I find recently that I've been thinking of a homeless man I met in Kansas City when I was sixteen. It was at a park near a lake, or maybe it was a pond. I'm not sure if he had a tent or if he was squatting in the park, or maybe he was just passing through. He looked middle-aged, though he may have aged more quickly from living under the elements. I've forgotten his name, and probably couldn't pick his face out from a group if you asked me to, but the memory of him remains.
He talked and talked and talked, but he barely made any sense. He had bare feet, and his feet were covered in giant oozing black blisters, or maybe they were warts. He told us how his health has been good, and how he really likes to feed the geese at the park, and how he hates how people chase off the geese. He told us that he had to leave his home and family because his brother was "wearing a wire". His father too. Even that young, I knew that it was a symptom of paranoid psychosis. He didn't seem completely lucid, either, but he didn't seem dangerous. He liked talking to us. He was glad we came to speak to him.
I was with a group of maybe four other teenagers, some younger than me, some older. It was a church outreach, in which we were going around and praying for people in Kansas City. If that sounds like a bad idea to you, it's because it was, but militant evangelical Christianity will do its thing. I don't think the other people in my group realized he was homeless until we had already approached him. I remember one of the girls in our group gave him a little card talking about how he would burn in hell if he didn't go to church. It had the church's address on it. I remember being disgusted, and thinking that it was a horrible way to "convert" people to Christianity. I never confronted her about it. I wanted to. I didn't.
I think about this man from time to time. I know that if he had access to and was willing to try psychiatry, he could probably get on antipsychotics that would at least allow him to hold some job, somewhere. He was sleeping on the ground in the middle of the park. As far as I knew, he was totally exposed to the elements. I hope he had a tent somewhere that he could hole up in if it rained. I often wonder if he's still alive.
Another fun interaction I had that same week, another church outreach, was praying for a group of Muslim men. I remember this vividly, even though it was so long ago. I feel like this was a formational memory for me. Me and two other teenagers approached this table at the farmer's market, where a group of Muslim men were giving out Qurans. There was a large sign next to their table (or above it?), "WE LOVE JESUS BECAUSE WE'RE MUSLIM." I felt dubious about it, but one of the guys of our group approached the table and the rest of us followed. He asked to pray with them, and when they responded with a tense silence he took it as an invitation to start praying.
I still remember the look in their eyes. I don't think I've ever seen such ardent hostility in someone's look ever before or since. They looked like they wanted to kill us. Maybe if it was just him they would have slugged him on the jaw, but there were three of us, so they just looked angry and did nothing. I still think back to that memory, wondering -- what the fuck was he thinking?
Militant Christianity.