Holiday Reboot: encountering homelessness
As a child on Thanksgiving, my parents, sister and I went to Texas’s George R. Brown Convention Center to serve turkey and stuffing to over 10,000 homeless people and then went home to eat our own meal.
Last week I saw a perfectly good sleeping mat rolled up on the sidewalk near the dumpster of my building in Philadelphia, so I tossed it into my Toyota, hoping to find the perfect new home for it. I figured I could transport it from the suburbs to Center City and find folks who could use it.
The night before Thanksgiving, driving home from Center City, I was headed north on 18th street in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Suddenly I spotted a person sleeping over the steam vents. I quickly put the car in park, hopped out, pulled the mat out and left it on the sidewalk near the person sleeping. Their white and blue blanket was covering their head so I could not tell the person’s gender, age, or race. It didn’t matter. Goal accomplished. A resource was redistributed from trash/land fill to someone who could use it. Beyond this one act, we of course need systemic solutions for more affordable housing, and one day, we will stop criminalizing poverty.
When we give, we receive. I was lifted. Plus there was more. I felt my father’s presence with me throughout the whole drop off. He passed away 25 years ago and the anniversary of his…
