A backwards look at gluttony

Spending time at Rachel's Women's Center in downtown San Diego is necessary in my usually lazy and cushy life.  If compassion means to be with suffering, then anyone seeking to be compassionate should spend time with the homeless.  With the homeless, suffering seems to be the fabric of being.  It is amazing to see the intense suffering that happens in the lives of broken, battered women.  This week, I met a woman who was praying that the huge welt on her head, a result of domestic abuse, would never go away.  She patted it as she said: "I wish it would stay there always so I could see it and be reminded not to go back - back to him like I've done so many times before."  Why was she amazed when I called her courageous?

The strange truth of this conversation was that it happened in the midst of trial-sized shampoo, body lotion, and toothpaste.  I was sitting behind a counter, passing these necessities out like rations at a refugee camp.  "You can take up to three shampoos," I would say, and when a woman would thank me, I was half horrified to hear my own voice say "you're welcome."  As if I am the dispenser of basic human rights.  As if I have anything to give.  If we let it, charity messes with our heads.   As I think it should.  I am grateful when I am troubled and confused by my role as the Santa Claus of hygiene products - I am humiliated when I simply pat myself on the back (as I so often do) and go on with my day.  After two hours at the Center, I usually treat myself to a smoothie or, as was the case yesterday, a cafe au lait with sugar-free vanilla - a reward for being such a saint!

Harder than seeing that woman's welt, harder than rationing razors, is the donation room.  Here, goodwill and good intentions are piled in a corner for me to sort through, fold neatly, or throw out.  Calvin Klein mingles with White Stag, and paper and plastic bags burst open from the weight.  I am not bothered by the monotony or the simple-minded task before me.  No, my type-a personality loves to sort by size, style, and quality.  However, I find it hard to be there, and the difficulty of the donation room is two-fold.  Last week, I spent the first hour frustrated by rips, holes, sweat stains, and dribbled spaghetti sauce.  Really?  Do we really think the homeless won't notice that this swishy track suit is from 1984?  It seems to me that the donation room can quickly deteriorate into a garbage dump for those we often treat like garbage.  That week, I had brought my own bag of clothes to donate, and my green sweater with the visible stains was painful for me to see.

When I finally opened a bag with no less than ten pairs of pants, all from designer labels, I breathed an initial sigh of relief.  Here is someone who knows that homeless women want to look good, someone who is willing to give the best.  Yet as I pulled out Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs, and J. Crew, I suddenly felt even worse than the moment I first saw that track suit from 1984.  As I beheld so much wealth in one simple black trash bag, I couldn't help but visualize the closet from which it all had come.  This closet has designer label pants from 2012, never 2011.  Truly it was a moment of despair when I realized that charity can serve as justification, or atonement, for excessive consumption.  These garbage bags of gluttony, piled 3 or 4 deep, seemed like penance for the subconscious guilt of living out the American dream.