Wasn't going to post as I struggle to justify the relevance of the parent
and my response to the community, but think it's ultimately of little consequence and the words themselves are important to me, so...
~OT: I once worked as a charity fundraiser and had more than a few encounters with homelessness, one of which (a few years after leaving the job) left me quite stunned. The company was a bit of a stop-gap for those that could and would handle it, with accommodation, food, and a pretty interesting lifestyle all thrown in.
I once found myself in a pub, however, and a homeless guy came up and asked me for a bit of spare change. Having built up a healthy respect for people and torn down my impulse to judge on the basis of only a very small amount of information (from my exp. in said job), I gave the guy what I could when, looking in his eyes, I saw my friend. A guy I had worked with as a fundraiser, who, after a brief spell of bad luck had fallen through the gaps of society and ended up having to constantly climb. I did what I could for the guy, but more importantly he did so much for me - I had never realised destitution was so close (or that the climb back up was so high).
Another time I met something I can only describe as otherworldly.... it was almost sacred. Take what you will from it. I was approached (this was while fundraising) by a small, fat, black guy in comfortable, though slightly disheveled clothes in his late 50s or thereabouts. As he came close it occured to me that he didn't exist... I honestly cannot understand the instantaneous clarity of that thought... maybe he was just too much of a cliche for my mind to deal with, but there was something more, an aura that came from somewhere deep within him, from somewhere I don't think I have. He took my hand and started talking to me as though it was the most ordinary things in the world, and he proceeded to tell me about his pebble. He'd been fondling it in his other hand and as I noticed it he started telling me about where he'd found it and all the things that could have been while that pebble had remained hidden. And that, he said, was his point. My pebble was currently hidden, and I was close to finding it. It could be a stone, a coin, a woman or even the world! The point was that it was mine and that it had been sitting, passive, until the day I, and I alone, would come across it and bind myself to it...
I don't even know why that's worth sharing with you. Most people I tell, I'm sure, just think I was seduced by the romantic ramblings of a mad old man... maybe so, but I think that moment, myself, the old man and what he said deserve a great deal more dignity, even divinity, than that. I choose to make that moment spiritual (and I'm not by any means "religious")....