I have no answer. At least, I have no good answer. I look into my own heart and find no saintly motivation. Beneath my involvement in the Labre programme is a veritable hodgepodge of basal instincts and emotions, the same as those who govern all of the rest of my decisions. Though I have in the back of my head an awareness that Jesus and/or the Pope have at various points exhorted the rich to help the poor, these other emotions are presented to me with such immediacy that they threaten to drive me fucking insane, if I were not to act on them.
What are they?
FEAR
Some time in Summer 2012, I hopped off a ferry at Tallinn. The first person who greeted my arrival at Estonia was a drifter. And he pestered me: do you not have two euros on you? Do you not have five euros on you?
This was when I was a helpless intern in Helsinki. I travelled often, usually alone. I felt vulnerable all the three months of that stay. I relied entirely on dumb luck and goodwill navigating countries where no one spoke my language well. But this man, he spoke English. He was like me.
He WAS ME
I imagined myself in the event of a botched journey across the Baltics, losing all my stuff and having to beg for euros at the Port of Tallinn in perfect English.
I gave him the euros of course. I wanted people to be giving me euros in the unlikely but not impossible scenario where that happens.
And even though in Ottawa (much later) I had been able to wait for my paperwork with a roof over my head, I felt very much among the homeless, with whom I spent long afternoons in the public libraries, and blended in with them.
TERROR
I moved to Cleveland in April 2019. This would be a year-long contract which would see extensions to 2 1/2 years. The so-called honeymoon period of one who comes to live in a spanking new country in this case lasted approximately 0d 0h 0min 0s. I am immediately overtaken with a sense of oppressive dread and constant terror about Cleveland (and the United States by extension) which lasted many months. Let me explain why this was the case:
1. It has been a habit for my parents to remind me to do my research on the "good" and "bad" parts of town before I went to any place in the United States, having lived in Inland WA and Downstate NY in the 1980s and experienced many close brushes with death and tragedy, all of which they delighted in sharing with us in the particularly dark and stormy nights.
2. While I dutifully "did my own research" for Cleveland, online commentators who obviously knew what they were talking about assured me that basically all of Cleveland is fucked-zone and I am guaranteed to be murdered 4 times in a year just for showing up.
3. Because of these reassuring findings, I looked on everyone around me with suspicion. I was on guard all of the time. I peered over my shoulder once per three steps. I imagined every small conflict escalating into dead people on the streets. I still had to take 30 minute commutes to school by bus.
Every little snag in bureaucratic processes sent me reeling in PANIC
LUST
This section is meant to be an amusing interlude. I had a passing fancy for a woman on a Facebook group. I confided in her in the TERROR of living in Cleveland, America's poorest large city.
She asked me in reply, doesn't the church have anything in place to help with it?
Roughly one year later, I found the answer, long after the conversation had moved on to other things (it didn't work out between us).
SPITE
The American home is a fortress. Inside this fortress, opulence, abundance; things bought and never used; an artefact here and there that pleads to the visitor: I do this awesome thing, when that thing was never and will never be done. Blasted lies.
Outside the fortress, the poor, the desperate, the dying
They are not for show. They are not fiction. They haunt all my hangouts. If I reach out my trembling hand, I could touch their broken, bloody faces. I could hear their pathetic pleadings, how terribly they pled!
This is the American Dream. People change out of their baptismal names at Ellis Island for this. People bake to death crossing the Sonoran Desert. For this!
I was so consumed with rage that I became unable to sleep, because people who thought themselves upright and good allowed this to happen, and persist in happening. It extended to the entire culture of American suburbia. It extended even to my friends, who came of age as part of that culture.
I watched what they did in life, and out of spite resolved to myself to do the exact opposite.
VIOLENCE
I overheard this at the airport at Charlotte:
Careful! There are some BAD PEOPLE around here!
I began taking self-defense lessons at gym out of this fear, although once I had reached a certain measure of aptitude in rearranging people's facial features, the fear automatically left me; and in its place came a certain unwarranted swagger, and the self-assured conviction that I would more likely be the dealer of grievous injury than a victim of it.
I set out to explore the poorest parts of Cleveland, emboldened by my newfound capacity for violence. I became familiar with its roads, then I began patronizing their businesses, then I went to their churches.
The most beautiful churches of Cleveland and its best-made chicken tenders are mounted like jewels in the poorest parts of town, in among the "bad people".
PEER PRESSURE
As a rebuke to the section before the previous one, there turned out to be people among my friends who were kindred spirits, especially where helping the poor is concerned. I was introduced to the Labre organization and community service through their good example. I will name names.
Shortly before I left Singapore I learned JOSEPH KOK, DAVID YEE and friends have conducted outreach to the homeless, staying with them over Friday nights at 24-hour McDonalds branches. I remembered them on my food drives.
The journalistic team of the PLAIN DEALER did a consultation with the public at Cleveland Heights Public Library (Lee Road Branch). I met a lady there whose name I have forgotten. Her deal was that she collected and gave out children's books for inner city households up and down the East Side. She surprised me by being very much alive.
(One year later, in 2020, the publication would be run aground in a devious union-busting putsch, leading to the sacking of many a fine journalist whom I had met on that day.)
An unknown young woman was spied in February 2020 in Cambridge (England), doting on a vagabond. She wore a vest with a logo which I can no longer recall. (edit of 23 Nov 2021: the organization is called Streetbite Cambridge)
I first heard of the Labre programme from GRÉGOIRE MICZKA, who attended Lectio Divina in 2019-2020, and also participated in Labre.
REGINA and ROBERT SINGERLINE volunteer at the West Side Catholic Center for women seeking shelter from abusive households. They roped me in as an extra pair of hands one random winter evening.
The plucky undergrads who run Labre are too numerous to name individually, but I am especially impressed by JONATHAN OCKUNZZI, Cleveland native, who knows every street corner and has a sharp eye for people who could use a meal.
Brother Larry and the team of ST. HERMAN HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY (Orthobros establishment). This is an establishment for homeless men. The entourage is a spectacle of surly, rough-riding characters who all looked like they could casually snap your spine. Brother Larry, their ringleader, is old, frail and half their height, creating a hilarious contrast when they stood together. They greet me and the others with nothing but warmth and smiles, and said we are welcome anytime to "come cut bread". Brother Larry gave us a tour of the chapel and iconostasis. They sell honey in the winter.
JOHN NIEDZIALEK picks garbage from the streets around St. Casimir for an hour every week. He did so quietly and thanklessly, except for one time, when he made a news feature.
LONELINESS
Friends of Case Labre come and go. Sometimes they find a permanent shelter. Other times they die. But mostly they fall off the face of the earth, leaving us uneasily in the lurch. Fortunately for us, one or two have become our regulars, and might even be able to recognize a returning participant.
In Fall last year I went on a run with Jason Choi. At St. Malachi's we ran into a guy who recognized my face, but I did not recognize his. We bumped a fist. I had not met a new person for many months, and relished this random encounter for a long time.
Now even though I am due to leave in a month, I have grown accustomed to the people and landscapes of Cleveland. I could almost call it home. I have given up (with difficulty) living in fear of the other and what they variously call "the poors" or "bad people". I learned that generosity springs forth naturally when such a thing is taken care of.
Benoît-Joseph Labre of Amettes, patron saint of hobos, prenez pitié, priez pour nous.
Despite my best efforts, I remain only vaguely aware that your intercession and the might of Lord Jesus have had a hand in the tangled mess that is my inner life. I should remain thankful in any case.
29 August 2021, Cleveland
Picutre credit: Wellcome Library, London
