Homelessness in the Boston, MA area from the perspective of Sister Maureen Lynch who works at Pine Street Inn Her hand trembled as she struggled to sign the scrap of paper on the front desk.
Her steps unsteady, she turned to drop it into the bucket.
Eyes glazed over and unfocused, somehow she knew she was safe.
She had a bed for the night.
A gentle woman – simple, quiet, thoughtful.
A sick woman – fourth stage renal failure and AIDS.
“You don’t look too good today, Maria. Where were you?”
Her speech slurred, “I went to dialysis.”
I want to believe her. Yet…I suspect she’s been using.
As she heads for the stairs, the meat slips from the half sandwich in her hand, too weak to hold onto.
“Please be careful, Maria. Why don’t you sit down for a while?”
I’ve lost her. She’s in another world right now.
Incredible, God, You love her unconditionally just as she is.
Nothing, absolutely nothing she does can separate her from that love.
Some time ago, I wrote this in a journal I keep on some of the women I meet at Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter in Boston. I remember watching her from the front desk as she sat nodding, still trying to clutch the sandwich in her hand. At the time the Prophet Isaiah struck a chord in me. “There was in him (her) no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by people, one of those from whom people hide their face, spurned and we held him in no esteem.” (Is:53: 2-3)
TO continue visit…
http://www.schalifax.ca/pages/CA_july-homeless.html
Tags: Homelessness
