How one Mayor introduced me to another...

A story in consideration of a New Year

By Dave Libby

 

About 10 years ago Mayor Daily, who was then mayor of Chicago, decided to enact a campaign to “clean up” the city. This entailed getting the homeless off the streets of lower Wacker Drive.

 

The strategy was simple – while they were out, take their belongings.

 

So, city officials began cleaning the streets by confiscating sleeping bags, tents and other “unattended” itinerant items found around the city, and in particular along lower Wacker Drive.

 

Feeling this was unjust, I solicited some friends to participate in a “re-supply project”. Several small fellowships gathered sleeping bags, small tents, blankets and food for a couple weeks and then with four other friends and three cars we headed down to the city at around 10 pm one winter night to find the hapless victims of the mayor's city cleaning campaign.

 

Not really knowing what I was looking for along lower Wacker Drive, I stopped at the first place that had a few wanderers thinking I might at least ask them where the homeless guys hang out. I pulled off the street and got out of the car – and as I did a community appeared from seemingly nowhere all around me. Guys literally rose up out of the street – from under boxes, around trash bins and from a general assembly of men seeming to be trying to keep warm by huddling together under whatever cover they could find.

 

It was cold, so it made sense.

 

I have to admit, my first reaction was to think through an escape plan if things went bad, more to protect the two girls with us than anything, but as I briefly outlined the steps in my head and started pulling sleeping bags out of the trunk of the car while the other cars following suite, my fears were quickly melted away.

 

It wasn't that my fears were ill-founded, but they were unreal. And as we shared with these men, reality became apparent – it was thus that we received a warm kind of hospitality and welcome that was not familiar to us, even at church, but it was holy. If we had a guitar we might have ended up starting a fire with the unneeded boxes and sitting around singing Kumbyah until morning. The night ended too soon as we were left with an impression that we had not expected.

 

C.S. Lewis described writer George McDonald as both his “master” and as the “baptizer of his imagination”, saying that he had never written a book where he didn't quote something from McDonald. Describing his life in terms of being one of poverty, with 13 kids and after serving as a pastor of a congregation in Scottland at the turn of the last century that had tried to hurt him by docking his salary for being unconventional and un-conformed to their will – he ventured out as a writer. Today, a hundred years later, there is hardly a place on earth that hasn't been impacted by George McDonald, the father of modern day fantasy and mentor of such writing greats as Lewis and his very famous friend JRR Tolkien. But Lewis' regard for the man went well beyond fantasy as he said of McDonald that “he wasn't given over to the pathology of the consumptive, and offered a kind of hospitality that only the poor can give.”

 

Most of the time those of us who have been subdued in the material world make the mistake of placing the value on the material things, rather than on the exchange that they offer. And we stay out in the cold as a result – insulating ourselves with the best boxes we can find.

 

As we got to know the guys under lower Wacker Drive, one of them asked if I could give him a ride to his home, which was on the West Side, a project apartment. On the way there I asked him why, if he had a home, was he staying out on the streets at night. He replied simply: “To get up to meet the traffic.”

 

“Get up? What time?” I inquired.

 

“About 7 am. We stay by the heating vents down here at night so we can get up in the morning.”

 

“For what?” I naively asked.

 

“To pan-handle.” He replied, somewhat sheepishly.

 

I was stuck. Here was guy enduring hardship when he had a home (albeit without regular heat) so he could get up in the morning to go to work. I was forced to ask the question – what then does he produce?

 

Former Vice President Al Gore has become somewhat famous through presenting his message of global warming in his book and film called “An Inconvenient Truth”. But what seems more consequential is the global cooling that appears to be running rampant and poses a much more dire and immediate problem for us in both balance as well as social stability.

 

“When did God become a warm reality?” The final question of the four Quaker questions guaranteed to develop intimacy in any group of strangers asks. For me this happened on November 7^th, 1980, after our house burned to the ground and we barely made it out with our lives. We were left without any material possessions as they went up in a flaming explosion that looked like a sunrise. But in the back of our 1964 Chevy Impala huddled together while my dad prayed, a warm sense of God's presence assured me everything would be alright. Then throughout the next year, as person after person and body after body of people stepped in to affirm his promise, God convinced me – he really was that warm reality. Connection.

 

It is inconvenient to make connections of any sort, that is why in business the objective is to make connections of the right sort – the kind that can offer you something. You can basically sum up business today as cultivating the right connections – and of course avoiding the wrong ones.

 

Perhaps this is why the real inconvenient truth has to do with global cooling – which is much more dangerous than global warming. What happens in global cooling? A New Testament writer describes when this happens as people come to an end as they becoming lovers of themselves, lovers of money, are boastful, proud, arrogant, disobedient to their parents and have a form of godliness, but yet deny its power. Disconnection.

 

What does the man in humble circumstance, who ventures to work every day at 7 am to meet the traffic on the street actually produce? What does the guy going up to the tower at 7 am who passes by the man on the street actually produce?

 

Cultivation of community. The man heading up to the tower produces ways to gain from the cultivation of his relationships – specifically focused to remain “efficient, effective and sustainable”. While the man he passes by on the street – produces simply the opportunity to be inconvenienced.

 

We have heard the warnings. The sensational 80's band Pink Floyd prophetically sang out... “On the turning away, from the pale and downtrodden. And the words they say that we won't understand. Don't accept that what's happening, is just a case of others suffering, or you'll find that your joining in, the turning away...”

 

There was a Biblical prophet who once said “Behold, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, and has anointed me to bring good news to the poor and down-trodden. To bind up the broken hearted, and restore the sight of those who have become blind. To set the prisoners free and finally declare a day of the Lord that is acceptable.

 

The man behind the counter at Atlanta Bread the other day commented that he used to work down in the city – in banking no less. One day a homeless man came in with bags of money. They questioned him for wanting to open up an account. He said a brother had died and left the money to him and he had stored it in his mattress, but wanted to get it to some place safe. (This of course was before the 2008 financial debacle). So he had come to the bank. He wanted to buy the flop house he had stayed in to give his friends a place to stay, which shortly he did. One day the Atlanta Bread man got called to the police station to bail the man and a bunch of his homeless friends out for a disturbance at a local bar. A bar-tender had refused to serve them and the homeless man retorted that he could buy the bar if he wanted. This started an altercation that resulted in six homeless men being taken to jail. After he was released, the homeless man bought the bar, and his friends were able to be respectfully served.

 

So what happens when one out of 10 is considered worth-less than the other nine?

 

How about when 9 out of 10 are considered worth-less than the one?

 

What about when what we teach at home (economy) is reduced to simply getting what we can for ourselves – and what we end up producing is reduced to gimmicks that cultivate the right relationships to get what we want? What happens when everyone figures this out? Is this truly sustainable?

 

Do you see the immediate and potentially catastrophic danger of global cooling?

 

What happens when people realize that the guys on top of the pillar (capital) are not really producing jobs, or even considerations, but rather are simply creating schemes to benefit themselves at the cost of everyone else being driven to produce the energy to keep them warm in their boxes?

 

To me this is the more real issue, but it is also one we can have an immediate and effective influence upon, where as global warming really requires global cooling to be addressed first. For as long as we operate in the model that we are competing for resources, which is the logic behind influencing global warming, then there will always be a certain audience segment who will avoid responsibility by seeking to take the advantages to benefit themselves. This upsets the process of influence by fostering the incentive to “gain” the resources – which of course is the market-economy concept. And this means that we are in conflict with ourselves in truly dealing with any social issue. Thus we promote causes to create movement by stimulating or even fabricating fear, creating a force of velocity that drives the market, and also creates a need for false moralities to counter the fears and help us satisfy our growing sense of guilt for acting impulsively. The effect is the counter movement so necessary for movement or velocity to function. It doesn't actually matter what stimulates it – just that people move.

 

What can really be done about this issue except to perhaps just kill the the perpetrators before they multiply (sorry, that was a somewhat sarcastic saying an old girl friend used to quip).

 

A few years ago I was heading back to the train from a court appeal downtown regarding a tax exemption issue pertaining to our home and as I passed over the bridge crossing the Chicago River a man, I assumed to be homeless, looked up and just smiled at me. I proceeded over the bridge where I was met by a second man who did the same. I stopped, and then walked up to him and asked:

 

“Is it your job to sit here on the bridge and smile at people as they go by?”

 

Somewhat surprised, he replied; “Yes, it is!”

 

“And you come here every morning to simply brighten up people's day, right?”

 

“Exactly!” He exclaimed.

 

“Sir, thank you for your good and honorable work!” and I proceeded to give him all the money I had.

 

He responded: “I am not doing it for just money, but thank you!”

 

“I know, I just think you should know that I appreciate your work!”

 

He seemed a little taken back, and then offered; “You know, I'm the Mayor of the Bridge!”

 

“The Mayor of the Bridge?” I questioned.

 

“Yes, you can ask anyone! Ask her if you like.” He pointed to the next woman passing by.

 

So I inquired; “Do you know that man over there?”

 

“Of course, that's the Mayor of the Bridge!” she responded as she continued on to the train.

 

“You see! I also know things that no one else knows. In fact if you want to know what is really going on, you can just come and talk to me. People come and tell me all the time about what is really happening all over the city.”

 

I was impressed. That, I felt, was good to know.

 

I shook his hand and thanked him for making my day a little better, and then proceeded on.

 

Riding the train home I pondered what had happened and realized that I was the man moving the material world up in the tower. But that this had drawn me down to the city where I was given a gift because a Mayor had wanted to “clean the streets” and that this gift afforded me the opportunity to actually meet, The Mayor of the Bridge!

 

Connection.