Lifted Up

Beauty and Love are as body and soul:
Inexhaustible mine, and diamond-beyond-price.
I loved his beauty and Love flamed from me:
I grew beautiful, Love whispered my name.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

It was a day of wonder, of miracles unfolding, of God's gentle whisper creating joy amidst the chaos.

It began with a couple, a mother and father, who came into the shelter in the hopes of finding their son. They haven't seen him very often over the past three years. He hit the streets running and keeps looking back to ensure no one's following. We see this fairly often in young men, 19 - 25. Schizophrenia is the big driver. The big push away from stability into a world where voices urge them to act out, strike out -- on their own, at those who love them, for destinations unknown.

For this young man, three years of keeping the voices at bay by listening to their urgings to run away have driven him to the shelter.

And yesterday, his parents came looking. His mother crying. Pleading. Lost. His father tall and stern. One arm around his weeping wife's shoulder, the other held rigidly at his side.

"Have you seen our son?" the mother asked.

By law, we cannot tell. By law, we cannot reveal who is or isn't staying at the shelter. What we can do is take their information and promise to give it to their loved one, if (and that is the if we cannot confirm) they are staying with us.

The staff member took the mother into an office to explain the regulations. The father walked through our day area, a large space where over 500 people gather during the day to chat, to lay their heads down on a table and catch forty winks. An area where, during meal times, over 1,000 people congregate and where at night, the tables are pushed back to create a sleeping space for 150 mats for those who are not over the top intoxicated and can walk up the flight of stairs from the Intox area on the first floor.

It is a busy place and the father wandered through the tables and chairs, his eyes constantly searching.

To no avail.

His son was not there.

The mother, after leaving her contact information, came out of the office and as the staff member lead her back towards her husband a female client approached, looked at the woman and exclaimed, "You must be Kevin's mother! You look just like him."

The mother caught her breath. Tears fell fast. She sighed. "Yes. I am. You know my son?"

"Sure," the woman replied.

And for the next half hour the mother and father sat with this woman, a stranger, who gave them news of her son, who shared what she could.

It was a touching scene. A moving moment of faith, hope and charity.

And then, I checked the Comments on our blog and God's whisper caressed my heart.

In a world where sometimes it does seem like the problems are unending, something happens to make me sit up and realize -- there is no good reason to not make a difference. There is no good reason to stop doing what we do here at the shelter. There is no good reason to not care for people in their distress, to not care for them when they're messing up, to not care for them when they're falling down.

Yesterday, a visitor said to me, "You just enable people here (referring to the fact that of the 1200 people we sleep every night, approximately 300 are under the influence of drugs and alcohol).

"Yes," I replied. "We are great enablers. We enable people to stay alive. To keep falling until they find the courage, or strength, or desire -- whatever it takes -- to stop doing what they're doing to hurt themselves so they can start doing things that heal, that help, that support them. We enable people by keeping hope alive even when they've lost all hope."

I leave you the link to delve into. To experience the wonder and the beauty of the human spirit when it alights on truth -- some may remember this post I wrote during our 12 Days of Christmas at the Shelter -- regardless, give yourself the gift of reading this woman's comments at the bottom.

You will be lifted up.

http://thedi.ca/2009/12/hello-just-call-me-happy/

Nameste.