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September 24, 2021Today I went to Market Basket and saw a woman in the parking lot playing an electric violin. Next to her was another woman, with a baby on her hip. I thought about how I hadn’t given this week’s tithe away, and decided to give her some cash on my way out.
I am realizing that I have had criteria for giving money away. Just a week ago at this very same grocery store, I was aggravated to see a little boy asking for money at the exits for his football team; he looked to be around 7 years old, and was with his mother, in his jersey, with a can for this obviously store-sanctioned beg. He stepped right into people’s paths on their way out of the store, looked people in the eye and said, “would you like to donate to support the something something small something football league?”
It wasn’t the boy who offended me, it was the whole idea. I’ve developed mad skills at exiting grocery stores just behind and to the left of someone else, buffeting myself against the ask, because I hate being forced to say no. Obviously I’m not against fundraising, but this attack at the exits just rubs me the wrong way. It usually is some small child having to beg strangers to fund their activity or some agency; I don’t like to give to agencies I haven’t researched, and I don’t want to have a fact-finding conversation on the sidewalk, with my hands full of bags. Still, I guess this kind of fundraising works, and… maybe teaches kids a… valuable lesson? I'm not totally proud of this reaction in me; not sure what it's even based on, but I feel a strong kick whenever I am in this situation.
This woman, though, with the violin, had a sign in English and Spanish that said “need help to pay bills, have three kids” and had a bucket and info about her cash app, so people could give online. That’s 2021 right there!
I realized that if I gave this woman 20.00, I’d still have 53.00 to give to the victims of the hurricane in New Orleans. That made $20.00 seem like not much, actually. When I left the store I scanned the parking lot and couldn’t see them, couldn’t hear the violin. The sign was still there, and the bucket, so I crossed over to them, and that was when I realized the violin player was not a woman, she was a young girl, a teenager. Her mother, nearby, with the baby on her hip, was the one who needed help with her bills, and the young woman, one of her three kids, I guessed, was helping in the way she could help.
Now. Here’s where I wish I could say that I walked up to the little family and asked them their names, heard their story, offered to pray for them. But instead, I met eyes with the mom, dropped the $20 in the bucket, and went to my car. Sigh. Is it enough to give them cash without investing the tiniest bit of grace to them? I’m going to wrestle with that one a bit; I can hear my spiritual director asking me “what do you think God has to say about that?
This experiment is forcing me to think about ways I like to give and ways I don’t; people/agencies/causes that feel somehow worthy of my money and those who don’t. I guess what’s happening is that my prejudices and my values are coming into sharper focus, and both give me a lot to think and to pray about.
