Stop the Clocks

I was reminded of the Auden poem “stop the clocks, calm the sirens", and the headline seemed to warrant that we all stop and take note and reassign some sort of moral order:  HOMELESS FOUND DEAD FROM HEAT IN CITY. Hot town, summer in the city.  Many dead, mostly homeless, candles lit in a cathedral to commemorate anonymous lives, fried Phoenix brains, and bodies, homeless dead.

We, as a society, don’t like the homeless much. They tend to clutter the walkways. They stink.  Sometimes they make strange gestures and spit out guttural utterances. We don’t like the homeless. They make us nervous.

As a little girl, I was told of a homeless couple going door-to-door, begging for compassionate hospitality. Their son, Jesus, had a profound impact on my road less traveled. He was the child of homeless people. Wonder what the weather was like in the barn.

A very strange and homeless guy prepared the way for Jesus — a wild man who dieted on locusts and shouted out wild pronouncements about the future. A lot of those prophet types were homeless, and they certainly make us squeamish.

Of all things, Mother Teresa went out seeking the homeless, scooping up skeletal bodies off the streets of Calcutta, cradling them, feeding, wiping their brows and their tears. What was up with her?

Then there’s the Dalai Lama, that happy homeless fellow, who had to hit the road when the Chinese landed in Tibet. He would make a jolly poster child for the homeless.

Gandhi and Buddha chose voluntary homelessness. What were they thinking???

Many of the inmates with whom I shared ministry would get a vacant faraway look in their eyes when they talked about their homelessness. Did I mention that a lot of homeless people are mentally ill?

Homeless dead in the Phoenix summer heat. Why should we care? And yet my clock stopped.

Our homeless Jesus, Son of God, said He would remember us if we gave a drink to the thirsty. Please consider bringing bottled water to the church as part of our Mission Collection for Vista del Camino for the month of August. Pile it up in the Sanctuary and Chapel narthexes. Do this in remembrance of Him.