'Je suis seule'

I was on holiday in the south of France last week. One morning I went to the supermarket to buy some food, and saw a homeless man at the exit. I did my shopping and came to leave.

I find homelessness a very difficult thing to deal with: firstly, I am conscious of the balance between helping people in the most effective way possible and the most direct way possible: ie, giving a homeless person a pound may be more direct, but it may have a less positive effect on their overall well-being than giving that pound to a charity, say (this is a complex debate, and my presentation is a simple one – the empowerment of one’s own money, even if it spent on ‘unhelpful’ things, is something that the second of my options for the pound misses). Secondly, I find it completely unacceptable that people are homeless in our society. We are one of the richest countries in the world – it is unacceptable. I share the disgust of an Australasian tribesman in a recent C4 documentary that anyone in such a rich country can be without somewhere permanent, warm and secure to live.

One thing that I have done is to buy things for people. Nothing too special usually: some orange juice, more often than not, sometimes a cup of coffee. So when I walked out of the French supermarket I saw that the homeless man (accompanied by his sleeping dog) had a baguette by his side. I walked past, and then turned around, for I had two baguettes in my hand – ‘a baguette, sir?’, I asked in my GCSE French. ‘Non, merci. Je suis seule.’ – for those whose French is worse than mine: ‘No thanks – I’m on my own.’ He was on his own, and so didn't need another one.

I was so moved it was incredible. Mary’s song in the Magnificat says that the Lord ‘has put down the mighty from their seat – the rich he has sent empty away.’ I felt amazingly humbled by the man’s response:

• In one of Rob Bell’s better moments he chastises Christians for praying that God will feed the hungry when we have more than enough to eat.
• Mother Teresa said the sea is made of many small drops – small actions that affirm God within us and within others start to change the tide.
• A homeless man (called ‘Christian’, as I later found out) in a brief encounter gave the best rebuttal of our Western consumerism that I have ever heard: I have enough already, and I don’t need any more. But coming from a marginalised person with far less than myself it seemed rather more powerful.

I am a child of the contemporary consumer culture. I type this blog on a £1300 laptop, listen to podcasts on my ipod, spend £20 each month on my phone bill, and buy £3 cups of coffee. For Christian to tell me that he didn’t need what I was offering because he already had enough seemed pretty upside-down. But then the last shall be first, and the mighty have been put down from their seats.

--

So each day that I went shopping Christian was there. I bought him a bunch of grapes on each day after that one, figuring that he probably didn’t already have some. We chatted a little, and he wished me a happy day each time. Our parting goodbye was rather ruined by my appalling ineloquence in French, but the sentiment was there: meeting him was one of the highlights of my holiday, and I’m sure he enjoyed the grapes that I have bought him.

I have blogged before about the significance of giving in our lives, and how we often discover who we are by giving of ourselves, rather than receiving from others. We gain infinitely more by giving of ourselves than we could ever hope to acquire through chasing after more and more of whatever we seek. St Francis was right: it is in giving that we receive.

So Christ. Born to a single mother, a displaced family of refugees, disgraced as a result of his disputed paternity. Spent his life with the dropouts, the down-and-outs and the nobodies. He learned that often it is these people, rather than the religious, who know what life is really about.