the safe house

Today a large Hispanic man came to the shelter for a cup of coffee and sat in a plastic chair.  His dirty gray pullover was soaked from heavy vertical rains that drove everyone waiting outside the shelter's doors inside before eight am.  He cradled the cup and began to laugh.  He laughed loudly, the quiet men huddled alone with their cups looked at him but there was no joke to share.  He quieted down to a garble and then started laughing again and no one paid attention. 

Yesterday a half dozen beleaguered souls held animated conversations with their unseen choirs.  A local sociologist wrote about the house in a book he published twenty years ago and described the local orators as the crazies.  I didn’t take his label as demeaning; physiologically altered or born mentally ill, or suffering from a multiplicity of traumatic events no longer able to conform or perform left me depressed.  Beyond reach but certainly not alone in their thoughts they have no silence.

The first day of a new month. This has been a long summer and only falling leaves will confirm its end.  Where will I be in a month’s time is uncertain though it’s beginning to feel I will not leave.  How can I not become like the laughing man or the crazies without a large daily dose of silence. 

The 407 house across the street is for the worst of the worst, those who are so mentally unscrewed no one else will take them.  And here we take them in.  It takes an unlimited amount of patience and respect for the truly down but look hard enough you can see in the desperate eye they try to make it through another day. 

But what the safe house cannot do is give sanctuary to the self-destructive.  There is nothing in the words of Jesus or the Buddha that can protect the soul who is close to death because of self inflicted, exacerbated diseases.  There is no one to blame for this except God, if we are permitted to point the finger at the one who created a soul lost in oblivion.  There is great despair when someone’s fate slips through our fingers.  No amount of compassion, no amount of love will save a body barely hanging on a thread that denies it needs help. 

And it is wrong to take the blame for the loss.  I hear you say, ‘well you came into their lives to give them comfort, to help them survive, to share a morsel of hope’, does this suppose then that the shattered life had no meaning before hand other than to test me?  Maranatha. 

Who is the soul beyond our reach?  Do they walk this earth empty of life, departed when they lost hope from violence and drugs and evil?  Perhaps the soul continues its tormented journey, locked in a vicious cycle leaping from one crushed life to another, hoping for its own complete and final end.    

I’ll pray for one tonite.  Walking through the streets barefooted, unaware diseases have ripped her life from her, there is nowhere to go anymore.  The law has protected her rights as much as it can but the time has come when no legal recourse will protect her.  I fear the day her body is found and Lord, have mercy on her and on my soul because we ran out of options.  But really, you need to take the flak for the faulty man.  You made us in your image.  Original sin?  Sins from the father?  They never had a chance, dude, never. 

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.