It is a scene of devastation, love and hope. A scene from the movie The Soloist somehow reveals the stunning beauty and tenderness of the Heart of God.  

Based on a true story, an L.A. Times journalist, Steve Lopez, wants to understand a new friend, a homeless man who is a musician and who suffers from mental anguish. When Lopez first encounters Nathaniel, he is playing Beethoven on a violin with only two strings. Nathaniel is wrapped in the passion of the music, playing to the pigeons who clap their appreciation with their wings and soar with the music to the heavens.  

Wanting to give his friend a place of safety, Steve finds him an apartment, but Nathaniel prefers to sleep on the street. Wanting to understand, Steve searches skid row one night to find Nathaniel, and it’s frightening. Drug dealers are menacing, pimps and prostitutes dart from the darkness, violence flares in different corners. When he finally spots Nathaniel, they bunk down in a doorway with cardboard for a bed. 

As they settle in the darkness, Nathaniel begins to pray the Our Father. Tender music accompanies his prayer and the overhead camera offers a sweep of this motley, destitute and beloved swath of humanity: some people are trying to sleep, others are shooting up, others are gratefully eating a meal provided by good Samaritans. There are sporadic flashes of violence and frustration, but for the most part, these poor souls are trying to survive. With great confidence, Nathaniel says, “I think these children of God are going to be ok. I hope the whole world rests well.”  He then prays the familiar words. He doesn’t doubt that the Father is there with them all. And as the camera sweeps over the scene, it evokes the Father’s gaze on His people, loving each one with great tenderness, perhaps poured out most powerfully on the poorest.

When I was a young woman, I backpacked through many countries, ending up in India.  There, in a leper colony at the edge of a Christian ashram, I met my Nathaniel. He was a young man disfigured with the disease, isolated in this seemingly God-forsaken corner, cut off from outside contact except for weekly Masses offered by the resident priest. He was radiant with love and gratitude. He lived in destitution, but knew himself to be loved by God and that was enough. I felt blessed by the presence of Christ in him.

That’s where my eyes were first opened to the presence of God in His beloved poor, and I have sought Him there ever since. I have lived in Toronto for almost two years now and have encountered different kinds of poverty. Just around the corner from Madonna House is Bloor Street, where many homeless stake out their corners. For the most part, they are open to some kind of relationship with us. We learn their names, we share short conversations, sometimes we offer a sandwich. Occasionally it seems that someone is falling through the cracks and we see what connections we can make for them. We notice when they’re not around. We grieve some of the indignities they suffer, like “Jeremy” no longer able to find shelter in the warm library because the teenagers swarm him during noon hour.  

The more hardcore poverty is downtown, where the effects of drug abuse and mental illness are more ravaging. But if you live or serve in this area and come to know the names and stories of the street denizens, your heart can break with their suffering and beauty. In this area, what’s staked out is not a corner, but a grate, where heat rises from the subway labyrinth. One man sleeps on a particular grate right on a street corner, forcing people to walk around him. He has a sleeping bag, but when it is sleeting, it does little good. It feels like a crime to leave him there, but apparently, he will not move.  

Poverty through mental health issues is searing and difficult to assuage or even to touch. Some days it feels like we have a constant stream of people suffering from addictions, compulsions, gut-wrenching grief and loneliness, begging for consolation and finding precious little. But for them, it is enough to have a listening, sympathetic ear — to have someone truly look at them and see their heart.