Friday Night Strike

Last Friday, Alyosha and I (Jen) went to participate in the Night Strike under the Burnside Bridge. It is a thing to help homeless or 'down on their luck' people. All through the car ride over, the preparatory instructions and singing--I was explaining to Alyosha that we are going to go help people who don't have a home. They don't have jobs or money to buy food. He asked why don't they have these things and I told him that maybe they had bad parents who didn't teach them they need to work. Or maybe they were just lazy. Maybe they didn't know how to go get a job. Maybe they didn't eat their broccoli when they were kids and their brains don't work the right way. I talked about lots of reasons they might be living on the street and not have a home.
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So, all of the volunteers meet in a building across the street. The leader, Marshall, calls us all to order by playing guitar and leading us in a few songs. We pray. Pray for each other, for the lives we are fortunate to have, for the people we are going to give food and clothes to and pray that maybe someone will see that a little help can go a long way.

Along with the food and clothes, there are stations to wash people's feet and cut their hair. Supposedly, this one night a week is the only day some of these people take their shoes off--can you imagine what is going on with those feet? It seems like this act of washing feet is as much for the 'homed' as it is for the homeless. I read an article written in USA Today here that put the foot washing experience this way: Bridgetown Ministries and its dozens of volunteers aren't vetting the moral worthiness of the homeless people whose hair they cut, bodies they clothe and feet they wash. They know some might be drunk and some on drugs. Are they homeless because they're lazy? Do they deserve this care? The questions are utterly irrelevant from the perspective of the ministry's radical compassion. As Snider puts it, "We're just out there to love on people."

On the walk from our warm volunteer headquarters to the brightly lit space outside under the bridge, Alyosha pointed to every building in sight and said--why can't the people without homes sleep in there. Our duty for the evening was to hand out clothes and sleeping bags--they said that this station gets rushed upon during the first 10 minutes because everyone wants a new, clean sleeping bag or the biggest warm coat since it is winter. One lady, Darnella, smiled at Alyosha and asked him for the brown sleeping bag--he was happy to give it to her, and then asked me with a little water in his eyes if we could give everyone a house and a cartoon too.
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I don't know if it is right to give out food and clothes. Some people start to depend on it and then they maybe really do get lazy. But some of them really do need help and truely don't know where to get it. There are so many times that the majority must suffer because of a minority who are disrespectful. On Friday night, at least we know that the people who really seek the help and need the help are getting it from a lot of people who care. And it is the best way I know so far to show Alyosha what it is to be cold and hungry and how to ask for help and give it without intentions.