On one of those cold, gray afternoons this past February, I ran into a friend at a coffee shop who greeted me with a warning of her sour mood and explained that she was tired of the gloom.  It was the perfect word for those weeks leading up to Lent.  The darkness and cold of the season seeps into our collective psyche and a pervasive gloom seems to settle into our daily lives.

One Christmas day, 15 years ago, I sat next to my wife’s grandmother, Marie Vigil, at a family gathering as my kids and their cousins tore through presents with delight and awe.  She watched her family with a smile, laughing occasionally at a child’s outburst of joy and parents’ attempt to maintain order. 

Increasingly, in social settings like dinner parties, the person I am talking to will take a serious tone and say something along the lines of: “This homelessness seems to be getting out of hand.”  Then, with a manner that is genuine in both concern and resignation, they will ask: “What can possibly be done about it?”

I have found over the years that my answer to that question takes far too long. After a while, there is a glance at a watch or scan the room for other conversations. The reasons for homelessness, and the poverty that causes it, make for bad dinner- party conversation.