What it is to be human...

I have three stories for you.

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The first is about an ageing German film-maker, who is allowed entry to a cave filled with ancient paintings and bones of now extinct species. Gazing at the paintings - so vivid he is moved to comment that one looks like it could have been painted yesterday - the film-maker, Werner Herzog, ponders the nature of what he calls "modern man", a species he distinguishes from Neanderthal man primarily on his inclination to create, to draw, to represent. What yearnings in the human soul, he questions, do these paintings indicate?

Interviewing one of the many scientists involved in the project, Herzog asks the question of what makes a human. His interviewee cites the ability to adapt well to one's environment and to interact effectively with other beings (he is French, so the latter word is pronounced "be-eengs" - an awkward, double vowel sound that gives it greater emphasis than usual). Herzog does not seem satisfied with this answer. Surely humanity involves something more? A quest for meaning? A quest for beauty and truth?

Another one of his interviewees seems to agree, noting at another point in the film that the name homo sapiens - the man who knows - is grossly inadequate as a description of our species. He offers instead the name homo spiritualis. The sacred choral film score in the background resonates in agreement.

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The second story is of an ageing French illusionist, who finds himself in Edinburgh attempting to make a living for himself plying his craft at a run-down music hall and renting a room in a hotel he shares with acrobats, a washed-up clown and an equally washed-up ventriloquist. He is accompanied by a young girl, Alice, who believes in the magic that he only fakes. Alice becomes enthralled by the world that he brings her into, but it never satisfies him. He wanders through it all with the same baffled nonchalance that his creator, Jacques Tati, epitomised. Few of the characters speak the same language. Those that speak English are rarely coherent, and there are never subtitles when French or Gaelic are spoken. Yet the characters - all animated - are magnificently real and vivid. The film so often pauses on pathos-laden images of desolation: of the drunken ventriloquist sleeping in the street, his dummy going for an ever-decreasing price at a local antique store; a clown drinking alone while vaudeville tunes play on a faltering old gramophone.

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The third and final story is on a Lygon Street tram returning from the cinema, a local homeless man who I recognise from years spent on this street entering the tram near me. Somehow he has acquired a slab of beers, one of which he is drinking now, lying back on the plastic concertina wall that unites the two halves of the tram, glassy-eyed, not quite tranquil. I pray for him until he exits the tram. As he gets off, a man helps him zip his backpack up again to avoid losing all the beers stored in there. I'm not quite sure it is an act of kindness. When I get off the tram, the troubled and troubling lady who frequents my tram stop stands at the lights on the corner of Lygon and Stewart Streets, howling at the wind and the traffic and the rain.

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How long, O Lord, how long?

Restitution and Offsetting

How do we assuage our guilt? It's an important question. The Catholic church told us to wallow in our guilt. Self-condemnation, it seemed, was the way to atone for sins we could never undo. The Freudians told us guilt was an immature response to our lives and something we needed to overcome for the sake of psychological health.

These days, we don't seem to know at all. We go for runs to deal with our guilt over eating that extra piece of cake. We offset our carbon emissions to atone for an overseas flight. And then we tell ourselves to not feel bad. It isn't our fault. We're only human. We've all got to live a little.

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8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:8-10)

Zaccheus could never have done anything to make up for his guilt. He could never have been accepted by a society that resented the crimes he had committed. He could never have broken out of the cycle of guilt and indulgence that trapped him. But Jesus called out to him and said, "Zaccheus, come down from that tree." And thus began a transformed life. The first thing he did was pay back those he had cheated.

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3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”

5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. (Matthew 27:3-5)

Judas saw the best of all men hanging on a tree and knew he had put Him there. He looked at the silver in his hands. He looked at the perfect blood smeared all across it. There was nothing he could do. Giving the money back would never bring back the life he had betrayed. Hanging himself on a tree could never take away his guilt either. But he could see no choice.

*

A man sits at the entrance to Lygon Street. A scrawled note on a piece of cardboard sits in front of an icecream container with a few odd coins sitting in it, the sort of coins I consider a nuisance. The sort I would throw away if I could.

I have no money in my hands, only the books I just bought from Readings. The man blocks my path, and his needs cloud my happy Saturday mood. I glance at his face. I do not know what to do. Maybe I'll beat myself up over it, tell myself I suck, that I'm another Western hypocrite, that I need to be more compassionate, more giving, less selfish. Maybe I'll go home and donate to a charity to offset my guilt. Better than that, maybe I'll fall on my knees before the perfect one who already bled for my every moment of hypocrisy. And what will He say to me, when I kneel there? "I forgive you. Now go and do what you know is right."

He has shown you what is good, O man. And He knows that you will forever fail to do it. Rise every day. Pray that this time you will do what you are called to. Cling to the grace that forgives you every time you fail.

Worthy causes

The past week has seen me back in my old stomping ground of Carlton a fair bit. It's always an interesting experience returning, feeling at once just I've never left and like it's years since my life revolved around that place.

One of the more awkward aspects of city life that I am always reminded of when I go back is the very challenging question of when to give money to beggars - and they abound on Lygon St, particularly outside Lygon Court. I never worked out a consistent strategy to adopt when I lived there, and am no more consistent when I go back. On Tuesday night, going to the Nova to watch a film with my old housemate from the latter Carlton days, we were approached by someone asking for money to get him and his uncle somewhere. My friend obliged with some small change, and so I felt like I might as well. I only had about $1.50, plus a few 5 and 10 cent pieces, so I got out the $1 and the 50 cents and handed it over - only, we were standing just over a drain and, much to our collective horror, the $1 fell out of my fingers and through the grate. The man stood over the drain, looking in and saying, "Is there any way of getting it out?" I didn't really know what to do - I only had what I had already dismissed as worthless shrapnel left in my wallet, which I instantly took out and gave to him as some means of making amends. The larger notes in my wallet seemed too much to give him as well - why, I wonder? Was I playing it safe, and figuring that he could hardly do much damage to himself with only 70 cents, whereas $20...well, who knew what he might do?

What stood out for me most from the whole experience was that I wouldn't miss that dollar coin that was now circulating somewhere in Carlton's sewerage system. I had parted with it because it didn't mean a lot to me, and so I was no worse off. To that man, though, the dollar was worth enough that he even contemplated climbing into the drain to get it. Speech of Arrested Development had it right, I suppose, when he said, "Two dollars is a snack to me, but it means a big deal to you." Pity "Mr Wendall" hasn't dated very well. The social message was probably once very profound.

Then, last night, I sat outside Vina Bar, sadly soon to be closed down, with some friends from my book group, when we were approached by a girl, probably about twelve years old, who was selling handmade friendship bands. We declined her offer without much thought. I wondered as she passed what she was selling them for. I had no use for a friendship band, but would probably give her money for one if it was for a good cause. One of my friends must have had the same idea, calling the girl back to ask what she was raising money for. The girl's answer was that she was trying to buy all the "Twilight" merchandise. I tried to hold back my amusement while a couple of my friends engaged her in conversation about "Twilight" and why it was important to her. The girl was delighted, clearly, to share her love of the books, and her hopes for the movie, just released on DVD - and, I must admit, while my snobbery made me feel that this was in no way a worthy cause, I suspect my friends had the better response to talk to her about it, and to make a gutsy twelve-year-old girl feel a bit more comfortable walking alone on Lygon Street on a Saturday night.

The lines to guide us in situations like this are fairly thin. If we aren't responding with love, we make every cause worthless. With love - even the most worthless of causes can gain some purpose.