the weather

During the past two weeks at Central, you could feel the added weariness and weight of the cold weather on our unsheltered partners. Being wet and very cold is a terrible combination. I heard words of despair more than usual last Thursday during our social service and clinic hours. A tearful, “I can’t take much more”, by a person in their 60’s that I have come to cherish was particularly painful. I learned about the difficulties of staying warm in a “camp,” and a bit about the challenges of keeping a car’s heater going while rationing gas. Returning afterwards to my warm and safe house felt cruel and unfair.

Since coming to Central, I pay attention to the world around me differently. I look closely at the person with an oversized backpack walking or cycling down the street, or the person sleeping on the beach —I might know them! We may share meals together during the week at Central, or worship and take communion together on Sundays. In this closeness and community, I am attuned differently. More sensitive everywhere I go to people surviving without shelter. I don’t know if what little I can do is ever going to change the great injustices that lead to homelessness, and that is okay. I’ll keep trying anyway. I do know that in our community at Central, I have been changed. I am more tearful and sensitive because my heart is expanding. I see the world through a different lens, and I wonder if this kind of change is what it means in the scriptures to be born again. Not something otherworldly or philosophical—but something possible right here, right now in our own loving community. I hope so.