Walking our deaf-blind neighbor through the intersection to her favorite restaurant, guiding a handicapped child down the hall to her classroom, watching an old man beam and wave at the people leaving his beach, I see that the handicapped, the homeless, are good for our society.
I know now why Chesterton made a little fun of the American lady in Paris who "suffered from delusions; for she labored under the extraordinary notion that she had seen ignorant people giving a child Alcohol, and she was ridden with a sort of nightmare, to the effect that a beggar is a horrible thing."
You can shut them up as nightmares or you can keep them as mirrors. If the beggar is tragic, it is because of the Fall, but he is not especially tragic, and he is not terrible. We call him terrible as an excuse to put him away, but we only put him away so we don't have to face ourselves; for in this world we are all a little handicapped, we are all a little homeless. We herd them into asylums, into programs, out of our neighborhoods, just so we can delude ourselves about who we are.
When you are driving a big car to a party, dressed up, with your friends in the back seat dressed up too, and your favorite music playing loud, so that you have created your own world, it is good to have to stop at a traffic light and look at the blind man holding a cardboard sign ("Anything Helps God Bless"). It is good to have to face the immigrant woman approaching your window to sell you flowers.
It reminds you what the real world is like - maybe as opposed to the one you live in. It reminds you that in the real world, you are not God. It reminds you what it means to be human.
I know now why Chesterton made a little fun of the American lady in Paris who "suffered from delusions; for she labored under the extraordinary notion that she had seen ignorant people giving a child Alcohol, and she was ridden with a sort of nightmare, to the effect that a beggar is a horrible thing."
You can shut them up as nightmares or you can keep them as mirrors. If the beggar is tragic, it is because of the Fall, but he is not especially tragic, and he is not terrible. We call him terrible as an excuse to put him away, but we only put him away so we don't have to face ourselves; for in this world we are all a little handicapped, we are all a little homeless. We herd them into asylums, into programs, out of our neighborhoods, just so we can delude ourselves about who we are.
When you are driving a big car to a party, dressed up, with your friends in the back seat dressed up too, and your favorite music playing loud, so that you have created your own world, it is good to have to stop at a traffic light and look at the blind man holding a cardboard sign ("Anything Helps God Bless"). It is good to have to face the immigrant woman approaching your window to sell you flowers.
It reminds you what the real world is like - maybe as opposed to the one you live in. It reminds you that in the real world, you are not God. It reminds you what it means to be human.
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