How do you exegete "the poor will always be with us" and reconcile that with the command to love our neighbor as ourselves? Enter Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist, looking for a lead on a one-off story and finding instead a four-plus-year relationship with an exceptional musician living on Skid Row. This is a tale of common grace and is both a spurring on to love and good deeds, and a reminder that personal discomfort is often a necessary part of living the gospel before others.
Unlike many who are apt to read The Soloist, or see the 60 Minutes feature (March 22, 2009), or view the DreamWorks film released earlier this year, for me this is more personal. In the early 1990s, Philadelphia's corner of 18th and Spruce Streets was a regular hang-out. Moses, Jimmy, and Billy were invariably panhandling on the corner, between Day's Deli and the Great Scott Supermarket, trying to get enough money to eat a bit and get their next score. The very wealthy lived just one block north on Rittenhouse Square. The very poor, four blocks south. Tenth Presbyterian Church, with beautiful Tiffany windows depicting an angel over a field, was one block east. And Temple Beth Shalom Synagogue, with exquisite stained glass windows picturing the redemption of God's people from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, sat across the intersection.
The streets of Philadelphia, like New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, were flooded with the homeless’many winding up there after the mental institutions were closed in the early 1980s. Joining those struggling under the burden of mental illness were many others landing there, living hand to mouth due to an enslavement to drug addiction. On cold winter days, nearly every heat grate over the subway system was a brief respite of warmth to too many people. And the city was overwhelmed.
But just like Lopez in Los Angeles, it takes only one person to make a difference. By God's good grace, my husband Jeff saw Moses, Jimmy, and Billy as men, not so unlike himself. And today, one man's story was dramatically changed. Thomas (aka Moses) is now married to his common-law wife (Jeff was his Best Man) and has held a steady job for fifteen years and counting. He spent the night before his first entrance to America's Keswick on our couch’afraid of change, but more afraid of not changing. He'd been hearing about the love of God in a community Bible study at Tenth and seeing it in the life of my husband. After cycling back through the strong call of addiction, Thomas returned to Keswick a second time and began a real journey of change, called by the Holy Spirit. Truth is, this far along, Thomas may still stumble. But even more sure, he is redeemed.
Why this background on a book review? Because when I read The Soloist, I believed it because I had seen it. This tender, clear-eyed, heartbreaking, and heartwarming account is told in the voice of a popular former Philadelphia columnist transplanted to Los Angeles. Bringing his same blend of compassion and tenacity to the problems of L.A. that he did to Philadelphia, Lopez unpacks the difficult and complex story of one man who hit schizophrenia head on. Ill prepared, in the intense environment of Julliard School of Music in the 1970s, and during an era when Thorizine was the solution that literally wiped out the very essence of what made a person a person, Nathaniel Ayers migrated to Los Angeles and lived on the streets for over twenty-five years before meeting the man who would become his friend.
But The Soloist is also the account of the journalist who became more and more a part of one man's life. Starting with a single feature article, over the years Lopez grappled with his own frustrations as he revealed the difficulties of mental illness, homelessness, and drug addiction. What looked simple was not. Relationships with mothers, fathers, and siblings are a tangled web of love and despair. And the mystery of why Nathaniel could organize and keep track of every item in his cart, but not his life, is heartbreaking.
As with any tale of redemption, there are many starts and stops. Anger, doubt, pride, self-preservation all enter into the story. But so do grace, mercy, friendship, and respect. When Nathaniel becomes Mr. Ayers, a real change begins to form. Lopez himself is also changed. He enters into a world of classical music that soothes his own troubled soul, and extends himself to include an outsider into the very heart of his family.
It is rare that a motion picture does justice to the printed word. And while the DreamWorks production makes changes to the story to make it more "Hollywood," it stays true to the thrust and purpose of the original story.
According to Lopez's account at a local One Book, One Philadelphia event, Ayers continues to live in a one-room apartment on Skid Row. He has two goals: to use music as a therapy for others in the struggle, and to join and perform with a community orchestra. He may never reach either goal. But right now, each day is a challenge to live fully.
Whether you have never seen a homeless person on the streets of a city’or you have seen so many that you are numb’The Soloist will make you think differently about people. By God's grace, we will each see those around us as image-bearers of God. Even if they live on the street.
