A Matter of Faith

"The homeless will break your heart."

Those were the first words I heard when announcing my intention to give up a job I had held for 10 years, and work exclusively in the homeless arena.

The friend who uttered those words wasn't talking about the heartbreak of working with families made homeless while trying to care for disabled children, or battered and broken youth coming out of foster care, though of course those cases are a reality both she and I know well.

No, what my friend was saying is that chronically homeless individuals and generationally homeless and/or indigent families learn to survive by codes foreign to those of us from more advantaged backgrounds. Their dealings with social service agencies and churches and government officials are often rooted in deceit and manipulation, and their coping skills are too frequently limited to alcohol and drugs. To work with the homeless is to go out on a limb for them again and again, only to have them cut the branch from under you.

Intellectually, I understand how and why this happens. But emotionally it hurts. Compassion fatigue comes faster and harder with people working with the homeless than in any other social service field.

However, I also work with volunteers whose spirits never flag; whose ability to dig deep for homeless people never reaches a limit.

Lydia Barton is one of those volunteers. For 50 years, she has worked as a psychiatric nurse all over the world: in war zones, in towns on the Texas/Mexican border, with the most poverty stricken peoples imaginable. She has shared her heart, her food, her house and her funds with more people than I will meet in a lifetime. They never stop disappointing her. She never gives up on any of them.

"I know many of the people I help will abuse my generosity," she says. "But that's on their conscience, not mine. Only God can know how much it took to break the spirits of the homeless and leave them in such despair. Only God can know how much it will take to bring them back. All I know is to help wherever I can."

Julian Ferrari is another such volunteer. In a past life, he was a New York City cop. September 2001 left him physically and emotionally shattered. He and his wife came down here, where the climate was kinder to his lungs and they had friends and relatives. For months, he felt unable to think, or feel, or do.

One Sunday morning, for no good reason, he found himself in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, being greeted by the pastor with a smile and a spatula. Here, this Catholic looked around and saw people of all faiths, races and cultures, both working as volunteers, or looking for a meal and hope.

Julian likes to cook. A meal he could provide.

Within a few weeks, he could provide the hope also. Julian has become a one-man reclamation agency for the homeless. He trains the homeless in marketable skills, finds them jobs, mentors them as they learn new work habits, finds them housing. He puts them up in efficiency apartments behind his house while he teaches them to work as auto mechanics and to do paint and body work.

They disappoint him. They work for a month, then go on a bender. They move into a boarding house, and trash it as they leave without paying rent. Julian was a New York cop, he's seen far worse. He shrugs and moves on.

But not all the homeless disappoint. Some restore your faith in God and humanity.

Lydia and Julian live the story of the shepherd rejoicing at finding the one lost lamb, the one who strayed from the herd of a hundred. Both of them have worked with thousands of lambs, and hundreds have repaid them with new lives, new hope, and new faith.

Lydia talks about it often. Her experience has taught her that there are always some among the homeless who will find their way home, and that you never know which ones they are just by looking. You have to help everyone God brings you, and let God reveal who among them will flourish at your touch.

Last night my son and I stayed up until 2 a.m. talking about the transformative power of faith - how it takes your intellect and research into best practices and new models of care, and gives it breath and life. This morning I went to work to deal with broken lives; this afternoon Tom went to run the laundry program for the homeless. Neither one of us has the faith of a Lydia or a Julian, but at least we are putting ourselves in its way.

We have faith that we, too, will find our way home.