On Christmas Eve, a lesson in receiving

It was Christmas Eve, 1992.

I brought my 9-year-old daughter to work with me at a homeless shelter. I was not happy about working that night. It was snowing. People were lining up out front, waiting to come in for dinner. I needed to prepare for 100 or more needing shelter and was working in the back. I did not notice what my daughter was doing. She had gone to the main entry, near the dining room, and seeing men and women standing in line waiting to come in, snow piling up on their shoulders as they stood, she did what we should always do; she opened the door to bring people in out of the cold.

She wasn't supposed to do that. We had very strict procedures about when and how we let people in. In addition to my paperwork and other duties, I hadn't prepared the kitchen for our guests. It was probably an hour before anyone should have come in. I hadn't even made the coffee. And yet, when I walked to the front building where the kitchen and large dining room were, looking for my daughter, I found coffee perking, people laughing and talking, taking coats off, looking like a family come home for the holidays, with my daughter, a natural born hostess, circulating throughout the group, laughing, talking, and drawing smiles from faces that were starting to thaw.

That scene could have been enough for me to let my heart soften just a bit that Christmas, touched as I was seeing the loving spirit of my daughter. She was always, and continues to be, a young lady any father would be proud of.

I knew the core group of our guests well enough that I knew she was safe and being watched over by a dozen pairs of eyes. There is, or can be, a chivalry of the streets, if you will, a code. Our guests, "bum-cicles" in the eyes of some, maybe, were still men. They knew me, knew who my daughter was from other visits. They would watch over her, and me occasionally, when things got tense enough as they sometimes did.

That scene alone could have been enough for me. But, what played out in that room that evening changed me, changed the way I approach my work, changed my life really.

I'm not sure I really have the words to explain how, but I will try.

The primary mission, or duty, of a staff person in a group setting such as a homeless shelter, is peacekeeping. For me, it is a sensory thing. You train yourself to feel the energy in a room rather than watch it directly, noticing early hints of conflict, if necessary. The energy I began sensing that evening, though, was very different. There was a bustle that night, a Christmas cheer that felt both familiar and foreign at the same time.

When my daughter came to me and held out a handful of spare change that someone had given her, I began to get the sense of what was happening. I looked up from her full hands to see who knew more about this.  I caught the eyes of a particularly grizzled street vet. He was smiling. I noticed another man, moving about the room with an open cigar box. He was asking his fellow shelter guests to dig deep into their pockets for their spare change. They were taking up a collection to give to my daughter as a Christmas gift to her.

Well, we all know that isn't the way giving is supposed to work. My daughter and I were there to give, not receive gifts from these very poor men. Our religion teaches us that it is better to give than to receive. It is required of us. And yet, I saw joy in these men, as they hustled to provide gifts to this smiling child.

I do have to admit with some embarrassment that my daughter's joy in receiving was not feigned. I was a single parent and working in a shelter. Noble enough work, I suppose, but we were not experiencing the type of Christmas that some of her schoolmates or neighbors were, whose fathers had chosen more practical career paths. In this line of work you become familiar with people known as "Dumpster divers." These are people who dive into the better trash of a community to cull what is useful, what might even be resold. A man who did this for a living brought in a nearly new winter ski parka that fit my daughter perfectly. He had laundered it and confided, just a bit wistfully, how much he could have sold it for.

Another man left and crossed the street to a liquor store and returned with a new stuffed animal he had talked the owner into "donating" from a counter display. OK, I'm not exactly sure the owner knew he had donated anything, but it's the thought that counts, right?

The energy in that room, with these homeless friends, was very powerful. Although it can be a struggle in these material times, one of the great joys of fatherhood, I believe, is having the opportunity to give to my children. It brings me joy. Which is what I saw on the faces of the men that evening as they brought a smile to the face of a child. It straightened their backs; it raised their chins as well as their spirits. It gave these men dignity, a rare flower in the weed fields of homelessness.

The professional path I chose was in the "giving" professions, knowing that the benefits are far greater than a paycheck. Having the opportunity to be of some service sustains me in ways that a larger paycheck might not - and my family has paid a price for that, for better or worse.

But, what I learned that night, in a deeper way, was that if I were to give anything of value at all, it needed to be based on an equality of relationships, one that was not based on who was giving and who was receiving, but that as human beings we really need to be able to do both.

Housing matters, of course. But, healing matters more. We all need to know that our lives matter to those around us, that if you or I were not here, that a gift would be missing.

In the course of my life and work, I have known men and women who have fallen into the depths of despair, been in the presence of blind beggars, winos with what looks like fur on their teeth, individuals living outdoors or in shelters without the ability to clean their own waste from themselves.

I hope, as my daughter reminded me this particular evening, that I continue to experience each of these men and women, as desperate as they might seem, as persons with innate dignity, perhaps with wisdom, or generosity, or loving hearts broken by the weight of their lives who still have love to give.

For that matter, I hope that I continue to experience men and women who have material wealth or worldly power as human beings whose greatest gifts are not these things, but something deeper - that the essence of who they are, who we are, is so much more. William J. Miller serves as executive director of Friends of the Homeless, 769 Worthington St., Springfield.

Click here to read as published in The Republican