Since mid-September, my church has been a homeless shelter
once a week. My church along with three
other churches rotate providing the volunteers to staff the shelter and food to
provide dinner, breakfast, and a sack lunch for the homeless guests.
It’s really a beautiful thing to see the space at my church being used
as a shelter for around 45 men and women each week and I love seeing how
all these church members have given their time and resources to care for our
neighbors in need.
Over the past couple of months I’ve spent many Wednesday
evenings and Thursday mornings helping.
I’ve set up and put away chairs, tables, pads, blankets, and
pillows. I’ve helped prepare and serve
food. And I’ve done a share of washing
dishes and kitchen clean up.
However, the way I prefer to volunteer is to sit around.
About a month ago I sat with Linda and we talked about
cooking and baking. We talked about
favorite recipes and she shared some good ideas on what to do with the
abundance of tomatoes and cucumbers that were coming out of my garden at that
time. And I listened as Linda shared
some of the difficulties of being in the homeless system (she is relatively new
at being homeless and is still trying to figure things out).
A couple weeks ago, I sat and talked with Oscar as he
finished up his dinner. I hope to share
more about Oscar and his story one day, but for now know that Oscar is filled
with joy like I’ve never seen before despite the fact that he goes from homeless
shelter to shelter each night. As I
talked with him, it boggled my mind that someone so friendly, so full of joy,
so full of life could be homeless.
Last week I sat at a table with about 7 men and we talked
about everything from Hollywood actors to politics to music to religion. The men made fun of me and my youngness and
naïveté about the way the world works.
We joked and laughed and complained.
I have gotten to know these men and women who come to spend
the night at my church. There are people
I see every week and there are people who come and go.
As I have gotten to know their names and their stories, I
find that I have been thinking about them more and more. I pray for them. I think about their stories. I worry about them. I’ve stayed up late trying to devise ways to
help them get out of the homeless system.
I search for programs that might help. I anxiously wait for each Wednesday night when
I can see and talk to my new friends and know they are ok.
I’ve thought a few times that it might have been better to
stick with setting up chairs and tables and doing the dishes. If I hadn’t sat around and talked with Linda
or Oscar or Alex or any of the other homeless men and women then I wouldn’t be
spending so much time thinking and worrying and trying to make a plan to help
them. One thing that is becoming more
and more abundantly clear to me is that there are no easy answers. Helping people who are homeless and people
who are poor is infinitely complex and messy work. And it’s heartbreaking work.
But now that I did sit around, I know names and faces and
stories, and I’m stuck. In a small way
the stories and lives of these people who are homeless are becoming part of my
life and my story. I can’t forget the
stories. I can’t pretend they don’t
exist because I know their faces. I can’t
help but feel the need to do whatever I can for Alex, Linda, Oscar, and the
others. I'm stuck.
So what now? I’m
going to sit around this Wednesday night, and we’ll see where things go from
there.
