home, the homeless and homelessness, after east thoughts4

a quick two sentence summary: home is a safe place; the homeless here -NYC- hope for home. They home the HRA and the NYCHA will receive, review and not lose their documentation papers; they hope against hope.

And when they are experiencing ‘homelessness’ , they are like a Sandra Bullock character ) in the film ‘gravity’) – alone, defying, floating -flotsam in space. Homeless, but now without hope, no hope of safety…

Homelessness.

You see, homeless as a word describes a person, an individual. Homelessness describes not a being but a state of being. Now you are not a person or a thing, but a ‘place.’ But a place without people or memories; without personal effects or even daffodils or birds. A place of deep, deep darkness that is only visible to you. Homelessness.

Lear experienced such a state on the heath during his horrific storms. Without daughters or knights; without fellowship of children and the possibility of grandchildren, without a kingdom -he is alone, a fool.

A fool as Jesus.

As Jesus alone on the cross-forshaken, assigned a single, closed, splintered unbearable space to hang in….

On the cross, Jesus, 100% God and 100% man experienced true homelessness. Forsaken by his disciples, by Peter, by Judas and His community on earth; He is also forshaken by His Heavenly Father. No home on earth; no resting place in the heavens, home is a cross.

A space devoid of hope.

Why? He willingly went to this cross, this abyss, so all could have heavenly spaces: resting places with a Father who loves us.

Recently my Father passed. In the few weeks he was healthy and feeling as well as thinking right, he saw me doing all I could to love him and -unprompted – he said before sleep, ‘Charles, I love you.’

When others fail me, when my friends leave me, when children do not speak into my life, I hang onto the resting place my father’s

( see these 2 articles about the homeless in America and LA)

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-opioid-mother-20180418-story.html

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-metro-homeless-20180406-htmlstory.html