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Man's prayer offers hope for the homeless and all of us
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Published: April 19, 2009
"Our most gracious God, we ask your blessing on all those who gather today; our brothers and sisters; our kindred; those who serve and those who are served, for we all are the same."
-- From a prayer that Charlie Wilson gave Wednesday at a Winston-Salem event to help the homeless
As Charlie Wilson gave a prayer Wednesday to open "Project Homeless Connect," an annual outreach to the homeless held in the Joel Coliseum Annex, many of the participants were all but oblivious to him as they filled out applications for help and talked to counselors.
Wilson, a longtime advocate for the homeless, didn't mind at all. He's an ordained pastor who realizes the importance of prayer. But he also realizes the importance of transforming his words to action. So after his minute of prayer, he stepped down from the stage and disappeared into the large crowd, serving doughnuts, listening, and trying to help as best he could.
Wilson and his wife, Anne, were among many volunteers. By the time the event opened at 8:30 a.m., there was already a line at the door. "Yeah, it's bad," an older man told me. "They need to bring the jobs back." He wasn't homeless yet, he told me, but he was close to it.
He was one of about 350 people who came to the event, which connected the homeless and near-homeless with a wide range of services. The event was part of the long-range plan to end chronic homelessness in Forsyth County. The city of Winston-Salem has applied for a grant of $750,000 in federal stimulus money for housing and counselors.
Basic needs such as food and clothing have to be met first. They have increased since last year's event. A month after that event, Barack Obama, then running for president, came to the Annex for a town-hall-style meeting. He briefly touched on the economy, which was slipping, but still a long way off from its September plummet.
Many say we haven't hit bottom yet. Meanwhile, advocates for the homeless say they're seeing more people who are becoming homeless for the first time, and more families becoming homeless.
"May we all seek and believe in a time when all will have a home; when all will be free of unnecessary anxiety, when the poor will be a faint memory, when extravagant wealth will be no virtue; when peace of mind will be more than an abstract idea; when no person will experience the pangs of want or the illusion of absolute comfort."
It's an eloquent prayer, especially when you consider that Wilson banged it out in a few minutes Tuesday night. But cynics might say they're just words, dreamy hopes that will never come true.
The cynics should talk to Wilson.
A retired pastoral counselor, he's a pragmatist. For almost 12 years, he was the chairman of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Council for the Homeless. He and many others have chipped away at a big problem.
The number of people who are chronically homeless (those who are disabled and on the street for a year or more) has dropped from 200 to 111 in the last three years in Forsyth County, said Andrea Kurtz, the director of the local Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. But many more people, whether disabled or not, are still homeless for shorter periods of time -- as many as 500 in the county on any given night.
Organizations such as the Samaritan Inn, which feed and shelter many of the homeless, are crucial. So are overflow shelters for the winter months.
The council for the homeless negotiated its way through a maze of objections and red-tape and helped get an overflow shelter opened at First Baptist Church on Fifth Street last year. This past winter, the council helped get another overflow shelter opened at the Rescue Mission. Because of their efforts, many more homeless people had a warm place to sleep. A few may well have been saved from freezing to death.
Providing temporary shelter to the homeless is crucial. But the ideal is to teach many of them to live in their own homes. Many of the homeless have mental problems, and organizers of the push to end chronic homelessness hope to provide more of them with case managers.
"Teach us to live in a real world where pain and suffering are never denied nor is the possibility of joy ever abandoned, where the complexities of life never overwhelm our creativity, where ambiguity never paralyzes but stimulates."
A man named Michael pulled me aside at Wednesday's event to talk with me about the new movie The Soloist, based on a true story, in which Jamie Foxx plays a concert violinist whose schizophrenia lands him on the street. If you stay on your meds, you're OK, Michael told me. He said he's schizophrenic and homeless, but he's been on medication for "years now and is progressing." He hoped to have his own home one day, he said.
Maybe he will.
■ John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at 727-7357 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
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