er to a guy standing at Dale St. and I94 because he looked like me.  Serious or not, those words rattled around in my head until they became, there but for the Grace of God, go I.  I think we would be surprised how narrow the life circumstances are sometimes between us and them.  Us and them.  I hate putting it that way, but it’s really irony to the point.

My Dad, God rest him, volunteered at the VA in the post Viet Nam era.  He was around vets with wounds both visible and not.  He used to tell me that many days he would think, there but for the Grace of God goes my son.  Near misses, narrow circumstances.

Eric, enough already, can you wrap this up with a point?

If you like to give up something during Lent, think about some of the preconceived notions we could give up.  This Lent, consider giving alms that don’t involve a check or a collection plate.  Those aren’t bad things.  Please keep doing them.

But consider giving alms on the street.  Without condition.  Please.