Learning From the Last

A few blog posts back I talked about “the last.” For those of you who missed it, “the last” are members of society that most of us overlook or have thrown away. The last can be of any income level, but for the purposes of this piece I’d like to focus on the homeless and insane. They, like other “lasts” are the scorn of the elites and supposedly the scum we dare not seek.

But maybe we should.

Though not without their struggles, the homeless and insane have stepped outside of the rat race. They are disconnected from our doldrums of stagnant salaries and high inflation. The frivolousness of Hollywood is of no concern to them, and because they’re not obsessed with the things that we are, they can connect with other things. Deeper things.

They have a better connection to nature; it would be hard for a homeless person sleeping on the earth not to. “Grounding” is becoming a popular health trend; a quick internet search yields pictures of people lying on the earth or even connecting their limbs to it with wires.

Homeless would have an advantage in this area; they “ground” every night.


Many of us have also seen the homeless and insane screaming at the air, talking to things visible only in their mind. Or so we think.

While I won’t’ dismiss mental illness as a cause of most of these cases, I must for a minute consider the spiritual. It is easy to see how a disconnect from this sometimes-overwhelming physical world makes these people more susceptible to the spiritual. They could be trying to rebuke spirits of darkness.

On the opposite, they may be better able to interpret spirits of light, God’s will, or the angelic host around them. If so, could they share this skill with us?

The homeless also possess practical skills-skills that could be useful in an emergency. Numerous talking heads have warned of American’s aging grid and the consequences of its failure. Except for the streetlights and a few battery-operated devices, most homeless live without electricity daily. They have found a way to be “off grid” even while surrounded by it.

What could they teach us when the lights go out?

The movie The Day After Tomorrow entertains this possibility. In it, a homeless man trapped in a New York Library teaches college students how to stay warm and scrounge for food during a severe snowstorm.

Caring for the homeless is a universal Christian calling. The Catholic Church has written this into its dogma, considering it “one of the corporal works of mercy,” and Protestants have been no less dedicated. On the surface it seems like the homeless reap all the benefits, but that may be incorrect. The financial benefactors may also benefit, just in more obscure ways.

There’s more to this world than winning the rat race. Lily Tomlin once said: “the trouble with the rat race is, even if you win, you’re still a rat.” We’re called to be better than rats when we leave this world.

Perhaps learning from the last could help us accomplish this goal.