Preface: I wrote this reflection in November. I did not publish it then because within a few days, fuller accounts of the woman’s life were published and family members gave a more complete picture of this woman as a full person. I publish it now because we are called to love our neighbors (Matt. 22:39) and loving our neighbor means recognizing another as fully human, fully God’s creation regardless of whether they look, think, work or live like me. In A Spoke in the Wheel, Renate Wind wrote that it was in prison where Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood “that people who were shaped neither by Christian faith nor by middle class education could be wise companions in the struggle, thoughtful and ready to help….” (166)
November 2010
Friday afternoon a homeless woman riding a bicycle without lights or a helmet was hit by a car and killed. Saturday I saw her friends gather grief-struck as they learned what had happened. Together we shared a moment of silence to remember her.
I was disappointed to read Sunday’s newspaper account which reduced her to what was known about her from public records – her age, her criminal record, and her last residence.
Why is tragedy more palatable when we imagine the victims are anonymous, disconnected and forgotten? Surely, her death is no less tragic because her mistakes were more public than my own; surely, her life is not worth less because it was darker and harder and colder than mine. Yet, that is what the world would have us believe.
But I know better. The portrayal by the newspaper was fiction. It was imagined. The reporters didn’t even try to discover who she was. In life, she was a mother, a fiancée and a friend. She was kind and loving and she will be missed by the community that knew her.
As we welcomed advent today and look to the promise of Jesus’ birth, we remembered Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist. We talked about the am ha-aretz, “the people of the earth”, who demonstrate their faithfulness to God in the every day and about those who sought power and dominion over them and who lived in excess at their expense. I believe the woman on the bicycle is one of the am ha-aretz and, contrary to the newspaper account, her life was not disposable just because it was not comfortable, because she was homeless, or because she had made mistakes. She was created by God and loved and forgiven by God.
