Today on my way home I found out that one of my friends who lives on the street and is sick with epilepsy and chronic alcoholism, was placed in a psychiatric hospital (or as his friend said, “in Costiujeni”). I had the misfortune to say that at least there he will receive the qualified help that he needs. But she—his friend—looked at me as if I had said a dirty joke in church. Once she realized, however, that I don’t really know the true nature of the situation, said to me, “The truth is, no one will take care of him there! They will inject some medication into him that will turn him into a vegetable, and that’s it.” (This somehow made me think of Ken Kesey and his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I mention this in order for you to see how close the connection between life and literature is!)
Then, this same lady gave me a few lessons about faith. She begs at the church gate, and I find that it’s impossible to not end up discussing these types of topics in such a place. It is also likely, however, that faith is one of the few topics that we can talk about with those who live on the street 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It doesn’t really work to talk to them about Brad Pitt’s latest film or about Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel because it would be as if you were mocking them—they who can say like the Son of Man, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (There are also exceptions: a few years ago, I met a man who was begging at the train station in Odessa. He knew many of Pushkin’s and other Russian poets’ poems by heart—poets about whom I had only heard in passing. I must admit that I felt very stupid, in the most literal sense possible.)
The lady told me about her life and about how God miraculously healed her several times from things that, for us—people who are used to taking pills by the handful and waking our poor doctors up in the middle of the night when we have a toothache—would have most likely brought a fatal ending. Actually, everything started from the fact that recently she had hit someone who was cursing God. “I asked him,” she said, “Why don’t you just leave God alone? What has God ever done to you?” How many of us can boast that we have confronted at least one person who was cursing God? And then we have the courage to look the people up and down who are looking us down and up, praying for us to help them to buy instant mashed potatoes and sausages for dinner?! Does this mean that, starting tomorrow, we should declare jihad (in the sense of holy war) against everyone who curses? Of course not! Maybe this means that we should take our lives of faith more seriously. If you and I were to remove our church clothes, to get rid of the pious language we use and to stop singing in the choir, would anything be left? Or would there be just nothing? Actually, what remains could be called faith—which we have gathered—little by little—like gold diggers—from God’s word, from our private relationship with God, from our relationships with those we encounter each day and simply from the rubbish of this world through which we step so haughtily and full of ourselves. Please forgive us, Lord.
Someone once said, “I believe in God,” and I’ve been ashamed of this same affirmation that I’ve made maybe a thousand times. It’s an easy thing to say when you have a job, when you know that at the end of the month you will receive a salary and when you can afford to go out from time to time with your girlfriend for coffee and a pastry. And do you know what’s even worse? Even when we can afford so many things, we still have the courage to complain that we’re not beautiful or smart enough that we weren’t all born into the queen of England’s family or into the family of I don’t know which sheikh in Saudi Arabia…. We are vile sinners and nothing more—that is the conclusion of all things!