Every homeless person has a mother and a father. They have a story. Friends, siblings, relatives. Successes and losses, joy and suffering, plenty and want, health and sickness. It’s never “what you see is what you get.”

Despite knowing this intellectually, my cage was rattled the other day. To many of us, a friend of mine said, the homeless are invisible. Oh yes, we see their physical selves, standing on a corner, sleeping under cardboard on a loading dock, dragging a beat-up shopping basket around downtown Kirkland, scrounging through trash cans for discarded aluminum cans. Last year’s King County one-night count, in January, found 8,439 men, women and children homeless. Most were in shelters, but 2,631 were out in the open, in sub-freezing weather. That includes 153 in Kirkland, Bellevue and Redmond.

Whether we’re looking at numbers or real people, we do what our mothers told us, “don’t stare.” Perhaps we wish they weren’t there. “They don’t look like me,” a woman told another friend, “I don’t want them near me.” We talk about what a shame it is to have homeless people on our streets. Perhaps we wish they would move to Portland.

I’m guilty of that kind of blindness. I’ve looked the other way, feeling uncomfortable. Or I’ve justified not handing money to a panhandler “because they’ll use it to buy liquor.”

It’s easier to generalize and think about physical needs, for food, clothing or shelter. It makes sense to me to give to a charity, to make sure the money goes to addressing the core issues of job training, psychiatric care, rehab, or sometimes just helping people solve problems that for some reason they’ve been unable to do on their own.

My contributions go to Fare Start, a restaurant that’s also a school to train homeless people for jobs in the culinary trades. It’s open for lunch weekdays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., in downtown Seattle. I recommend it (www.farestart.org).

The hardest thing to do is to stop and talk to a homeless person. Yes, many suffer from mental illness or drug or alcohol dependency, but many are disabled, a good portion are escaping from physical abuse, and some are simply going through a major economic crisis. I don’t see the situation getting better any time soon, do you? The hardest truth to deal with is that they all have a need for connection, a sense of belonging. Just making eye contact can make a difference.

Until recently, when homeless people approached me, my cultural radar warned me away. Then, inspired by a Buddhist monk, I fine-tuned my radar by looking more carefully. I looked them in the eye. On several occasions, I felt comfortable enough when approached for money that I was able to ask, “Are you hungry? Can I buy you some food?” Out of half a dozen times, only one man waved me off, clearly wanting the money for some other purpose. I took one woman into a nearby convenience store and bought her $10 worth of food. Maybe she traded it for beer. Maybe she didn’t. I’ve taken others to an inexpensive restaurant a few steps away. I walk in, hand a waiter $10 and say, “this man is hungry. Please give him $8 worth of food and keep $2 for yourself.”

This happened once when I was with a friend from work. He looked at me like I was crazy. But the five people I’ve bought food for thanked me, and three of them said “God bless you.” I haven’t yet sat down and asked one his story. Perhaps I will find the courage some day.