A Day in the Life of a Tinkling Cymbal

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” 

So St. Paul tells us in the opening line of 1 Corinthians 13, likely the most quoted of all New Testament admonitions. At Christmas especially, I find myself wondering whether I am one of Paul’s tinkling cymbals.

On the morning I wrote this article, I was confronted with this very question. Having picked up my morning McCoffee—76 cents with a senior discount—I watched in mild annoyance as the driver in front of me stopped to chat with the presumably homeless fellow who mans the exit at the Broadway McDonalds. 

Having an office overlooking Westport Road, I see and hear a lot of homeless people. Over time, I have had the occasion to speak to many. I wish I could say that these conversations opened my heart, but they haven’t. Once, I slipped a 20 to a guy who emerged shirtless from my office dumpster—“Mac, you have convinced me!”—but as a rule, I do not contribute.  

From what I can see, the bulk of the discretionary income that the homeless muster is spent less on housing than on, say, fentanyl or Old Milwaukee. I wish it were otherwise. I wish that the mentally ill had treatment centers and that the addicts had families that cared enough to rescue them, but few do.

Some years back, I made a promotional video for Restart, a truly worthy organization dedicated to “providing resources for the growing population of unhoused youth, families, individuals and veterans in the greater Kansas City area.” In the course of the project, I interviewed a dozen or so people who were working hard to restart their lives.

One rarely discussed cause of the growth of homelessness, I learned, is the collapse of marriage and the corollary erosion of the extended family. Many of these people came from homes long since broken. Once they began their descent to the streets—divorce, depression, lost job—they had no place to turn. “Home,” said Robert Frost, “is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” In the most profound sense, these people were ‘homeless” even before they were houseless. Once they found housing, if they did, they would have to create a “home” of their own. This could take generations.

We have been disciplined to repeat the mantra that all families are equal. That may pass for wisdom when all goes well, but not when things go badly. Last month, for instance, my wife and I celebrated Thanksgiving at the home of my grandchildren’s other grandparents. My daughter and her husband were there as well. So were several of my grandchildren’s aunts, uncles, and older cousins. 

These are lucky little girls to have the support of two fully intact families. If either of their lives were to spiral downward, there would be more than a dozen people ready to ease their fall and bring them home. Charity towards family and close friends is instinctive. Towards strangers, it is not. 

Back in Westport, I assuage my conscience by making eye contact with the homeless and exchanging pleasantries when possible, but I choose not to contribute. As the residents of cities like Portland and San Francisco have learned the hard way, the surest way to grow the homeless population is to subsidize it. 

That said, the surest way for the individual to grow callous and uncharitable is to live among the homeless and do nothing. This summer, after a morning trip to McDonalds, I realized how skeptical I had become. 

As I was pulling out of the lot, the homeless man at the exit picked up an empty cup a customer had presumably discarded and put it in a nearby trash receptacle. The sight gladdened my heart. I resent people who litter, not enough to pick up their trash perhaps, but enough to feel virtuous for not being a litterer myself.

As I drove away, I thought of going back and rewarding the man for his civic virtue. Then a dark question forced its way through the tiny charitable nodes of my brain: did a customer actually drop that cup? After all, had I seen the actual act of littering, that sight would surely have triggered me.  

Growing up in New Jersey, where grifting is the unofficial state sport, I had to question whether the homeless man’s retrieval of the cup was something of a con. Maybe, I thought, he discreetly planted the cup and then showily picked it up when he caught the eye of a sucker like me in the pick-up line. Unsure of whether to reward him for his virtue or congratulate him for his scam, I just kept on driving. 

On this December morning, however, what I saw took me by surprise. The driver in front of me, blocking the exit, the driver I had been quietly scolding for subsidizing the homeless man, got out of his car and handed the fellow not money but a cup of coffee and an Egg McMuffin. He then opened his back door and retrieved a blanket wrapped as though it had just come from a store.

Paul was right. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” This whole scene played out for an accidental audience of one, me. There would be no banquets, no plaques, no recognition of the benefactor’s generosity. The look of genuine gratitude on the face of the homeless man was the only earthly reward the driver would ever receive. The two men shook hands, and the driver was on his way. 

Watching this little drama unfold, I was reminded of the gulf between what we all profess and what we practice. Easiest solution? Send a check to Restart or the City Union Mission and pray God takes mercy on us tinkling cymbals.