While it is true that Dorothy's words in "The Wizard of Oz" can be said in a number of ways to illustrate the mixed relationship many of us have had in our experiences of home, I think it is also fair to say that, at a deep emotional level, there is something about our desire for a home that cannot be easily dismissed.
Even our choice of the word "homeless" to talk about those who do not have housing seems rooted in something deeper that simply a problem of resources. It is as though we sense that those who are "homeless" have lost something fundamental to what it means to be human. In that word "homeless," we sense an experience of profound loss.
Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J Walsh, in their book, "Beyond Homelessness - Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement," explore this notion of homelessness and offer eight key insights into what it means to be at home.
A home is a place of permanence. "To be 'at home' somewhere is more than simply having a place to stay... Home...signifies a certain degree of spatial permanence, an enduring presence, or residence. In a speed-bound culture, every highly mobile person is a victim of some form of homelessness because there is no time to foster a sense of enduring emplacement."
A home is a dwelling place, an abode, a place where memories and relationships and stories are made. Where a house is made of bricks or wood, or concrete or stone, a home has deep psychological and social significance.
A home is a storied place. "Certain practices turn spaces without stories into narratively formed places...A house becomes a home when it is transformed by memory-shaped meaning into a place of identity, connectedness, order and care." Rituals like the celebrations of holidays and rites of passage make a house a home by linking our personal and communal stories with a particular location.
A home is a place of safety where you can relax and be yourself. It's a safe place where you can be vulnerable and also learn how to trust.
A home is a place of hospitality. "If homes are to resist the temptation to become self-enclosed fortresses -that is, if homes are to have windows and doors that are open -then they must be sites of hospitality...Rosemary Haughton emphasizes that 'hospitality means a letting go of certainty and control...'"
A home is a place of embodied inhabitation where a person feels a sense of rootedness. When we become rooted in a place we are shaped by it. Simone Weil describes the importance of roots this way: "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul...A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future."
A home is a place of orientation in which we know where we are and what we are in this world. A home provides a sense of order and direction to our lives.
And finally a home is a place of affiliation and belonging where we experience recognition and acceptance.
One of the most important things we learned from our experiences over the last four years at First United and especially from the experience of agreeing to become a HEAT shelter was this distinction between the words house and home. I don't remember whether we knew it in the very beginning but we knew it soon after. We knew that there were people in the city who, for many different reasons, couldn't handle the formal shelter system. Some of them had behavioral issues which made them a threat to others who were there. Some didn't want to work with a case worker and so would often end up back on the streets because they weren't making "progress". Some lived such chaotic lives that they couldn't bring themselves to line up to get a bed or if they did think about getting a bed, they wanted it after intake closed and there were no longer beds available.
Whatever the reason for their chronic homelessness, we knew from our experience that there were a large number of people in the Downtown Eastside who were sleeping rough at night, if they were sleeping at all. When I started in January 2008 and the church was only open during regular business hours Monday to Friday, I often stepped over people in my effort to get into the door in the morning. They would be sleeping under the overhang in the entrance way of Gore Avenue. When the doors opened, they would come inside in search of food, dry clothing and a place to sleep on the floor or the oak pews in the sanctuary. Whatever issues they had happening in their lives, it seemed like they were larger than simply a lack of housing. Somehow it had to do with being without a home.
When Mayor Robertson called Ric that fateful Sunday night in December 2008 and asked us to become the first HEAT shelter, we made some decisions that week which, in retrospect, set us on the path to the decisions which would culminate in our departure in December 2011. Those decisions had to do with how we would respond to this profound need for home.
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