We owe the location of our nation’s capital to George Washington himself.  The trick was to choose a site that would be considered neutral to both northern and southern interests. 

Washington’s answer? A 10-mile square that allowed for Pierre Charles L’Enfant to work his grand avenue, Versailles-like magic along the Potomac. Too bad for George though, the President’s House or White House, today the oldest surviving Federal structure in America, was not available until 1800 when John and Abigail Adams moved in.

If you’ve never visited Washington D.C., you owe it to yourself, your family and friends.  This city, or to be more precise, district, belongs to you.  It always has, with the exception of a few months during the war of 1812 when the British got a little carried away.

Washington D.C. is perhaps the single greatest symbol of freedom in the world today.  It represents the great American experiment, which is far from over.  A visit to the National Archives Museum underscores this point.  A commanding female statue keeping vigil over the contents therein reminds passers-by on Pennsylvania Avenue that, “what is past is prologue.” 

That quote recently caught the eye of Daniel.  Daniel is homeless and plays street soccer for the St. Louis Roadies, our own hometown homeless soccer team.  A few weeks ago, Daniel and 5 of his teammates traveled to D.C. to compete in the US Homeless Cup.  “What does that quote mean exactly?” he asked.  The question went on to become a theme for his teammates during the tournament.  For the purposes of a travel column, a unique look at Washington D.C. through the eyes of a homeless soccer team is worth the read.

The US Homeless Cup is a tournament that allows for cities across America to showcase the soccer talent of those who grapple with freedom on a daily basis.  Men and women living on the streets or in shelters across the country are invited to compete on behalf of their city.  Tournament organizers then choose from a hundred or so athletes to represent the nation on the global stage.  The Homeless World Cup, as it’s known, is approximately 5 years old.  This year’s US National Team will travel to Melbourne, Australia in December to compete against 60 plus nations from around the world.

With limited sponsorship funds, the St. Louis homeless soccer team, aka, St. Louis Roadies, had to be very careful on per diem type items.  Lodging, for example, was our first challenge. 

Frugal travelers will be happy to know that it is possible to stay in the heart of the capital for $20 per person per night.  That is, if you’re more interested in experiencing D.C. than remembering the quality of the towels from your hotel.   Very modest accommodations can be found at Luther Place Memorial Church Youth Hostel (Thomas Circle, 1220 Vermont Ave. NW) located in the heart of D.C., thankfully within walking distance of Ben’s Chili Bowl (1213 U Street). 

One of our players uncovered Luther Place church records from the 19th century in our room.  Pastor John George Butler served 50 years in the district in the 1800’s.  His career was marked by service to the poor and counsel to Presidents and dignitaries.  In fact, he served as chaplain to one of Lincoln’s assassins, assuring him of divine compassion even to the gallows. 

With one day to sightsee before the tournament began, we were short on time.  Our first stop was to pay a visit to Senator “Kit” Bond.  Room 247 in the Russell Senate Building is set aside on Thursday mornings for Missouri visitors to D.C. to meet with the Senator.  He was kind to listen as players described what it is like to be homeless in St. Louis and asked for his support of the many programs offered by Peter & Paul Community Services (www.ppcsinc.org).   

Senatorial visit complete and with “All Day” metro passes secured, group consensus brought us to the Declaration of Independence and the Lincoln Memorial.  Like so many of the world’s great cities, there is only so much you can do in a given timeframe.  An entire summer is needed for a visitor to take in what is offered at the Smithsonian alone.  We were content to focus on just a few of D.C.’s landmarks.

After sightseeing, players and coaches connected rather interesting dots on the day.  A theme surfaced and carried the conversation prior to lights out.  The men reflected, for example, on why they were in D.C. and what the soccer tournament meant for each of them.  The common denominator for each was freedom.  From the reverence they observed in the National Archives for a document that set the world on fire with hope, to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Dr. King delivered his famous speech, each player realized he was fighting to be free of all those things that up to this point had dominated him, leaving him enslaved to homelessness.  For some this meant alcohol, for others, drugs.  Still others sited mental illness, anger and low self-esteem as their particular chains. 

The St. Louis Roadies went on to finish 3rd in the beginner bracket of the US Homeless Cup.   They managed 4 points in all and won their last game against Richmond.  The Roadies received the “Fair Play” trophy, an honor set aside for the team that best captured the spirit of the tournament.  And finally, our goalie was chosen from over 1 hundred participants as an alternate for the National Team.

While people-watching on the Mall one evening, the Roadies welcomed President George Bush back to the White House via Marine One.  We were also lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the new President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani as his 1 mile motorcade exited from a nearby restaurant on 15th and Pennsylvania Ave.  More signs of freedom.

Our weekend went on to include shopping at Union Station, cruising Georgetown at night, taking in the sunset from the roof of the Kennedy Center and driving along the George Washington Memorial Parkway on route for a group photo outside the National’s ballpark.  Aside from the shopping, all free, all fun.

Homeless World Cup organizers estimate that 1/3 of those who participate in the tournament do not return to homelessness.  No one is quite sure why.  It may have something to do with the dynamic of belonging.  It could be linked to the dignity that comes from knowing that others are depending on you.  Perhaps a renewed sense of

pride and self-esteem is at play or the feeling of being connected to a bigger picture?  Whatever the reason, the men who make up the St. Louis Roadies are some of the greatest people you’ll ever meet.   Whether they will belong to the fortunate 1/3 who leave homelessness behind as a result of playing soccer remains to be seen.  Until then you can bet on one thing. 

Like all of us, their past is prologue and their future holds the promise of hope.

I know how she feels.  It is good to work hard and be appreciated and “belong.”  The quality of life is greatly enhanced by the sense that I am a contributor.  But what if that were taken from me…by illness, accident, or other circumstance?  Where would I then find my worth?

I think of such things when I look at the faces of the those we serve in the Meals Program at Peter & Paul Community Services.  How hard it must be to maintain a sense of dignity in a world that only values or praises what you earn/have/do?  Sometimes they share their stories, and I am humbled.  What was it my Grandma used to say? O yes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  Sorry, Grandma, but I don’t think God had anything to do with it.  But yes, “there, but for a quirk of fate, a misstep, an illness, an instant, go I.”  And I don’t want to forget that.

     In interviewing him, I asked him how he became homeless and this is how his story unfolded.

     He became homeless when he was evicted. He was evicted because he stopped paying his rent. He stopped paying his rent when he got fired. He got fired because he was always late. He was always late because he couldn’t get up in the morning. He couldn’t get up in the morning because he was closing the bars every night. He had nowhere else to go except treatment. His mother wouldn’t take him in…and none of his close friends had places of their own, a rather telling sign for a man in his thirties.

     “So”, I asked, “you became homeless because of your drinking?”

     “No, I became homeless because I was evicted.”

     It wasn’t the best first interview. He wasn’t seeing the connections between all these things. Still, he said he wanted to have his own place and be independent. More importantly, he said he wanted to stay sober. Those are two goals we always want to hear from candidates for our transitional program. He hadn’t processed everything that had happened to him, but that isn’t unusual for someone with a few weeks of sobriety whose head has been in a cloud for  twenty years. We gave him a chance.

     Ronnie went to work immediately. In no time he was working sixty hours a week. This became a problem because, within a couple of weeks, he let his aftercare program go. It is easy to stay clean in a residential program. The challenge comes when you re-enter society at large. I doubt he was thinking of backsliding, but that is just how it begins.

     We gave him an ultimatum. He could not stay in the program and not have an aftercare plan. He grumbled and moaned but complied. He was going to at least three twelve-step meetings a week and he found a sponsor.

     One of the other things we told him was to avoid his old friends and hang outs. It is not about judging them so much as recognizing a weakness in himself. This is probably the single hardest part of recovery. Building a new social world for yourself isn’t easy, especially when you’re in such a fragile place. You just can’t stay clean hanging out with all the folks, and in all the places, you’ve been getting high in all your life. Between his work and meeting schedule, this wasn’t the problem it might have been for someone else. We weren’t that close to his old haunts.

     After about six months in our program, six months of sobriety, he went to his mother’s. He got there early in the day and spent time with her. When she got busy preparing dinner, he went out into the old neighborhood. He ended up over at an old friend’s or rather an old friend’s mother’s house. Some of the old gang were there in the basement smoking pot and looking out for the “old lady.” Ronnie was embarrassed to be there.

     After six months of sober homelessness, he had sober friends. Friends who were striving for goals and achievements and supporting him in his goals and applauding his achievements. He had more money in the bank than he had ever had before. He felt dirty hiding in a basement with grown men doing exactly what they had been doing since they were teenagers.

     When he was back at the shelter and we talked about what had happened, he said he could no more go back to that than go back to high school. Six months earlier, it was normal to him. It was all he had known since before entering adulthood. He wouldn’t have hesitated to pick up the pipe and get high. The space and time we provided him allowed him to see another possibility. That possibility allowed him to hope for a different and better life, something he didn’t even know he was lacking. He had built a new life for himself. And the only thing it had in common with his old life was the same ‘only thing’ that made a difference, himself. A year later he owned his own construction/demolition company with several trucks and employees and was working toward owning his own home.

     In all these things, I always point out that the work, the accomplishment, is theirs. We provide an opportunity. It is always up to them to take it or not. Ronnie took it. He found a vision of another possibility. Finding a way to create hope is our challenge. For so many of those who are chronically homeless, their whole life has been chaos and disorder. Our challenge is to show them something that may never have entered their field of vision. Or something that left their field of vision so long ago, it is like seeking Helen Keller’s “Wa wa” breakthrough.

     Ronnie was never “chronically homeless.” He could have moved either way. He took the right turn. He had much to reckon with, but compared to someone who grew up between the Department of Corrections and the Department of Mental Health (not as uncommon as you might think), he had it easy. He knew what a “normal” life could be.

     It has been said, you can’t tell somebody something they don’t already know. I think this means you have to have the mental construct that allows something to be comprehensible. Were I to start writing in a foreign language, it would be gibberish to you unless you knew the words, syntax and grammar of that language. Most of us share some common notions of how we are to live together and relate to one another. We have ‘faith’ ‘trust’ and ‘values.’ Most of our experiences reinforce these. They are common but not universal. There are variants in all our experiences, for better and worse. For some, it has been much more for the worse. Our goal is to reach those people and give them a vision of hope for a better life.

There are an estimated 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county, and an estimated 11,000 shelter beds. In a room somewhere, someone should be asking the question “Where will the other 79,000 sleep?” 

The less-than-good news in today’s paper comes from Dallas, where a church has opened it’s parking lot for 150 homeless people to sleep on the pavement, because police were arresting homeless people found sleeping in public places. The Deputy Police Chief said that the city would be looking at whether the church had the proper permits to allow people to sleep on their parking lot. The article reported that the city of Dallas has 5,000 homeless people, and only 1,300 shelter beds.

Closer to home, in St. Louis the hotline that people call to get into shelter is forced to turn away seven out of every ten people looking for shelter, because all the beds are full.

I don’t mean to minimize the concerns of a community that is looking for answers to the problems homelessness causes. I appreciate that people do not want to step over sleeping homeless people on their way to work. It makes us uncomfortable. (It’s also less than comfortable for the person sleeping on the concrete.) But criminalizing homelessness is not the answer. It is demeaning to the homeless person, it ties up the time of the police and the courts, and it is expensive for the community.

One thing we humans all have in common is that we each have a body. And that body has needs. And one of those needs is sleep. Part of being human is that we take up space…even when we are asleep. Homeless people have to be somewhere, and by definition they don’t have a home to go to.

It’s a crime that in a country where we spend so much money on (insert your own pet peeve extravagant excess here), that people are hungry and homeless. We shouldn’t put them in jail for it.

The neighborhood of Soulard was named for a Frenchman who fled their revolution. The reigning Spanish governor awarded him a land grant in the 1790s. One day the Spanish lowered their flag over the territory and the French raised theirs. The next day the French lowered their flag and we, that is, the United States, raised ours. Circumstances begged the question: was the United States duty bound to honor a land grant made by an arguably spurious foreign power?

It took decades to wend its way to the Supreme Court where it was finally decided in favor of Soulard’s heirs. Early in the legal wrangling, circa 1810, in order to assess what was physically at stake, court surveyors left the village of St Louis and ventured a mile south to inventory the property.

There were woods and fields, streams and ponds, and a house. The house had been there for some time, ten or fifteen years, and although it showed signs of recent habitation, it had apparently been abandoned and needed repairs. Who had been using it? Trappers or Indians or perhaps some of the no account layabouts who had been living on the fringes between the Indians and the villagers, but then again, I already mentioned the trappers. That house still stands, with some recent improvements, about a block west from the entrance to the shelter.

As neighborhoods go, Soulard was historically a modest one. It was where the succeeding waves of immigrants would first settle. Climb atop a Soulard rooftop and count the churches. Most every one represents a different nationality although the Germans are represented  for each different wave that seemed to come every twenty years or so.

 Each church served as the social center for those immigrants providing assistance and community for the newcomers. They also served as community support for others as well. The very first chapter of the St. Vincent De Paul Society (dedicated to helping the poor), in the Americas was established here in 1848.

Soulard was a working class neighborhood. There were some wealthy families. They had to be able to get to and from work in a reasonable amount of time, but early in the twentieth century automobiles fixed that.

The first three quarters of the twentieth century weren’t very kind to the neighborhood. Prohibition was hard on a community of brewers and brewery workers. The end of Prohibition coincided with the start of the Great Depression which overlapped the Second World War. After the war, the men and women who fought it wanted a piece of the prosperity. The government created what was then the largest social spending program in history, the G.I. Bill.

The Bill provided low interest college loans and mortgage guarantees to millions and paved the way for the next two generations of prosperity. There was one catch, though. It was also a jobs bill. The G.I. Bill only provided loans for new homes to generate construction jobs. It didn’t apply to existing houses. If you were a returning vet, where would you live, in a new modern low-cost home or a hundred year old fixer upper that may not even have running water? Parts of Soulard didn’t have running water till the ’60s. That is the 1960s. Much of Soulard was simply abandoned.

By the 1970s much of the housing was vacant. The city floated a plan to bulldoze everything east of Highway 55. There were a few stalwart visionaries who fought off city hall but it was still a dirt poor neighborhood. I began coming to the market in ’65 and the neighborhood during the late ’70s.

A number of artists and musicians moved here for the low rents and made the place a destination. The Geyer Street Sheiks and the Soulard Blues Band are among the unheralded saviors of the community.

I remember cold water flats for as low as $45 dollars a month. I also had friends who were occupying buildings with no legal claim on them. They went to work every day. They had furniture and carpets and hung pictures on their walls. They would carry water home in plastic jugs and had heating and lights from kerosene. Their lifestyle wasn’t much different from my own except perhaps they had fewer bills. Some people would line up daily at the doors of the neighborhood churches and ask for food, blankets and clothing. This had gone was now so routine it called for a better response.

In 1981 three of those churches got together and worked to better address the needs that were being presented at their doors. Trinity Lutheran, St. Vincent de Paul and Sts. Peter & Paul opened a shelter. That first winter it was in the basement of Peter & Paul’s parish hall. The following winter it moved to the basement of the church itself, a neighborhood response to a neighborhood problem.

If you lived in Soulard back then, encountering people with serious mental health and substance abuse issues was a much more common routine. There were certainly scores and possibly hundreds of squatters among the generally poor people living in Soulard. It is hardly an exaggeration to say there were whole blocks you could have bought for what some single homes are currently selling for.

In 1982 the meals program was born. The requests for food came from beyond those in need of shelter. Many people on limited income, such as Social Security or food stamps, were running out of resources by the end of the month. Many churches came together to provide a hot meal. At first it was just the last week of the month but as more groups joined, the program has grown until today when there is a meal served on all but three days at the beginning of the month. The program starts, as of January ’07 on the fifth of each month at Sts. Peter & Paul. It moves to St. Vincent’s on the twenty-second where they serve up to including the first of the following month. This past year around 50,000 meals were served out of the two locations.

I wasn’t there for the shelter’s inaugural winter. I didn’t arrive until the fall of 1985. I was still in my twenties, for at least a few more weeks. I had read some poetry at a reading in one of Soulard’s myriad bars and was approached by Peter Rosenberg. Peter thought I had the right attitude and invited me into the shelter. There were men, women and children living crowded in the church basement. Eighty to ninety a night was typical. The door would open at nine each night and the crowd would rush in. Sometimes there would be a hundred at the door when we opened. When we felt we had our fill we would then offer transportation to New Life or Salvation Army. On Dick Pikey’s birthday in January 1986 we hosted 120 guests, it was ten degrees outside and we weren’t turning anyone away.

I was living nearby and it was easy for me to come almost every night. I would leave between eleven and midnight after most people were settled on their bunks and the overnight volunteers were all in. I worked the door. I was essentially a bouncer.

We saw a lot of one percenters back then - those alcoholics who lived for nothing more than their next drink, Pops, Ashtray, Johnny and Roy;  and severely mentally ill - Bucket Joe aka Gravois Joe and Cosmic Dan, and constant scrappers like Otis and Dumpy. We also had families with infants and children in school, abused women, abused men and folks just really down on their luck…and far too many veterans.  

When we closed at the end of March in ’86, decisions were made. We had been serving a lot of people but poorly. We were overcrowded. The numbers greatly added to the stress level. We helped open three other shelters intent on working with women and families.  We would cut our numbers down to fifty a night. We would, henceforth, only serve men. They would have to sign up for a reservation for a week at a time.

Initially, I opposed these changes. That we might exclude anyone struck me as a terrible idea. Within hours of opening, in the fall of ’86, I knew it was the right thing to do. The stress level had fallen off the charts. Previously at the end of each evening, I had such an adrenaline level it took hours to unwind. We still have our moments but not at all like we once did.

Out of those decisions a lot of good has emerged. We knew we could be more than a seasonal shelter. In ’87 we made our first attempt at a year round program, a transitional program. We were making it up as we went along. There wasn’t a handbook at the time and we failed utterly. We needed to give it a lot more thought. We didn’t want it to just be a smaller emergency shelter. We really wanted to see men move from the streets. We shut it down within two months.

We tried again in the spring of ’88. We had a clearer set of expectations for our guests and a better notion of who we might be able to help. Since then, many hundreds of men have received meaningful help in their journey back from the streets.

We have probably all heard about the de-institutionalization from the mental health system that was taking place in the seventies and early eighties. Libertarians were offended that people were being held, incarcerated because they were mentally ill but had committed no offense. Conservatives thought the government ought not be in the mental health business anyway. It was a much too nebulous a field to be wasting tax dollars on.

The upshot was we saw a lot of severely mentally ill people on the streets back then. Sometimes a mental hospital discharge plan was little more than a taxi ride to the vicinity of the shelter. We saw many folks revolve in and out of hospitals, jails and streets. Sometimes they would enter boarding houses only to drift away without proper supervision.

There was one program, Juniper House, that received a number of our past shelter residents. Many seemed to do fairly well there. It was run by Brother Bob Huston. Bob came down with cancer and his guests were foundering. We had been concerned with what we had been witnessing and felt we could do more in this area. In 1991, we established our mental health transitional program and adopted the residents from Juniper House shortly before Brother Bob died.

Known today as The Benedict Joseph Labre Center, the program is a 15-bed state licensed mental health facility. It is a transitional program with an occupational therapy component to assess and develop the living skills of the residents, where we seek appropriate housing and supportive services to enable them to live in the community, off the streets and out of the jails and hospitals. Once stabilized, many of our guests have gone to school and back to work and are contributing back to the community.

At least from my earliest days in the shelter, there has been the constant presence of HIV/AIDS. Ours is a difficult demographic, individuals who, in many instances have exhausted friends and family and other service providers. Many have come to us with shattered health and unstable mind. Some, we have held their hand to their end, but many others we have been able to assist back to health and stability.

We have about twenty people in housing today as part of what has become our Positive Directions program, and we have a day center where residents come for classes, meetings, meals and social activities.

Our newest program is the Breakfast Club. Originally housed at Christ Church Cathedral, we moved to Centenary Methodist Church in September 2006. Prior to 2002, Christ Church would daily open their doors and many homeless people would enter, especially in the winter. They would sit in the sanctuary, occasionally going to the offices asking for help with simple needs.

The Cathedral approached us about creating a program and managing it in their space. We opened in October 2002, expecting to serve around 50 to 60 a day. In short time we were seeing closer to a 150 daily. They renovated a larger space and our numbers blossomed again.

Once again we were serving a lot of people poorly, but not for lack of effort. The numbers were just too great for the space. A couple blocks to the west on Olive Street is Centenary Methodist, another beautiful old church. Their pastor wanted to develop an urban ministry serving the ubiquitous denizens of the downtown streets. We worked out a plan to move into their much larger space.

Today, we can (and often do) seat over 200 people at tables at one time and are serving a light breakfast with information and referrals to about 1,200 individuals a week. Centenary’s own staff has developed a lunch program serving similar numbers. In the past year we have served at Centenary, somewhere around a hundred thousand meals. We are beginning to develop an evening meal, too. In September, dinner will be served three nights a week. Many other agencies are coming on site to do outreach and provide services.

We make an impact. We make a difference. People come to us for help and get it.

One of the things I admire most about Peter & Paul is that all our programs came about because a problem or situation presented itself and we fashioned a response. We aren’t perfect and haven’t always been right, but we give our best shot with our best abilities. I came as a volunteer and continue with volunteers, people who give their time and money to make this a better community. From former recipients to corporate executives, liberals, conservatives and those who are apolitical, people who know they just can’t sit back and say, “Somebody ought to do something” and let it go at that.

Every now and then, someone asks me how I keep doing what I do. They see the grinding poverty, deprivation and attendant suffering. All of which is real and true. I suggest they look around and see the selfless giving and engagement.

Every year many hundreds of volunteers offer many thousands of hours to make our programs work. Our guests know this and appreciate that so many could be doing something else but choose to be a part of the solution.

Volunteers come to the work as a joyful thing. They know helping someone else helps themselves, that to be happy you make someone else happy. It isn’t the gift, it is the giving. The shelter was a neighborhood response to a neighborhood problem, a problem that couldn’t be ignored. All the other programs grew out of a budding awareness of the constellation of problems that made people ‘homeless.’ Some of our programs are more directly dependent on volunteers than others but all programs utilize them, need them.

This past Sunday’s Post-Dispatch carried an article with the headline: “Homeless clash with push to gentrify city.”  The story reported the controversy between homeless people who congregate in Lucas Park downtown, and neighbors of the park who have moved into loft condominiums along Washington Avenue who would like to be able to use the park without being panhandled.

Now, because I work for an agency that provides housing and services for those who are homeless, you might think you could guess “whose side” I’m on in this situation. But as it turns out, in this case I don’t think it’s about “sides.” The condo-dwellers have a legitimate desire to use their neighborhood public park without being harassed. And the people who are homeless…well they need to be somewhere, don’t they?

The problem here is that too many homeless people have nowhere else to go. By definition, they have no space that is theirs. Lucas Park has been dubbed “Hobo Park” by homeless people for decades. I can only imagine that they chose to gather in the park because for years, until the recent revitalization of Washington Avenue, it was off the beaten path. There is less visibility there than in the parks along Market Street, and so they draw less attention to themselves, and so feel safer. It has the added benefit of being bordered by the New Life shelter, the main branch of the public library and Christ Church Cathedral.  All three provide them with a refuge from the weather (and access to indoor plumbing) for at least part of the day.

The best solution is to create a space where homeless people will feel safe, a space that offers protection from the heat or cold, a space where their needs are met, whether it’s an immediate need for a rest room, a shower, a meal, a telephone…or a need for services like medical care, legal assistance, and substance abuse counseling. 

The good news is that there are spaces being developed that will meet some of these needs. Our own Breakfast Club at Centenary United Methodist Church offers a morning meal and a caring staff to offer assistance to more than 200 homeless men, women and children each day. A nurse from Grace Hill Clinic provides regular medical screenings, agencies like BJC Behavioral Health, Community Alternatives and St. Patrick Center provide outreach and mental health services, and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri visits to provide free legal aid.  And at lunchtime, Centenary Cares and St. Patrick Center both provide a meal, as well as linkage to a wide array of services.

As it turns out, the answer to this problem is hospitality. This week on the news I saw a woman interviewed who came to St. Louis after Hurricane Katrina. She spoke of her love for St. Louis, and how her family felt welcomed and cared for here. Just imagine how many problems in our city could be solved by applying that St. Louis hospitality.

By the way, that word hospitality comes from the same root as the word hospital, a Latin word that means “guest room.”

Did you see the cartoon recently? A man is sitting at a desk in his den, surrounded by vast wooden shelves full of books. He’s working at his computer. His wife stands behind him in the doorway and asks, “Let me guess, the Great American Blog?”

Every “Writing 101” class starts by telling students to write what they know about, or at least, what they are interested in. Well, my interests are my family, my faith and values, and how those beliefs are played out daily in the public sector.

OK, so I could write er, blog, about family relationships (and vacation photos)…religion…and politics. Those all seem like safe subjects to write about. And surely no one else on the Internet is blogging about any of those topics!

When I was first asked to write a blog for this website, I had lots of questions. “Where would I find the time?” (After all, I’m a busy man.) “What would I write about?” (It’s the homelessness, stupid.) And most certainly, “Who would want to read it?” (I guess we’ll find out.)

Well, we’ll see where it goes from here. If you look for it, there is news every day from around the country regarding issues of homelessness. This Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch will carry an article about people who are homeless in the downtown parks. Check back next week for our thoughts.

That’s right.

CollabARTive.

Eight years ago next month we started what was supposed to be a time limited project bringing art into the lives of some of our residents, and the lives of some of our residents into art. At the time, I felt my time spent with the project was a guilty pleasure. It would have been very easy to send the men off with the artist and do something more “productive” with myself.

What I found, as a program manager, was that by participating with the men under the instruction of the visiting artist, we had opened up an avenue of communication that has become essential to the program. In the nuts and bolts of what we do, I, the case manager and the substance abuse counselor, are professional nags. “How is the job search going?” “Have you made your 12-Step meeting quota this week?” “Did you make your bank deposit this week?” These questions define our relationship. They also put up a wall between us. The men have to account for themselves to us and we become… how shall I say…tiresome.

For a couple of hours once a week, we step into other roles. One of a rotating series of artists come in and run workshops on art of various disciplines: writing, photography, drawing, painting and clay sculpting. The process lets us step back from our official roles and provides a forum to relate in a more natural way. It allows us to learn about each other’s issues and concerns in a more relaxed fashion. It allows us to step around the wall. It doesn’t work miracles. It creates more opportunities.

It has also fostered greater support among our clients for one another. They become mentors for one another. Several alums from the last several years drop by from time to time to reconnect with us and contribute to the current class of transitionals. One man from eight years ago is still quite regular with us.

One of the artists we have worked with extensively over the years is Jane Ellen Ibur. Jane is a certified “master teacher” who has spent most of her career teaching in non traditional settings: prisons and jails, nursing homes, community centers and shelters. She is a published poet and well known in local literary circles. And she has done a poetry and literature program on KDHX FM-88.1 for the last umpteen years, “Literature for the Halibut”, (Thursday’s at 8 PM).

Janey has been working with the men on a performance piece based on their writings turned in over the years, that tells something of their stories. The piece is being directed by Con Christeson, who has been the managing artist all these years . There is something of early home life and setting out on the road to homelessness, substance abuse and recovery, life on the “trail” and recovery. And it is hopeful. It is the story of men redeeming themselves.

Next week, some of us will be traveling to the KDHX studios and performing excerpts on Janey’s show. You can listen in at “Literature for the Halibut,” Thursday, August 30th, 7 PM, 88.1 on your FM dial. The following week, we will be performing the whole work at Christ Church Cathedral’s Art & Soul Cafe at 7PM, September 7th. 

His brothers did not.

Parties on my dad’s side followed what became a predictable routine.  The women would prepare the meal while the men sat and smoked and imbibed various products from Anheuser-Busch.

At some point during the party, which inevitably would last into the late hours, the topic of the war would come up. 

And there I would sit…spellbound, listening to their stories and occcasionally interrupting to ask a question. I learned early on about the attack on Pearl harbour, our response at Midway, MacArthur’s long promised return to the Phillipines and my uncles’ involvement to make that dream a reality at Laihi, Rommel outfoxing the British in North Africa, the Allies landing at Normandy, the bombing of London, the battle for Anzio and, of course, the Sullivan Brothers.  In fact, I still hear the anger in my uncle Bill’s voice as he retold the story of the latter.

I can still see them all…laughing and carrying on.  Everyone happy to be together, reminiscing about old friends while Bacchus smiled on.

I remember having the thought as I grew older that I should write their stories down.  I feared they’d be lost forever. But I never did.  “The road to hell…” and all that I suppose. Slowly, but with all of the certainty that time has in its store, my uncles passed away one by one.

By 1999 my dad’s last surviving brother died. To date, I have interviewed several WWII vets, their wives and others who lived during that time.

In some cases, I’ve approached perfect strangers and inquired about their age and involvement in the war.  Most are quite happy to share their story.  In fact, their families are often thankful for the effort.

“I had no idea my dad lived through so much” is a response I hear or “She never talked about the war until this interview.”

Stories are essential to life’s experience.  Mosaics, tapestries, whatever image you prefer to use to describe them, stories surround us on all sides.  They entertain, educate, celebrate and sometimes call us to action.

Working at PPCS allows our staff an opportunity to capture stories that might otherwise have been lost.

They are stories of those who are homeless and often invisible to the community. 

Like all of us, these are folks who have been wounded in one way or another.  Their stories are of genuine heroic effort, accomplishments, set backs, honesty, dishonesty, addiction, illness, redemption, unimaginable rejection and hope.

So who knows?

Maybe by sharing some of their stories, PPCS can snare some unsuspecting bystanders who just might take an interest in the issue, come to appreciate its complexities and get involved.

Once thing is for certain, their stories deserve our attention.

In the past few years I have worked as a casemanager with larger populations. This has been a positive change as well as a challenge to be creative and track improvement for myself as well as the guys I am working with. The greater challenge has been to look more realistically at the kind of changes that take place for the clients I am working with.

In the past as a casemanager, it was more about providing resources, supports and linking people to needed services. It was a little more obvious to evaluate the success/outcome of the services provided. If someone needed housing, mental health treatment, clothing or food, we had resources available and could quickly determine if we were able to meet the need. Those outcomes were measurable, but now, the measurement of change as I work with people day to day is more incremental…no less valuable, but not as easy to identify.

This has been a wonderful challenge for me at an amazing agency and working in such a unique program. I am always praying for a new challenge and it’s great to know GOD is listening. I suppose I will pray for greater understanding and patience. I am grateful to be a part of and witness the wonderful changes I already see in our clients in this exceptional program. I hope anyone who is interested in what we do will plan an opportunity to learn more about Positive Directions and Peter & Paul Community Services.