“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” Dorothy Day
Open source courtesy of Wayne Evans
Every once in a while, I hear a story that restores my hope and saves me from a descent into disappointed cynicism. We know a young woman, let’s call her “Virtue,” who is suffering through a dark period in her life, and there have been more than a few of those she has suffered through in her life, most admittedly through her own bad choices. In former relationships, she was physically and emotionally abused. She’s more careful now in her choice of partners, but as it turns out not careful enough.
Last year “Virtue” made a mistake by choosing to engage in the baby making act with someone who didn’t love her and marry her and commit his life to her. Let’s call him DB for short. And sure enough, a baby was conceived in the baby making act. After all, that is what the baby making act is devised to do.
They were living in an apartment with a friend of the unloving male lover. When it was discovered that she was with child, the friend of the father’s, whose name was on the lease for the apartment, stated unconditionally he would tolerate no troublesome little human beings in his life. Since they enjoyed the apartment, DB, the irresponsible[i] father-to-be made the decision for all three of them: father, mother, and baby: the kid had to go. Or DB would go. She knew that her connection to the tiny human being within her womb would not allow her to “terminate the pregnancy” as the euphemism goes. So, her original mistake was not to be compounded by a tragic new one. But that is not to say it wouldn’t be difficult, very difficult.
DB was true to his word (if nothing else), and after persistent harassment failed to loosen her resolve, he left in the night with a new girlfriend to an undisclosed out of state address. “Have a nice life.” This scenario is now commonplace, especially among the poor, compounding their misery.
“And what if—what are you if the people who are supposed to love you can leave you like you’re nothing?” Elizabeth Scott, The Unwritten Rule
We met “Virtue” last winter when she was eight months pregnant and a week short of living under a bridge with no place to go. A friend introduced us. After some hectic scrambling with some good-hearted friends, collectively, we were able to secure a spot in a homeless shelter for expectant mothers – a kind of miracle given the abysmal shortage of such havens for those without options. But the time has now run out there, and the shelter needed space for new desperate clients.
We met with one of the same friends and “Virtue” recently to discuss options and help find a more permanent situation for her and her baby, now seven months old. Her situation is still far from secure. The baby is healthy, happy, relaxed, and curious about everything going on about her. She has beautiful dark hazel eyes that follow every move, eyes that stare unblinking at you in trust and candor. No pretense with babies. She is patient while the adults talk with all those strange sounds. Rolls of baby fat dimple her elbows and knees, plump that will burn off as soon as she gains her mobility and starts crawling, crabbing, walking, running, climbing, exploring, and testing her mom’s ability to keep up.
The almost toddler laughs a lot when old guys rain raspberries on her arm, and she seizes anything within range of her chubby hands. She has a minor issue that requires physical therapy, but her mom is diligent with getting her to her appointments and relies on the kindness of volunteers in her church congregation for rides to and from. Her prognosis is excellent for full health.
Her mom told us this story over coffee.
She left the baby for a short time with her parents while she ran some errands and picked up some needed groceries for them. She was able to stay a short while with her parents, but the rules of the elderly housing project where they live preclude a longer stay. She went shopping on foot. She has no car.
As she walked on the sidewalk in her small city, “Virtue” encountered a disheveled, unshaven man prone on the concrete. All the pedestrians carefully averted their eyes and eschewed intervening with his obvious predicament. Not “Virtue.” She stayed.
She knelt next to his head. His breathing was shallow. “Sir, are you alright?” No response. Roll him out of his vomit. “Sir, are you alright? I’m calling nine one one. They’ll be here soon.” Check breathing again. Make sure he is still doing that. Flag down passing pedestrians dressed in hospital scrubs. They join her and check for a pulse. A bit thready.
The rescue crew shows up within five minutes or so and takes over. “Virtue” left her name and contact information as a witness with the police officer who soon joined them. They determine acute alcohol poisoning. If left unattended and ignored the stranger on the sidewalk could have lain there until he stopped breathing.
“Virtue” told us her story in a matter-of-fact manner but was pleased she had been able to help. Sure. That’s what human beings do for one another. “What else could I do?” Without hesitation or doubt. A week short of being on the street herself with an infant, she was the one who took notice instead of stepping over the guy like all the rest hurrying to their urgent destinations. She was the one who did the loving thing for a stranger.
The French poet killed in the first World War, Charles Peguy, wrote, “The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.” A homeless mother taught me that last week.
Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’
Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.” Luke 10: 30-37 (New American Bible translation)[ii]
[i] An all-too-common adjective for hormonal, negligent sperm donors in recent decades. As it turns out, the sexual revolution didn’t liberate women as much as it liberated and enabled irresponsible men – going on three generations of them. The unwritten rule today is that if a baby results from the baby making act, it’s the woman’s responsibility to ‘take care of’ because of the failed contraception (anti conception), and the expectation for physical coupling in a hook up culture is a given. The male may choose to pay for her in getting rid of the baby. Or he may just evaporate. No opprobrium attaches to the man who was once expected to “do the right thing” after he did the wrong thing. Increasingly rare is the man who “does the right thing” before, during, or after the hook up.
The ‘hook up’ culture is an appropriate metaphor. Sexual coupling with virtual strangers who have no commitment, no love, no sense of self giving to the other person has all the love and tenderness of a beat-up, faded tow truck backing up to a Rent A Wreck auto with a blown engine.
Great book on the topic: Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom, 2015, by Gabriele Kuby
[ii] The Samaritan was despised in first century Israel as an apostate and treated as a pariah. One of the lessons from the parable is that Jesus came for the despised, the poor, the alienated and not for the perfect and sanctimonious. “Virtue” is among the poor, the sinners like all of us trying the best we can to live in a fallen culture, the abandoned, those with few options, yet it was she, and only she, who reached out to the stricken man on the sidewalk. There is hope in that, and a lesson for us all.
Quo Vadis Blog 