Walking next to some thick shrubbery recently, I saw a foot moving behind the bushes, and became aware of a warren of cardboard and old blankets in the shadows: There was a person living there. I felt embarrassed, as if I d walked in on somebody using the toilet.
And I understood something about how we respond to the homeless.
We have a tendency to look away, to not see these people huddled in doorways or holding crude signs on which they have written their life s tragedy.
They embarrass us, standing before us naked, having been stripped of home, employment, family and proper costume. They are simply unadorned human beings, without social titles and roles, and we have no script for dealing with them.