Saturday in Detroit

Yesterday morning Brad, Mark Kohne and I headed downtown Detroit with a woman from my church, Linda Bentley and her husband Ron. Linda's been going downtown Detroit for 17 years to feed and clothes the homeless. The five of us went over to a church in Dearborn Heights and spent a couple of hours sorting and loading to 15 passenger vans with clothes, toys, blankets and food for people. Around noon a bunch more people showed up and we all headed downtown for the first stop, right outside the Cass Corridor, over by the Masonic Temple. If you've been here, it's a pretty scary area - although with a fresh coat of snow, it really didn't look too bad. We setup tables to give out food, clothes and then gifts for kids and adults. There were about 50 people at the first stop where Brad handed out the gifts and Mark and I worked with people to hand out clothes and blankets. After everyone had been taken care of, we moved onto the next stop, over by Temple and Brush Streets, another interesting area. We had a lot more people here, over a hundred. One of the guys there who does this on a regular basis explained that this is a pretty transitory group in the winter because of how they rotate through the homeless shelters, which only allow them to stay for three days at a shot before they have to move on. Someone had donated an artificial christmas tree and when I told one of the guys there about it, his response was "What am I going to do with a tree when I don't even have a house. I can't very well set it up in my car, can I?" He had a point. The people were mostly kind and appreciative, but Linda had done a great job explaining where some of them were coming from, many of them not having eaten at all up to that point and maybe a little ornery.

This whole deal really blew me away and hit me at a heart level. I've been trying to figure out exactly what it's been that impacted me since yesterday. Part of it was around how I look at my stuff. As we helped people find clothes and blankets, watching how grateful they were for this stuff, and how they needed this stuff for them and their families to survive. I've got so much crap that I'll buy and forget about on a regular basis. The other thing that struck me was being close to these people - shaking their hands, getting hugs from them and talking to them about their world. I walked around with this smile on my face the whole time as I watched what was going on. I wondered about how tough it must be to humble yourself enough to take a hand-out like this. I saw how the church could get beyond stupid infighting and start to change the world around me. It got me thinking about what I've been reading in the book The Holy Longing, about Charity and Justice - going from giving out pieces of bread to trying to change the system so that people don't go hungry to begin with.

I'm still trying to process all of this. It was a phenomenal exerience, but I'm trying to figure how I can make sure it doesn't stop with just one visit out there. It has a huge potential to affect my heart and I want to figure out how I can keep allowing this stuff to change me. Watching Linda, the woman who coordinates all of this, gives me a feel for what Mother Teresa is like. Linda is such a quiet, unassuming woman, who so deeply loves these people that she interacts with on the streets. She does this every Saturday. I watched one homeless many come up to her and give her a Christmas gift - a chipped precious moments coffee mug wrapped in a paper bag. She treated it like it was gold. She's so thankful for every person that comes and helps. The whole thing really rocked my world - I'm still trying to figure out exactly how and why.