Somehow I missed The Jungle in high school.
When I read Upton Sinclair’s classic as a young adult it changed things. While most readers recall the horrifying details of Chicago’s turn-of-the-century meatpacking industry I saw myself in Jurgis Rudkus.
This video from 60 Minutes broke my heart yesterday. While riding the trolley to work I listened to the audio and wept.
16 million kids in our country are currently living below the poverty line. That’s an increase of 2 million in just 2 years as families slip from “middle class” into poverty.
It’s where you live. In your city, town, suburb, gated community, or rural area. And it’s people who never thought they’d struggle. And certainly never thought they’d become homeless.
As the video shows, millions of kids are now homeless. We hear about foreclosures and we think of the housing market. We forget that those are also displaced people. Families who lost everything.
As I listened to this story, I thought about how can the church NOT respond?
I thought about how churches and youth ministries could easily do a few things that could make a big difference. Ministry life just can’t go on as normal with a quarter of the families in our community unsure where their next meal might come from, or unsure if they can stay in their apartment another month, or unsure if they can even keep their families together.
It’s one thing to preach Good News. It’s another thing to actually be Good News.
How about you? What are some things you can do, as an individual or as a church, in the next 30 days?
Headphones in, volume up, helmet strapped on, I mounted my bike with a lot on my mind. Already running late and frustrated that my air compressor was not working, I peddled down my block.
With my rear tire nearly flat I knew I’d have to stop at the nearby gas station and fill it up.
As the first segment of 60 Minutes played into my ears I pulled up to the air compressor at the corner station, quickly jumped off my bike, propping it up against the machine, took off my backpack, and started fishing around for three quarters.
My hands were shaking. A quick glance at the time on my phone revealed I only had 6 minutes until the next train and I was at least five minutes away. But I couldn’t go another day riding around with this tire so low.
I put the coins in the machine and it roared to life. My fingers fumbled to get the rubber cap off and the tire in the right position. All the while listening to the story of Julian Assange cooly tell his side of the story about Wikileaks on 60 Minutes. He’s a character from Superman. But is he Superman or Lex Luther? Seconds go by until I finally got the nozzle attached and squeezed the handle to start pumping air.
I exhaled a sigh of relief.
Just then a hand brushed across my neck and shoulder. I instantly cringed and almost fell over into my bike. The hair on my neck stood on end. Who just touched me?!? The fight or flight instinct stood me straight up, unsure which option to take.
Startled, I looked to my right. Instantly I was put back at ease. A woman, homeless, bent over to grab the spicket to the water nozzle on the air compressor. As her friend looked on with other bottles in hand she began to fill up her water bottle.
She and her partner live in the bushes behind the gas station and saw me pull in. They know that the water only flows from the spicket when the air compressor has money in it and were simply taking advantage of the opportunity.
My heart sank back to its normal position. And I tried to act as cool as Assange answering those questions on 60 Minutes. We were both kidding ourselves.
I kneeled back down to finish filling my tire. As I put the rubber cap back on my now-full tire I looked to my right one more time. Yes, I’d just been startled by a frail, strung out, and harmless woman doing what women for centuries have been doing… fetching water.
Ashamed, I put my backpack on, mounted my bike, and peddled off.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” John 4:13-15
Just another day, reminded early in the morning, that Jesus is King and I’m just a jester.
“Can you help me with my bike? My wrist is broken!”
I barely heard the question. But speaking over This American Life was the voice of a man on the platform struggling to get his bicycle up the stairs and onto the trolley.
With my bike pinning me against the retractable wheelchair lift on the ancient, yet retrofitted ADA accessible trolley car, it took me a few long seconds to get to the door. With the door trying to close and an annoyed trolley driver belching over the loud speaker, “Please board the trolley immediately, we have a schedule to keep,” I arrived to press the button and fling the door open in the nick of time.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” The man said as he pushed from behind when I grabbed the front handlebars. As I yanked the front handlebars, decorated with tennis balls and aluminum foil, it’s weight revealed that this wasn’t just a bike– it was this mans worldly possessions.
Lifting (more like heaving) the bike it seemed stuck between the edge of the platform and a bar that divided the doors. With pressure to speed up and a dose of adrenaline, I gave it a bigger yank and the bike let out a loud yelp!
“Just a second, let me untangle Wile, he’s chained to the seat post.”
As I looked to the right of the bike, sure enough, there was a collie-mix tethered by the collar to the mans seat post.
“OK, here we go. I’ve got it now.” I said, giving it one final tug as the now-free rear of the bike lumbered up the steps.
By this time the whole car full of riders glared back at me. In the process of helping with the bike and dog– my bike had fallen down and made a horrible noise. So, as I was guiding the bike, rear-loaded with about 50 pounds of stuff in a box wired to a makeshift rear-carrier, his dog, and it’s owner having a long conversation with himself about needing to buy dog food– I also picked up my own bike and wedged myself back into my safe corner.
It was clear that the people were not glaring at the man. They barely noticed him. But their ugly gaze was at me. They think I should have left the old man on the platform.
I quickly popped my headphones back in just in time to hear Ira Glass introduce the next segment of the show.
The trolley doors finally close. The driver instantly kicks it into high gear, as if to say… “I’ll show them!” The bike and the dog were secured, but the man had just made it to the top step and hadn’t quite measured his balance when the car leapt forward. His arm reached out and grabbed mine as he winced. Given the impossible choice of falling backwards or gaining his balance with a broken wrist, he chose to grab firm onto my forearm.
“Thanks for the help. I couldn’t have made it without you. What’s your stop? I’m going to Old Town.” He said, now settling into a comfortable place to stand at the rear of the trolley with his whole life at his feat.
“I get off at the college. So when we get close, you’ll have you slide forward so I can get by.”
And then he started talking to himself about some sort of gibberish I couldn’t make out. And then about 10 seconds of silence.
In that silence I had to decide. Am I just going to tune this man out and go back to listening to the latest episode of my favorite podcast? Or am I going to take my headphones off and see where this conversation goes?
The Holy Spirit was screaming at me. “Talk to this guy.”
Sliding my headphones into my pocket– the man told his dog to lay down as he twitched and pulled and talked to himself.
“So, what’s the dogs name?” I said, startling him with my question and breaking the newfound silence between us.
“Wile E. Coyote. He’s part coyote. He’s the best dog in the world.”
“Oh, I see that. He’s a great dog. How long have you had him?”
He stared off into the horizon as the trolley slowed towards the next stop seemingly thinking about the question for a minute and came back with, “You know, these trolley cars weren’t built for bicycles. I asked a transit cop one day why we get these cars on the green line instead of the newer ones which let you roll your bike right on. He said it was because of the graffiti on the other lines.”
I just rolled with it and for the next few minutes listened and talked to the man about whatever he talked at me with. The Chargers. The canyon he calls home. How he broke his wrist. Florida. The weather. A fishing trip. It was like our conversation was the random setting on my iPhone, you never know where it’d land next.
At first, I wasn’t certain he knew I was a real person as he had a tendency to look through me more than at me. He’d also stop in mid-sentence and start a different thought. I kept wondering if he thought I was a figment of his imagination. But over the next few stops it seemed like the blurriness of his life started to narrow a bit and things became slightly more in focus. As I kept chatting with him his eyes gradually drew more into the trolley car, even noticing me a couple of times for his pupils to focus on me, or my bike, my backpack. His ticks and pulls dramatically slowed down. About 10 minutes into the conversation I think he realized I was real. The longer we made small talk the more relaxed he became.
And the more relaxed I became in talking to him, too.
To him, I think I became less a random object that helped him get on the trolley and more a person. And to me, he became less a homeless man with a dog and an impossibly heavy bicycle making me late and more a man who probably just needs someone to regularly talk to.
In that moment we were just two normal men engaging each other in small talk on the trolley.
It was the most healthy thing either of us had done all day.
I’m no psychiatrist. So I don’t know if this is true or not. But in my experience I think anyone who is a little mentally ill probably gets increasingly worse when they become isolated from people who aren’t ill.
And zooming by on the freeway at 70 mph or driving everywhere in my car isn’t going to put me in contact with the Dan & Wile’s of the world.
Sure, I ride the trolley for my own reasons. But one reason I think God has me ride the trolley is to slow down and take notice of people the rest of the world largely ignores.