A Church Drop-In Program improved my perspective…
Last Tuesday evening I left my Church office in the Community Peace Centre complex around 6:00pm to p/u my wife from work. As I was leaving the under-building parking area which is entirely open to the weather on three sides I noticed a motionless body half-covered with a quilt lying on the cold cement in the breezy parking area where two concrete walls come together providing some protection from the wind. Stationary legs with long pants and snow boots protruded from beneath a quilt which covered a torso. It was -9 with a wind-chill of about -20.
Of course I stopped the car and got out to ensure that this unmoving body was still alive. “Hey Buddy” I called out loudly, “are you OK?” “I’m fine” came the reply. I inquired if he’d had supper and the response was negative. Upon returning to work for the evening about an hour later, I came bearing a hamburger, a chicken sandwich and coffee. The parkade dweller declined my invitation to come eat inside saying he preferred to stay right where he was, I assume that was because he may not have wished to disturb the warmth of his location beneath a quilt on a woven matt, up against a protective concrete wall – which may possibly have also been serving to retain some small amount of his body heat.
Now you may think I’m looking for recognition for being a big spender on fast food and coffee for a homeless man. Actually I’d prefer that you forget my name altogether ‘cause you see some people would contend that I’m perpetuating a problem by failing to promptly evict a homeless person from a parking area where people pay to park! There is an opinion that acting humanely toward a homeless person is not always a virtue to be celebrated.
Our family moved to Moncton in July 2003. At that time, Central United Church, where I’d come to work, hosted a Wednesday Afternoon Drop-In program each week. I tried to descend from my office when I could to mingle and have a few games of cribbage with the clients who frequented the Drop-In held in the old Sunday School Hall. Consequently, I soon got to know quite a few people who lived on the edges of our society – some of whom, who had no home at all.
One night in the later autumn of that same year I had worked until midnight or later at Central United. We had by then lived in Moncton for nearly five months. I elected to travel along Main Street downtown on my way home. As I did I noticed a person wandering here, another wandering over there and a third wandering further along. As I continued along Main Street, all-of-a-sudden it dawned on me that I knew three of the wandering people I was seeing on those late night sidewalks in the heart of our City. They weren’t strangers and they weren’t people to be afraid of. In fact, they were fellow citizens of the new City where my family had come to live and for an unexplainable moment on that late autumn night in 2003, my new home in Moncton NB seemed like a beautiful and safe place in which to be living and working and raising a family. Who are we as a community in 2018? What’s our relationship like with the people on the edges of our society who may walk our streets late at night?
Jim MacDonald serves in ministry with the congregation of Central United Church-
An Affirming Ministry and a founding partner in the Community Peace Centre Inc.