August 14, 2009
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Dean Sharp is back to blogging! Perhaps his example will help me get back into the habit myself. It is well worth reading his take on why he will never be homeless.
It is great to hear Dean say so eloquently what I have been trying to say in clumsy fits and starts for 15 years. Many years ago I grew my beard out to biblical proportions (actually aiming for a ZZTop look) and spend significant time with a variety of homeless folks, trying to rescue them from addiction and, well, homelessness. It was soon obvious to me that a dearth of relationships-- and an inability to form or maintain close relationships, for varied reasons-- is the root of every chronically homeless person's plight.
Since then I have contrasted this with the obvious un-homelessness of several people who, by fate or by design, were without a place to stay for significant lengths of time.
One fellow suffered from cerebral palsy and hydrocephaly, but he had so many friends that he managed to "couch-surf" for more than a year before a UCP apartment opened up for him. And this despite his hosts (including us) having to help him dress and undress and even help him in the shower. Because he had friendships strong enough to share those burdens gladly, and many enough to spread the burden between us all so none of us got "burned out" caring for him.
In contrast, another fellow "went homeless" for one calendar year in order to better understand and empathize with those living that lifestyle. He found it very difficult to do so in an authentic way because his friends kept checking on him and helping him out! At last he had to cut himself off for several months and intentionally "go missing" in order to feel "homeless" in any real way, despite living under an overpass for weeks and eating out of dumpsters. This from a person TRYING to "be homeless"-- he knew, and his genuinely homeless acquaintances knew, that it wasn't real until those close healthy relationships were severed (at least temporarily and artificially).
Makes me wonder how many well-housed, well-insured, well-fed, fully-employed people feel "homeless" in the deepest sense: living without really belonging, without a band-of-brothers or any tribe to claim them as its own...
Comments (2)
Wow Nicolas! Good thing I still have you in my reader! I never check on xanga anymore. I really enjoyed Dean's post, and yours is great too.
It reminds me of these two quotes by Mother Teresa. She seemed to really have grasped the idea that it isn't just the poor who feel as if they have nothing.
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa
I am over at http://obahsomah.blogspot.com
Deana
@obahsomah -
Thanks Deana!
Good MT quotes... clearly she saw that, despite Maslow's hierarchy of needs, those "higher needs" can be just as keenly felt as "lower needs", and can in some ways be "greater" too. Although I'd love to ask her in what way she believed the hunger for love is "greater" than the hunger for physical nourishment. (besides the obvious physical-vs.-spiritual ...I wonder HOW, in MT's opinion, those spiritual needs trump or occlude or tower over physical needs)
Any guesses?