At least we had a cot! Mike slept as well as he could at the Church of St. Clements.
When the temperature gets down in the 30’s, that normally means flannel blankets and nerdy pajamas. For the homeless, sometimes it means sleeping in a church.
My husband Mike and I discovered just what that was like when we volunteered for the night shift at the Church of St. Clement’s, which serves as a hypothermia overflow shelter between January and mid-March.
Loaded up with warm clothes and my Snuggie and favorite pillow, I set the house alarm (because I stupidly posted on Facebook what we were doing) and we drove to St. Clement, where set-up volunteers Cindy and Doris gave us a reference book organized like a military battle plan. We were set.
Around 8:15 p.m. eight men arrived in a van from the Carpenter’s Shelter to spend the night. They wished us “good evening”, smiling and showing a new guy how to sign in and take a mat, pillow, sheets, blankets and pillowcase. They said, “Yes Ma’am” and “No, sir” when we talked with them, and we said “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” back.
Manners beget manners.
Most of them watched TV in a back room. Cindy and Doris left Doritos, hot water and packets of hot chocolate, coffee, creamer and sugar. A handful of Lifesaver breath mints, each individually wrapped, were in a white bowl.
Lights out came at 10:15 p.m., right after the 10 p.m. smoke break. The men settled in for the night among the pews and aisles. An overhead lamp gently illuminated their ragged backpacks and dirty fleece jackets, along with the poinsettias and a huge nativity scene next to the altar. Mike and I could hear them quietly snoring as we settled in the adjoining entryway.
We decided I would take the first shift, so he stretched out on a cot and attempted to sleep, protected by a three-dimensional nativity made entirely of grapevines. I sat nearby, scrunched up on a wooden bench with a flashlight reading Life, Keith Richard’s autobiography until it was my turn to sleep at 2 a.m. I wondered if Keith Richards could have been one of these men had his grandfather not given him a guitar when he was a child. How much does luck play into where and how we end up?
As the flashlight batteries dimmed, I sat in the darkness, fully awake with nothing to do after a one minute walk through the church. I thought about what being homeless would be like. What was it like to wonder when I would eat again? What was it like to sit against a wall, day after day for 12 hours, waiting until it was time to sleep? What do you think about?
Most of the guys were awake before the 6 a.m. wake-up call. They signed out and took the McDonald’s coupons that the program provides.
“How did you sleep?” one of them asked me.
“Not very well,” I answered, and immediately felt like an over privileged idiot.
The Carpenter’s Shelter van came to take them. One guy thanked us for volunteering-another hugely humbling moment-and they left.
We turned off the lights and headed out the back door. One of the men must have turned on the TV that morning. A preacher in a grey suit was trying to inspire. The church cleaning lady thanked us for volunteering.
As I walked up Quaker Lane toward our car, carrying my backpack, pillow and Snuggie, Mike said, “You look like you could be homeless.”
Not hardly.
Sleeping in church just took on a whole new meaning.
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To volunteer at a hypothermia overflow shelter, contact local churches or organizations who work to end homelessness. Carpenter’s Shelter, A-SPAN and FACETS are a few nonprofits that come to mind.
