I came to the church on Tuesday at 8:45 to lend some moral support to Adam as he was making the morning push to rouse our unhoused neighbors for the day. We all have witnessed how depressing this duty must be. Coming out of choir practice on Thursday nights in the winter, it is especially difficult to process the misery of obvious mental illness, drug use, the struggle these brothers and sisters face to keep warm, find comfort on bare concrete, find food, feel safe, and go without the most basic cleanliness.
Tuesday morning Adam had everything under control, and everyone was packing up and cleaning up their mess to make sure our renters didn’t have to navigate garbage and scary-looking people as they arrived. One man covered in tattoos politely asked me how I was doing, and promised that he was ready to sweep up the remains of his spot. Another, less friendly, agreed, and they both volunteered gratitude for how Christ Church offers the covered space for them to sleep. One woman didn’t say anything to me or the other rough sleepers; was just packing quickly, and helping others as well. She picked up trash into the garbage bag Adam provides each morning, then swept a large area with a broom, before departing. A terrified-looking young woman was hiding at the Well’s Hall end of the breezeway, putting her scant belongings into a trash bag. She was crying.
One neighbor stood out for his neatness. He had a space all marked out with a thick memory foam pad, sleeping bag, and a pillow. He was packing up his belongings in the shopping cart that had seen a lot of street use, strapping down carefully folded and rolled items piled high above the cart’s basket. It was a process that he obviously had done for a while, and it took him some time.
The next morning, Wednesday, I was there to garden, and stopped to talk with him. Mark is seventy years old. He served in Vietnam. He considers himself to be a volunteer advocate for the homeless, and as a regular sleeper in our breezeway, acts to protect the more vulnerable people who stay. He says he is often out of his bed to walk down to the sanctuary end to tell any loud guests to respect the neighborhood and the others sleeping there. He’s not always successful. I asked him about the weeping young woman who had slept on his other side, away from the men. Mark said she was newly on the street, so not knowing strategies to protect herself, she had been abused before finding better protection off the street, on our campus. On Tuesday, Mark had walked her to the hospital to get some medical care.
As I was digging in the soil of the gardens on the other side of Well’s Hall, I felt grateful for this Christ Church community. Volunteers keep the sidewalk food pantry stocked with easily accessible nutrition. Christ Church volunteers fill ziplock bags as emergency packs for handing out in public. Volunteers built six raised beds to grow vegetables, and I harvested Swiss chard today to deliver to Urban Harvest Exchange, part of the Emergency Food Network.
Most impressive of all though, is how we face our fears by allowing the homeless to sleep on our property. Do I love coming to church in the morning to see trash in the gardens and on the sidewalk, stains of unthinkable origin on the concrete where we walk, and the abject misery of other human beings? No, of course not, none of it. It’s depressing and ugly, and according to Mark, not all of the sleepers are nice people. Yet, this sheltering that Christ Church commits to is a blessing beyond price to those who need and use it when city residents are not tolerant of their presence. I reflected, as I dug out and rejected the hated buttercup, that overcoming my own fears to accept our nightly sleepers is the very thing that Christ asks of us. Human service is calling us just as it has called Mark, and he answered.
