Shelter

Nathan and I spent last night at the homeless shelter, volunteering on behalf of one of the churches in our Presbytery. This morning was rainy. Most of the men there were stoics, pulling up their hoods, putting trash bags onto their bedrolls, and walking out the door.

Two men remained just after 7AM. The older of the two had eyes rimmed with red and yellow. He swept the empty room -- officially our job as volunteers, but he'd taken the broom as his province, and we left it to him. "Yeah, thirty years ago, I never thought I'd'a been homeless," he said. "I raised a family -- three daughters, I raised. I worked. I worked hard. I worked Three Mile Island, during that time; that time, with the -- you know. I worked there. And now -- Well, my feet hit the ground this morning, and I was alive, so I thank God."

He swept up and handed over the broom. The other guy, the one who had slicked back his hair and shaved his face, picked up the Bible from the coffee table. "I like to do this in the morning," he said. "I'm not a religious guy, but I seen some spiritual stuff that most people wouldn't believe." He opened the Bible to a random page.

"What's the date today?"
"The twelfth."
"The twelfth..." he paged down to the first superscript twelve he could find, and read aloud: "And as for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time."

We gathered up the trash with these two, and they peered out the door. "It's not raining anymore."

They tightened up their coats. "That verse," said the shaved one, to his friend, "That sounds like some'a what you were saying this morning."