I Just Wanna Get Warm

 The colors here are monochrome studies in one shade of grey
The good times and the hard times, cut from the same grey cloth
And all the fires that crackle here consume but do not burn
All light and no heat, and I just wanna get warm
I just wanna get warm  [i]

January welcomes a New Year, and with it the annual onslaught of guests who get way too cold for their own good.

It’s particularly harrowing for our Springs Rescue Mission neighbors who live in the fog of addiction or mental illness as they work through the challenges of being homeless in cold weather. Many of them don’t even notice there’s a problem until hypothermia or frostbite (or both) have set in. That’s a problem because when you add the confusion generated by hypothermia to the addled mental state of those neighbors, it can be really difficult to remember your need to get somewhere warm. Worse, by that time your body’s temperature regulators may be going haywire so you may feel the need to take off the layers of clothing that are saving your life at the moment. 

It isn’t an everyday event, thankfully, but the homeless community here in El Paso County loses people to the cold now and then. We wonder to this day whether the cold caught one of our RAP friends by surprise last month. We held his memorial service here not long before Christmas Day. 

Hypothermia and frostbite are both subtle at first. Hypothermia is a body temperature below 95° F. Depending upon your physical condition, hypothermia can begin to kick in when the air temperature around you is as high as 50° F. As one’s internal body temperature decreases, the very real possibility of heart arrhythmia increases.[ii] About 700 people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are killed from hypothermia every year in the United States.[iii]

Frostbite, clinically defined, is the temporary or permanent skin tissue damage caused by prolonged skin-tissue temperature of 23° F or below.[iv] And the angels at Springs Rescue Mission’s Resource Advocate Program (RAP) are knee-deep in frostbite intervention this week. If frostbite has turned to gangrene, the intervention is not pleasant and quite costly to the community.

Bottom line is this: if we can help our neighbors who nightly face the cold stay warm, despite the challenges they face, they’re more likely to stay alive and well and make it to spring intact. Cold weather sleeping bags (mummy-style if possible) and warm socks are simple things we can offer to our neighbors on the streets during Colorado winters to make their lives a bit more tolerable. They are time-tested and proven help for anyone with the need to stay warm during long and frigid winter nights.

Will you join us in providing sleeping bags and socks to help the homeless be warm until they can be helped or healed? Just bring them by the Mission warehouse at 1 West Las Vegas St from 9:30 am – 4:00 pm Monday through Friday, or Saturdays from 9 – 11:30 am. Your donation today could help prevent frostbite or even worse for our neighbors.

They just want to get warm. Let's help them.

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[i] Mark Heard, “I Just Wanna Get Warm,” © 1991 Ideola Music/ASCAP.

[ii] http://www.thesurvivaldoctor.com/2012/01/03/symptoms-of-low-body-temperature/

[iii] http://sleepingbagsforthehomeless.com/

[iv] http://www.healthscout.com/ency/1/453/main.html

Perfect Storms, Tribes and Social Miracles

The common definition of a “perfect storm” began as “a phenomenon where conditions are just right to produce an event of catastrophic proportion.” I’ve also heard “perfect storm” used frequently and, I think, appropriately in describing the lives of so many we serve at the Mission. 

Rarely can we point to one single circumstance that drives a family or an individual into profound need or homelessness. It’s more a matter of conditions piling on top of each other in a way that produces catastrophe in someone’s life.

For example, when Warren lost his wife to cancer some years ago, he turned inward and medicated his grief with alcohol. He ended up alienating his married children and grandchildren. He began showing up at work hung over and depressed, which led to him losing that job. Unable to find another job in a shrinking economy while he was on unemployment, he ended up homeless, alone, hungry and addicted.  Grief, alcoholism, broken relationships, an economy on the fritz and fading chances for employment. Smells like a storm, doesn’t it?

Jerry’s cardiologist is convinced that the stress of being laid off led directly to Jerry’s cardiac collapse a few months later. Jerry kept looking for work while he was recovering. He went into interviews looking well-dressed, but really haggard. Meanwhile his nest egg shrunk and then disappeared. His deteriorated health fed his deteriorating opportunity to work which further deteriorated his economic stability-- or should that be in another order? Maybe it’s all of the above, together, firing at random.

So what do you do when your neighbor is caught in storms like those? Convene the next meeting of experts and make the homeless and hungry the main topic? Write a politician and tell her to take care of the problem? Hope some rich family foundation or Donald Trump-type coughs up a huge check?

What if you could be part of a social miracle? 

In his book Lost Icons (T&T Clark 2000), Rowan Williams (yep, that one -- the Archbishop of Canterbury) comments on what historian John Bossy calls “the social miracle” of the medieval community and church -- charity resulting from “the extraordinary process by which sectional loyalties were from time to time interrupted and overcome by a sense of integration, of belonging to an entire social body extending far beyond one’s choice or one’s affiliations of interest and ‘natural’ loyalty” (Williams, p.54).  In other words, people made the choice to move beyond the tribalism of the Dark Ages into a greater community to benefit those in need. Bossy counts that as nothing short of a miracle. 

He’s probably right. Think about the tribes, each with their own biases, mores and folkways, in our modern culture. Tribes spring up over economic status. Tribes thrive on divisive politics. Tribes nurture differences of social position. Tribes watch with fear should someone invade a comfort zone within their territory. Asking tribes to move beyond their perceived boundaries of relation is tantamount to social heresy. If one’s boundaries don’t include those who have slipped into a different tribe of people struggling with alcoholism or poverty, it can be difficult to even see the need to offer a hand up to others.

But that hand up is necessary for those neighbors (there’s a community term), many of whom may never share our tastes in candidates, football teams, restaurants or radio stations, who find themselves in perfect storms.  Our neighbors need the extraordinary process that interrupts sectional loyalties and goes way past “natural” loyalties. They need someone, in fact a community of “someones,” to break tribal boundaries and offer a hand up out of the chaos of their perfect storms.

As the old Bruce Cockburn song says, they’re waiting for a miracle: the miracle that happens when our attention is fixed, even for a moment, on the fact that because we share the planet and our days with them, the hungry and homeless are somehow miraculously and wonderfully a part of each of us.

They need responses beyond tribes, elections, and platitudes. Our neighbors need the miracle and true synergy of community response, starting with the life jackets that will help them navigate their perfect storms -- food, clothing, education, options, housing, basic care.

Count this your invitation to be part of a social miracle right where you are.

Guest Blog, Ben Robb: "We have to let you go..."

Ben Robb is a valued friend and colleague of mine at the mission. Over a lot of hard-earned caffeine, I found that I really enjoy Ben's insights and passion. Today, I hope you will too. (Go get 'em, Ben!!)

"We have to let you go ..."

What would you do if you and your spouse both lost your jobs today?

I suppose you'd feel stressed. You'd pray, perhaps. You'd certainly spruce up the resumes.

And then you'd call people. People you trust. People who care about you, want the best for you, would watch for new opportunities and mention your name.

You'd activate your network ... And you'd probably be just fine.

Positive relationships are easy to take for granted--building them comes naturally to most of us. But imagine if all your friends were living below the poverty line. Imagine that many of them were looking for work, too. Imagine that they all lived in small apartments, that none of them had a spare bedroom.

Then what would you do if you and your spouse both lost your jobs?

Imagining life with a different set of relationships makes it easier to see why approximately 800 single mothers are currently living with their children in their cars in the Pikes Peak Region, doesn't it?

You may have read Sarah's story in our recent newsletter (if not, get caught up here)--until recently, she was one of those homeless single mothers. She's also Springs Rescue Mission's first participant in a new program we're calling the Family Mentor Alliance. Here's the concept in a nutshell:

What we're doing to help

Homeless families have a short-term need: shelter. We're currently in the process of developing a safe place specifically for families with children--more on this in another post.

Homeless families have two primary long term needs if they are to avoid ending up on the streets (or in their cars) again--education and relationships.

We seek to meet their long term needs through the Family Mentor Alliance by matching them in a mentoring relationship with members of a local congregation. Our goal for all of the families we work with is self-reliance.

When I met Sarah, she was several months into her time in the family Mentor Alliance and was preparing to move out of transitional housing and into her own place. Committing to a rent payment for the first time in years, she was understandably stressed about the move. But her mentors were helping her.

Honest help doesn't always feel good. Sarah told me about arguing with these folks because the place she originally picked out was over budget. Together, they adjusted expectations and found something smaller, something sustainable. She told me about crying in her living room because her mentors were pushing her not to try to squeeze all of her stuff into the new space, which was smaller than her transitional housing, too.

These guys fought. They cried. They built real relationships--long term relationships. And Sarah has finally  gained some positive momentum for herself and her children.

Why this matters to me

Sarah's mentors are faithfully walking her through a wonderful spiritual curriculum and investing in her family in numerous ways. But it's the everyday stuff that makes all the difference in the long run. It's the positive relationships that matter.

I've worked for a few different non-profits over the last 11 years. Some of them have had a difficult time quantifying their long term outcomes. In my experience, the reason has been that the organization didn't build long term relationships. They might talk about reaching an inordinate number of hurting people (reach is a media term), but they haven't invested the months or years that it takes to walk people through the meaningful and sometimes mundane decisions that actually get lives back on track. And there's nothing more important.

Why it should matter to you, too

You give money to non-profits every year. If you're funding folks whose aim it is to get lives back on track, make sure they develop long term relationships with the people they're helping, whether it's through counseling, casework, or education. There's no substitute for long term, positive relationships.

If you want to help a family, a neighbor, a coworker, or the guy panhandling on your street corner, develop the relationship. There's no substitute for you.

Finding the Music

A few weeks ago my wife Annie and I visited my mother, who is progressing into the final stages of Alzheimer’s in a care facility in my hometown. We were able to take the time to help feed her dinner that evening.

Before I was born, Mom was winning journalism awards. She was an accomplished jazz and ragtime pianist as well as the church organist for many years. She was a source of great inspiration and practical help for me in writing and music. (Of course! She’s my mom!) In recent years it has been brutal to watch her lose both her way with words and her way around the ivories. 

Midway through the meal, Mom shoved her cafeteria plate out of the way and started drumming her fingers on the table, moving her arms to her own cadence. Annie and I turned to an attendant who shrugged his shoulders and said, “Every once in a while, it happens.”

We listened and watched for a few moments. Then Annie whispered, “Steve, she’s playing the piano.” And with that hint, it only took me about four measures to recognize the rhythm of a pretty sophisticated ragtime standard Mom had played at social clubs, family gatherings and at home for 60 or 70 years, I’d guess. One of her favorites and one of mine, too.

I leaned over and spoke softly, “You go, girl! Zez Confrey[i] is a lot of fun, isn’t he?”

Mom nodded and kept “playing.” A few moments later she suddenly stopped, looked at me almost in panic and whimpered, “Where’s the music?” Mom knew something important was missing; that there should have been different results coming from the effort she was putting forth.

That feeling like there should be different results from one’s efforts is all too common among the neighbors we serve at the Mission.

Will has training and experience as a groundskeeper. He’s a veteran. Yet he lacks education, and his drinking has hurt him both physically and psychologically. He came to our Resource Advocate Program (RAP) a couple of months ago to apply for food stamps and to get a free cup of coffee. He took steps to become more self-sufficient, trying to more fully engage the social net that the Pikes Peak Region can offer. He kept applying for jobs with no success, and he had reasons why: “The economy’s just too tough… I just can’t find the people who truly appreciate what I do… I’m a hard worker, but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

Just as Mom needed a piano to achieve her desired results a few weeks ago, Will needed something more to achieve his desired results: sobriety. Ongoing encounters with his RAP case manager made it clear that his problem was not the economy, but his drinking. He was going through many of the “right” motions, but without clear progress toward sobriety, he’d never find the results he wanted.

So he’s making the changes he can to move toward the reality that is sobriety. Will’s attending AA. He’s voluntarily entered a local intensive outpatient treatment and moved into a halfway house with peers who will keep him accountable.

Will shows us the AA coins that mark new milestones of sobriety when he drops by. The clouds have left his eyes. There is greater clarity in his thinking. Now he takes responsibility for his situation.

It isn’t over yet, but Will is getting what he needs to find the music.

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[i] The composer of Kitten on the Keys and a lot of other ragtime songs of the 1920s and ‘30s.