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Stinky People, Cake and Jesus
Some places are just not intended for human comfort.
Take, for example, the concrete pad behind the building where I work. Two heat pumps and a garbage can occupy the space, which is surrounded by a waist-high concrete wall. There are no picnic tables or chairs to indicate this is a place to hang out. Nor is there any cover from the elements, which means both the sun and the rain beat down on its surface.
And yet, for the past few weeks, it’s been someone’s sleeping quarters and safe space. As I was leaving out the back door for a meeting last week, I noticed “Mark” (not his real name) sprawled out on the concrete pad in the hot sun reading children’s books.
The books were donated to my organization to distribute free to anyone who walks through our office doors.
I asked “Mark” how he was doing, and he grunted at me. I continued to my car without bothering him because, well, the grunt meant he probably didn’t want to be bothered.
“Mark” is a thirty something year-old man with schizophrenia who has been coming to our office for years.
Sometimes he is taking his medications. Sometimes he isn’t. Sometimes he has a place to live. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he wants to talk. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes, the system helps him. But most of the time, it fails him miserably.
He spends much of his time moping around town with his head hanging low and his pants hanging even lower. The police know him. He’s been arrested and even done jail time for trespassing. Many of our social service and mental health facilities know him. Even the people at the hospital know him.
One time, when he was desperate to get the demons out of his head and a safe place to stay, he actually called an ambulance to come get him at our office. That didn’t work out very well. He’s even been committed and spent a few days in a psychiatric facility. That didn’t work out very well either as he landed right back where he was before.
“Mark” isn’t capable of living on his own, but there are no facilities in our community for someone like him. From what I understand, he is an unwelcome guest at the rescue mission. He’s been robbed and taken advantage of by people who are more streetwise than he is. And much of the time, he stinks. Literally.
And yet my co-workers treat him with the same respect they treat our donors. They listen to him – even when he doesn’t make sense. They let him use the phone – even though we are fairly certain there is not anyone else on the call. And, on the occasions they’ve convinced him to take a shower in the upstairs bathroom and he’s thrown his wet, stinky clothes away, they’ve taken them out of the garbage and washed and folded them.
They don’t do any of this because it’s in their job descriptions. They do it because it’s the right thing to do. They do it because that’s what loving thy neighbor is about: loving all of our neighbors – not just the ones who smell good or with whom we agree.
I was thinking about this last week when “Mark’ grunted at me from the hot, concrete pad and I slipped into my air-conditioned car. When the radio came on, I heard the news about the Supreme Court decision in favor of the baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding. I’m not a lawyer or a Constitutional expert, but I disagreed with the ruling on a personal level. I also wondered how baking a cake could even became a political and legal issue in a nation where so many people define themselves as “Christians.”
But the again, I also wondered how, in a “Christian” nation, Mark’s safe place is a concrete pad behind a social service agency.
Christians are supposed to be followers of Christ – that’s where the name came from, right? And wasn’t Jesus all about breaking norms by socializing with the ostracized and caring for people who others disregarded? He never pretended it would be easy or pleasant. But he did teach us that no person is more important than any other person.
When I got back to the office after my meeting that day, Mark was gone. His belongings were out of sight, and there was no indication he’d ever been there or that he would soon be back
But I knew he would be.
Because the fact that the concrete pad behind my office is his safe place isn’t by chance. It’s because the people inside the building have created that safe place by accepting him just as he is.
You know, kind of like Jesus taught us,
The Meme I Hate the Most
I regretfully admit that I was in my forties before I truly understood one of life’s most important tenets: being right will never feel as good as being kind. That’s why I almost didn’t write this.
I don’t want to shame or embarrass anyone who has shared or posted the meme that makes me cringe every time I see it.
I know that it was posted with the best of intentions by great people with good hearts, kind souls and a desire to make the world a better place.
But a statement suggesting that big homeless shelters are somehow better than big churches is, well, just wrong on so many levels.
Let’s start with the fact that we live in America, a nation founded by people seeking a right to worship in the way they wanted. Dismissing how others choose to worship is completely un-American.
Personally, I’m not a fan of churches with memberships larger than the population of the town in which I live. But that’s why I don’t attend one.
I understand concerns that the money used to build, maintain, and equip such large churches could be better used to pay for services to the disadvantaged, but couldn’t the same be said for almost any aspect of our own lives? If we had a smaller house or a less expensive cars, all of us would be able to give more to charity.
We should all spend less time judging and more time actually helping others.
Which brings me to the other reason I hate this meme.
Are there really people who think that building more and bigger homeless shelters is the answer to our homeless problems?
To me, that statement is like waving the white flag in surrender to all of the issues that cause homelessness. We are accepting that we are helpless in the face of the root causes, such as mental illness and social injustice. We are admitting that prevention doesn’t work and that people and systems can’t change.
And I’m not willing to accept that.
I work for a social service organization that fights poverty. Yet every day, I also fight a mentality that providing financial assistance and food to the poor is all we can do to help.
In reality, that’s doing people in poverty a disservice. It’s sending a message that they are not capable of doing more or being more. It’s telling them we’ve given up on the possibility that they are capable of helping themselves and helping others.
Addressing issues of poverty is hard work. It involves developing relationships with people who are often hard to love or don’t understand the manner in which middle class people live and interact. It’s our job to walk with them, teach them, and set expectations for them.
That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for emergency financial, food, and housing. There is. We can’t expect anyone to make big changes in their lives when they are in the middle of a crisis.
But if that’s all we do, then we are selling them, and ourselves, short.
So instead of calling for more homeless shelters, I want to hear a rallying cry for more preventive and support services. I want a united demand for better mental health and drug treatment programs. And, most of all, I want people to stop putting the band-aid of temporary shelter on gaping, life-long wounds created in part by the inference that some people should just accept their place in life.
If Only
As a social worker, the most heart-breaking cases always walk through the door on a Friday afternoon when most social service organizations are closing for the weekend, all the organizations are out of funds, and everyone is both mentally and physically drained.
And there is absolutely nothing I can do to help.
So it was a few weeks ago when a woman with three children under the age of four walked through my door. And as the woman told her story, two words ran in a continuous loop in my brain: “if only.”
“If only” I lived in a community with more resources.
“If only” the woman and her children weren’t invisible, irrelevant or deemed undeserving by people who are more concerned about their next vacation or their social status.
But most of all, “if only” our social services system wasn’t so broken that we invest most of our resources into programs that are as effective as putting BAND-AIDS on wounds that need major surgery.
The details of the woman’s story varied only slightly from those I’d heard before.
She had stayed home to raise her three pre-school age children while her husband worked. Everything was fine until, one day, her husband decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. In fact, he didn’t even want to live in the same country she did. And so, he fled – leaving her with no work experience, no support system and three very young children entirely dependent on her.
Unlike me, the woman had never been supported or encouraged to ensure she could be financially independent. No one had even told her that furthering her education or skills was an option.
And so she did the best she could.
She went to the Department of Health and Human Resources and applied for benefits, including Temporary Assistance of Needy Families, or TANF. To receive those TANF benefits, she had to sign a personal responsibility contract that required her to make every effort to find employment. She did just that. The job she found was only part-time, and the limited hours were irregular. As the sole caretaker for three small children who got sick and had other emergencies, she was often late and sometimes missed work.
Unlike me, she hadn’t grown up in a home where steady employment was a top priority. No one taught her the importance of calling in or being on time.
So when her supervisor spoke to her about these issues, she quit.
Unlike me, no one had ever explained to her that the costs of quitting are greater than those of being fired. She just didn’t know. But she soon learned.
Her TANF benefits were sanctioned because she had broken her personal responsibility contract.
Without any income, she got a car title loan to pay the rent.
Unlike me, no one had ever taught her that the interest on such loans quickly grows out of control. And unlike me, she had no support system of individuals who could help her financially. The people she knew were facing similar crises.
Despite her efforts, she couldn’t afford her rent and was evicted. She and her three children went to live in a shelter with strict rules and little privacy. That’s why the apparent kindness of a new acquaintance was so tempting.
The man offered her a free place for her and her children to live.
But, unlike me, she had no role models for healthy relationships. She had no frame of reference that trust, one of the most essential elements of any relationship, takes time to develop. She was in crisis, and people in crisis want one thing: a way out.
And so she accepted the man’s offer even though shelter rules prohibited her from returning for 30 days if she left on her own accord.
Unlike me, she had never been provided with opportunities to reap the rewards of delaying gratification after weighing benefits and consequences. She had only been taught to act on instinct and in the moment.
But less than a week after leaving the shelter, she realized that the promises for a free home didn’t actually come without a cost. She escaped with only her children and a car that was being repossessed because of her failure to pay on the title loan.
And that’s when she landed in my office on a Friday afternoon
I wish I could say I helped her, but all I could do was encourage her to go to another town with a homeless shelter from which she hadn’t been banned for 3o days.
As she was leaving, one of her children asked her if they were finally going home, and her response was “I told you that home is wherever Mommy is.” My heart broke a little.
Her words along with my own words of “if only” have been reverberating in my brain for weeks now.
“If only” echoes every time I listen to representatives from social service organizations report, in an almost congratulatory manner, that they have increased the number of people to whom they have provided emergency assistance. Providing assistance to those in crisis is important, but when the numbers go up, we are reinforcing how little we are doing to improve the long-term circumstances of struggling families.
“If only” echoes every time I hear poverty defined in terms of a lack of money rather than as a lack of resources. We can’t eliminate poverty until we address all the resources people need to succeed – that type of resources that I was so fortunate to have growing up: ongoing support, positive relationships, skills, knowledge, encouragement and role models.
And “if only” echoes every time another desperate individual or family walks into my office on a Friday afternoon and there is nothing I can do to help.
“If only.” “If only.” “If only.”
For All I Do Wrong
I felt like a child on the verge of a temper tantrum. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, stomp my feet and tell 
everyone to be quiet.
But, I couldn’t. I was attending a meeting in a professional capacity.
And so, I could only throw an internal temper tantrum during which I raged about how easily people can point fingers.
Maybe, I had just reached my capacity for simplistic thinking. Maybe I was exhausted by all of the people who expend all of their energy finding fault rather than solutions. Maybe I was tired of putting labels on people without taking into consideration all of the external forces that helped shape them. And maybe, just maybe, I was too aware of all of the mistakes I’ve made in my own life.
And so, when I was forced to listen to people make a blanket statement that all homeless people are drug addicts and criminals, I twitched.
Here’s the truth: not all homeless people are criminals or drug addicts and very few drug addicts and criminals are homeless.
Here’s a greater truth: no person arrives at rock bottom on purpose. No one makes decisions with the sole purpose of destroying all of the good things around them. Most important of all, no person can be described by one or two simple adjectives like addict or homeless or loser.
I’m not just saying this because my work involves individuals who struggle with those labels so I have the opportunity to see how complicated people and situations are.
I’m saying this because I make mistakes EVERY SINGLE DAY. Sometimes the mistakes are small and easily forgotten. Sometimes they are significant enough to hurt others, and I carry the guilt and regret with me as though they were an actual physical presence. And, more often than not, I’ve hurt myself with a pattern of wrong decisions that have left scars on both on my body and my soul.
And yet, few, if any people, label me by mistakes. Maybe that’s because I’m able to hide them behind a shield of respectable friends, family and job. Maybe it’s because I am surrounded by people who are not so weighed down by their own mistakes that they still have the energy and ability to help me when I fall. And maybe it’s because I was raised by parents who, even as they reached out a hand to help pick me up, never allowed me to escape the consequences of my mistakes.
But if I ever discovered that, instead of being identified as a unique individual, I was being forced to wear my mistakes as a label, I would not just feel shame. I would also feel less than human. And when I feel bad about myself, I am much more likely to make bad decisions.
Which is why, as I sat in that meeting where blame was being thrown around like baseballs at spring training, I wanted to 
remind people of that old saying “when you point a finger at someone, remember there are three pointing back at you.”
In other words, we can’t expect the world to change until each of us changes too. That starts with spending less time finding blame, more time trying to understand the complex issues that cause our biggest community problems, and, most importantly, relying on ourselves rather than others to be part of the solution.
Making the Most of a Crappy Situation
I love my job, but it’s not an easy one.
That’s actually why I love it. Every day is different, and I’m always tackling new challenges. A normal work day can include dealing with personnel issues, fundraising, administration, bookkeeping, programming, marketing and volunteer development.
That’s not to mention the constant decisions I have to make that impact the lives of the people we serve.
So, while I’m generally harried and stressed, I’m also generally happy to be at work – with one exception.
I hate being the one responsible when something goes wrong with the building. I’ve dealt with roof leaks, security alarm issues and, worst of all, plumbing problems. I’ve dealt with so many plumbing problems this past year that I’ve become quite the expert with the plunger.
Of all of my accomplishments, that’s not one in which I take any pride. It’s also one I wish I could avoid.
That’s why, when I was called into the intake office on Friday afternoon, I ignored a rather loud gurgling sound coming from the downstairs bathroom – the ones our clients use.
Instead, I chose to focus on the homeless couple seeking help. After speaking with the two individuals for a few minutes, I went upstairs to make phone calls on their half.
I was on the verge of resolving their predicament when I got an urgent call from the intake office.
“The bathroom is flooding. There is water all over the floor and there is poop floating in it!”
I looked down at my feet and my cute open-toed shoes.
This was not the time to display my mad plunger skills, but, as the person in charge, I still had to deal with the situation.
My shoe excuse didn’t impress the rest of the staff, who looked down at their feet with the same forlorn look that I had given mine.
Finally, the social worker, who was wearing tennis shoes, sighed and waded into the bathroom to get the plunger.
That’s when the young homeless man spoke up. “I can help,” he said. “I’ve done worse jobs.”
I couldn’t imagine a worse job than cleaning up the waste of a complete stranger, but he was true to his word.
He unclogged the toilet, mopped the floor and disinfected the bathroom.
And he never once complained.
While he cleaned, the social worker did an intake and an assessment with his partner, and we were able to find temporary solution.
After the couple left and I had asked staff to put the mop, bucket and gloves in the garbage can outside, I reflected on the incident.
The homeless guy hadn’t thought twice about helping out because he recognized what he could contribute to a really crappy situation.
And, regardless of the toilet situation, I was just able to help him out with his own very different, but just as crappy, situation.
And that is why I really, really love my job.
The Empty Box
The boxes were big – really really big/ And there was one for my brother and one for me. They were among the first gifts to appear under our Christmas tree, and my brother and I couldn’t have been more excited.
We were ten and twelve years old that year – old enough to know that our parents were practical and extremely unlikely to splurge on anything expensive AND impractical. But we were ten and twelve years old that year – young enough to be hopeful and confident that the boxes were too big to actually hold anything practical.
We were wrong.
On Christmas morning, we both tore into the large boxes, which simply revealed what we had known in our hearts all along: our parents were extremely practical.
Inside each large box was a puffy winter coat. To us, the boxes might as well have held nothing at all. My brother and I were both devastated. Our mom had actually wrapped winter coats in beautiful packages with elaborate bows as though the gifts were incredibly special.
As an adult, I can appreciate the presents and that my parents wanted to ensure our warmth. But as a child, I felt like I had been fooled. Sometimes I feel like I’m still being fooled or, just as often, I’m fooling myself.
I still jump to conclusions based on the appearance of a box without knowing what’s inside. For example, I was recently discussing the backpack program, in which food is sent home with students who may not have enough to eat over a weekend. For some reason, the discussion turned to a specific neighborhood, and I said, “Why waste time in that neighborhood, shouldn’t they should focus on neighborhoods where children are really hungry?”
The neighborhood in question has large homes with spacious, well-manicured lawns.
“Because there are hungry children in some of those homes,” I was told. When I started to argue, I was put in my place. “Some families bought those houses in hopes that the value would grow. At the time, they didn’t have enough money to furnish them. Now, their houses are worth considerably less than they owe, and they are struggling just to make the bare minimum payment. They have no furniture and often can’t afford food. There are hungry children in side those big, empty houses.”
And I realized those houses are like pretty boxes. We think we know what is inside, but we are often wrong.
This week is Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, and I hope everyone will take some time to think about boxes: empty ones and ones we can fill up with food for hungry families. This year, our help is needed more than ever. SNAP (formerly food stamp) benefits have been cut, and nonprofit organizations are receiving less support from the government than in previous years. That means our hungry and homeless are depending on community members.
Let’s fill up those empty boxes.
The Reason I Never Forgot Eddie Pee Pants
On a beautiful spring day several weeks ago, my kids and I were heading to lunch a few blocks from my husband’s office on the crowded streets of Washington D.C . Dressed in only shorts and t-shirts, we didn’t really fit in with the men and women in business attire who were walking with a great deal more purpose.
But we had one thing in common: we all pretended we didn’t see the homeless person still wrapped in a blanket and sleeping in a doorway on a busy sidewalk.
I saw both of my kids glance over at him, but neither said anything. I didn’t either. Soon, the homeless person was forgotten.
Almost.
Because somewhere in the back of my mind, he stayed with me.
He’s still there.
It’s not that I’ve never seen homeless people before. I see them every day. I even have a semi-relationship with the guy who hangs out at the park where I walk my dog. If I don’t at least wave at him, he coughs or makes some other noise until I acknowledge him.
But the homeless guy sleeping on the steps was different, because he might as well have been invisible. Everyone, including me, blatantly ignored his existence.
I understand why the business people ignored him: they probably see him everyday. He’s as much a part of their daily landscape as the traffic lights, the street signs and the blur of faces they regularly encounter.
But I didn’t have any excuse, and I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t even talk to my kids about him. That’s just not like me at all. If anything, I usually talk way too much about such things.
The only explanation I could find is one I don’t like: I was going along with the crowd. It was just easier.
It’s not the first time I’ve had to make that admission.
When I was in elementary school, I didn’t even know the full name of the boy who rode the school bus. I just knew everyone called him Eddie Pee Pants. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out how he got the name.
I don’t remember calling him that to his face, but that’s the name I used when my peers and I were discussing how to avoid him. No one wanted to have to sit with Eddie Pee Pants on the bus. If you did, you’d not only have to smell him, but you would get “Eddie Pee Pants germs.”
I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I justified my behavior by telling myself that I was never actually mean to his face. But the guilt got worse when Eddie’s life got worse.
One Saturday morning, I joined my dad at the top of our driveway to watch the drama unfold on a hill about a mile from our house. A dilapidated mobile home was on fire. Flames were shooting out the roof, and smoke was turning the sky black.
“That’s a total loss,” my dad commented.
I didn’t know until Monday that the old, junky trailor everyone said was an eyesore was Eddie’s house.
I have no recollection of what happened to him after his house burned. I just know he never rode the bus again, and I don’t remember ever seeing him at school again. I don’t even remember if there were any injuries or fatalities in that fire.
What I do remember is wondering why I wasn’t nicer to Eddie and feeling horrible that I’d never have an opportunity to undo my misdeeds.
Eddie isn’t the only person I’ve ever discounted or belittled. But he’s the first person who taught me three essential life lessons:
1. Treating someone poorly never makes you feel better about yourself.
2. Sometimes you don’t get a second chance to do the right thing.
3. Issues such as poverty, child abuse and homelessness are actually about individuals — people who, regardless of the reason for their circumstances, still have value.
I’ve taken that third lesson to heart. Eddie, like the homeless person in the doorway, gave me something priceless. They taught me to look beyond the unkempt appearances, poor hygiene or odd behavior. They’ve taught me that sometimes the person who needs to change their attitude or perception is me. And they’ve taught me that speaking up feels a lot better than putting someone down.
They were priceless gifts in my life, and I hope I can pass their lessons on to my children. And that, if nothing else, is what makes their lives so valuable to me.
Not Just Another Walk in the Park
My dog Rodney on a daily walk in the park
I’ve got a habit.
It’s a habit that’s opened my eyes to a side of my town that many people aren’t even aware of. It’s a side of our town that some people look right through – maybe because they don’t want to see it or maybe because they simply don’t know what they are looking at. It’s a side of our town that shows disparity, inequality and absurdity.
But it’s there right out in the open – in the park down the street from my neighborhood. It’s a park where I’ve spent hours and hours of my time.
My husband calls my behavior obsessive. I call it maintaining a routine. But, whatever you call it, I am compelled to take our dog Rodney for a walk in the park at least once, and sometimes twice, a day depending on the weather and how busy my schedule is.
No matter what, we always go in the morning. Always.
On weekdays this means my alarm goes off at 5:00 and we’re in the park by 5:30. On weekends, we’re generally there a bit later.
But no matter the time, those visits to the park provide a glimpse into what’s going on in my town.
This time of year, it’s still dark when I get to the park. But that doesn’t bother me. I’m walking a big German Shepherd, and anyone would be crazy to mess with him. He’s a nice dog, but he isn’t exactly a fan anything, human or otherwise, that he sees moving in the dark.
Besides, just like I have a routine, so do others.
There’s the group of joggers that come running through every other day. There’s the two middle-aged women whose exercise routine is a little less strenuous and who simply walk through the park gossiping. There are always the other dog walkers, although I don’t think they are quite as committed to the whole dog walking thing as I am because they are only there sporadically.
And on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, there’s the group of bankers, accountants, lawyers and others being barked at by an ex-Marine putting them through “boot camp.” I’m always amused by the fact that these professionals pay to have someone tell them to run the bleachers and jump rope at the crack of dawn. But, then, I guess they probably wouldn’t get out of bed for the torture if they weren’t paying for it.
And as the sun begins to rise, I also see what other people have left behind. Clean-up crews haven’t arrived yet, so there’s always quite a bit left from the previous days’ activities and events. There are sweatshirts and shoes; I don’t understand how anyone can leave the park without shoes, but it happens all the time. There are balls and toys; I imagine some of those the parents were happy to leave some of those toys behind. And worst of all, there is litter – lots and lots of litter. Bottles, cans, cups, fast food wrappers, tin foil and popped balloons often lie on picnic tables and on the ground, usually near one of the dozens of trash cans that dot the park.
And, also as the sun rises, I see a man walking through the park. I never know where he’s spent the night, but I do know it’s not in the comfort of a warm home and bed. He’s always carrying his life on his back and something to read in his hand.
Just like many of us, he has his own morning routine. He settles at his favorite table at the shelter by the creek. He takes a water bottle from his backpack and lays his reading materials out before him. He then heads to the restroom, where I assume he grooms as best he can. And then he goes back to his table and reads. He is usually there for a few hours but is always gone by mid-morning. I don’t know where he goes, although at times I have seen him walking the streets of my town during the day.
I’ve come to think of this man as an acquaintance, even though I don’t know his name or his story. But, like any other acquaintance, we always greet each other. I’ve also come to respect this man – not because he is obviously surviving any way he can, but because he’s earned my respect.
Unlike many other patrons of the park, he alway leaves his space cleaner than when he got there. If that means throwing away his trash as well as the trash of others, he does. I’ve seen him do it many, many times.
It might seem like a simple thing, but it’s not simple at all to me. In fact, it seems very complicated.
Because people who can afford to leave behind shoes and sweatshirts have more than this man… a lot more. At the same time, many people who have sufficient material possessions are quick to judge and label those who don’t as lazy. Yet, to me, someone who throws away trash is NOT lazy, and someone who leaves it behind is.
That’s a puzzle I’ll have to ponder on yet another walk through the park.
Just So You Know 