The Personalism of a Three-Year-Old
Perhaps they are the ones who see the "good bones"
It was an ordinary weekday as I pulled out of the Kroger parking lot, transporting two children who I barely managed to drag to the store and a load of groceries. As usual, there was a man standing at the stoplight with a cardboard sign, this time asking for food, clothes, and a bike – though some kind soul had already taken care of the last one, so that was crossed out.
And as usual, my eyes darted back and forth – I should smile at him, right? Or is that rude, if I am not going to give him anything? Should I give him something? Do I even have cash? It’s in the diaper bag, way back there – is it worth rooting through it? And so forth goes my inner monologue.
But on this particular day, my almost four-year-old, Solomon, noticed this happening for the first time.
“Why is he holding that sign?” Sol asks me.
“He’s asking for food,” I tell him, explaining that in the world we live in, food costs money and not everyone has money to pay for food.
“Why is no one helping him?” he asks.
“It’s….complicated,” I respond, knowing that I don’t really have a good answer. Knowing that the real answer is that I have become cynical – made helpless by the knowledge of the complex systems that feel so huge – too huge – to make a dent in. Knowing that the truth is, I have let the immense amount of hunger in the world – a problem that seems to be only multiplying by the day – make me feel too overwhelmed to help the person in front of me.
But Sol only sees that one person. He doesn't know, yet, about the rest. He doesn’t know, yet, that if the man gets food today, he will probably be hungry again tomorrow.
“Maybe we will help him,” Sol says next.
“Do you think we should?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
At this point, the light changes and I am relieved from the discomfort I feel at ignoring someone else’s suffering. As we drive away, I say some more things about how sometimes it is hard for people to have jobs or how some people don’t have family to help them, and he asks, “Did he not have family?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Yeah, we haven’t talked to him,” Sol says.
“No, we haven’t,” I admit.
“I want to know his name,” he tells me.
To Sol, the problem is simple, and so is the solution. You see someone who is hungry, and you give them food. You see someone who is naked, and you clothe them. You see someone who needs a bike, and you give them a bike.
It sounds like an echo of something, doesn’t it?
This is why Jesus tells us the Kingdom of God belongs to children.
So I do what Jesus tells us, and I try to become a little bit more like my child. I promise him that the next time we go to the store, we will buy some gift cards to keep in the car to give to people who need them. Later that day, with my heart cracked open just a little bit, I finally reach out to a local organization I’ve been thinking about volunteering with for a while.
I’ve been (very slowly) reading The Long Loneliness - Dorothy Day’s autobiography - over the past few months, and it strikes me that personalism – one of the core principles of the Catholic Worker Movement – comes naturally to children.
Colin Miller writes that personalism is “the call to act directly and personally to form relationships, organize community, care for others and practice the Gospel, without waiting for the state, or charitable institutions, or professionals to do it for us.”
This is challenging to me, because I do think organized institutions are important and necessary for our world. But I have felt the danger that Miller articulates, that, “When we get used to living through institutions, making our own decisions in light of the Gospel can become foreign to us. We come to wonder if we can, or even if we should, think for ourselves and act freely, outside of an agency with a board and five-year plan.”
I recently interviewed for a part-time job at my parish that would have involved a lot of one-on-one ministry with people who sleep outside of our church’s doors. I did not get the job, because I basically spent half of the interview talking about how I did not feel qualified for it, and the other half talking about how I didn’t know what I’d do about childcare. I was skeptical that I’d actually be able to make any difference in these people’s lives with no professional social service background. I still am.
But then I have Solomon the wise, reminding me to just be human. To live the Gospel. To learn people’s names.
Will it solve everything? No. But it will solve a small something.
On our next trip to the store, Sol was in charge of handing the gift card out the door to the person on the corner – an action that brought joy to both people involved. It’s a new routine of ours, with Sol’s mere presence holding me accountable for this small action.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones”:
Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
There is a lot going on – both on a global and a personal level – that is heavy and I want to keep from my children. But for me, it is the children who are reminding me that we could make this place beautiful.
Yours,
The Bread We Share (by Me) - Today is the feast of Corpus Christi in the Catholic Church, so it feels appropriate to share this story I wrote about the Eucharist one more time. The homily I heard this morning talked about being a “Eucharistic people” multiple times, but never gave any specifics about what that actually means or looks like. I hope the examples I give in this story – both of ministry on the border and of the life of the early church – might help flesh this out a bit more.
Man of Letters (by Me, again) - In a more recent issue of U.S. Catholic, I wrote a profile of Malachy Fallon, the executive director of the Xavier Society for the Blind. I had no idea this organization existed before being assigned this story, and it was fascinating to learn how they make spiritual reading materials available to people with visual impairment.
SABLE, fABLE by Bon Iver - I’ve been loving the vibes of this album recently. I also enjoyed his interview on OnBeing.