Arman

Last year I wrote about a homeless guy who was living outside the wall that surrounds our house.
http://thehealyblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/somewhere-out-there.html

He just showed up one day and started living there. He never hassled anyone. But he bothered me. I still think about him when I pull my car up to the curb near where he would sleep. I wonder if he has reconnected with his family in Mindanao, and if he is feeling safe and secure.

His name was Arman. I suppose he made me feel uncomfortable because he was a symbol of poverty and the ravages that it inflicts on people. He wasn't a category or a statistic. He was Arman, and he was outside our wall while I was comfortably inside the house. In many ways he was everything that I wasn't - homeless, desperately poor, hungry, without hope. Every day he would wake with a blank slate. There was no money or food or job prospects to carry over for the new day. But it wasn't really a blank slate, because the hunger would carry over and the despair would accumulate. But he would greet me with a smile when I'd park near his cardboard bed roll. It would probably have been easier for me if he was beligerent or demanding or posed a threat to me or my family. I could have called the police and had him taken someplace else. His smile and his total poverty haunted me, and continues to bother me as I reflect on Arman. As I mentioned in last year's blog, we helped him get a ticket for a boat back to the province in Mindanao where he told us he was from. Did I do that primarily just to get him out of my sight and lessen my guilt? Was there more I should have done to help him while he was here?

The issue of dealing with poverty is an every day thing here in the Philippines. You can't escape it. Beggars confront you while you drive through the city. Often it will be a young girl with a baby on her hip. I drive to the Shelter and pass people who cannot afford public transportation, so they walk. I buy medicine for my family and outside the pharmacy are people who are sick and dying for lack of that same medicine. I sit down to eat knowing there are hungry people going without lunch. I sleep in my comfortable bed while Arman and the thousands of other Armans curl up on a piece of cardboard.

I hope you are not expecting that this blog will have the answer here. I don't know why some people have to suffer and I don't. No speaker or author has answered that question for me in my 57 years of life. And I confess to being more than a little numb to the realities of life for the poor. Maybe I'm just not really willing to share my bounty. I can always hide behind my job, telling myself that I'm doing a lot to help homeless kids and prevent other Armans being on the street. Or I can just ignore the needy people all around me. The needs of Arman confronted me because he came to my house to sleep, and I was forced to deal with him and look him in the eyes and experience his poverty.

I don't think that I'll ever forget Arman. I think that is a good thing. Maybe we all need to live with an Arman in our head, reminding us of the desperate needs around us and the disparity that exists. Jesus did not isolate himself from the Armans of his day. As a man, He was limited in his access to the needs of all the poor people. But to those He confronted or that confronted him, He offered something. Maybe it wasn't always what they wanted but it was something they needed. Maybe Jesus knows our emotional and spiritual limitations, and the Holy Spirit's work in our lives is to move us with compassion for those that He selects for us to help. Maybe that's why out of the crowd, Arman stepped into my life.