Presence, the Red Lamp is from Robin’s poetry book “More Than Knowing”
In early morning light, I see
red glowing up the hill,
shiny bright light glows in the brown of the wood,
shining eternal light of God down the mountain to my home?
I look closer to see sunlight
flow through red water-food for hummingbirds.
I remember the homeless poem
I promised to write.
How the homeless haunt me;
the man sitting in the rain in a park in Charlotte.
He was an attorney who lost his family someone said.
Rain fell a sheet of gray wetness one morning
as he sat on the bench in the park
beside of my office.
The morning was cold,
I took him my rainbow-colored umbrella.
Large canopy of color in my hand,
I said, “Here this is for you,” and he looked blankly
at me, but took the umbrella.
“Don’t give them money,” the dictum of all city dwellers.
Instead, I gave him my umbrella
little comfort to me.
What happened to him? To his family? What gray day destroyed him?
At the end of the day,
when the rain had stopped and the sun began to shine,
outside my office door leaned the umbrella gently in a corner.
The homeless man nowhere to be seen.
A colorful yet silent thankfulness
dripping wet in the corner.
The homeless are nameless birds
roosting on our corners,
sleeping on park benches, streets, sidewalks, warm doorways.
Relatives by loss and often mental illness,
they are connected by a cardboard sign
and some same black magic marker.
Who gives the marker?
Odd questions always come at the wrong time.
Once I knew her name, for she lived on my street
or nearby in the woods where rapes happened.
She had multiple personalities
that she argued with as she walked by my cozy house.
Once, after a stint in jail,
she was lucid and clearly intelligent.
She was forced to take her meds there.
The officer said she would be fine
if she could just stay on her meds,
but they are expensive and
how do the homeless get prescription cards?
The last I saw her she was arguing with her other personality,
the one who was belligerent,
“Why didn’t you take that sandwich she offered? I’m hungry!”
“I asked for money and I want money!”
One Christmas I gave her a small token gift,
wrapped in pretty paper with a bow.
As I write, I know it was more for me than her.
She still was gracious and kindly thanked me.
As she walked into the dark woods,
she celebrated the shiny bow
as precious.
Beauty,
a gift given in nature
by light, trees, water.
We celebrate these beautiful things,
these places that are the wild
where our homeless live.
In Columbia, South Carolina,
there once was a river city of homeless.
Their cardboard houses were constantly taken down.
The average homeless person walks ten miles a day.
Nobody wants them.
Keep them out of the neighborhood
away from the rivers and bridges.
That is not my daughter, sister, mother.
Not my brother, son, father.
Mother Teresa said that when we look in another’s face,
we see Christ.
Presence.
The red lamp in the church is
about the presence of God
shining light into our dark places.
We always have hope.
Even if we are Christ of the homeless,
Christ’s face is homeless.
You
too could be homeless
or light.
You are the light of presence.
Red light shining down
love,
kindness, a meal.
Bread of life.
Tabernacle of the holy.
Feed the birds.
Shine your light.
The hope is you.
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Luke 9:57-58 NRSV
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