Via Facebook today from fellow NightWatcher, Brittany:
I was just sitting here thinking about you and the people of Greensboro. I wanted to send you this video for Charlotte and you can imagine the people and places of Greensboro!!!! I believe this with all my heart over Charlotte and Greensboro as well. Be blessed and be encouraged because GREATER THINGS ARE YET TO COME AND GREATER THINGS ARE STILL TO BE DONE IN THE CITY!!!!!!!!!!!
Amen, girl, amen. I believe it, too. Thank you. Love you.
I just upgraded to WordPress 2.5. Smooth and easy using the automatic upgrade plugin. I like the new admin interface. I’ll have to test drive it a while to see what else I think, before I upgrade my web clients.
Maya Rae Penland is the beautiful baby daughter of my friend, Cat. Maya was born in September 2007, and we knew before she was born that she had Spina Bifida. In the first five months of her life, Maya endured nine surgeries — she was just 10 hours old when she had the first one.
“….but when the context has been shot to hell with addictions, abuse, self abuse, poverty, hopelessness, and then I’m coming along behind ‘the church’ mopping up a lot of bull s**t and lies and utter usury, I’m just wondering — where in the world do I start? The best I can come up with is being a friend. I’m wishing I was in a typical mission field — where the culture is intact, and a social structure exists.”
“A 49 year old graduate student arrived at the War Memorial Auditorium at 5:10 this morning and was the first person in line to get in. She said, ‘I want to look into Barack Obama’s eyes,’ she said. ‘I want to have a personal experience with him.’ She went on to say, ‘I’m really ready for not just change but absolute change.’
A friend and I stopped by Blogging Poet Billy Jones’ house on Tuesday afternoon, where he was waiting for the Bicentennial Torch Run to pass through. We went to Billy’s to pick up a bicycle that he repaired and was donating for another friend who needed transportation, after recently moving from homelessness to housing.
This afternoon, a group from World Can’t Wait came down to the block (Lee and Eugene) to protest the war. Later, the folks from Food Not Bombs served their regular Thursday evening meal for the homeless (usually served at St. Mary’s) under a tree in front of Greensboro Urban Ministry, just down the road. My friends from GPD’s bike squad hung out and kept watch over the calm and peaceful scene. Good times. Photos below.
“It is the mission of Dorothy’s Place to live, to love, and to work in harmony; to serve the marginalized, to create partnerships that are mutually liberating, and to pursue social justice with respect and dignity for all, in the spirit of St. Francis and Dorothy Day.”
– web site
If I could, I would take you someplace safe, and lock the gates against the world, and cook you good food, and let you rest, and laugh with you and cry with you, and read His Words to you about who you really are, and sit with you and listen while Jesus sings over you, and watch you heal. I know who you are. I see the one that He created you to be. I know you’re tired. I know you want it to stop. I long for you to be free. God hears our prayers. It’s Friday now, but Sunday’s coming…
My mom asked my son how his small group Bible study went this week and he answered, laughing as he realized the irony of what he was saying:
“It was basically ten teenaged guys, an adult leader and a college-aged assistant leader sitting around watching ‘The Passion of the Christ’ and drinking Koolaid.”
I posted the prayer I prayed on my way home from last night’s NightWatch. One of my prayers was for “my friend who sleeps at Grace who’s moving into housing and who needs to be encouraged.” Today, he sent me an email and asked me to forward it to the director of the housing program.
The Salvation Army of Greensboro’s winter shelter closes until next year.
A homeless man sleeps outside Greensboro Urban Ministry.
Erik put a blanket on the man sleeping outside the shelter.
The cold weather shelter programs at both homeless shelters ended yesterday, and Greensboro Urban Ministry Executive Director Mike Aiken and Salvation Army Major Paul Egan say they won’t reopen before next winter unless the weather becomes life-threatening. Salvation Army was providing emergency shelter for about 40-50 people, and Greensboro Urban Ministry’s overnight shelter was sheltering dozens more. Those 80 or more homeless people are now back on the street. Where are they sleeping?
Our NightWatch team found that the group of homeless people who met us in the parking lot of Grace Community Church had more than doubled from last week. The efforts of Grace’s outreach staff and the Family Service of the Piedmont housing support team had decreased the numbers of folks sleeping outside at Grace from more than a dozen regulars last summer down to an average of three recently, at least one of whom will be moving into permanent housing this week, but with the closing of the winter shelters, we saw a new group of faces at Grace on this night.
When we got to one of the big bridges downtown, we found that the number there had doubled, as well. Our friend JM, who has the spot nearest the path, announced that “the bridge is full.” There were men sleeping in every available space underneath the bridge. The spaces between the bridge’s support beams are just wide enough to hold a mattress, and all of the mattresses were occupied.
But the hardest thing for me came later in the night, when we went to check the parking lot of Greensboro Urban Ministry before going home for the night, and we found at least a half dozen people sleeping there, some of them on the concrete right outside the doors of the shelter — including a woman. As I knelt down to speak to them, feeling helpless and trying to think of what in the world I could say, one of the men locked eyes with me and softly said, “It’s just inhumane.” His eyes welled up and he turned away. I put my head down and prayed, “God, please help me…” I felt sick. Words were inadequate.
I thought of Mike Aiken, the director of that shelter, who is involved in every effort that I know about to end homelessness. I thought of my earlier conversation with Jackie Lucas, the director of the Salvation Army shelter, who told me that she’d been able to move five people into transitional housing before winter shelter closed. She’s also involved in efforts to end homelessness, and she’s always looking for new ways to stretch limited resources to better serve homeless people. I know and love Mike and Jackie, and I’m thankful for their service and commitment to serve and show God’s love to homeless people. And I also realize that neither has the space, the staff or the funding to shelter everyone.
And then I looked back to the face of the man in front of me — a kind, intelligent, dignified and weary survivor, who is trying to get his life together — and I hurt for him. He told me that he’d lost his job and just recently found a new one, but he hadn’t gotten his first paycheck yet. He was struggling. “It’s like Job,” he said, and there was both resignation and determination in his voice.
He continued on, telling me that he knew that it was going to be alright, that his trust was in God. I reached for his hand, and asked if I could pray for him. When he nodded, I began, “God, I know You’re here with us,” and beside me, he said, “Yes, You are.” His voice was firm and strong and the intimacy with which he spoke to his God was unmistakable. I did not feel strong. I felt small and inadequate and humbled by the strength of the faith of this man, steadfastly trusting the Lord even as he spent the night on the hard concrete outside the closed doors of a homeless shelter.
On the drive home, I prayed out loud for the man of faith to be rewarded, for this to be the year that JM finally leaves the bridge and gets a home, for my friend who sleeps at Grace who’s moving into housing and who needs to be encouraged [prayer answered], for a homeless friend who has found his voice and is using it to advocate for others, for LV whose heart is beautiful even though he doesn’t realize it yet, for V who is a precious princess, for all my friends who need a home and hope and a new start, for my friends who work tirelessly to provide shelter and housing but can’t do it all and who need to be free from the burden of thinking that they have to, for my friends who serve on the street, for the Church and the community to have the eyes and the heart to see the needs of their homeless brothers and sisters and to respond, and for God to give me faith, wisdom, and strength to serve in love, and grace, mercy and forgiveness for my many failures and shortcomings.
I soon learned that hours before I prayed that prayer, God had already begun to answer me, by sending His word to me through a friend. When I got home from NightWatch, I saw that Jordan Green had posted this on my Facebook:
Thought of you when I read this:
2 Chronicles 4:7-10:
“Yet we who have this spiritual treasure are like common clay pots, in order to show that the supreme power belongs to God, not to us. We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair, there are many enemies, but we are never without a friend; and though badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed. At all times we carry in our mortal bodies the death of Jesus, so that his life also may be seen in our bodies.”
Maya Rae Penland is the beautiful baby daughter of my friend, Cat. Maya was born in September 2007, and we knew before she was born that she had 
