Clasped hands. Not in prayer. But in the ritual of humiliation. Of being worth something only if you are on your knees, doing anything you can to survive. Holding coins others throw carelessly, but which mean life and death.

People pass by, figures shrouded in halos of twinkling lights—artificial, bright, dizzying. You are invisible by nature of your position, a specter at the edges of merriment and celebration. The church bell tolls, and it does not bring good news, faith, or pleasure. Instead, it signals the next wave of people you will beg from. Beg for mercy. For scraps. For food to fill an empty belly but not an empty heart. Beg for your right to live.

Men in white robes sometimes pass through the big door. They are always inside those churches, sheltered by marble floors and gold candelabras, bread and fruit and wine at the altar. They give alms, sometimes. They tell you God loves you. But what is God to a poor soul whose body decays before it can reach the grave? Your body is weak—how can it host a healthy soul? You try to be good. To believe in the words of priests and nuns and social workers. To believe in the promises of government officials, in the endless message that if you are good, if you have faith, you will be saved.

Still, you are hungry. Still, you are dirty—tainted with grime and condemnation. If you do not get down on your knees, you are cast as a burden. An ingrate. A useless, uncontributing member of society. If you risk the irritation and humiliation of begging, of selling small knick-knacks nobody wants, you are called a nuisance. They will not look you in the eye, as if your reaching, receiving palm is a sin by virtue of its existence.

Christmas. The birth of a savior. A time when, maybe, if some people feel the festive spirit, they give coins and food to last a week. A month at most. Afterward, you return to where you were, where you have always been, and where you will likely remain until you die.

You have faith. Of course you do. You have faith that tomorrow will be easier on your tired, sloped shoulders, on your malnourished, weakening body. That is why you struggle every day, despite the emptiness each one leaves you. But you do not know where—or in whom—that faith rests. Perhaps in yourself. But that is blasphemy to some. You must have faith in God alone, not in your own acts.

Clasped hands. Not exactly in prayer to the divine, but a plea to those with listening ears and seeing eyes. Maybe the true godlessness is not the absence of deity. It is the rejection of divinity in humanity.

Later, when you draw your last breath—thin bones, dull skin, a heart too frail and tired—you will be a disciple who searched for God and will feel that you never found Him. And people will ask, “How can they not see Him?”

But on judgment day, God will ask those who did not help you, “How can you not see them?”