Perhaps the most beautiful thing about Friday night was all of the different people who joined us. Not only did we get to spend time with homeless men and women but some little ones joined us, too.

A friend and her husband brought their two young daughters to help pass out the suppers. Each of them, delighted, grabbed sacks of spaghetti -- and salad and bread and a cookie -- and walked fearlessly and joyfully up to the men and women that passed us by.

Today, I told the streets goodbye. Or, farewell. See you later.

I got to sit with my friend named Greene on the corner. He entertained me with his vibrant mind, informing me that, in fifteen or twenty years, people would be traveling to Mars to live. “It’ll be a suicide mission,” he said with his chuckle and lisp.

When I walked up, I just plopped down in the middle of them. It is no longer “by invitation only” that I sit, but I am part of them and they, me. I am a part of the community. Granted, I am not homeless. I do not live on the streets, but, as my friend Rowdy told me several months ago, “You are one of us.”

Slender, wide-grinned, big-hearted Gregory Crawford stands a little above the crowd. When he finished up trade school and moved to Dallas in the '80s, he entered a world that, unbeknownst to him, would soon swallow him up and threaten his very life.

In those days, South Dallas was known as “The War Zone,” an area of the city completely above law and order. An article from 1988 puts the invasion of crack/cocaine in South Dallas this way: “It's easy to conclude that this is not merely a poor neighborhood invaded by drugs. It is occupied territory, a neighborhood claimed by crack. Drugs aren't a subculture here. They are the culture.”

Back in January, many people came together to donate furniture and/or funds to help Eva fill her apartment. (If you'll remember, she went from sleeping on a cot at the shelter to sleeping on the floor of her apartment because she had no furniture.)

Thanks to everyone who donated furniture, kitchen items, etc., and to those of you who donated funds.

In a world that judges us by our productivity and accomplishments, homeless people don’t fit in. 

People who sit in the dirt and drink beer day after day simply have no place in our American life. They seem to contribute nothing to our society; they only take.