Blessing bags for the homeless

Image from Joy's Hope

I was surfing around Pinterest, looking for ideas for our Faerie House for the festival at Zilker Park, when I came across a picture entitled "Blessing Bags".  I had to click in to see what that was about, and then click again to reach the blog post.

What I found was a post from KWAV (Kids with a Vision) about creating these blessing bags to give to the homeless. Homelessness is HUGE here in Austin, Texas, so I was immediately interested.

I've heard people talking about putting some snacks in bags, but this went further. As you can see in the picture, these included soap and Tynenol, toothpaste and deoderant, as well as some food.  It shouldn't feel revolutionary to me...I've done personal care bags for a couple of projects. But somehow, I didn't connect the dots. And I've worked with projects to provide food to homeless and in-need people for years.

Food + personal care items + some change + a bag = something to keep in the car to hand out.

The timing is perfect....

Last night, we were downtown for a walk with a group. My daughter and I stopped to admire a dog who was walking with two young guys -- one maybe in his late teens, one maybe about 20 or so. After petting the pup, the younger guy asked if we had some change we could spare for "a couple of street kids." My daughter apologized that she didn't...and he immediately responded.  "Don't apologize! You talked to us, like we were real people.  That matters a lot."  I wanted to cry. "Like we were real people."?  As though they were less than that??

I dug two one dollar bills out of my purse, and handed them to the younger guy.  He immediately gave one to his friend. They said thank you, and we said good-night and walked on.

After our stroll, we headed back to the car, and passed the same two young men. "Thank you so much again", the man said. "For everything."  My husband, who hadn't been with us earlier, asked why he had thanked us.

I explained.

"All that for a dollar," he asked?

Yup.

All that for a dollar. And some friendly conversation with a couple of strangers.

How nice it would have been to have had a bag to hand them, with some snacks, some personal care things, and maybe one of those silver space blankets to ward off the chill. How nice it would be, when I stop to hand someone a few quarters at a stop light, to be able to add a bag to my gift.

So thank you, Pinterest...and KWAV, for inspiring me. I have some bags to make. (Want to make your own?  Here's my list of ideas!)

PS...The post where the picture came from suggested putting religious materials like tracts ot Bibles in the bags.  I am a very spiritual person, but I have a huge problem with mixing religion and basic needs like food and soap, so I won't be doing that. Just sayin'....

How can something so simple be so heartbreaking?

We've all done it.  A flick of our wrists, and a crumpled blanket or quilt is tossed into the air, and comes down smoothly over a bed.  In fact, I would bet that it's a gesture we hardly think about.

So why was it so heartbreaking when I watched a young man do this everyday task the other day?

He couldn't have been more than 22 or 23.  Maybe even younger. Just my son's age.  The multicolored quilt flew up and came down smoothly.  He adjusted the corners to straighten it out.  But it was not on a bed or even a couch. It was under the overpass of Highway 183 in Austin, Texas.

I sat at a stop light, watching this moment of ordinary human action.  And I cried.

As a mom, I cried for the young man, so recently someone's baby, someone's child.  What had happened in his few short years to lead him to bed down under an overpass instead of in a home?  Had he run from an abusive home?  Fled neglect?  Or was a mom or dad somewhere praying for his return, not knowing where their son might be...or even if he's alive?

As a person who has worked with the homeless for years, I cried for a country that leaves so many without even the basics of home or safety while others get rich, some even stashing their funds in Swiss bank accounts or off-shore banks to avoid paying their part to care for the rest of the nation's citizens.

I know there have always been homeless people.  But the face of homelessness has changed in recent years.  For the past decade, the image of the single man struggling with drug addiction or the lone woman fighting mental illness has been replaced with more and more average people who faced one tragedy, and lost everything.  Or the family who cannot overcome the barriers of rent deposits and transportation (and now, mandatory ID requirements that catch the poor in an endless loop of documents they cannot afford to acquire.) 

Or a young man, who once probably spread his quilt over a bed...but now beds down for the night on the concrete under an Austin highway.

Angels on the street...for Pink Saturday

There are a lot of pictures we want to put into our scrapbooks.  Birthday parties, new babies, weddings and vacations probably account for most of what we put into our scrapbooks.  And those are all great things to remember -- milestones in our lives.

But what about scrapbook the imprint we leave on the world?  Have you ever considered creating a scrapbook of the things you do that make a difference in someone's life? In the earth?

I know, some people will say that those things should be kept secret.  According to the ancient Rabbis, doing good things is best if the donor never knows of the recipient, the recipient never knows from whom the help came, and no one else knows about the event at all.

But there was an interesting study I read about recently that I'm sure the Rabbis never considered.  It seems that if people are told to count the number of good deeds they do, even if they are not told to do any or to do any more, they do in fact perform more acts of charity and kindness in a given time period than either the control group which was not told anything (they were asked to describe acts of kindness at the end of the test week), or the group that was told to do kind and charitable things, but not asked to keep count.  (I'm trying to find the study so I can add a link.)

Scrapbooking the good we do might be a very good way to encourage people to do more, to pay attention to the deeds more.  It is a visual and tangible way to count. It reminds us why we are here, and how each person's efforts matter.

The pictures in my collage are from a group I belong to called Project Downtown, a group started a few years back by a handful of Muslim students from the University of Miami.. My daughter calls the people we work with the Angels on the Street -- these homeless people who will rush to put their last quarter in my parking meter because they want a way to pay us back for being there for them. And they don't understand that we are the ones who are benefiting most....

Where once when we came in old jeans because we had been at a work project, a new Angel who thought we were homeless offered my girls and I his room at the shelter, because it would be just wrong for a mom and kids to be on the street.  (Did I mention it was one of the coldest days in S. Florida history -- around 35 degrees, when he made that offer?)

Where we met the man who would not accept a dollar from me at a street corner, after asking me if I was a single mom.  He had to sleep at night, he said, and better to be a little hungry than feel guilty.  We cried as we drove away.

The streets of Fort Lauderdale are where we met and came to know a homeless man  named David Martin.  A man in a wheelchair, who spent his days and nights trying to make things better for other people on the street, and yet never complained about his own misfortune. The result was a project that came into being right after his death earlier this year -- a coalition of area churches working together to address homelessness in a tangible way. Hope South Florida is all that David dreamed it could be.

So these precious moments, these times when we, along with the other volunteers, get a chance to make a difference, belong in my scrapbooks.  So do the days my children clean up a city park, or the times one of us helps an elderly neighbor with home repairs. And those moments belong on my blog -- and on your blogs. So in honor of David Martin, and his inspiration, I dedicate my Pink Saturday Post.  There may not be much pink in it, but there's a lot of heart in it, and that has to count.

Today's Pink Saturday giveaway -- also inspired by The Katillac Shack inspired home make-over miracle video...

To encourage more people to remember their acts of kindness, I am giving away a scrapbook kit, including a 12x12 acid free Pioneer album, photo stickers, some acid-free paper and a set of scrapbook scissors.  To win, just comment on this post, and promise me that you will spend one hour in the month of September volunteering.  I don't need to know what -- I just want to get the ball rolling. And if you can, give a donation to Habitat for Humanity or Project Downtown -- if we all pull together, maybe someday, no one will be homeless.

The Story of Cindy

I see her almost every morning as I head to work.  A solitary figure in a long black skirt, a man's black windbreaker, sturdy boots and a hat pulled low over her face, despite the raging south Florida heat. She's usually carrying a bag or two, but never more than you'd see after someone has been shopping at the mall. Never enough to give her away. Never enough bags to look homeless...but she is.

If I stop for tea or a bagel before work, she's often there  -- sometimes eating her own breakfast, sometimes just sitting at a table, sometimes walking past.  We've talked now and then.  She knows me well enough to say hello, to chat for a bit.

The first time I talked with her, she was sitting alone on a bench by the fountain.  It was well over 90 degrees, but she was dressed entirely in black.  Layers of black.  I said hello, and she began to talk to me.  Her face was surprisingly young -- maybe late 30's or early 40's.  Her voice and her vocabulary suggest a very good education, a comfortable upbringing.

She used to be an artist, she told me. A good one.  She had a studio and a future. She shows me some sketches from one her bags.  The subjects are confusing...a bit of this, a bit of that, but the skill is very much there. She tells me she lost everything to a partner, who took her studio, destroyed her career. She watched the partner walk away with the success that should have been hers.  And that was the end. She didn't say how -- I have no idea if she walked away from her former life, had a breakdown or simply gave in to demons that may have existed all along.

But the result was a loss of her home. And perhaps saddest of all, a loss of her name.  You see, I call her Cindy to myself.  She looks like a Cindy.  But she says that when she stopped being an artist, when she lost her future (her words), she also lost her name.  Whatever she loves or likes, she tells me, she loses.  It is taken away.  So she hid her name, even from herself, so she would not lose it. She would not say more.

So nameless, she walks the streets and rides the buses in South Florida.  Always clean, always polite, always dressed from head to toe in heavy back clothing.

A lost soul, who lost her own name...

An issue we need to address

As immigrants and refugees in this country continue to be demonized, (it is always the "other" who is viewed as the cause of all economic and social problems...xenophobia), here is a issue we need to address immediately...
Iraqi refugees. .

Since the promise...G-d's latest additions to my life -Saturday

A few days ago , I made a commitment to do one thing every day to make a difference. Since then, G-d has been acting in my life in big ways.

I wrote about the women and the overheated car. That was Tuesday evening. Thursday morning, I checked my e-mail to find information about an organization called The Project Downtown. It's a small but growing group of people in cities across the country and now across the globe that started with three men taking 30 sandwiches out to the homeless on the streets of Miami. It's still the same mission...to feed, to, to talk with, and to listen to the homeless. To be a resource there on the street. Not a formal organization. A friend. Someone who will spend an hour or two and share a meal and a willing heart with people who are struggling to survive.

I responded immediately, and got an e-mail back telling me the place and time to meet on Saturday. I went. This "chapter" of the group, headed by three truly amazing young men, was ...I am not sure exactly what word I want....

inspiring?
uplifting?
humbling?
fun?
eye-opening?
prayerful?
awe-inspiring?

The right word is somewhere among all of those, a piece of each. After we distributed sandwiches and cold drinks and talked and listened, we had had a brief meeting among the volunteers, then a closing prayer.



I was invited back to the Mosque afterwards and went gladly. We spent another 1-2 hours talking, planning for this group, and discussing obsticles to our program (the police, a local women's group...they apparently regularly harrassed the group for handing out free food to the homeless.)

"There is a big beautification move on in the cities here," I was told. "So they only want the homeless fed indoors. Out of sight. "

"The homeless are not beautiful to them, I guess."

Sad.
Wrong.
Very wrong.

Next Saturday we will be there again. I will be there again. And the hungry and homeless will still be there too. With their beautiful souls.

Perhaps not beautiful to a city...

I'm just that G-d and the people who started this group see with different eyes.

Starting Over on $260 --- Thank you American Red Cross

On Friday night, my friend's house went up in flames. Not just an ordinary housefire from something left on the stove or a faulty wire somewhere. This was arson, with accelerant in every room. The contents, the walls, the ceilings, the floors and even the windows are all gone. The metal window frames are melted and hanging in bizaare swoops and angles that make my stomach turn. My friend and his four children are staying in a single hotel room. The Red Cross provided them with a room with no cooking facilities except a tiny microwave and a coffee machine, then gave them $130 for food. Total. For five people. And another $130 for clothing. Ditto. They have the room until tomorrow at 11 am. After that, they are on their own.

Aside from the clearly criminial act of setting this fire, there is another criminal act going on.

The Red Cross, which misses no chance to collect money from the good people of this country, is raking it in by the armful, and giving it out in thimblefuls.

Imagine you have lost everything. An arson determination means weeks or even months of delay for the insurance payments. You have 4 children. And now you have $260 to feed and cloth them from scratch. $260 for backpacks and school supplies and shoes and underwear and food and clothes for school and clothes for work and laundry and personal care things like shampoo and soap and deodorant and ... food. This man probably gave far more than $260 to Red Cross over the years. And yet that is all this good family has to "get back on their feet."

If that is truly all the Red Cross can spare for a family of five, why aren't they working with area and national merchants to gather supplies for families in crisis? Why aren't they showing up with gift certificates for clothing and food, backpacks full of school supplies and a list a rental housing especially for short term crisis housing? A debit card and a few teddy bears and they are on their merry way to the next fund-raiser. Another family helped. NOT!

After hearing a while back how much the director of the Red Cross makes each year, I was hesistant to give them any more donations. After this fiasco, I will make sure I never do. Spread the word. It's time for a change. The Red Cross has outlived its usefulness. Let's make something better...and I'll direct it free.