Cold reality

I hesitate to put my next thoughts in writing, but I don’t think that I am the only one who struggles with this.  I went to the Cherry Street Mission this week with high hopes and anticipation.  I understood what homelessness was.  I understood about how people get there and get stuck there.  I knew that this mission gives hope and a real, concrete way to get out through tutoring, job training, and housing.  In the dark, in the devastatingly stark abandonment of the block where the dining hall stood, men were milling around in the cold as two white women drove up in a late model convertible.  We were the first to arrive from our group.  Did I feel safe?  No.  All the vaguely accumulated cautions came to the surface – all the stereotypes that arise from fear.  We pulled into the empty parking lot next to the building to wait for the rest of the group.  Two men approached on their way to where ever they were going to spend the night, one raised his hand, smiled broadly, and called out a “Hi!”  Score one point for progress against stereotypes that are subconscious generalizations (remember, I already had an intellectual base of truth).  In a few minutes, two other people in our group showed up and we went in.  Men streamed out into the night because the hall was closing.  We stood and waited for someone to find the person in charge.  This was it.  Here I was.  Our job was to clean the clinic rooms where medical students give rudimentary health care.  It was grimy.  It was also a storage area.  For men and women pushed to the edges of life.  Were they just grateful that this clinic service was available?  That someone cared in some way (a grimy, “you fit in here along with the stored items” way)?  Someone in our group commented that the dining hall could use some air freshener after we had cleaned the clinic with a fresh-smelling product.  The hall smelled of greasy hair and a certain smokiness clung to everything in the room.  I said, “That’s the smell of homelessness.  It’s not going to go away.” 

I have different thoughts now that I have expressed myself here, but let me go back to what I took away that night after being slapped in the face by reality.  I felt fear.  I felt recoil from what I saw.  Reality vs. “good intentions” is a big check-in point for stepping up or stepping away.  The men and women I met were what they were.  The woman who supervised them was no-nonsense and expected them to step up and do their jobs at the hall.  She in essence treated them with dignity because she expected them to act like responsible, productive people.  So, here I was.  Could I put off my conscious and subconscious thoughts of being someone who didn’t “belong” there?  Someone who did something and left?  Just “cleaned a room”?  That was the problem.  The old “us” and”them” mental division.

So, what am I going to do with all of this junk swirling around in my head?  When I clean those clinic rooms, I am saying that whoever goes there deserves a clean clinic, not just “take whatever you can get and feel lucky”.  Is it a small thing?  You notice when something is gross, but what if you are used to gross and see nice?  They’ll notice.  It’s just a couple of rooms getting cleaned (that were getting little cleaning, if any, before).  Someone will notice.  That’s how little things grow.  That’s how lasting change happens.  Little things take root easier than big things.  They are easier to tend to and give courage that a little more can be safely added.  Do you see where this is going?  If I didn’t get to this place, I would have freaked and run and nothing would have been done.  I’m all for little things.  Those are the sustainable things because they can be tended to on the personal investment level.  It’s my own contribution, not a big, faceless agenda-laden project to “end homelessness”.  I know that I just nibbled off a a hangnail on the elephant, but the elephant is glad because he knew it was there.  Now, to keep it trimmed, and to give myself a chance to get to know the elephant on a more personal level and build a relationship.