From the Boundary: On Fr Quixote and Dulcinea the Beggar

Have you noticed that when something, for whatever reason, takes your interest and when heart and mind are at one with it – though you’re not actually seeking or striving for anything to do with it – things happen? Your thoughts have somehow projected themselves. It’s as if deep inside you, the waters have broken and you’ve given birth to something from the truth of your being whose form and reality are already known, as if you and it are conjoined twins. It’s as if, in that moment, eternity has whispered. Let me give a very simple example. Years ago, after I’d seen the film Gandhi, I felt that I wanted to know more. I did nothing but, a week or so later, as usual I went on to ebay to see the religious artifact listing of a Canadian friend as I did every month. As if from the blue I found – and it was totally untypical of him – a set of Gandhi’s works, which I then bought. A coincidence? Yes, in a way – but a one in a trillion coincidence surely, with something of the ‘holy other’ about it.

Well, that’s what’s been happening to me recently. Some of the themes I’ve written about – for example, beggars and respect – have played themselves out in life.

Now – we all know, don’t we, that the Law Courts’ car park in White Park Road is holy ground? St Peter has been said to walk there in wig and bands. It’s the courtyard of the Temple. Its car parking spaces have been fought over by generations of attorneys keen to reform our justice system. It’s a 365 day Passover. It’s protected by burly Papal musketeers wearing the grey-blue uniform of God with ‘respect’ written on their epaulettes. I go there mid-afternoon. In my world of jumbled imagery I somehow feel closer to Truth there, and besides it enables me to meet my old pupils doing what they can to make their way. Sometimes I meet my Wife there. Sometimes I write poetry and talk to travellers like myself. Inconveniencing no one, I make no apology for it, for it’s the ‘gate’, a mushroom of light, from which daily I begin my ministry of the streets which not even the jolly trappists in the Diocese can take from me. Besides, don’t five years or so on the Community Legal Services Commission give me some kind of usufruct? No? Oh well.

Now – do you remember my column on beggars and begging some weeks back? If you had your eyes closed when you read it, you’ll remember that I suggested that beggars were the pits, that they were blots on the social landscape who should never be indulged with charity, that not even Mother Teresa would stomach them.

Now – imagine a beggar in the Law Courts’ car park. What would you see? You’d see the end of civilization as we know it, the final collapse of the legal system and the tourist trade. You’d see a nation stripped of religious belief wandering the deserts of despair. You’d see sex shops in Henry’s Lane. You’d see ‘respect’ disemboweled and thrown to the dogs.

Well, last week there was one there. In fact, of late he’s habitually there after 3 p.m. He walks up to attorneys getting into their cars and tells them he’s hungry. I’ve no reason to believe they’re more generous than anyone else – more generous than me, say, for most certainly I too give him alms provided he doesn’t ‘bug’ me too much. See, he does walk a very fine line between soliciting for cents and importuning for dollars, being a thorough nuisance. I don’t mind him. Why should I? The Pharisees would say I shouldn’t be there either, though I don’t ask for anyone’s indulgence. Besides, in our different ways we’re both outcasts. Think of him as my Dulcinea.

OK – so last week the fella, my Dulcinea the beggar, walks up to my car, my Rocinante, and asks for alms. I tell him that since I gave him the day before I’ll give him on my return if he’s still there. 

Enter two blue-grey musketeer security guards stage left who remonstrate with Dulcinea and tell him to leave. Fair enough – Athos and Aramis, the more spiritual sort, are not unkind and beggar doesn’t argue. But then Act 2 – Porthos, as St Michael, appears galloping with baton in hand and arm stretched at 45 degrees to body intent on dispatching a dragon. He’s a big man, this Porthos, and masterful. He takes beggar by scruff of neck, beggar not resisting, and frog marches him to the pasture of lost hope. As he does so, he repeatedly jabs beggar in back with baton and thwacks his legs. Is that what Jesus suffered? Enter Fr Quixote stage right, sickened by what he’d seen.

“There was no need for that”, he tells Porthos. “There was no need to assault him, to hurt him. He offered you no resistance.” At this, incensed by interfering old man in jeans with fancy orange Rocinante daring to tell them what’s right and wrong, they turn on him, snarling and growling. I can’t remember everything that was said but for all the world Quixote became a beggar too. It’s called scapegoating. “If it’s that precious, why don’t you fence it?” – that one didn’t go down very well.

 But then another appears, a tall middle aged someone in civvies. Flapping his windmill sails of self-importance and with eyes like fire balls screaming ‘respect me’, this otherwise jobless Toledo trader tells Quixote that he saw him giving to Dulcinea yesterday. “You’re a church goer, right?”, says Quixote, with demonic discernment. “Yes”. “Then don’t you know yet what ‘charity’ is? Besides, was it your money I gave him – or mine?” The patronising parting shot of this stiff-necked busybody: “Go along”. 

Now look – how could any reasonable person possibly respect the musketeers in their unbridled use of power over? Is that what the ‘old values’ really are? Is that how some uniformed Bajans do their thing – in packs bullying the weak and defenceless? Is that what a uniform does to a man – turns him into a self-validating robocop? Is it a plantation mentality? Why wasn’t Dulcinea, or Quixote for that matter, ‘Sir’? The musketeers, despite all the swaggering, have no more right to assault people than you or me. The precious virginity of the car park was not at risk from either beggar or old man. I asked some wise security guard friends what they thought of the incident. They were appalled. Are they exceptions, do you think? Yesterday I saw Dulcinea again. He seemed pretty well. Oh – and a musketeer said ‘hi’. That was nice of him – and it made my day.

Until the next time then – go safely.

Nirvana from the boundary: It’s when you discover you’re nothing. But rejoice, daily God uses your nothing (Mother Teresa - adapted).