My colleague at Father Woody’s, a day shelter for the homeless and the poor, points out that the wearing of rosaries as neck jewelry is sacrilegious. But then applying rigid doctrine to our population — hard, crusty people on the outside, fragile within — is impious to the core.
We have boxes and boxes full of rosaries. Thousands of them. A religious order donated these strings of plastic beads many colors: pink, yellow, green, red, lavender, black and white, brown.
I am struck by the individuals who reach for the pure white beads instead of the festive-pastel-hued fun ones. Those people seem to embody Consecration by their simple act of reaching for a color that’s plain and pure.
There is an innocence about the homeless. How to see it? Well, you get past some character flaws: manipulative, dishonest, antagonistic, despondent. How to do this, then?
You have a rosary giveaway that you announce during lunch, the shelter’s dining room filled to capacity, volunteers serving plates of chicken and rice, with tossed salad slathered with ranch dressing. You say, today we are giving out rosaries, please raise your hand if you want one. A few hands immediately shoot up. Free? If it’s free, it’s wanted. So the rosaries land in the first three hands.
Francisco wants a green one. Raynette, by the luck of the draw, gets one that’s lavender — she takes in a breath that’s mingled with the ahhh sound and reverentially places the plastic beads around her neck. Patty says, when I hand to her the last of the bunch, a white one, “That’s good, the white one is for me.”
Every face in the place is battered — bruised, cut, scarred, stitched, swollen or in some way damaged, disfigured, worn and depleted by surviving out on the streets every day, every night.
We run a day shelter where these same faces sit their bodies down for a couple hours. They drink a cup of hot coffee. They eat something. They get warm. They talk — to each other, to us. I get a cheerful hello from them when I come in early mornings: “Good morning Miss Linda.” And, “Hola Linda, como estas.” I respond: “Buenos dias Miguel.” And, “Good morning David, how’s it goin’?”
Everyone looks to me from where they sit, except for those whose heads are planted in their cushioning arms on the tabletops — asleep, semi-conscious, or plain sick. I feel like an angel passing through their midst, and I ask myself, how can I live up to this image today?
At a quarter ’til the hour, we announce closing time. I watch them leave. With rosaries around their necks they look like atypical vow takers, a bunch of illogically merry acolytes, setting out to wander and seek through the streets of downtown Denver. I notice that many of our guests here have engineered the acquisition of two and three rosaries of different hue; they are splendid looking walking out into the cold weather shouldering packs and bags and other gritty, grimy paraphernalia.
Linda Harmon King (linda@frwoodyshavenofhope.org) is a writer and volunteer coordinator at Father Woody’s day shelter near downtown Denver.
