When I was homeless I had to cross the panhandling bridge. This wasn't too difficult for me since I had given away hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars to panhandlers in my many years in the Bay Area. I used to stuff my pockets with change, every day, to pass out to those who mingled on Berkeley street corners or slept in the Powell BART station entry-way. I can remember feeling a sense of joy and privilege at being in a position to give.
Being on the other side of that exchange is an entirely different experience. I didn't feel the shame of it for a long time. I was simply relieved that so many chance encounters that coughed up pennies, bedside table change, fed me and kept gas in my car, for the treks from town to our camp and back. The flash of silver, as someone's hand withdrew from their pocket, nickels and dimes and, glory be, a quarter, was as satisfying as Christmas morning when I was a kid.
I'm relieved that my panhandling days are over, but it did teach me gratitude and perspective. It also taught me how difficult it is for some people to hand over even spare change. I felt sorry for them. I may have been poor in worldly ways but those who are poor in spirit have a much harder row to hoe.
I had a lot of resistance at first. But the need to survive will overcome even the most ingrained social habits of "civility." I thought about all the holy men in other cultures, India in particular, who survive only by begging, as they are not allowed to provide for themselves in any other way. I thought about what it means to be at the mercy of the beneficence of the universe every day, the generosity of strangers. It still fills me with a sense of wonder and awe, that for many months so many people I didn't know and would never see again, cared enough about this unknown human to help me survive. Thank you.
Aboriginal Indians in Australia go on walkabouts. They head out into the desert, elders, kids, men and women, with, perhaps, no particular destination in mind. They take virtually nothing with them even though they may be traveling for months at a time. It is a form of worship to enter into the world, trusting that everything you need will come.
In our culture it is a great taboo to ask for help in the way of panhandling, to beg. It is a gesture filled with shame and loathing: an admission of abject failure in the ways of a world steeped in the primacy of things rather than people. I recognized this every time I asked for spare change. I somehow moved beyond the stigma and greeted this time as a form of worship: the opportunity to receive from the universe, when I had always been a giver; the opportunity to learn what it is like to be on the other side of the helping hand; the chance to refuse to meet refusal or hostility or rejection with anything other than sweetness and light.
I think in many of those exchanges I gave as much as I received. It is a wondrous event to relieve someone of guilt or anger by saying, "no, it's ok, I can see it's not a good day for you to give;" to bless them with acceptance of whatever way they are. I have watched panhandlers (and experienced this myself) turn around and give everything in their pocket to someone who needed it more, whether it was because they were cash poor, even though they had a car and a home, or because they had meager spirit and simply needed an unexpected gift from the universe.
I learned to receive with joy, and without guilt or shame, and I have learned to give until it feels good. I am grateful for these lessons.
(Copyright by Kristi Shelloner, 1999 - No reproduction without express permission from the author)