True Beggars vs. Actual Beggars – Aren’t We All?

True beggars, actual beggars? Is there, technically speaking, a difference? What is this about? On the street corners, and along the roadsides of too many countries there are people, human beings, standing or sitting, reaching out their hands for something. In our own highly developed country they can be waving hand-written signs at those stopped or passing by. Anything $ Helps.

Isn’t a beggar, a beggar, a beggar? From my experience, it seems there can be a distinction made. But then, my background in philosophy tends to want to clarify things by delineating differences.

Thousands of desperate migrants have been swept up and bused into our city from the southern border. Most are fleeing economic collapse, or systemic violence. They have left all: home, relatives, the culture that identifies them, in hopes of making a better, safer life in our country, which they still see as a land of promise. Sadly, the sheer numbers, and presence everywhere, is hardening people’s hearts here, stealing our usual compassion and generosity. We need to hear these displaced people’s stories. But we need to want to learn names and listen to tales of desperation and hope.

These ragged fugitives, who have never known freezing temperatures or wind-driven snow, for me, are a stark contrast to the marijuana immigrants, with their windproof and waterproof tents and down sleeping bags looking for enough cash to express their freedom though hybrid smokes or candies. Obviously, temporary highs don’t deal with these people’s inner pain. Tomorrow they will be at the same intersection asking for more assistance to try to ease  untouchable hurt.

These latter are not bad people, they just have no clue as to what human life is meant to be about. Both populations beg. One group is unimaginably, desperately needy. The other doesn’t seem to recognize it’s own deeper needs. One group doesn’t know what it has. The other knows what is essential.

The migrants are looking for work so that they can feed, clothe and educate their families, and just live without constant deprivation and/or terror. Some have taken to offering to wash car windshields while traffic is stopped at a light. We who are comfortable see them as a problem. They all challenge our well-established sensibilities and lifestyle. But could there be another layer or level to our discomfort?

In some sense we are all beggars. No one, not one of us, can do well without the help and support of others – as much as we in the US of A hate to admit this. Our very being comes as a loan. We owe. Big time! If we are able to stand at all, we stand on the help and achievements of those who’ve preceded us. It may be that the people, whatever their story, on our street corners and roadsides, with their in-our-face poverty, mirror to us our own neediness. If we haven’t yet accepted our interdependence this reflected image of our own limitations can be frightening and painful. We haven’t learned that no one can “do it themself.”

Several years ago, while living in a L’Arche community in Erie, PA, I was introduced to a style of praying using a beggar’s bowl. In India, and other countries, those who are poor often have a bowl to reach out for alms, and a sack to hold what is given in the course of a day’s begging. Every Lent we have placed a small, slightly battered, old wooden bowl in our prayer corner. As so often happens, I don’t have words to capture all that is moving inside, especially when I reflect on the pain and brokenness of our beautiful world and all it’s suffering people. This can be overwhelming. So, I pick up the bowl and silently hold it in my lap, occasionally lifting it and reaching its emptiness, the emptiness of my own powerlessness, out to God. And we cry together. This simple exercise helps to keep my heart open to be moved by compassion – the compassion of God.