Broken Homes and Broken Bones

For those who do not know, I live close to the inner city.  Even my neighbourhood is considered low income, despite all the re-gentrification that has happened in the past ten years.  As I walk to work, one can not help but notice all the abandoned houses due to fires or closures by the health board.  My neighbourhood is littered with them and so is the McCauley area.  Boarded up to prevent squatters, these places tend to just sit there and take up space for years, the landlords just leave the lots as they are or empty.

I can not help but to make an analogy of these broken homes with some people that I serve, those whose spirits and bones have been broken.  You encounter people like this coming from all walks of life and from all cultural and economic circumstances.

When really wounded there is always that "danger keep out" sign in front of them.  Boarded up to protect what shell of a house remains.  As sad as this analogy may seem, there is hope for the human spirit.

All human beings are given some type of foundation to work with.  People are resilient, and God only knows that I have heard my share of stories that testify how the human spirit is built to be resilient.  We all have survived from pain, trauma, fear and hopelessness from circumstances we may have or may not have had control over: we have tools that helped us to cope and continue on healthily.  These are tools and skills that we can share with others who may not know how to use them.

No matter the damage, therefore, there is always a possibility to rebuild that spiritual house.  These houses need to be rebuilt with the support of a healthy community who are in essence the landlords of the spirit of the community.

As landlords we are in charge of stewarding our communities and relationships-to be good neighbours.  Yet, I believe we often fail to support one another in such mundane circumstances.  I find that we easily judge and try to board up those who are desperately in need of our support.

Often we label these people, condemn them and tell others to stay away and pass on the responsibilities to the government and social workers to do the carpentry work of the human soul: despite the systems efforts, the system only acts like an insurance company that gives out the bare minimum funds to deal with the damage that is done.  They can not build and sustain the relational aspect missing in most of these tenant's lives.

The hope I see, in contrast, is that if we can come to see these people as our broken people, as being part of our community, part of our human family, we will be moved to help rebuild their home by being carpenters of healthy relationships, good will and peacemaking.

By doing that, we have more of a chance of helping people than just relying on the welfare state to repair the damage done.  We can give our brothers and sisters a chance to become more than just an abandoned home that we board up and leave to rot. We can give them a chance to be carpenters too, to share tools that can help others who are struggling-to help rebuild other broken spirits.   The question is do we want to be slumlords of the human spirit, or responsible landlords of the human spirit?

Peace and Joy,

Billy