Something scary is happening to me. This the true problem I am confronting in my life: a loss of compassion for the poor--a pragmatism that steals away the heart from encarnating myself with the poor. Where has that person I once was gone to? That person who wouldn't eat his lunch because he saw poor, hungry, people on the streets and knew they were hungrier than he. That person who found the greatest joy living in and amongst the people of the garbage dump talking and laughing with them and drinking their tea and getting to know them and their realities. What happened to that person who is now better dressed, working for a service organization that keeps him decently housed and decently fed? My heart for the poor has been hardened by a desire to help them through structure and pragmatism. Perhaps I am still illusioned by failures with CCMV. I know not what made me this way. But the other day I saw a man with one shoe, homeless, and begging on the street. And in my bag I had an extra pair of shoes too small for me--but I didn't approach him because I thought I needed the shoes for the gym I was going to to lift weights. What bullshit! Adn then two days later I saw a man with no legs sitting on the corner of a street begging for money and his eyes were filled with a warmth and a humanness. And all I could feel was guilt and a need to avert my eyes. I didn't want to sit down and talk with him and get to know his name and his situation. This is my spiritual crisis. It's not that I find it difficult to maintain an inner spiritual life, but it's that my heart has been hardened and my eyes blinded to the poor amongst me. I still want to help them, but in a structured way. And though this has its value in some ways, it can NEVER take the place of sitting on a street corner with a legless begger and getting to look into his eyes without shame or pity, but with respect, compassion, and love. Or nothing can take the place of sitting with a one shoed homeless man and putting new shoes onto his dirty, blistered feet. And I know that untill I learn to be able to do that again, I will never truly be able to say with conviction the words of Saint Francis "My God and My All" or even to pronounce that revolutionary prayer of Jesus that began with the words "Our Father." For it is pure hypocrisy to say and affirm belief in "Our Father" if one can still avert his eyes from the suffering of those he passes on the streets everyday. Without the touch of the poor, pragmatism steals the touch of God administered through contact with the reality and the lives of His most poor.