Perhaps it was George’s own wound of alcoholism that contributed to his gift of compassion for a broken world. Despite his wound, he had the discipline to start each day with time for writing before descending into the abyss of alcoholism. Along the way, his fellow writers and poets encouraged him and gave him hope he could get through his bouts of depression.
Each time I attend 12 step program meetings to support friends who are receiving their anniversary medallion for sobriety, I am struck by the number of people who name someone, often a stranger, who has given them hope on their journey; someone who looked beyond the wound and saw the gift within.
The following story of hope and healing comes from a parishioner of my home parish of St. Margaret of Scotland in Toronto. I thank him for allowing me to share it with The Church on the Street community.
“I worked in the financial district of Toronto, and Ronnie would panhandle at the corner of Queen and University. He was in his sixties, and each day I would see him as my bus was driving by the corner. One day, I saw him wearing a yellow baseball cap that said, “Don’t Kill my Vibe.” Concluding that he was a man of superior character and spirit, I had the bus driver let me off and I walked up to the man at the corner and introduced myself.
“That was roughly 10 years ago, and we have been friends ever since. Each weekday, I would take the bus and get off at Ronnie’s corner. We would talk for about five or ten minutes, and I would give him a little money that I had in my pockets. Later, as our friendship grew, I bought him a mat and a sleeping bag so he could sleep more comfortably on the sidewalk.
“As it happens, my wife’s best friend runs the Ontario legion, and with her contacts at the Good Shephard homeless shelter we got him admitted in the fall. As so often happens, when winter ended, he returned to the street, in large part due to the abundance of mental health issues he had to contend with on a daily basis. Two women, myself, and a close friend of mine, were all caregivers to Ronnie, and so a few times a year, including his birthday and Christmas we would have lunch together.
“As the next winter approached, one of the two women took out a Go Fund Me page to get him off the street for the winter, and we received enough money to put him up for four months at a downtown hotel which had been converted into a homeless shelter. “Eventually his legs began to fail, and we bought him a power scooter so that he would still be mobile in the downtown community. All this time he had a nurse who would help him bathe and make sure his medications were taken care of. She became not only a nurse to him, but a friend, and she joined her father and brother in renovating the basement of their small home to put in a bedroom and bathroom which could be accessed through the garage. The family looked after him until the time that he required hospitalization, and he had to move to a downtown hospital. However, his group of friends still visit him regularly to support him and give him the hope that friendship can bring.
“In 2019, Pope Francis addressed Caritas Internation with these words, “Jesus tells those who follow him to ‘remain in my love.’ The only way to do that is by staying close to Jesus. We will be helped by staying before the tabernacle, and before the many living tabernacles who are the poor. The Eucharist and the poor, the fixed tabernacle and the mobile tabernacles; it is there that we remain in love and absorb the mentality of bread broken which is Jesus.”
You and I can be those mobile tabernacles, people who can look beyond the wound of the person in front of us to see the gift of Christ within.