The paragraph below is the beginning of an essay written not by a homeless person, despite what it might sound like.  It is actually an essay by a 16-year-old gifted student who is a junior in high school.  Alix Glynn spent two weeks participating in Impact Boston — a community service, social action and advocacy summer program — which included one day of living the life of a homeless person.  He was one of 13 people selected to work with Spare Change News — Boston’s alternative newspaper written and sold by the homeless to support themselves and encourage change.

After the program, he began volunteering at a local homeless shelter, something he might not have done had he not experienced how a smile and “Have a good day” can mean even more than a few quarters in a cup.

It’s a quintessential summer day, and Boston Commons is abuzz with activity. Across the avenue I carefully scrutinize the passers-by — a 20-something quickly moving her designer messenger bag to her other side, a middle-age man wearing a Red Sox cap clutching his young son closer, a group of teenagers staring as if I had two heads and five eyes, a college student typing on his smart phone almost stepping right over me and not bothering to apologize. Eventually, a woman drops a few quarters in my cup, but she scurries past before I even have a chance to say thank you.

via Essay: Spare change, spare kindness.

Homelessness is often seen as something that happens to other people.  Something that happens only in big cities.  Something that happens to people who somehow deserve it because they brought it on themselves. Yet my mother in small town Illinois of under 10,000 people joins her fellow CDA women to cook and serve food to homeless adults and children. In a town that small, the people she serves aren’t strangers, they’re neighbors.

When you take time to listen to the stories you realize homelessness can happen to anyone. Is that homeless man on the corner there because his story resembles the one below, recently posted about one of my own neighbors? Or is the reason something easier to dismiss, like addiction? The problem is, you’ll never know if you don’t LISTEN to their stories. If you take time to do that, you may find yourself thinking, like me, that it doesn’t really matter if fate or the individual is responsible. It only matters that IT IS.

In July of 2008, Mike caught pneumonia and was in the hospital for a week. During routine tests, it was discovered he also had the rare-but-treatable disease Hairy Cell Leukemia. He was immediately placed on an aggressive schedule of chemotherapy treatment, and stayed in the hospital for six more weeks. While the treatment cured him, it left him so physically depleted that he required three months of recovery. During this time, his health insurance and Family and Medical Leave Act funding ran out, and McLendon could no longer hold his job open for him. (Mike points out that McLendon did everything they could to help him throughout this time.) .

via West Seattle Blog… » Followup: Mike’s journey into homelessness &, hopefully, out of it.