I think I've been fortunate in some ways. I went through much of my teens and twenties with safe houses to visit and in my thirties and forties I was, for a while, anyway, able to pay it forward. As a teenage Jesus freak I had a huge extended family of other fanatically devout Charismatic Christians. There were communal and ministry houses full of friends where I was always welcome. This continued in my early and mid-twenties and then I began to repay the hospitality by taking in guests and visitors in my own home till my early forties when I became homeless.
These were not tight, exclusive little cliques of friends. What really set us apart from others was our porousness and our welcoming attitude towards others, perhaps sometimes too welcoming. We took seriously the Gospel of love, seeking to incarnate in our lives as accurately as we could within our limitations the reality of the welcoming and healing love of Jesus. Then I tried my best to show gratitude as I began opening my own home to others. It was never perfect and I didn't always get it right, but do we ever, really, any of us?
This life experience, of having support and available respite long before I would ever need it therapeutically, did not prevent me from becoming mentally ill, nor did it protect me from homelessness. But it did help me develop enough inner strength, resilience and balance to get through those ordeals with just a minimum of damage.
Partly the benefit was in having people in my life I could trust and be safe with. But there was also the challenge of extending to others the same love and hospitality that I was able to benefit from. This helped me mature young so that already, when I was just fifteen, I was more a young man than a teenage boy.
I have already mentioned that I work in a psychiatric respite centre, where people who are experiencing a mental health crisis or extreme life difficulties and challenges can come for refuge for a few weeks. I think it is just wonderful that this service is available. I think it would be even more wonderful if this kind of respite was much more widely available to a much larger demographic of our population.
It seems that mental health and housing support services are only available when the damage is already done, when our lives have already been ruined beyond hope of recovery by poverty, trauma, poor housing, homelessness, childhood abuse, addictions, and underemployment. When I was on social assistance I found it appalling how our government will refuse to offer any needed support while we are working and paying taxes to help us stay healthy and in good condition emotionally, bodily and spiritually. Many are expected to bust their asses working in low paying employment with only the hope that they can somehow get ahead by taking extra education and training and by finding other, better paid employment. The sad truth is, there are many casualties along the way, and a lot of people just don't make the grade. They lack family and spousal supports and in order to keep their heads above water all they can do is keep working and hope the rent cheque doesn't bounce. How can there be any way but down when this is the way that so many of us end up having to live every day, every year of our lives? By the time we get on welfare, if we can get it at all, we are already humiliated and damaged. A few of us bounce back. I am one of the lucky ones.
The system is broken. It breaks and damages human lives and souls in its greed and zeal to feed the corporate machine with new flesh and blood, and all in the name of churning out profit. We have to find a human scale that respects and honours our humanity and makes it possible for us to get through life, pay the bills and put money in the bank without getting broken and damaged by the very machine we are expected to help sustain.
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