Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[Soapbox speech alert!]

This Thanksgiving I am most thankful for not being homeless.  That is true both in that I have a place to live but I also have a home.

Even if I fell on hard times and had to leave my home, I have a family and friends and an infrastructure to fall back on.  Even so, some people who are now homeless also had some or all of these "safeties" at one point in their lives.

I know some of my friends, good people, who are reticent to support efforts to end homelessness.  I think this is because sometimes it is hard to admit that our hard work, mutual love for others, and good choices is not absolute protection from being in very bad life situations.  Everyone wants to believe that they would not take the road that leads to that kind of life and that homeless people did something wrong and therefore are reaping what they have sown. 

When I recognize this rationalization in others, it is easy for me to forgive them for what may seem like a lack of compassion.  It is easier for us to think of homeless people as drunks, drug addicts, or mentally unhealthy.  To think of "the homeless" instead of homeless people, people who have nowhere to brush their teeth or get their mail or store their things or just sit down for a little while.

But they are people.  Please check out this blog entry from my old boss's blog about a guy named Gary Reid.  People are homeless for a variety of reasons, not all of which people like me (educated, with a big family, relatively well off) are immune to experiencing.  And that is scary.

On this Thanksgiving you may not be spending time thinking about homeless people, but I hope you at least take a look around and give thanks for what you do have whether big or small.  Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Homeless
Unwanted.  Unprotected.
Begging, walking, freezing.
Owning only what's carried.
Helpless