“Finding Home”

The Rev. Carol A. Huston, Community Unitarian Church at White Plains, New York, November 4, 2007

I got used to seeing Sam and Betty at art openings in St. Louis. They stood out in that particular crowd. Shabby dress, unkempt hair, bodily hygiene varied from time to time but often pretty questionable. The interesting thing was that no one tried to throw them out or block their way to the cheese and crackers, even though it was supremely obvious that these were homeless people, gaining a good percentage of their weekly protein from the brie and Jarlsberg on the table. I don't believe that they drank the wine, but they took a substantial share of the food on the tables. And I want to be clear: they looked at the art. Sam never said much, but Betty would give you her opinion of a piece if you wanted to listen.

I gradually learned their story. Sam had been a math professor at Washington University. But through the years, some form of mental illness asserted itself, and the school had to let him go. He lived with his parents not far from Wash U - probably had always lived at home, and Betty, who was his sister, was there as well with the family. Neither was employed when first their mother and then their father died. Sam and Betty stayed in the house until it was seized for back taxes. After that they lived for a year or two in their parent's old car, which they could not legally drive because they had no license and the registration became out of date - but they would move it from street to street as they could. Eventually the car was taken as well. From then on they slept outdoors in St. Louis's hot summers, and stayed indoors in Wash U's student union in cold weather. The University population helped them out with cash, clothing, and engaged lobbying of the University administration whenever some Dean somewhere thought they should be locked out of the student union. I think there were a few houses that took them in at times and offered showers, and even the occasional theatre tickets. Betty died in the early 90s. I never knew, but I imagine Sam was institutionalized after that.

Sam and Betty have been haunting my mind in the last few weeks as I hear this term "non-compliant homeless". Here in Westchester County the term refers to the population of about 70 or 80 homeless men and women who, because of mental illness, addictions and other reasons, don't report to assigned meetings, don't fill out forms, don't declare their Social Security or earned income and pay a solid percentage of it to the County - rent, as it were, for homeless shelter beds. In the past few years, this marginal population has been housed in drop-in shelters, most of which were closed in August.

As I think you know, in Westchester County there has been a new plan for the non-compliant homeless, a plan that would grant this category of people nowhere to lie down. Representatives of the County Social Service office came in September to ask the White Plains Religious Leaders to open warming centers for the County. In an almost offhand manner, the County representatives stipulated that these Centers would have chairs only, not beds or cots. Even if the warming center location owned cots, the County said that it would not be allowed to deploy them.

Let's consider for a moment the linguistic game - the framing - that's evident in a term like "warming center." A "warming center" sounds nice and cozy, doesn't it? A place where we come in out of the cold. But remember, this is a place where, if you get warm, you're not allowed to sleep. We might more honestly call it a "sleepless center," or a "get out of here quick center."

This issue came up because of turf battles between the County and White Plains, and other municipalities as well. But the county also, at times, chose to position itself, saying that this is a blessing in disguise-an opportunity to turn all those non-compliant homeless into compliant people, using the carrot of the bed instead of the chair. The County announced with great joy a few weeks ago that more homeless were becoming compliant. Shelter directors countered that this shift had more to do with a daytime outreach program that has been in operation over the last six months. The County stopped pushing that point.

They know as much as anyone that the hard-core homeless will always be with us. Those of you who go along on Midnight Run see this population in the City. And with the County's regulations, there will always be some who haven't filled out the forms and attended the meetings for transitional reasons - just out of prison; waiting for a residential program to begin. And some will remain on the streets because of on-going addiction, for reasons of illegal citizenship status, for reasons of dementia and mental illness. I am sure that Sam and Betty never would have been compliant with regulations. Mental illness made it hard enough for them to be compliant with life. About all they could do was to travel the path they were used to - Washington University and art galleries. A strange existence, an inviting path, you might say, taking advantage of the kindness of others. But their illness denied them the supreme comfort of having a home.

What is home? Home is a word like "family" that can be over used. "Home sweet home." "Your family loves you." These ideas are sentimentalized the world around. Too many assumptions of good are made about them. Some families are sources of support and love; other families offer dysfunctional support of the wrong qualities. Some homes offer shelter and haven; others are the locus of abuse and private terrorism. In her ground-breaking volume The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan told the world that many of the perfect homes of the 1950s covered up the deterioration and substance abuse of a woman in the household. I am not telling you today that "homes" are always the source of good. As I cast around for a quotation for the order of service today, many of the quotations carried a skeptical twist. For instance, an anonymous source said, "Home is where you can say anything you like cause nobody listens to you anyway." We have all been there. And we all know that the place that we own or rent, the place that we decorate with our own stuff, the place that we clean up when people are coming over - this place is not always the haven and shelter that all the inhabitants need.

But I am going to remind you today that to be healthy in the world, to grow spiritually, morally, and lovingly, we all need a home. The home we need may be a room or a corner in that larger structure of your house. We are all at home in some rooms and not in others. The old fashioned front parlors, where the furniture always stayed covered, and you were never allowed to put your feet up, I'd say that wasn't really "home" for most people. Where do teenagers find home? Probably not in the house as a whole, but in the room that they keep for themselves. One of the challenges of being a parent of a teen is learning to close the door of that room and allow your young person that space.

Some of us have a home away from home - the office space, even the cubical that you can really occupy might at some points in your life be more your home than the apartment or house where you sleep.

Perhaps Community Unitarian Church is a home to you at times - I've heard that word from many of you. We have around us today a display of religious stoles, each of them in honor of a person called to the ministry who could not fully answer that call because of sexual orientation or gender identity. Churches and synagogues were not homes for these individuals. We hope that in the future more religious organizations will welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people home.

What is it to exist with no place to call home? Not even one room. Not even one desk-top, not even a remembered place? Where would you gain security? Where would you go to rest? Is that what's wrong with a lot of people today - no place to be at home?

Harriet Beecher Stowe said: "Home is a place . . . of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room." How do we live our lives and grow if there is no where to make preparation?

Westchester County has come a long way in housing the homeless over the past 20 years. In the 1980s there was no place for anyone, complaint or non-compliant, to find a bed. Today in the Coachman Center, at Open Arms Shelter, and other places people without a home can find a place to call their own, to get themselves together, to rehearse for a better life. Some people - for reasons of addiction, mental illness and other causes -- are not ready for those rehearsals, and so this county has housed them in drop-in shelters -- not giving them a little space to call home, even for a night. Is that not enough punishment? Do we have to degrade their worth and dignity further by also denying them a bed? Clergy in White Plains, as part of our prophetic function, have refused to go along with this plan. We are continuing behind the scenes to make sure that the cotless warming centers will not be the norm here in White Plains, and we hope that other municipalities will follow. I hope that you will continue to attend to this story and to make the occasional phone call. I will say that there is nothing really for you to do right now - unless you run into a Common Council member or candidate. You might remind them that we don't want people suffering and dying in the cold or dehumanized in warming centers.

The reading today was a poem called "Candles" by Carl Dennis. It evoked the picture of a man without a job, dwelling outside in a strange place, homeless.

"Picture him taking a stroll one morning,

After a month of grief with the want ads,

To refresh himself in the park before moving on.

Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards

Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,

Then still a girl, will be destined to stop on

When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic

If he doesn't stoop down and scoop the mess up

With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can."

An unknown person doing an unknown good deed for who knows what benefit. We look on the homeless as useless, dangerous. What if we could see that these small acts of generosity could be part of their lives, part of our lives as well? We will never know in the ecology of life who has done us well and who has done us wrong.

In a home, in that small bit of space that we control, we don't need to worry about the common space. But in the rest of the world, the place which is not home, with people who never find home, we need to worry about these interactions, these little acts of kindness or cruelty and err on the side of kindness. It is the work of religious community to offer home to all who want to come here. It is the work of religious community to offer you the space to consider whether you need to search further to find the corner where you are truly home. And it is the work of religious community to advocate for a city, a county, a nation, a world in which all can be at home.
What is Home?

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. ~Maya Angelou

Home is not where you live but where they understand you. ~Christian Morgenstern

Peace - that was the other name for home. ~Kathleen Norris

Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
~Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man

Home ought to be our clearinghouse, the place from which we go forth lessoned and disciplined, and ready for life. ~Kathleen Norris

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. ~Jane Austen

Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to. ~John Ed Pearce

A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless. ~May Sarton

Where thou art - that - is Home. ~Emily Dickinson

Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms. ~William J. Bennett

One's home is like a delicious piece of pie you order in a restaurant on a country road one cozy evening - the best piece of pie you have ever eaten in your life - and can never find again. After you leave home, you may find yourself feeling homesick, even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up. ~Lemony Snicket

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
~Robert Montgomery

I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world. ~George Washington

Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. ~Frederick W. Robertson