A friend of mine sent me a poem. She wrote it while sitting on a park bench watching pigeons and the homeless. She saw how the birds were fed yet free — no expectations abound, no moral judgments were to be found. The homeless also were on full display to all. Unlike the pigeons, there was plenty of judgment directed at them, for the homeless are always viewed through a prism that tells more about the observer than the observed. For some reason, her poem brought “Diana” to mind.
Diana is an older homeless woman in Santa Barbara who has managed to survive our — at times — cruel and inhumane streets, regardless or perhaps because of her severe mental illness.
Every morning I see her crawl out from her improvised shelter close to State Street. She dresses in layers of loud, colorful clothes. Looking at her this morning and thinking of the poem, I realize that not only is she a walking, living testament to the failure of our mental health system across the land, but equally as important, a living example of our spiritual values.
You see, she has no income, and her mental illness is too rich in delusions of wealth, of hidden bank accounts, monstrous houses and rented villas in the hills to enable her to accept my offers of shelter and help to apply for SSI. But survive she does.
At times I run across her as she carries her cache of calorie-rich donuts and other junk food that does so much harm to her body. I come upon her as she digs through her 3-foot-deep restaurant that for the rest of us passes as garbage cans. The homeless call it “dumpster diving.”
But Diana also has a legion of strangers who look out for her welfare — dozens of silent saints who give her clothes, food and money. She has a cadre of spiritual friends that goes beyond the usual moans and groans about the tattered social safety net that we all know is dysfunctional.
Instead of hanging their heads low and passing the blame on to others, they give her love with no conditions attached. Out of nowhere she wears new clothes, a sweater to hold off the cold or a jacket to ward off winter rains. At other times she holds plates of salad and nutritionally rich sandwiches. These good citizens, our neighbors, don’t participate in the countless strategy sessions that project reams of plans, both for good and bad. They simply listen to their inner conscience and act accordingly. Their prism is one of spiritual beliefs that we are one. Rich and poor, young and old, healthy and disabled — that our spiritual values are to be lived and not merely listened to once a week.
These kind people find it impossible to walk by her and leave it to others to lend a helping hand — to professionals who know all too well the severe shortcomings and lack of resources of the government. When they pass Diana, they pass a friend, knowing she is probably someone’s mother, daughter or wife.
A few months back, I began to get a constant stream of calls when Diana had injured herself and was too far into her mental illness to seek help for a hellacious wound that became infected. It literally took me weeks to persuade her to let me and Dr. Lynne Jahnke clean and dress the wounds. It was one of the worst infections I had ever run across, one that made me seriously question if we could save her life, let alone her leg.
Weekly, for six months, Dr. Jahnke and I would hunt Diana down, clean the wound, apply bandages and antibiotics, and share our concern. The calls continued to come from concerned business owners and citizens with a spiritual compass that guided them to care. For them, Diana wasn’t a performing pigeon, nor an eyesore nor threat. Maybe she was simply a woman who God had sent to Earth to allow us to grow into or out of our spiritual lives.
Words fail me in my gratitude to the kind citizens who have given so much to one so humbled by life’s circumstances. You are the Santa Barbara that in your quiet way moves beyond rhetoric and false values. Diana can’t thank you, so let me do so in my humble ways. Your moral blessing has helped this poor woman, and in the end, all of us. You make our community strong and special in these troubled times. Nothing can take that from you, her nor the rest of us.
Yours is the priceless gift without monetary value, one that is immeasurable. Thank you.
Postscript
Listening to the radio, my favorite singer, Martina McBride, brought me this same lesson of life as she sang God’s Will. It’s a simple song that tells us how the disabled often have more to offer us than we do them. Her song and this story come from the same place of the heart.
Shelter, a documentary about homelessness in Santa Barbara featuring Ken Williams, will premier at 7 p.m. Friday at the Veterans Memorial Building. Click here to reserve tickets.
— Ken Williams has been a social worker for the homeless for the last 30 years. He is the author of China White and Shattered Dreams, A Story of the Streets.