praxistheologia.com

I went to the grocery store tonight. Walking into the store I was approached by a homeless fellow. He told me he drank. He told me he’d smoked pot. He told me he’d be grateful if I bought him some food, but what he really wanted was cash to wash his clothes.

My senses were alert. I noticed the week’s stubble on his face, the cigarette smell on his clothes and the way he never quite met my eye.

He said God bless me. I decided not to give him money. I told him that I’d take him grocery shopping, but that I’d not give him any cash. After all, I have precious little of it. I work hard for it. He looked at me and said if he were me he’d not give himself any cash either.

I went to the store for cookies and milk. As I made my way through the store I passed through the pharmacy isle where a grand sign announced that the store’s commitment to a “family values safe” shopping experience meant that family planning items would be kept behind locked glass. Below the sign, rows of multi-colored boxes hung from pegs marked with the price of premeditation. While I stood taking in this sign, the store manager approached me and asked me if the man outside had “accosted” me or asked for money?

I wondered then, what the price of my premeditated protection from homelessness cost that man. After all I decided from the sights and smells, that I’d help with food but no cash. I berate my fellow students and my friends for refusing to acknowledge and live into a kingdom economics. An economics of abundance. And yet when it came time to live into that abundance, to give freely of the money that is not mine I chose to play in the sandbox of scarcity. I chose food but no cash and in so doing I failed to trust that there is more than enough money behind my debit card to buy cookies, milk, and do his laundry.

The organized, colorful economics of scarcity hung from it’s peg at the forefront of my mind promising me that if I only used it correctly, I could carefully plan out my contact with others, keeping some at bay with the thin slice of plastic that represents the wealth I merely steward for God. I promised him food, and with that came trust, but not the intimate trust of touch. In telling him food but no cash, I told him that I loved and trusted him, but that I didn’t want him to touch me.

All this struck me while the condoms stood vigil. The manager asked me again if I’d been bothered by the man’s presence. I don’t think he understood me when I mumbled yes, but only because I failed.