The world is mad

It was a dreary, drizzly day in Los Angeles, one of many this winter. We were driving to church when my friend looked out the window and said, “You know what breaks my heart? Those people out there in the rain.”

I turned my head to where he was pointing, and then I saw them: dozens of tents and shopping carts lining the park near my apartment, dripping with cold water that undoubtedly also soaked the people dwelling inside.

I was shocked, not at the sight of the homeless encampment, which has been visibly growing for the past few years, but at myself. How had I not properly noticed my homeless neighbors? I walk past them all the time as I hustle to the Metro station, on my run to the doughnut shop—but somehow, these individuals had faded into the background, as commonplace and unremarkable as the trash littering my low-income neighborhood. How had I become so desensitized to the indignity and madness of fellow image-bearers sleeping on urine-stained streets—within the same block where I rest my head on a memory foam pillow?

That’s the danger of being a city-dweller. We’ve become too used to certain things that once offended our senses. We smell the odor of car exhaust and body excrements, hear the screech of vehicles and brawls, and see poverty and depravity so regularly that we seem to have developed an unconscious immunity to them. The ugliness and darkness of the city have become invisible to us, blotted into the gray-toned humdrum of daily life. I was reminded of the song “All The World Is Mad” by Thrice:

Something’s gone terribly wrong With everyone All the world is mad Darkness brings terrible things The sun is gone What vanity! Our sad, wretched fires.

A lot of things have gone terribly wrong in our world, and homelessness is the boiled-down mush from many of these horribly wrong things: broken families, systematic injustice, addictions, abuse, mental illness, failed policies, apathy, compassion fatigue, corruption … and the list goes all the way back to Genesis 3. No wonder those who try to “solve” homelessness feel incapacitated by the enormity of the situation—this is a monster of a problem with uncountable hairy, twitching legs. Many give up and harden their hearts—why spend more time and money on an untamable, unquenchable beast? Some stress doing more—more services, more taxes, more housing, more plans.

LA straddles both sides. Last November, Angelenos passed a $1.2 billion bond measure that will increase property taxes to pay for more permanent housing for the homeless. In March we narrowly passed another measure increasing sales taxes to generate $355 million a year to fund services for the homeless. People voiced their opinions about the measures online—some with pity for the homeless, some with frustration at what they see as wasting more tax dollars—and once again, the “issue” of homelessness becomes an abstract, politicized behemoth that gorges on online fist-shaking and anonymous name-calling. We get so passionate about issues, but do we care to know the names and favorite cookies of the individuals most affected by these issues?

It’s easy for an average citizen like me to wash my hands of the homelessness crisis after ticking a box on a ballot. It’s not so easy after I meet Lavonne Garmon, a quiet, unassuming 56-year-old homeless woman who still limps from a stroke and back injury. It’s not so easy after I hear her choking on her coughs as she shivers over a thin yoga mat on the cold hard concrete, while the night temperature falls below 40s. It’s not so easy after I no longer see her at her usual street corner anymore—last I heard, she had sustained a head injury, most likely from personal assault. It’s not so easy because she’s not an issue that falls neatly into a political camp. She’s a unique, complex human being who giggles like a schoolgirl and lost her two kids.

A broken heart is not enough if it stays as hurt feelings without any hope or action.

As I continue my reporting on homelessness in LA for WORLD Magazine (see “Homeless of the streets of LA” from the just-released April 1 issue), I meet many more individuals who live on the streets—some by choice, some driven by internal demons, some by personal crisis—and not one of them has the same story. As I listen to their stories, my heart breaks. But a broken heart is not enough if it stays as hurt feelings without any hope or action.

So I ask myself why I am even writing about this issue. What more can I, an insignificant, bumbling journalist, bring to the discussion that has been going on for decades? What fresh revelations can I bring about the sewage of human sin and the fallen world? But perhaps that’s the wrong question—“What vanity! Our sad, wretched fires,” the band Thrice reminds us in its song.

Instead, God is teaching me to pray: Lord, what are you doing? What do you see? What grieves you, delights you, honors you most in this mad, dark world?