Small change(s)

Ever come away from a conversation feeling like you just might have been changed by it, forever?

That was my experience before Christmas, when I had the privilege of interviewing Tim Huff. Tim spent 10 years working on the streets, in the back alleys and under the bridges of Toronto, seeking out and befriending homeless youth. Today he spends much of his time advocating for the homeless, speaking, writing and consulting with organizations caring for the poor.

He’s seen it all, and probably heard and experienced even more. For Tim’s is a heart that loves freely. He’s been wounded and he has the sensitivity to prove it. But he believes in justice and he’s determined to hope. You might say he’s “bent” on it.

He’s also a man of deep thoughts and deeper compassion. Towards the end of our conversation he told me he doesn’t like the phrase “There but for the grace of God go I.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Only because it sounds like God has extended his grace to some people and not to others,” he explained. “If you’re on the other side of that statement, what does it sound like? The person who lives on the street might say, ‘So God’s given his grace to you and not me.’”

Evidence of that sensitivity. And a profound thought besides. Tim is a man of many such thoughts.

He shares some of them in his book Bent Hope: A Street Journal. He shares more online, here.

I began reading some of Tim’s work in anticipation of our conversation. In one essay titled “Scraps and Leftovers” he writes, “I have never seen God present, or the face of Jesus revealed anywhere like I have with those who have no home.”

I asked him why he thought that was.

“I guess there’s something incredibly resonant about the fact that Jesus was born homeless,” he began, and went on to say that many of the homeless people he’s known are people of deep faith. “They are so authentic. Many of them will talk about God, and they’re not talking about him from a comfortable couch but from a heating grate.”

We touched briefly on the reasons people find themselves on the streets and Tim made this observation, “I have yet to meet a person on the street – particularly a young person – who was not homeless long before they were houseless.” Then he shared a story with me, of a time he found himself sitting on a heating grate near Toronto’s Eaton Centre with a friend who had no home.  Together, they watched people walk by. People, said Tim, “who – even if they wanted to – couldn’t give any change because their hands were too filled with shopping bags.”

That image has played itself over in my mind repeatedly since we spoke. An endless movie on a loop. I’ve seen myself in it. And I’ve wondered how many times I’ve walked by people who have no home, my hands too full or my schedule too harried and hurried to reach into my pocket or purse in order to share a little from out of the abundance I’ve been given.

And when I headed downtown later that day – and on every trip since – I made sure my pockets were full and my hands were empty. Just in case.

***

“Either we are all beggars, hookers and junkies, or none of us are …

“Every day I play the role of a beggar. I look to the charity of others, seemingly wanting something for nothing to feed my ego and the overwhelming need to belong. Every day I play the role of a hooker. I try to sell the words, ideas and actions I think might make me desirable to others, often against my own better judgement, in order to get the emotional validation I need to survive. And every day I play the role of a junkie. I feed my addictions, supplying relentless cravings with products, entertainment, daydreams and relationships that are bad for me. Thus, when rendered solely in vulgar human slang, I believe we are all beggars, hookers and junkies. And if raw humanity existed as the only gauge, I know for certain that I am all of these.”

- Tim Huff in Bent Hope: A Street Journal

Christmas miracles

In the midst of a season that involves so much busyness, bustle and time immersed in crowds, I have a favourite Christmas tradition that soothes my introverted soul.

Every year about this time, I like to take a few minutes off – by myself – to gaze at a photograph in my son’s baby book. And I remember.

It’s not a very good photograph. Fading and trimmed at an odd angle, I glued it there almost 17 years ago. But the memory it evokes leaves me humbled, with gratitude and Christmas joy in my heart.

It’s a group shot. Seventeen people are dressed ridiculously in bathrobes or burlap, artificial beards covering their chins, towels concealing their hair, dollar store tinsel encircling their heads.

My husband Doug stands up front, draped in an orange tablecloth. I sit beside him, wrapped in a blue shawl.

We face the camera. But to a person, we look not at the photographer, but into a wooden manger on the floor in front of us. There is tenderness in every eye, an expression of wonder on each face.

My infant son lies in the manger on a bed of hay. Eight months old, he sleeps soundly. His face is peaceful, his blond hair shimmering. One small pudgy hand peeks out through swaddling blankets.

I remember the moment captured by the photograph as if it happened yesterday.

We had been asked to play the Holy Family in our church’s Christmas pageant. Mark was the youngest baby in the church at the time, and our choir director wanted a real infant in the performance. All Doug and I would have to do, he said, was walk from the back of the church to the front—in costume and carrying our son—then remain there for some narration and a few carols.

I remember hesitating. Mark was far from a newborn; in fact he was walking, running everywhere, and his high energy levels had earned him the nickname “Mark the Spark”. Did the director want to risk having a baby Jesus who stood, babbled or bounced on his mother’s lap throughout “Silent Night”?

But the director persisted. So we agreed.

Pageant day dawned, and stress descended. My normally cheerful son was teething and feverish and out of sorts; he fussed all day. By the time we donned our costumes at church I was tired and overwhelmed, and Mark—past due for a feeding—was howling in protest. With only minutes to go before our walk to “Bethlehem,” I found a quiet spot to nurse him, and breathed a desperate prayer. (I don’t remember what I prayed, but I imagine it went something like, “Help!!!”)

Mark fell asleep. It felt like my very own Christmas miracle. Cradling him close, I joined Doug just in time to walk down the aisle.

Mark slept on. But he was heavy. Afraid to shift him in case he should wake up, my arms ached. Song after song, reading after reading. I remember looking longingly at the empty manger; it seemed a shame to waste it. So just before the pageant’s end, I gingerly placed him there, and felt relief spread over me as his little body settled into the yielding hay.

Relaxing for the first time that day, I gazed at my son in the soft glow of the candlelit sanctuary. And as I relaxed, it occurred to me that the whole point of our family’s participation in the pageant was to illustrate this one central fact of human history: the Son of God became a baby too. I had been so consumed fretting over my own baby that day, I’d almost missed the lesson: the enormity of the real Christmas miracle.

Divinity became humanity. Willingly. Jesus left the side of his Father in heaven, and clothed himself in human flesh to become a helpless, needy, dependent human baby. A baby who teethed and toddled just like my son. Just like all of us. He did it because of his great love for us. He did it, as Tim Huff writes in Bent Hope, “to promise the hope of abundant life, before he sacrificed his own.”

It’s a wonderful story. I believe it to be true.

May we reveal its truth in the way we live. And in the way we love one another.

Have a very Merry Christmas.

***

This will be my last post for the season. I’ll be back when life returns to its normal routine in the New Year.