I'll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow
And mistletoe
And presents 'neath the tree
Christmas eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
Unfortunately a home for Christmas is just that - a dream, for the over 3500 homeless in this city, over 200 whom are children. Christmas looks quite different when you’re homeless.
If you live far from home, some years you will travel far to be home for Christmas. You'll even suffer the indignities that traveling by air or bus presents this time of year to be home at Christmas. You'll gladly sleep on a fold-out sofa.
Every day of the year we long to belong, but at no time is that more true than Christmas. You want to go to some place where everybody knows your name. Your home is where they understand you. As Robert Frost put it, "Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in."
I think Jesus understood the homeless…
Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at this time of year, knew what it was to be homeless. He once said, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." (Luke 9:58) When he began his earthly ministry, he really had no place to call home for very long. He wandered throughout Galilee and Judea. He had some friends who gave him a place to stay. There were Martha, Mary and Lazarus in Bethany. But a place of his own he did not have. He was homeless.
In fact he was kind of homeless at birth if you think about it, in that he was born away from his home. And when he got to Bethlehem there was no room at the inn – so he was born in a stable.
The homeless that I know are amazing people, with amazing stories, and often amazing gifts. Life has happened to them in ways we can sometimes not even comprehend, but they have become my friends, and in some cases, part of my extended family.
They are those who we choose to reconcile ourselves with and to provide a home. And it is in that relationship, in that partnership, that we discover that change is possible, and the greatest motivator for that change is a home - a place to belong.
A home is a place where the first steps for the homeless are taken. A move away from whatever symptoms have overwhelmed their lives, where they can find hope and be whole.
- Bill Nixon, Director of Public Education, The Mustard Seed
@billbytheminute
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Hello, i am homeless and have since planned to come to Calgary thinking that it would be far easier finding work there then having to return to BC, am i right? At this point, i have no idea, i used to reside in Ontario but there they had little or no services for me to get help. In BC i am or used to be on a Disability check once a month but found out i could barely survive on that and so i am heading into Calgary hoping to find the ever elusive work and help that i always or almost always find in BC, and one Tim Hortons in Windsor, Ontario, which was located downtown, great people them, very caring and helpful. I sure hope to be able to someday find someone who is willing to help and not fault me because i am homeless, or because they see me as being someone who does not feel or does not love for i am homeless and at times misunderstood, we, all of us who are homeless need hope & understanding, and help. May the Lord guide us as he has guided others before us. God bless you everyone, further May the creator & mother Earth watch over us as Father Sky & Grandmother Moon guide us and wash our dispair away. Blessed be one and all.
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