Lovin’ ain’t easy, but it’s free
Providing care, respect and compassion to a suffering neighbour
On a week that leads up to Valentine’s Day, many of us are thinking about chocolates, cards and flowers, but I bet you never thought the gift of a bed for the night would be one of the most important things any of us could give.
Two weeks ago, I sat in a room with 200 people who had gathered because of their common concern for the homeless in Cape Breton.
The Buddhists have a word for it: karuna. It is the selfless love and compassion for the suffering neighbour.
His real name isn’t Donnie, but that’s what I’ll call him. He came to our church recently looking for help. He didn’t want to go back to his small apartment on the Northside because the door had been broken down, he had been beaten up, “and there’s blood all over the walls.”
Donnie couldn’t go to the homeless shelter that night because he owns a dog. And so, his plan was to sleep in an old truck.
“I’ve done it before,” he said. “I just came over here because I’m really hungry.”
As the weather grew so much colder over the following days, I thought of Donnie often and hope he has found another place to stay.
While we may not love Donnie in a Valentine’s kind of way, there isn’t one of us who wants any person to live like that. We love him in a “philia” way.
Philia is a Greek word to describe the powerful emotional bond of close friendships and community. It is the most-mentioned type of love in the JudaeoChristian Bible and encompasses the type of love we are supposed to feel for our fellow humans. It is the care, respect and compassion we show for each other.
The other three concepts of love as described by the Greeks are: storge (the affection among family
members); agape (the perfect, unconditional love, such as we get from God); and eros, the romantic love we think of around Valentine’s Day.
We love in so many ways, but it is that Buddhist word karuna that stays in my mind.
And it was karuna I felt at that conference hosted last month by the Affordable Housing and Homelessness Working Group.
During a day last April when volunteers fanned out into the community to do a “point-intime” count, they spoke with 835 people and found 115 had experienced homelessness in their lifetime. Nine of those didn’t have an adequate place to sleep that very night. Seven people were staying in transitional housing that night, and 21 were living temporarily with friends or family. Nineteen per cent of the 115 who had experienced homelessness were under the age of 24.
In fact, the conference was told that at any one time in Canada, 6,000 to 7,000 youth aged 13-24 are homeless.
The good news is that more than 200 people in Cape Breton care about this problem of housing insecurity and are willing to do something about it. In fact, a new homeless shelter is being planned for 106 Townsend St. in Sydney (the old David building) and fundraising should begin soon.
It will house beds for temporarily homeless women, men, youth and the disabled.
Fred Deveaux, executive director of the Cape Breton Regional Housing Authority, says it will operate a 24-hour drop-in centre so folks don’t have to wander the street on extreme cold or hot days. And the housing authority will continue to offer services to help people find more permanent housing after staying at the shelter.
So, love one another. Let’s not just love those we really like — that’s easy. Love the stranger and we are all better for it.