Pigeon Joe

"I invented homelessness", Joe said to me during a Sunday morning conversation in the Men's Room at a large downtown church. Joe comes in to do his ablutions and me, a diabetic, have to make at least one trip during the service to micturate.

Like Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner", Joe fixes me with his "glittering eye" and fearsomely launches into his current obsession that may range from the church's elevator; to syndicated nature writer Scott Shalaway; to the necessity of providing winter substance to city pigeons.

A friendly priest once told me that Joe was arrested once for feeding the pigeons, hence the nickname (employed only behind his back) "Pigeon Joe". I have no way of knowing whether this story is true, just as the story told to me that Joe's former hovel on the North Side was once featured on local TV. This story came to me via the custodian, who is no fan of Joe's since one of his tasks is cleaning the restrooms.

Christianity has had a difficult time in fulfilling Jesus' mandate to "Feed my sheep". The Salvation Army probably does the best job tending to people in need but the message provided there is indeed hard nosed. I was at a service on Father's Day once at the "Sallie" (nickname of the Salvation Army) on the South Side when the resident Captain extolled the virtues of fatherhood. He ended by asking the fathers in the room to stand for a round of applause. The several men I knew there had sundered ties with their children long ago, and I felt like this gesture was the proverbial rubbing salt into their wounds.

I would guess that Joe is in his late 50s, but it's hard to tell the age of someone who has been on the streets for a long time. A study done in the 1960s by New York's Bellevue Hospital found that most people who had hit the streets actually died in a few years, their physical plight being compounded by malnutrition. Based on things that Joe has said during our conversations, I would guess that he has spent something like 25 years on the streets. For the current population, Joe may have indeed invented homelessness.

Joe's appearance is such that he might frighten small children; a big man, over 6 feet, with the hirsute look of a woodsman who abandoned civilization decades earlier. A shaggy head of hair, resembling a lion's mane; a six inch beard with a long braid in the center surround small, pinpoint eyes.

I've thought about asking Joe if I could follow him around but I feel confident that he would turn me down. Early on, I gave a priest a few dollars to give to Joe and he said that Joe doesn't take money. The only good book about being what used to be called a bum is George Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris. However, I came to realize that one can't enter that life as a voyeur. It would be obscene to trail Joe and his peers around with notebook and camera in hand.

The church custodian shared that Joe only comes to the church Sunday mornings "and I thank God for that", he smiled. He went on to talk about how disgusting it was to clean up after Joe's sponge bath. Another parishioner (who like me enjoys the diversity that the proles bring to the church) expressed her fear to me that the custodian would prevail upon the new priest to close the door to Pigeon Joe "because he frightens little children." Few children attend the church and I have never seen one on the lower level.

In the gospels, Jesus brushes off a complaint about money spent on his anointing by saying, "The poor you will have with you always." The people who criticize our welfare system seem as a rule to oppose panhandling in front of the churches on Sunday mornings. There is a public bath on the South Side; maybe Joe should go there. (Unfortunately, I think it's closed.)

Clearly the three Abrahamic religions give tending to the less fortunate a high ethical priority. How this is done—from alms giving to the welfare state—is another question; the answers being nearly as disparate as the human species. As far as I can determine there is only one Christian thinker who tried to view the question from Joe's perspective. The ancient Greeks thought that one of the chief arguments from private as opposed to public charity is the opportunity that the former afforded for virtuous actions. Christian conservatives like Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater adopted this argument.

But how do we handle Joe and his peers? St. Francis de Sales, a Roman bishop and the Co-Founder of the Order of Visitation, told the sisters that before they began their ministrations that they should first ask the poor for forgiveness.

This is because that for the nuns to be charitable God had to first create the disadvantaged to be objects of their Order's charitable impulses.

Forgive me, Pigeon Joe.

Brother Umberto is a retired lawyer and a member of the Franciscan Order of Divine Compassion.

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