The homeless have always been in the margins of my sight, background characters to my leading role.  They were there, beggars and drunkards alike, cast in the shadows of the spotlight.  I had never really looked at them, but I remember them; some overdressed in layers of dirty apparel in the summer heat, some barely clothed in the wet winters. There were some lying on the sidewalk as if they were dead, there were some who walked out into the middle of the street during heavy traffic, sat down, and ate their lunch of scraps next to a dead pigeon.  The homeless were always there, but I never gave them a second thought.

One day a couple of weeks ago, I took the train to visit my mom in Carson.  When I met her in the parking lot of the train station, she asked me if I wanted to go take some water to the people living in the parking lot.  I was shocked. Did she mean to deliberately go to them and offer them one of her many gallons of water on that blistering day?

“Sure” I said, with some apprehension. I didn’t really know how to proceed with that.  She had never shown such open altruism to me before, and seeing her brave the encampment of soiled paisley bedding tents and mismatched shopping carts, I wondered how many times she had done this.

She walked with a smile, juggling four gallons of water in her arms as she offered water to those she passed. Seeing her confident stride, I did the same.

When all of our water had been given away, we walked backed to our car. As we passed a woman, she asked if my mother was a pastor.  I smiled and said no, just doing a little public service.  My mother stopped as well and asked the woman her name.  She began to cry at that, and said “Gloria”.

“Why are you crying, Gloria?” my mom asked.

“Because I’m out here, getting high all the time,” she said, her voice cracking.

And in that moment, I began to really see her.  She was a woman in her mid-thirties with such sad eyes and a broken spirit. She said she came out there almost every day to get high.  She spoke `for a while, just venting her troubles about her precarious situation, about how she wanted to do better, but couldn’t seem to find the strength.  When she had finished, she asked me to keep her in my prayers.

I thought about Gloria for a long time afterwards. I realized that the spotlight wasn’t just on me.  Everyone had their own spotlight, and deserved to be seen and heard just as much as I did.  The homeless weren’t just background characters, they were main characters—and main characters were human beings. People without homes deserve to be in the spotlight just as much as anyone.

People become homeless for many different reasons.  But just because they live on the streets doesn’t mean they aren’t worth our time, our attention, our respect.  The reasons people become homeless don’t seem as important to me as helping them adjust to their new situation and helping them get back on their feet.

I don’t know the solutions to “ending homelessness” either, but I know that journey begins with all of us showing a little compassion.