Ho Ho Homeless For Christmas: How to Volunteer Locally

I hope you will join me in finding the time and compassion to volunteer at one of our faith-based community shelter host sites. Pick your favorite! The Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter needs your support.

Join me as an overnight volunteer, bring your family and encourage your friends to do the same, even if for just one night of the winter season. The IRWS of Davis opened its doors on November 27th and continues to serve the unsheltered poor until mid March. 

Contact the Spare Changer of Davis at thesparechanger.org or visit the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter website and sign up on line. Your presence is your gift, that and your compassion. Join me.

Giving Without Guilt

We can only give so much to others, no matter how deeply we empathize with the homeless and their plight, their sorrows and their often debilitating depression that accompanies the holiday season.

We donate our time, our care, our food and often our money to non-profits and charities of our choice in the hopes that these resources will bring some of the joy of Christmas to families and wayfarers less fortunate than we.

We wonder if by giving to others we are giving thanks for the many blessing we ourselves enjoy, not the least important of which is comfortable housing, a Christmas tree with ornaments enlivened with lights and holiday gifts. And we wonder if we are doing enough.

Sometimes we almost feel guilty for our relative good fortune; and sometimes we wonder what more we can do, what more we should do to make the lives of the very poor just a little less hopeless. At some point we realize we can only do so much, and to do more would take away from what we could give, what we should give to those closest to us; to our family, our friends, our faith communities and… ourselves.

So what to do then? And is it enough to think of the poor on only these most special days? On Thanksgiving? On religious holidays?

As a homeless man, I recall the only special meals, the only Christmas gifts, the only holiday cards to which I could look forward and enjoy, were offerings and donations from my church, from Davis Community Meals, from STEAC, from Grace –in-Action or while lodging as a guest of the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter of Davis.

A Synagogue, Bet Haverim, The Mosque, St. James Catholic and Davis community Church come to mind, along with United Methodist, University Covenant Church, Southern Baptist and of course the Lutherans.

True, I am no longer homeless; haven’t been for some 4 years now, but I still visit my ‘family’ of community volunteers and faith congregations. When I do, I ask myself (every visit) if I need to be there and each time I answer “yes.”

It is particularly gratifying to see these people doing their part in easing the pain of loneliness and despair I experienced, especially during the holidays, and that I know others still feel right now. It is gratifying just to see them, and now I have a chance to give a little something back. And I have a chance to show others there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

We just have to remember that, to look for it, and to be mindful—and grateful—there are people like you (and me now) who are here to help however we can.

While some members of the chronically homeless community seem to take for granted the social conscience, the social responsibility, and faith-based belief that everyone deserves a roof over their head, enough food to eat, and a pathway to better one’s quality of life, it has been my experience homelessness itself does not preclude appreciation for a helping hand.

It’s just that over time, someone fighting the demons of depression, of poor health, of divorce, of substance abuse or of just not being able to find and keep employment and support their children, finds no other option but to give up trying to sustain themselves.

This leads to further homelessness and before long a kind of resentment. While it may look like resentment towards the very people who volunteer to serve, it is really a resentment of one’s own self; a resentment in having to be in the position of needing help. The way I see it? “there but for the grace of god go I.”

I think that is the underlying motivation of every community volunteer and of even those whose job title mandates support of the marginally served, whether they be shelter challenged, nutrition challenged, newly or long-term unemployed.

Most people whom I’ve known to be homeless just needed understanding, encouragement, and sometimes just a non-judgmental ear. I know I needed these comforts, more than the shelter, the holiday meal and certainly more than the money I could earn given my personal issues. It was the volunteers themselves that helped me see what was staring me in the face every day I looked in the mirror.

These people helped me see myself, who and what I had become and, frankly, I didn’t like it. I made commitments to change. For this reason there is a special bond between these truly good people…and me. I believe this to be true between all of the community volunteers and the homeless for whom they make Christmas-time just a little less disappointing and, in many cases, something to which to look forward.

As I write this, images of hundreds of smiling faces emerge as symbols of compassion, goodwill and holiday cheer. I cannot begin to explain the joy of these people, and how so much of it has transferred to me. I suppose I feel a little inadequate I some ways as well, wanting to give these people a Christmas present, a Christmas Card, or perhaps just a phone call to thank them, and to let them know they are in my heart. I can’t do that…there are just too many. But what I can do is try to give a little something back.

This Christmas I (along with my Christine to whom I am eternally grateful for taking a chance on me) donated inexpensive (but well chosen by Christine) gifts for one 7-year-old girl we didn’t know. It is a program administered each year by Davis Community Church designed to provide gifts for families with children so that these children—and their parents—can better participate in the spirit of giving just as you and I.

I also encouraged members in the community who are also readers of The ‘Spange’ (see November 2011 Issue) to donate hot food to the activist who Occupied Central Park for 7 weeks. It made me proud I could use my monthly newsletter/journal to do something like this…

This month was even able to provide a pair of much needed bicycles to homeless adults with no other means of transportation; acting as a non-profit sponsor for UC Davis undergraduate Kristin Snow whose compassionate “Kristin’s Recycled Cycles” ministry to thepoor has put smiles on the faces of many these past 2 years. Kristin accomplished this by collecting and rebuilding gently and not so gently abandoned bikes.

Last Christmas an announcement was made in church that the bicycles of several children were stolen. As I recall these kids were in some kind of a ‘home. I let Kristin know, and you know what? Why, Miss Snow prepared several bikes for these kids and donated them. We never actually got to meet these kids, but it didn’t matter. It was our being able to do the giving that counted. And the smiling faces we could imagine. And the smiles it put on our own…

No, we can’t give ‘everything to everyone.’

Life just doesn’t work that way, does it? We cannot give so much that our own families suffer. Sacrifice for others is one thing. Doing so at the expense of our own is a much larger step, and often some family discussion to weigh our desire and commitment to helping others against sacrifices we are able and willing to make.

Or not.

And so it begs the question: How much is enough? If I do my bit during the holidays, am I free to live, in good conscience, on high moral ground, without responsibility (if not without guilt) for the rest of the year? And who to give to? Certainly not to everyone in need, so who? How do I decide who is deserving of my compassion and who is not? Must I make this decision? How can I not when my resources are limited, if not my compassion? After all, I am far from ‘rich’ and very much one of the 99%, so I have to make some choices. I am not God, so how do I do that?

Personal experiences on either side of the sleeping bag answer these questions for me, and without any doubts. What I have to give, and want to give, on an individual basis as a function of a need I know I can meet, is just ‘enough.’ The very act of giving, during the Christmas season, is but a symbol of my compassion. I do not confuse that symbol with the thing the act really symbolizes, which is my compassion itself.

For this reason the demonstration of some form of compassion of my choosing and in my own time—every day I take breath, year ‘round--for whomever, whenever and however I find someone in need (and who wants to be helped in some way), places and keeps me on that high moral ground I mentioned.

The need itself is my criteria for ‘deserving.’ When my limited resources are used up, and only my compassion remains, I find I am at that time replenished once again. No, I am not God, nor will I ever be one of the 1%, nor do I aspire to be. However, I do believe I can do a little of His work by finding a little of what I have and placing it where it will do someone some good, every day.

I know I feel like the 1% should feel, when I count my own blessings, treat them as money in the bank, invested in the security of good conscience, confident they will grow and grow; always maintaining my ability to share this real wealth, my real worth, with those in need.

And there will always be those in need of our compassion, because as long as there is society there will be inequities; as long as there are people there will be homeless people. As long as there are homeless people there will be people who are homeless in the winter; people who are ‘homeless for the holidays.’

Last issue, I described the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter and its mission to shelter and nourish the truly un-sheltered poor during the worst of the winter season. That season has begun and we at The Spare Changer implore you to Google the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter Website and sign up for at least one evening of volunteer staffing.

I wrote a great deal about the indispensable roles individual members of the Davis community have played in the mission of a dozen faith communities willingness and ability to house 25 or more men and women in their otherwise un-used infra-structures at night. You may go to the site and sign up as an individual, a couple, as room mates or as a club or organization. Duties range from shuttling the guests to and from the Central Intake on 4th and L Streets in the evening or in the morning, to food preparation, to handing out sleeping bags, to conversing during dinner.

The greatest need is for overnighters. Please pick a night to spend over night. It can be fun. Someone is awake at all times, so bring a friend or two, bring your homework, your “work-work” a quiet game to play or your laptop. Pop in a DV D or your favorite music! (Little more to do than just be there, really. Congregational staffs, UC Davis and Hi School Interns do the supervising, so whether as an ‘overnighter’ or other volunteer support help or you will find all the duties rewarding, and as I said, a lot of fun.

Davis community volunteerism is indeed both fun and rewarding. Working as a volunteer, up close and personal, you will experience the community, even the world, as our local homeless do, and yet your experience will enable you to share a bit of “mainstream” quality of life that the homeless cannot experience. It is likely your greatest gift to them, speaking both as someone who spent a season as a guest in the Rotating Shelter System and someone who has volunteered as well, most recently as an ‘overnighter.’