We vacillate between treating people like children or treating them like criminals

I have unlearned a lot of things in my short time at HealthCare for the Homeless (HCH) working as a Lutheran Volunteer Corps Volunteer.
All that I have seen, all those I have met have changed me.
An uneasiness, however, has grown in my soul in the last three months that I have interacted and observed interactions with the individuals we serve at HCH. I have been questioning my motivation to be here.
I have no formal training in either mental health or social work, or for that matter anything that could be of any use at the moment, and I view my opinion as a very biased and untrained one. That being said, here it is questioned, untrained, unprofessional.

There's you(the therapist) and there's me (the client). We are sitting in a room (your office), I like the way it looks (your knick-knacks spread out here and there), I like the couch I am sitting on (your couch). The therapy ensues, your ultimate goal is to provide an open space where I can share my thoughts and emotions and the things that trouble me daily. I feel comfortable with you, except for the fact that sometimes (outside of the office and perhaps therapy) you treat me like a child. Despite whatever diagnosis you gave me, the fact remains the same: I come to this place with little to no agency, only to have the last strap of it removed by every interaction I have with the people in this place. I come from a place where either (1) I didn't have an agency to begin with, or (2) the agency I had I couldn't handle, or worse (3) it was removed from me by the system in which I live in.
I am no different than you or anyone you know, and the questions hang in the air: would you want to be treated like this? Would you want to feel like you are doing me a favor every single time we talk, that my difficult life is something to be pitied? If you were here in my shoes how would you want to be treated? Am I child you take care of, will you hold my hand and continue to treat me like a different kind of human? Will you remove any strap of dignity I have left by treating me like this?
Am I even worth your time and attention? Not just the helping kind, with the nice voice and all, but the real attention? The kind of attention where you realize that you and I are not that different, where you sit right in front me, look at my face and I look at yours. We can clearly see we are the same, for all you know this could be you in my seat. I deserve to be seen as human and as equal as you, my situation does not dehumanize me. My diagnosis does not dehumanize me.
My run-ins with the law do not dehumanize me, or for that matter my entire history with the law system does not dehumanize me. I am not a source of constant risk to you. What I have done is not who I am. You don't need to be afraid of me. Know it, yeah, I can't even escape it, but don't fear it.
I am not homeless. I am currently experiencing homelessness. But I am not homeless, and homeless isn't me.
I have a name and face. I am you, you are me.

Does it matter where we go?

I came home on a whim,
after having emotions tug at me for days I finally decided to make the trip back to this place I once called home.
Deep down, I know I came here to spend some much needed time with my family. I haven't walked these streets or breathed the mountain air for over a year. My heart yearned for the Andes, my mind yearned for understanding.
I've been trying to grasp another facet of my past and of my life,
absorbing everything around me, the good and the bad. Taking in everything and everyone I used to know. Grasping to understand who my parents are as I simultaneously grab hold of who I am.
I think I have understood now better than before that these souls and bodies that gave me life and a home make up an integral part of who I am and of who I want to be.
My questions had never probed so deep into their life experiences. Life experiences that have been so vast and diverse from my own and yet strangely parallel. After all we all look for love, we all experience loneliness, we all look for purpose and meaning. Their tales of love lost and found, of loneliness and community have helped me grip on more tightly to this ride of life.
I don't want to leave for many reasons. I am afraid of their growing accustomed to having me around. I am afraid that their health may take a bad turn.
And yet I know I have to leave. I could make this place my home once more, but my mind and my heart are headed in different directions. The challenge is the same everywhere: the search for community, but I must also accept my commitments and be lead by the things that make me come alive.
I have committed to doing a year with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, working at a healthcare clinic that specializes in treating homeless individuals. I have grown intrigued and passionate about this group of individuals. I guess that my expectation for the coming year is to better understand and interact with people in general and homeless individuals specifically.
Perhaps I am already setting the bar up to high, I tend to do that.
Perhaps though, after being here for a little over a month I understand that that is exactly where I should be in the coming year. My time here has been like looking at my reflection on the surface of a deep lake. I see my parents in the background forming the blurry shape that I see looking back at me. I see a country that bleeds from racism and environmental degradation. I see who I don't want to be. I see who I am. I see my family's past. I see the lack of community among siblings and cousins. I see who I can become and who I want to become.
I am hopeful and looking forward to whatever comes next.
I continue to hope in a silent God. I continue to search for the area in which my existence will be most helpful to others.

I continue on with this newfound rest.

"So when I'm ready to be bolder,

And my cuts have healed with time

Comfort will rest on my shoulder

And I'll bury my future behind

I'll always keep you with me

You'll be always on my mind

But there's a shining in the shadows

I'll never know unless I try.."

On a side note this video is amazing depiction of finding community anywhere. I strive that one day I will better able to do this.

Faithful and True

Two weeks from now all of
this will be over, and
nostalgia's cool air has come
calling before its time.
Can we truly overcome the deep darkness within us and around us?
Is certainty even possible?
Can we complete the unattainable task of defeating this darkness?
The darkness of uncertainty, of emotions, of the future.
Aren't we all fighting the darkness? The large cloud of loneliness that thrusts us desperately upon each other? The overpowering grey of insecurities? The blinding faith?
More and more it seems to me that it is the simple things that are able to diminish the darkness around and within.
I just hope that it is these leaps unto the unknown that will bring healing in their own small way. Perhaps, in acceptance of relationships, of changed plans, perhaps in the sorrowful surrender of a tired faithless soul, there is resolution.

Quite some time

That's all.

Flying

There's something so beautiful about needing something or someone.
There's something so beautiful about selflessness and true friendship.
True vulnerability is beautiful.
There's so much beauty.
There's so much God, as painful and hard that it might be for me to admit; God seems to be everywhere  in selflessness, in needing, and in vulnerability.
It's in the relationships that could not be any more normal and yet their very foundation seems to be metaphysical.
It's in hearts that have connected, that have understood beyond all reason beyond anything anyone could predict. That is God to me.
I am searching for those moments where God becomes as real as the air filling my lungs.
It's in that unspoken understanding, in compassion that seems so human. It's almost as if our hearts call out and tell us, that this, right here, this is what I was made for.
I recently watched the movie The Intouchables and I have not seen such an amazing depiction of life and selflessness as I did in that movie.
It is love that transcends culture, prejudices, time and words.
I think we must live for those moments, for it seems to me that through moments like those that we catch a glimpse of what life can be, of what we can be.
We catch a glimpse of faith and hope.

You know no love or hate.

O dear human,
How frail are your bones, how thin is your skin.
How small are your cries, how loud is your pretension.
How minute your importance, how great is your pride.
How big your ideas, how small is your kindness.
How wonderful is your creativity, how deep is your desire.
How powerful is your lust, how consuming your need of love.
How dear are your dreams, how beautiful your heart.
How painful is your violence, how eternal your forgiveness.
O dear human,
Come away to the lost,
become awake to the darkness around you.
Become aware of your limbs,
become aghast at your abilities.
This darkness, this evil--though overpowering makes you uniquely human.
O dear human,
your perceptiveness to the light and its grandioseness is embedded in your very spine.
Your propensity to return to pain,
to what hurts the most, makes you weaker and stronger.
Human you are a juxtaposition.
A species lost and yet strangely winning.
With one hand you tie your own noose
with the other you reach out to the hungry.
O dear human,
Who are you really?
Who can comprehend you still?
You would kill yourself in the name of love
and be found amidst the rummage of its fire the next day.
The same love that destroys you,
sets you apart.
O human,
your soul is so unique.
It loves unrequitedly and with a depth so incomprehensible.
Dear human,
How free you are in a cage of bones.
How loving and kind in the midst of war.