Hunger Strike: the Wisdom of a Street Jester

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” -- 1 Cor. 3:18-19a NRSV

I don’t know that you would have called him a bum, although he was sleeping on the sidewalk every night. It was apparent from the first time I noticed him that his life was a witness. Dressed in heavy boots, jeans and covered up in a brown camouflage waste-long hooded raincoat that would protect him when the early April weather turned damp or cold, he sat on the concrete with his back to a street light on Independence Avenue in Washington, DC. He flanked himself with large, laminated posters with the words “STOP YOUR WAR” stenciled in large black and red block letters. The words encircled a poster-sized photograph of a little girl, alive but bloodied, and with the bandaged stump of an arm. If you permitted it to, the photograph drew your attention to the collateral damage of war. Most people I saw simply walked by.

My wife Barbara and I had chosen to sit at the side of a marble stairway that ascends from Independence Avenue to the Canon Legislative Office Building entrance on the corner of C Street. I drank a soda while she took a moment to talk with her mother by cell phone. We had just visited with Senator Clinton’s Chief of Staff, and had walked across the Hill, to the opposite side of the Capitol Building, where we would soon join some colleagues to visit a Congresswoman’s office. The day was sunny and bright, but cool and breezy. I watched dozens of people walk by the protestor as he leaned back against the street light in silent witness. One of the white placards that flanked him indicated the serious nature of his protest: he was on day eight of a twenty day hunger strike. You could not help but notice him, but the first time I saw him and the image of the injured child through which he made his proclamation, I didn’t want to look too closely. Now, sitting twenty yards away enjoying the refreshment of a Diet Coke, I watched as people passed him by as though he was invisible. People, I knew, were dealing with their discomfort through denial.

“I’m going to go talk to that guy,” I said to Barb as I stood up, leaving my half finished Coke on the step. I walked towards the corner and the street lamp he had claimed for his back rest. As I got closer I noticed his trimmed beard, four or five inches long, streaked with brown and gray. His chin was pressed against his chest as though he was sleeping, ignoring all the people who were ignoring him.

My blazer and slacks were matching navy blue; I was wearing a white shirt and powder blue tie. I was conscious of how differently he and I were dressed as I knelt down on the pavement, resting my weight on one knee, so that I could engage him eye to eye. I thought about offering to get him something to drink, but would have had to walk a significant way to purchase something. I could have offered him what was left of my Coke, but that didn’t seem right, either. Taking his hunger strike seriously, and knowing he had thought it through if he was prepared for twenty days, I didn’t want to patronize him. “This is quite a silent witness you are making,” I said out loud. He opened his eyes and looked at me, surprised I think by the human contact.

“What’d you say?” he asked as we made eye contact. He was wearing what appeared to be an old fatigue hat, perhaps of army issue, but available in most stores selling cotton head wear for summer. He had three crosses painted on his forehead in red and blue. “It’s quite a silent witness you’re making here,” I repeated in a friendly way. “I’ve seen you here all morning. I’m interested in your story. What motivates you to do this?”

It was as he lifted his face to talk to me that I first saw the three crosses on his forehead. “To tell you the truth, I’ve taken the pain of the world into myself,” he said. He pulled one of the laminated posters around and pointed to the girl, so severely injured. “This little girl is the reason I’m here.”

I wanted to know his story, what wound from his past was so severe that he would seek to draw attention to himself through this public hunger strike, and in so doing, draw attention to the vulnerable and innocent ones whose lives are so damaged by war. What would make him, seemingly ignored by thousands as he occupied the sidewalk all day and all night, rain or shine, do this? But he didn’t mention any wound he might be nursing by his behavior.

“There’s no use doing this at the White House,” he said. “I tried that. They are a bunch of crazies there. Nothing is going to change them. I’m sitting here,” he said, looking over my shoulder towards the congressional office building, “because there is a chance something can change from here. These people are our only hope for action.” Then he paused, looked at me for a moment, perhaps noticing the olive wood dove pinned to my lapel, or my name tag with the logo of the New York State Council of Churches, and asked, “What are you doing here?” A little self-conscious as a result of his question, I thought to myself about what a picture we must have made, he in his hippyish get-up sitting under his placard tent in protest, and I, in a coat and tie, kneeling beside him.

“I’m here with colleagues from several churches in order to carry a message much like yours into the halls of Congress, to meet with senators and representatives.”

“Are you here about the war?”

“Well, actually we’re here about the war but more than the war,” I said. “We’re here to talk about civil liberties and to urge resistance to torture. We want to talk about next year’s federal budget, to urge more help for people who are the most vulnerable. We want to make sure our country doesn’t attack Iran and widen the conflict.”

“What church are you with?” he asked.

“I’m Presbyterian,” I said, “but I’m here with a lot of people from a variety of Christian denominations.”

“I’ve completely given up on organized religion,” he said, shaking his head a bit. “I don’t mean any disrespect to you, but I’ve given up on the church.” As he said the words, and I thought about his unconventional protest, it came to me that many in the church didn’t have too much to do with people protesting as he was either.

“I’m out here 24-7,” he said. “This is what I do.”

“My name is Clint,” I offered, wanting not to leave him without some kind of connection.

“My name is Start,” he said, offering me his hand.

“Hi Stark,” I said, not hearing him correctly the first time, and thinking it was a peculiar name, as we shook hands.

“Start,” he said, not as though correcting me, but more as an affirmation. “Start Loving.”

Did I hear him correctly? I thought to myself. You’ve got to be kidding! “Start Loving.” Who would really have a name like that? But he hadn’t said it as some kind of joke. He was straight faced as he said it, as though he was eager for me to remember. Why would he trust me at all with his real name, anyway? He had no idea about whom I might really be, or what I might do that could harm him.

This man is about drama, I thought to myself. Rain or shine, with night time temperatures in the 30’s, he will occupy a spot on a public sidewalk for nearly three weeks. He had his face painted with the symbols of redemptive suffering. He was calling attention to children whose lives were forever damaged by decisions of our government, and he was willing to suffer with them in order to call our attention to them.

I wondered whether he might be a little mentally unbalanced, utilizing such an extreme way of making this statement. He was hurting no one with his hunger strike and protest, except perhaps himself. When I stooped down to talk with him, to ask him about his story, to try to understand his motivation, I thought I might discover where the passion for a twenty-day hunger strike would come from. Was he an Iraq War veteran, for instance? Whatever the wound that motivated him, whatever the wound that made him one with wounded children caught in the meat grinder of war’s madness, his life during these twenty days of hunger strike embodied a protest against it.

Since meeting Start Loving, I’ve thought of our men and women in uniform, and the sacrifice our government has asked of them. I’ve thought about children who are the collateral casualties in war, and of refugees forced from their Iraqi homes. I’ve thought about the purported reason for this war – Weapons or Mass Destruction -- now five years old, and the poor intelligence and bellicosity that led people to agree with its prosecution, the news media to push for it without asking the kind of questions we rely on the reporters to ask.

I thought about Start Loving with three crosses painted on his forehead, occupying his place on the corner of C Street and Independence Avenue.

Is he a whacko guy on Capitol Hill, easily dismissed? Or might he be the kind of fool whose wisdom points in God's direction?