December 21, 2009
Monday

I don’t think I’m alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my minds’s eye. You don’t think they were cute, like every other baby?
                — Dustin Hoffman, b. 1937
                     American actor

One of my high school classmates grew up in a family that owned a popular riverfront restaurant that was a favorite of state legislators as well as the entertainers and sports figures who visited the capital city from time to time. The place survived two floods, and Angie herself has survived breast cancer. For a time in the 1990s and into the 2000s, she operated a casual pizza place on the same property, as well as helping oversee the day-to-day operations of the more elegant original place. She also took an interest in our class reunions, and our planning group often met at one of her places.

She was an assertive and energetic businesswoman. When she wanted to delegate a bit of reunion business, she’d ask for help by e-mail, usually ending with “Take this off my plate!”

There is a lot on my plate today, literally and figuratively. When I report for my surgery tomorrow, I’ll be described in the notes as “well-nourished,” even though on more than one day last week the most nutritious substance I consumed was a Diet Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. Figuratively, I have a lot of concerns that are crowding my plate. One might even extend the metaphor and say that the most anxiety-producing and attention-hogging concerns are like junk food, stealing energy from the more salubrious activities that I really want to pursue.

So it’s time for a “best of” piece from my own work. I wrote it originally on Epiphany in 2004, repeated it here in 2007. During the storm on Saturday I triggered some accusations that I was a Grinch or a Scrooge because I wondered about the unbridled giddiness and joy some people were expressing about the snow. It’s just snow, I said, and it poses risks and losses for a lot of people. Oh, some of my friends said, those risks and losses only pertain to idiots stupid enough to go out in this stuff!

I was actually thinking about the hungry and the homeless, whose well-being is more at risk in weather like this than at other times. Alas, thinking about them is about all I do.

“Make Me A Pallet on the Floor”

January 6, 2004
Tuesday

I’ve roamed this town
Till my feet are sore;
I’m out and down,
That’s why I’m at your door . . .
Just make me a pallet on the floor;
Why, any kind of bed, so I can rest my weary head . . .
If it’s for only one night, please, I ask you on my knees,
To make me a pallet on the floor.
— Traditional American blues song

For the last several years the churches of downtown Harrisburg have taken turns during our coldest months (November through February) providing shelter for up to forty people who usually sleep on the street or in some makeshift accommodation in one of the enclaves of homeless that dot the city. Doors open at 9:30 and those wishing to stay must present identification and agree to some simple rules. No one is admitted after 10:00 even if there is room, except for certain individuals who work until 11:00 or later and who have made prior arrangements.

Guests are given a plastic-covered foam mattress about four inches thick and two blankets made of pressed reprocessed wool. Coffee and tea are available, as are donated supplies of granola bars, hotel-size toiletries, and clean socks. A representative of Christian Churches United (the sponsoring organization) as well as the host pastor help with intake, and then four volunteers from various churches stay with the guests until morning. There are, of course, more than forty people in this metropolitan area of about 100,000 who have no adequate shelter. Several agencies minister to them, and those programs are always full. The people who come to the emergency winter shelter are people who, for any of a number of reasons, are not associated formally with any helping group. As the volunteer information sheet said, for these people, “we are the end of the line.”

Responsibility for this ministry falls on the downtown churches because, well, that’s where they are, and that’s where the homeless are. But the congregations are small and their membership is disproportionately elderly, and in recent years they have asked for volunteers from suburban churches to help with the supervision. My congregation, Tree of Life Lutheran, usually takes January.

It was in my mind to sign up for at least one night’s duty last year, but I hesitated. As a fiction writer, I’m a voyeur. Because I’m still a beginner, my work tends to be heavy with experiences that spring from my own life and characters who are just like me — white, educated, moderately affluent. I want to learn first-hand about people who live in way I can only imagine. But the last thing I want to do is exploit anyone, especially someone whose circumstances appear desperate. Thus I wanted to be able to approach this work not because I’m curious about these people or regard them with pity, but because I am responding to God’s call to be of service. A friend who participated last year said that he didn’t think motivation was important, only that the work got done.

So last night I reported for duty at the back door of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, on State Street, one block from the river. It was 38 degrees when I left the house, with a chilly wind blowing off the water that easily found the neck opening of my Lands’ End parka. I wear the garment for its fashionable appearance and rarely zip all the zips and tighten all the drawstrings. Had I more than twenty feet to walk last night, I’d have certainly closed it up completely, and worn a hat.

Inside, I was given a brief tour of the facility, a large fellowship hall with an attached kitchen and a few classrooms in the back. As it happens, I had spent many a Sunday afternoon of my youth in that space. It was the site of the monthly meetings of the Junior Wednesday Club, sort of a guild for apprentice classical musicians that my mother channeled me into instead of the Girl Scout troop I would have preferred. Like many places unvisited since childhood, it seemed smaller now, but the baby grand piano still occupied a corner. The keyboard lid was locked, as were the doors to the sanctuary.

At 9:30 the doors opened, and the guests made their way down the registration table. Everyone who came last night already had a card on file. Most had their own supply of toiletries in a labeled zip-lock plastic bag stored at the facility. I was in charge of the box with the bags belonging to those whose names began from A to M. They all smiled and said thank you when I handed them their bag and a fresh wash cloth. Some asked for additional supplies. One man asked for dry socks. No one should have to be so grateful to be handed a sliver of soap, especially one embossed with the logo of a luxury hotel they’ll never stay in.

We served thirty-six men and four women. As predicted, some knocked after the appointed locking hour, and were gently but firmly turned away, although they were given blankets. The sponsoring organization’s representative realized at about 10:30 that she had admitted forty people without allowing for one man who always arrives, by reservation, at 11:30, after his shift as a dishwasher at a suburban steak house. She was permitted to let him in, but it meant that there would be no mattress for him.

The lights were out and all was quiet when he did arrive. He’s barely into his thirties, not unattractive, with an open face and a ready smile. His clothes were faded and threadbare, but no more so than those of some youngsters who favor a “shabby chic” look. I’d noticed that his name appeared frequently in the volunteers’ notebook as one who was extraordinarily helpful in defusing arguments that sometimes erupted between guests or in managing the behavior of those who arrived in an altered state. I offered him my mattress, saying I fully expected to sit up all night and talk with the volunteers or read. He refused it, and took extra blankets that he bunched up in a makeshift pallet. I gave him a stadium cushion I sometimes use on frigid aluminum bleachers, and he used that as a pillow.

I did sleep for about two hours, my mattress positioned between the refrigerator unit and the big work table in the kitchen. It had been a quiet night except for the almost symphonic snoring of so many people with compromised respiratory systems. At 5:00 another volunteer and I prepared the coffee and began rousing the dozen or so who had requested early wakeups so they could get to work. The man from the steak house had washed out his company shirt and hung it from a towel rack in the kitchen. It wasn’t quite dry. I had a compact hair dryer in my monogrammed overnight bag. I seldom have any use for it, but I was happy to have it now.

We turned on all the lights at 6:30. The guests used Lysol spray and paper towels to wipe down their mattresses. They gathered their meager belongings, put their toiletry bags back in the storage bins, and were on their way, as required, by 7:00.

I asked another volunteer what these people do all day, the ones who don’t have jobs. Most of them appear for breakfast at the Salvation Army, and then they hang out in warm public places — the downtown branch of the library (where you have to ask for a key to the bathroom and sign a sheet with in and out times), the lobbies of some of the state office buildings, the corridor that connects the high-rise shopping center with its parking garage, the Catholic cathedral which has several daily masses and a chapel always open for those who participate in its perpetual prayer and adoration ministry. Their presence in these places is tolerated to varying degrees. Another downtown church has an active free lunch program, as does one about ten blocks from the central part of the city. Dinner is at 5:30 at the men’s mission at Sixth and Verbeke, and then it’s time to get in line at the shelter again.

It took another half hour or so for the other volunteers and me to tidy up the coffee area, put everything away, and write the report. As I drove home I heard the radio news and weather advise that a cold snap was about to take hold for the next several days. My route took me along a street parallel to that of the Salvation Army building. I saw some of the guests I’d helped serve headed back toward downtown. I saw one of the women pulling her shopping cart toward the river.

I can’t say that this was a life-changing experience for me. But it was thought-provoking, and it will stay with me for a long time. I’m not willing to sell all I have and give it to the poor. But I am more aware than ever of the abundances in my life. The fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah advises that “if you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and the gloom be like the noonday.” The Reverend Jim Wallis, president of Call to Renewal, a national federation of churches, community development, and other faith-based organizations working together to overcome poverty, sees this passage as “saying . . . that the best way to get your life together is to do something for somebody else.” I hope it won’t be another year before I do something to effect my own healing.

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say Hi? Leave a comment, or e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)

From the Archives
December 21, 2004 — The Airing of Grievances: This [essay] is from Richard Kuser, . . .  who . . . claims that we are witnessing the “grinching of America” because it is becoming “increasingly offensive . . . to mention the word ‘Christmas’ or celebrate the true Christian spirit of the season.” . . . People like . . .  the crabby Mr. Kuser, who think that Christians are now a persecuted class in this country and who assume the posture of an oppressed minority, are making me tired. They need to get over themselves.

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say hi?
To comment or to be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the bracketed parts with @ and a period) OR
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/silkentent