To the Editor:
Over the past two years, I have been a volunteer with our new Island homeless shelter program. This program is staffed largely but not exclusively by our faith community, and is housed for now in churches’ parish houses. As we evolve, a certain strength is emerging from great vulnerability. We can use this new strength to create true homes for “the least among us.”
Like others, at first I wanted to avoid interaction with our guests when they came in, still in a state of agitation from their difficult day or in a state of intoxication, or both. I did not have the confidence for either scenario. I preferred the overnight shift to the dinner shift. Better to see them off to sleep and serve them breakfast in the morning in a clearer light for all concerned.
While I felt some guilt around what felt like my fear of connection with “them,” I now appreciate the deeper wisdom of knowing my limitation as a beginner and choosing to work with it anyway. Because every situation includes within it the knowledge we need to be fully engaged in that situation, one need only be present. That commitment grew as each encounter opened a rich, a beautiful world of connection with each other.
A program like this reveals not that much difference between the one volunteering and the one being helped. In fact, the lines blurred and disappeared altogether. Just as the fear and need for perseverance are mutual, so are the gifts of transformation.
We are, each of us, our brother’s keeper. It was this opportunity for the guest to become that for me, when I needed their help, that manifested a new and deeper fellowship for us both. Each of us thrives when an opening for our unique contribution presents itself, is seen, and then is courageously acted upon.
This two years of sheltering may seem like a long time, but in the context of transforming those who are lost and those who now have reason to trust, it is a miraculously short amount of time.
Our season has ended, our doors are now closed. I know I will miss it, and worry about what is next for our chronically homeless neighbors.
In Falmouth there is a parallel shelter program, aptly named Belonging to Each Other. In that program, churches, volunteers, and social workers have successfully followed the model set by two Hyannis organizations, Homeless not Hopeless, and CHAMP Homes. They have advanced from temporary housing in churches and motels to house rentals for their homeless population, thus saving and stabilizing more people over a longer period of time at lower cost. Here on Martha’s Vineyard, this model will work, though it might still require volunteers both for finding a rental property and assisting in social service. Together, in Hyannis, they have won over the NIMBYs and created 12 group houses operated by their residents, returning dignity and function not only to themselves but to their community. It is my fervent hope that we can find a way to do the same thing here on Martha’s Vineyard. If the 100 volunteers that stayed with our shelter program are any indication, thanks to the devotion of our churches and leaders, the answer is yes, we can.
Not since the 1930s have we entered an era of financial conservatism this extreme in its cynicism and callousness. But this too can be seen as a gift. It is increasingly up to citizenry to look to one another for care and hope. There lives our freedom, and the chance to be extraordinary.
Marjorie Mason
Chilmark
