The Power of Our Guests at Manna House

The Power of Our Guests at Manna House

Eddie was sitting on the couch with his paper bag of belongings.  Another guest took a look at the bag stuffed with things and asked, “Do you have a dining room table in there?” As the laughter started to roll around the room another said, “That’s like a dang traveling chifferobe.” 

Eddie took it with good grace, laughing along with the others.  “I’ve got everything I own in here; it’s bound to be a little crowded.”  Later in the morning he asked me for a larger bag.  His traveling chifferobe had given way under the pressure and ripped open.  I got him a plastic shopping bag from a local department store.  It was bigger than a grocery store bag and smaller than a typical garbage bag.  “Just right for toting” Eddie observed.

We’ve had so much cold weather this winter that on most mornings, guests are crowding into the living room and dining room of Manna House, and are making less use of the space on the porch and the front yard.  This means not only a lot of people in a small space, but also all their bags.  Some guests carry more than others. 

Backpacks are favorites for carrying things, and we never have enough to give away.  Guests also favor duffle bags with shoulder straps.  A few use those little suitcases on rollers, though in the snow and ice those aren’t so handy, and the wheels tend to fall off from too much rolling.  Plastic grocery bags, paper grocery bags, little canvas shopping bags, those all get put to use, too. But usually guests need two or three of those kinds of bags to manage.  That’s not very convenient.  Of course we do have guests who are not homeless.  They come from the rooming houses and apartments nearby and thankfully have no bags. 

With all the guests and the bags, getting a cup of coffee and carrying it back to one’s place requires nimble movement along with lots of “excuse me’s.”  It really is amazing how little coffee gets spilled each morning. 

Besides nimbleness, the movement without spills and tussles between guests also bespeaks of the community and compassion our guests share with each other. Guests share information with each other about soup kitchens, shelters, safe places to be during the day, opportunities for housing, and more.  Guests share socks and cigarettes and books among other things.  Hosting the Room in the Inn pick up the last week or so, I’ve seen guests give up their spot for the night so that another person who is more vulnerable will have a place to stay. 

Their decency and humanity to each other in the midst of horrific conditions on the streets is humbling.  Guest spend their days (and often nights) in the cold.  They eat barely adequate food.  At soup kitchens there is rarely any fresh fruit, and meals are high in starches and carbs.  They walk for miles from one place to another, often in ill fitting shoes.  Many go without glasses, because who can afford them?  They carry within a gnawing sense that no one cares and the wounds of rejection from family and former friends.  They experience the constant indignities of depending upon the fickle good will of others.  All of this is part of the slow death of the streets, the crucifixion of the poor.

And yet our guests carry their humanity in the midst of all this.  Their laughter and their ways of screwing with the various systems aligned against them form a resistance to the injustices they experience daily.  Eddie laughs about his “traveling chifferobe.”  Guests have catholes that no cop can ever find.  Freddie rides a bike in which he has fashioned handlebars covered with gloves in the “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot Position.”  And guests organize with Homeless Organizing for Power and Equality (H.O.P.E.) to fight for housing, and ending police harassment.   

There’s a power in the folks who come to Manna House, it’s the power of their humanity and it’s the power of God, of which the Psalmist writes, “You, O God are the eternal light. Your glory reaches higher than the heavens. Who is like you, magnificent in holiness? And yet you live so close within. You raise the poor from their lowliness; you lift the oppressed from the depths. You give dignity to their lives, a place of honor with all the faithful” (Psalm 113).