The poster shows a young girl, obviously street-involved, huddled in a doorway. She is wrapped in a twenty dollar bill the size of a blanket. The bold lettering beside the picture proclaims, “WE CAN’T HELP STREET KIDS WITHOUT YOU.”
There is at least one other poster in this series, this time it is a young man sleeping on the side walk beneath the shelter of a giant credit card that is leaning against the wall and stopping the rain from getting to him.
It’s series of ads for Covenant House.
I feel like we’re selling indulgences. We’ve given up on the general public actually caring about homeless kids, so we just try to get to their wallets. They may feel a twinge of guilt every now and again but it’s not enough to make them do anything… but it could be enough to get them to throw a couple dollars our way – especially with the help of a few eye-catching ads.
The slogan, at least, is true. We can’t help street kids without you. But it’s not your money that will make the difference. It’s you, your physical presence, that will make the difference. These kids need love, a listening ear, some sort of positive relationship. At the drop-in we would see 180-250 kids every day. There would be 5 staff to work with those kids. And we would try hard to love those kids, we would try hard to journey with them, to hear their stories, to get to know them all. But the odds were too overwhelming. The majority of the time you just end up doing damage control, making sure the place stays safe. It’s sort of like being the catcher in the rye… only there’s a stampede headed your way. We really can’t help street kids without you.
I mean, these kids are dying. When we pass them on the street we’re looking at a dying kid. Some die fast and others die slow but most of them never really have a chance.
Scene change: imagine yourself at the beach. You notice that there’s a fierce undertow, the water’s sort of choppy and it’s okay for the adults but you notice an unattended toddler has wandered into the surf. The child is drowning. What do you do? Pack your bags, write a cheque to help make the beach safer and then get the hell out of there? Of course not. If you see a baby drowning and don’t reach out and pull it out of the water you actually share in the responsibility for that child’s death.
It’s no different with street kids. Stop giving money to make yourself feel better. Start learning what it means to love. Start learning what it means to be a Christian.
“What are your multiple sacrifices to me?” says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed cattle. And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats… Bring your worthless offerings no longer… they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer I will hide my eyes from you, yes, even though you multiply prayers I will not listen. Your hands are covered in blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from my sight.
Cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Reprove the ruthless;
Defend the orphan,
Plead for the widow.
– Isaiah 1.10-17

I was on the south side of the Seine, a little to the West of L’Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame de Paris, where the streets connect at strange angles and just before broad thoroughfares disperse and narrow in the depths of Montparnasse and the Latin Quarters. I was tired from walking all day, my left shoulder was bothering me and my knee was swollen – and I was hungry, but after scanning the menus of the nearest brasseries I was looking for something cheaper. Night was already wrapping the city in grays and blacks. The street lights casting reflections from shop windows and the water that glistened on the cobblestones. One block south of the river I slipped into a McDonald’s and was engulfed in a neon glow. I felt like I had walked out of history and became a character in a video game. And yes, John Travolta’s character in “Pulp Fiction” was right, they do call a Big Mac a Royale with cheese. I sat by the window and tried not to notice the rotating posters attached to the locked-up newstand just outside. The French version of Maxim has no problem showing naked women, and the French, apparently have no problem putting those naked women on billboards. As I devoured my meal I noticed the girl sitting in the corner. She had her back to the window, maybe the same age as me, her hair down to her chin. She was crying, crying hard but trying just as hard not to show it. He shoulders shook every now and again and she deliberately tilted her head so that her hair hung in front of her face, her hands clutched in front of her mouth. I think the fellow across from her was breaking-up with her, or maybe she had discovered his infidelity. Once he tried – tentatively – to take her hand, and holding it, pull it away from her face. She jerked away from his touch. A second time he touched her cheek with his fingers, wiping the tears away. She didn’t move. She wouldn’t acknowledge his touch.
I remember feeling that way once, when the world seems to shatter and break and I no longer recognized landscapes that once seemed so familiar. I remember longing for such a touch and also not being able to respond to it when it came, knowing it wasn’t the same – the touch was no longer intimate, it was apologetic, not passionate.
When I left the girl was still crying, still sitting bolt upright, and the guy was still looking sorry, looking like he wished he could fix everything but knowing he couldn’t.
Paris, they say, is for lovers. A city full of beauty and romance. I guess the harsh neon lights of a McDonald’s end up being an appropriate setting for heartbreak. There you don’t see cathedrals and statues, parks and old winding streets lined with apartments that seem to lean toward each other. There you only have tiles and sticky table tops, bright colored uniforms and glossy ads for coffee and salads – and garbages that are in constant need of changing.
That night I sat for a long time on the Pont Neuf watching the river carve a black path through the heart of the city.