Tag Archives: Homelessness

Looking For a Reason

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EHAn essay I wrote quite a while ago has been published on the Effectively Human website.  It’s a piece about a young man I knew when I was volunteering, one that I often think about and hope he is doing well.  It still breaks my heart to think he might not be.

Here’s a small piece of it but I hope you will click through to read the rest.

Maybe the question I need to answer is not what went wrong, but what might go wrong. How long before the young boy’s eyes in the young man’s face grow cold? Will the day come when he will look at me with a glazed gaze: wild, cruel, daring someone for a reason to vent his anger and frustration at what he has become? He will sit on our stained blue couch and I will mix hot cocoa for him, or maybe pour coffee, extra cream and extra sugar. He will stuff packages of cookies in his pockets and ask if we have any clean socks, any hygiene kits, any sandwiches, any more coffee. Anything? The dark hair will be streaked with gray, the zipper on his coat will not quite close and he will carry a plastic shopping bag with the corner of a frayed airline blanket poking out from its tightly packed interior.

If this is Eric’s future, will I find courage enough then to look past his rage to find the human being inside? Will there be one there? Which would be the worst case scenario: a cardboard box or a coffin?

A cardboard box, and then a coffin?

No, I think. The worst case scenario would be not looking for the human being. If I stop looking, if everyone stops looking, the human being dies while the body continues to breathe. And the little boy in the church pew, the face he makes as he tugs at his tight top shirt button, the wide-eyed dream of someday drawing comic books, or pitching for the Yankees, or winning the Indy 500, dies also.

via Effectively Human: Homelessness, The Night Ministry in Chicago and A Reason to Care.

The Night Ministry Bus: One of the Pivotal Experiences in My Life

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NightministryI found this excerpt in an old journal, written when I used to volunteer in Chicago with the Night Ministry.  One of their programs is a large recreational bus that has a medical station set up in the back room.  It travels to two or three neighborhoods each night and serves coffee and juice and hot chocolate to anyone who drops by.  Sometimes they just line up outside to receive their treats; sometimes they come in and sit down on the couches and seats within, especially on the cold winter nights.

It was a life altering few years that changed my perspective on how I live my life.

The bus is gross.  How could it not be? Sure, the volunteers and staff are supposed to clean it up after every shift, but some nights, when you’ve been serving cookies and condoms from 6:30 p.m. till 1:30 a.m., and maybe had some lonely guy or hyper gal talking at you, or even someone venting hostility, your shift leaves you drained.

Listening is hard work.  Sometimes it’s the hardest part about volunteering.  Even harder than serving gallons of hot chocolate and tons of cookies to a hundred kids pushing and shouting and demanding and loud. There have been times when stuff was thrown at the bus, like eggs or trash. I’ve even been hit with a plastic bag filled with the crumbled cookies I handed to the kid myself.

Mostly, though, the people who come are happy to see you.  They welcome your presence into their dark and isolated world, so they make the most of your short visit by soaking up as much companionship as they can.  Storing it up against the long dark moments until the next person looks at them with their heart and eyes and really sees them again.

Listening, standing there and letting someone talk at you no matter whether it’s because the person is lonely, drunk, angry or  just manic, can exhaust you in ten minutes flat, fifteen tops.

On the other hand, the opportunity to just listen has presented me with some of the most meaningful minutes of my volunteering experience.