Grace in the Time of Covid: On a cold winter's morning, a lesson from Michael

 It was a bone-chilling cold, pre-dawn Tuesday morning. The 5 a.m. alarm on my phone sounded, and for several minutes -- nestled in my warm bed -- and debated with just turning it off and drifting back to sleep.

But I got up, with a moan. It was the day for early-morning liturgy and communion at Sts. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City. I knew I needed it, and needed to be there. 

After the service, the guys would meet for coffee and scriptural study with Fr. Paul downstairs -- a time that has become especially precious to me during this season of prolonged Covid-19 related isolation.

Showered and dressed, I donned a heavy coat, scarf and gloves and bundled myself into the car, first scraping a sheet of ice from the windshield. My decades-old Honda Civic coughed to life, I turned on the heater full blast, and drove down the road.

It's a 15-minute trip to the church, and to my usual morning prayers and added not a few laments about life as we have come to know it in the age of pandemic. Finally, as I drove on near-empty, slippery streets, I passed the homeless camps of shopping carts draped with makeshift tents that regularly pop up along the curbs of the Salt Lake County-City Government Complex.

Deseret News photo

But I was so self-absorbed, irritated that the old Honda's heater was just beginning to warm the car's interior, that I hardly noticed the desperation and poverty of wrecked lives that have become part of the urban landscape.

Pulling into a dark side street and then the small parking lot behind my parish church, I sat for a time behind the wheel, relishing a belated moment of warmth. Then with a grunt I got out, put on my mask, shivered, and began walking down the alley to the entrance of Sts. Peter & Paul.

The homeless, I'm ashamed to say, have too often become the faceless, nameless backdrops of our lives today. If not ignored, then they only elicit a brief thought or an occasional a few bucks quickly handed over to appease the inconvenience of guilt.

But there is one denizen of the street many in the parish have come to know, and some befriend.

"Michael," also the name of his patron saint, adorns the sleeves of his arms and coat with iconic images of saints and angels, secured with transparent plastic and duct tape. Slight and gaunt, his beard and graying hair often seeming as wild and surreal as his thoughts, Michael has good days and bad.

Some days, he holds forth on the warfare of angels and demons in the skies above, where clouds may swirl, punctuated by thunder and lightning. "See? There they are, fighting over the souls of the dead? Right there," he once told me on a summer day, pointing and nodding.

On other days, he seems to have the simple clarity of a saint. That is the case on this particular frigid December morning, as he steps out from behind a plastic tarp draped over his nest of blankets and sleeping bags near a building's steam vent.

He won't do the shelters. He has horror stories of sickness, bed bug-infested cots, drug use and violence inside them. He's often been robbed of his few possessions. Over the years, our priest and parish have tried to arrange other housing and psychiatric care, without success.

So, one does what one can, meeting this brother where he is, and with what he needs -- warm clothing, food, a few dollars for coffee or a snack, and friendship, to the extent this gentle and enigmatic man allows that.

So, on this morning, I just want to get inside to the warmth, comfort and spiritual refuge of the church. Michael recognizes my voice, this time, and hurries to my side. I'm grumpy; he is ebullient, and our pace toward the open iron gates of the entrance slows.

"It's a good day," he rasped. "It's a cold day," I grumbled back.

He either didn't hear me, or ignored my reply. "God is so great! He provides what you need. Even a hot shower!" Michael pointed to the steam coming out of a head-high pipe. "They shut down the showers where I was going," he explained, vaguely waving toward an undefined downtown Salt Lake City location, "But then God provided this!"

He went on to list a few other things he attributed to Providence. A place to fill his water jug. People cared enough to check on him, feed him, take him to the free clinic, even just talk for a few moments.

Then, Michael grinned, pointed at the church where he, like me, received baptism a few years back, and said, "And we get to go inside His house and have communion! Hey, it's the Breakfast of Champions!"

And we did that. We climbed the steps inside to the candle-lit darkness, venerate the icons of the saints and stood for the ancient prayers of the liturgy, culminating with the Eucharist.

I watched Michael approach the chalice, a look of awe on his smudged face as he received the mystical Body and Blood of Christ.

As he made his cross and silently walked away, I sighed, ashamed at first, then humbled, and then grateful for the lesson.

For Michael.

Lord have mercy, indeed.

The times we live in: Where even the cops say arm yourself for that walk to work

Our police chief in Salt Lake City of late has been boasting about how crime is down in the city's downtown core, i.e., the environs of the homeless shelters and free clinics.

Or, perhaps it is simply that people who used to report crimes -- folks you a couple years ago moved into new condos erected as the formerly depressed area of rail yards was "gentrified," got tired of the futility of calling in drug deals, bum fights, drunks urinating and defecating on the sidewalks, etc.

I work in the middle of the worst of this area. Every morning before dark, I ride the train downtown and get off one block from the shelters and the scene of weekly stabbings and strong-arm robberies committed by that criminal element that thrives within any large homeless community.

Like wraiths, there are always a couple of shadowy forms peering out from the parking lots, alleys and not-yet-open business entry ways.

During the daylight hours, the danger is likely less, but you cannot walk half a block without being accosted by beggars with stories of woe, and the hungry, wan look of meth or crack addicts in bloodshot eyes.

Twice, by different police officers I've dealt with as a breaking news reporter, I've been strongly advised to get a concealed/carry permit and carry a locked and loaded firearm.

Having once been confronted in the predawn dark by a couple street men, one circling behind me while the other attempted to cut me off from the front, I took the advice.

On the cited occasion, I was somewhat younger and lucky enough to find a piece of scrap rebar in a vacant lot that convinced the two to walk away.

Now, a last resort would be a legally obtained and licensed handgun. I pray I never have to pull it out, let alone fire it in a desperate, last ditch defense of myself, my family or an innocent stranger.

But this is the world we live in, and as my police acquaintances told me, going unprotected into such areas as where I work, and at the time of day I work, is to go naked into a den of hyenas.

So, today was another morning in the Zoo, the Asylum, or some circle of Hades, whatever you call these occasionally very mean streets. The shadowy forms flitted into and out of the dim street lamp lights, and away.

On the train platform where I daily get off to walk the couple blocks to the office, someone had abandoned a shelter blanket in one place, and a pair of underwear a few feet away. On other days, I've walked by huddled forms, their ragged faces brielfy lit by the glow of their crack pipes.

And, in front of the Tribune's main entrance was an abandoned syringe, the needle gone. I carefully picked up the syringe tube and tossed it in the garbage.

After all, little kids walk that sidewalk later in the day on the way to a nearby children's museum and school children by the busloads visit the planetarium across the street. 

Still, it seems an almost futile effort, like trying to dig through a mountain of sludge with a teaspoon.

The economy, and lack of jobs -- at least ones that can support a family or pay a mortgage; drug addiction; mental illness ignored by underfunding of needed treatment programs; and the human predators who thrive within a desperate, often hopeless community . . . all are contributors to the sickness.

All those things, and at the heart of it all, of our existence as human beings, the hopelessness of spirits broken by life, and however to define it, yes, sin.

And so, here's the bitter irony. On one hand, I am a Christian who gives tithes and offerings toward various outreach programs to the homeless and others suffering on the fringe of society.
And on the other hand, I live in a world where just going to my job means facing the possibility of a life-threatening encounter -- and, in the most extreme of circumstances, one where it becomes -- as it has for others, too often -- a decision to take a life to keep your own.

Be charitable, but beware of bogus charities that enrich no one but themselves

One of my pet peeves is mindlessly giving to "charity" without having the smarts to first check them out.

When you think of it, blindly donating every time you get a letter soliciting donations, or a telemarketing call, is no brighter than giving your hard-earned bucks to one of those neer-do-wells holding a cardboard sign outside parking lots, street corners, etc.

You know, the same "homeless" folks you will see pouring out of a van as part of an organized professional begging operation, or later driving an SUV to a house in the suburbs. That's why, if you want to truly help the homeless, you should volunteer in a rescue mission kitchen or donate directly to non-profit shelters.

But I digress.

Let's talk about established "charities" that are nothing more than cash-generating machines. They take $1 from you, and maybe spend 3-4 cents on their purported causes.

They play off the desire of Americans who have big hearts, but little time -- or desire -- to check out where they send their donations and what ends up getting done with them.

CNN, the Center for Investigative Reporting  and the Tampa Times combined their resources to explore such bogus charities. Here's their list of the "Worst 50."