David teaching one of our homeless guests how to play Bingo
The Super Bowl for the City party is in the history books, and though I may not remember who won it in a few years, I’ll remember how I spent this Super Bowl. It turns out that hanging with the homeless for the game is a whole lot more fun than my usual guest list!
The first few minutes are always the toughest. That’s when you realize that this isn’t just another party, these aren’t just nameless people, and the gulf that divides us is both broader and narrower than you can imagine. Those first minutes are terrifying: talk to them? Do they want me to? As it turns out, they do. They really do.
My first conversation with a guest was with a man named Charlie. He was a white guy with gray and black hair. I first spied him getting a hair cut at our hair cutting station (manned by a local stylist school students). The cut gave me the opening I needed. “I like your new hair cut.”
This was the haircutting station
“It’s good, it is,” he responded. “You people are doing something amazing. You’re gonna be blessed.” This felt backwards to me. Wasn’t he the one supposed to be blessed? I sat down and chatted with Charlie. Turns out that he had studied to become a priest, before deciding the Catholic religion wasn’t for him. I was surprised he’d lasted that long. When Charlie was six a nun accused him of lying. “Stick out your tongue,” she said. “See…it’s black. I can tell you are lying and God’s going to get you.”
“My tongue isn’t black, I’m not lying, and I know this much: God isn’t going to get me. He loves me and you don’t.”
Charlie’s eyes were yellowing and kind of watery. He looked like he’d had a rough couple of years. But he told me he wasn’t there for the Super Bowl (“Don’t care who wins”) or the meal (“I can eat anywhere”). He was there to talk to people, normal people. It was one of the few chances he has to sit with people and strike up a conversation.
Charlie and I sit and chat
So simple to sit and talk. So simple and so hard.
The night was filled with little conversations like that. There was the dancing woman who seemed determined to show everyone each layer of her clothing, causing a little drama when she got to the last layer. There were the die-hard football fans in the front row. Two guys argued about why in the world we’d want him to wear a nametag with his name on it. “They just want to address you by name! It’s ok. No disrespect.” There were the foodies thronging at the table and stashing whatever looked like it would travel. All over the stadium there were back packs and bags, bicycles stuffed with stuff, and even a stroller stuffed with at least three dogs, though I honestly couldn’t tell if the dogs belonged to a guest or a volunteer! By the end of the night it didn’t much matter.
Ben Hood, one of our volunteers, serving during the game
And oh yes, there was Paris.
Paris was an outgoing black guy who liked nothing more than to sit and watch both the game and the goings on. He gave me an education. I sat with Paris for quite a long time, getting treated to his Barry White imitation and his monologue on life. A highlight may have been the moment he introduced himself to my husband as “I’m her lover; now don’t get mad and fight me.”
Paris and his buddy Eugene.
In the end, it was Paris who taught me the deepest lesson of the night.
As part of our outreach, we’d collected blankets to give away to our guests. This was vaguely prophetic as the temperatures (for Florida) plunged into the low 50’s and it was COLD! So our guests, ironically, were wrapped up in their various new blankets while we volunteers had a taste of what it was like to be cold. Sitting with Paris, he kept asking me if I was cold. I finally admitted that I was, and he tossed me one of his three blankets he had scored. “Well silly white girl, put that blanket around you.”
Oh! That’s when I realized it. If I put that blanket around me, I’d look like a “Guest.” With little else to distinguish us, those blankets were the easiest way to tell who was a guest and who was a volunteer. And while some of the volunteers would know me, certainly not the majority.
What will you do in that moment? You have a choice to be identified not with the helpers, but the helped. Not the powerful, but the humble. I wanted a badge, a wrist band, an identifier. I wanted to keep my identity. I turned down the blanket. For awhile. But I got cold and I had been thinking about why I wouldn’t take that blanket. So I finally accepted Paris’s hospitality and charity, and borrowed his new blanket. Sure enough, it wasn’t much later that one of our volunteers sweetly asked me my name and if I’d like some chips or crackers. I smiled, said “No thank you!” and resisted the urge to say “By the way, I’m a volunteer. Elder’s wife. I’m just cold.”
Paris seemed to get that. And if he didn’t, I sure did. God was speaking furiously to me. He was talking about how it feels to be identified with the people you are trying to help. To take on the outer clothing of the homeless for just a minute or two. It was a powerful lesson, only partially learned.
Super Bowl in the City. It didn’t make much lasting difference in the plight of these folks. It didn’t change much except to provide a few services they may have needed and a night of pure entertainment in lives that rarely indulge in such a thing. The addicted left mainly addicted, the homeless left homeless but with a new haircut perhaps. But it was a bridge. It humanized the stories. The party brought together people who needed to learn from each other. And hopefully, that Super Bowl party may have planted a seed of God’s love and life in the kingdom.
And we’ll always have Paris. 
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