One day as I headed to the gym for my morning exercise, I noticed a man and woman moving hurriedly and yet invisibly as the sun was just beginning to rise.
The woman was in a wheelchair, the man struggled to push her along. He struggled because it was obvious that she was carrying all of their possessions in her lap.
I watched them as they crossed the intersection. Then the light turned green and I turned my attention to getting to my destination. They were there one minute and gone from my memory the next.
What happens to the souls of human beings when we no longer see one another? What happens to them? What happens to us? How are we all a little less human when we treat one another this way?
Every day in every city in our country, in our world, there are those who are visibly invisible among us. We see them but we do not really see them. We drive by them, pass by them, rush by them, but we do not see them. They move among us like shadows. We know they are there, yet we do not see them.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that in 2024 there were more than 771,000 homeless people in our country and 135,000 chronically homeless people. Both are record numbers.
In Memphis, we have on any given night more than 1,200 unhoused people. In 2023, Memphis-Shelby County Schools provided services to over 2,800 homeless students and their families, according to Chalkbeat Memphis.
They are visibly invisible to us. Unhoused. Unnamed. Unseen.
Roger and Margery Wolcott helped me see them. The Wolcotts retired to Memphis from California in 2013 and started Constance Abbey, a support network for men and women experiencing homelessness. Both were in their 60s then. Roger died in 2023.
The Wolcotts spent a decade welcoming and serving their homeless neighbors at two homes they leased on Hamlin Place, near St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral Downtown. They called them neighbors, not clients.
L.B. Walker was one of those neighbors. In his 60s, Walker was a gentle and soft-spoken soul who had to be convinced to be taken to a warming center in winter. He said he was OK sleeping outside in the cold.
Roger and Margery didn’t see a homeless man. They saw Mr. Walker, a man who was far too accustomed to not being seen. They chose to see him but not because it was easy, or because they expected something in return.
They saw him because he was a fellow human being in all his full beautiful humanity. And he saw that in them. That was the gift they gave each other.
Isn’t that really what life should be about? Shouldn’t the gift we offer one another on a daily basis be the ability to see and be seen by one another?
Aren’t we all made a little more whole? Not by the money we have or don’t have, the place in which we live or don’t live, the job we have or don’t have, but by the ways in which we see one another and invite one another to see us?
Parents say to children, “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” For children to look at their parents is a sign of respect. For parents to look at their children is a sign of love.
To look at someone is the first step in seeing not only the person you are looking at, but in the exchange, you see yourself.
Roger and Margery spent all they had seeing people no one else was willing to see. Did they fix the problems of the world? No. But in large and small ways, in simple and profound ways, they did help to heal the lives of those they did see. And in the process, they were healed.
May we all be moved to be and see beautiful people everywhere
we go.
