Not Welcome.

We’ve finally had snow.

My children are very happy. My wife is happy. My dog is ecstatic. I am… reluctantly appreciative of the snow. 

We have a monsterously steep driveway. It does mean that we are fortunate enough to have a wonderful view of the nearby hills. But for a few months each year (don’t hate me, rest of Canada) our driveway becomes treacherous. Shoveling takes the better part of an hour. Ascending the driveway becomes a fun game of “will we make it up today?”. Backing out of the driveway requires a spotter watching out for oncoming traffic. If not for the driveway, I’d be singing of a white Christmas in November. But no, I’ll take the green for as long as I reasonably can. 

Each day for the past weeks I have been watching the hills, watching the frost and snow cover the pines on the very highest elevations, and then day by day, the tops of the hills are hidden in low cloud, and the snow covers another layer lower.

Yesterday, the snow finally reached the bottom of the hill, and us.

But as much as I dread the driveway, as much as I am tired and sweaty from the last hour of shovelling, I’m glad to see it. It hasn’t felt much like Christmas this year. 

Most years, by mid November, I’m ready. I’m buying egg nog. I’m queuing up the Christmas playlists, I’m working on the Christmas letter (which still won’t usually be mailed before Boxing day), I’m baking cookies. I’m all in.

But this year has been different. Christmas promises a lot of things: love, family, gifts, hope, peace, and delivers in vastly different measures for each person. Christmas is a time of celebration, bright lights, cookie exchanges, thoughtful gifts and adoration. But it’s also darker days, higher electricity and credit card bills, being overwhelmed with obligations, sadness over those lost, and the cold.

Did I mention it finally snowed?

For those of us in houses, the cold mostly means higher heating bills, scraping our car windshields and layers upon layers before leaving our dwellings. For those who are living between shelters and in communities of makeshift tents, it means quite another. 

And there’s a number of people who will be sleeping in tents among the snow tonight. 

The city where I live has a problem. It has a significant population of unhoused individuals, and (currently) inadequate resources to shelter them. This fall, tents and makeshift tarps lined the downtown city sidewalks close to various shelters and services. The ‘tent-city’ took up an entire block. And then one day in late November, the city, citing fire regulations, unexpectedly and suddenly moved this population and their belongings to less central, residential areas of the city. Areas much closer to people’s homes. People in that community were informed of the move the same day the unhoused population was. 

Like a lot of problems that are not easily solved,  the decision to move this group of people and their belongings was complex. While I believe I’m smart enough to realize some of the factors at play here (city and fire regulations, affect on local businesses) as well as some of the root issues of homelessness (past trauma, medical conditions, systemic racism, lack of social and financial supports), I’m not an expert in any of those areas. 

So I’m not going to focus on this encampment, or the city’s decision to move them. I’m going to focus on two reactions, two responses that have dominated my thoughts over the past week. 

The first response is a picture. It was featured on the front page of our local newspaper. An individual with a jean coat with matching pink gloves and an embroidered scarf is holding up a sign that simply states two words: “Not welcome”.

That’s all I know about this person. In contrast to their seemingly put together appearance, the sign appears hastily written, blotches of paint visible within the letters. The person has the sign held high, covering their face. They clearly posed for the picture that would be run on the front page, and yet did not want to be associated with the message they had written. 

A few days later, a prominent pastor in our city weighed in with his opinion on the recent relocation, and on homelessness in the city in general. The front page, and the large “Not Welcome” sign remained fixed in my mind. This pastor had written passionately and intelligently before. I was hopeful that this pastor was going to comment on our common humanity, our need for empathy, and our need to stop ‘othering’ this unhoused population. 

This was not what was written.

To his credit, this pastor first challenged each person to walk down the affected street in our city, to see the faces of those most affected. The people hunkering down under makeshift tarps, those who worked at the nearby shelter, the business owners attempting to make a living. He reflected on his own religious instruction to have compassion and care for the poor. He lamented the tragic history that many of these individuals have had that has led to their current living situation. 

And then, perhaps because he is a pastor, he likened our city’s current homeless situation to a story of Jesus in the Bible (you can find it in the Gospel of John, fifth chapter). In the story, Jesus comes upon an encampment of people near a pool. The pool is thought to be a place of healing for those who can reach the pool while the water is stirring (supposedly by a divine being). Many sick, blind, paralyzed and emaciated lived nearby. It is here that Jesus comes across a man who has had an infirmity to his legs for 38 years, and asks him if he would like to be well.

That question, “would you like to be well?” is an interesting one, and one the aforementioned pastor focuses on. In the story, the man explains his predicament, and Jesus, having never received a direct answer, heals him anyway. The man doesn’t answer correctly before he is healed.

But this pastor sees the lame man’s indirect answer, and labels them excuses. He reckons that perhaps the man did not want to be healed. That he preferred begging, that perhaps he would have to take responsibility for his life if he was healed. And then he related the story to the unhoused. Maybe some of them don’t want to be housed. Maybe some of them don’t want to “be clean and sober and work and pay [their] own way”.

Ah. There it is. So that’s the pastor’s real message. There are the deserving and the undeserving. Sick or poor, hoping for miracles or meals, 2000 years ago or today, some people deserve our help and compassion, while others do not. Those who are deserving, lets move heaven and earth. And for the undeserving? This pastor argues not only against assistance, but that we should make our city “a very unwelcome place for them”.

There it is again. “Not Welcome”.

Now had this sign holder taken her fears and concerns to a town meeting to be aired and discussed, had this pastor talked about how to set up boundaries that considered both the unhoused and businesses, I would have little arguement with either response. But as much as their responses may have been birthed in fear and frustration and exasperation, it is their lack of compassion that disturbs me the most.

I mentioned before that I was no expert in many of the complex factors affecting our city’s homeless population. But in the area of compassion, I am certainly passionate, and a practitioner. 

I have worked with the medically unwell for nearly 15 years. I have seen many people who were very sick become healthy and make a full recovery. But I’ve seen just as many who never will. I’ve been in close proximity to those who some would call lame, who are paralyzed, or have physical and mental ailments. Some for 38 years or more. I’ve cared for these people. I care for them still. 

This is an interesting phenomenon within healthcare. Where we can, practitioners endeavor to heal to the best of our ability. But there are many things we cannot heal. Certain diseases, chronic conditions, even the human condition of aging and own slow entropy are inescapable, and unfixable. 

In these cases, compassion and care becomes infinitely more important than previous desired outcome of “getting better”. Compassion becomes the outcome. Reducing suffering matters, even and especially when all seems hopeless. Imagine if the next patient I met with COPD (a chronic lung disease that progresses until death), I refused to treat, on the basis that they would never ‘get better’. Or the next patient with ALS, or Multiple Sclerosis, or untreatable metastatic cancer.

I make this connection with our city’s unhoused and their treatment because I think this pastor, this unknown sign holder, and many of us are focused on certain outcomes. And that’s not bad in itself, just incomplete. This pastor sees that years of meals and clothing drives and “handouts” have not decreased the number of unhoused individuals visible downtown. I believe this pastor wants to help, wants an end to this crisis, want’s this to ‘get better’. He’s not uncaring, he’s motivated. He’s a fixer.

It’s a good impulse. But it becomes really ugly if we lose our compassion.

Because what happens if we can’t fix the problem? Or what if it takes a really long time? What if, as the experts imply, this a result of lost social and instituional structures, multi-generational trauma, systemic racism, a society-wide dependence on numbing through substances? What if this isn’t a “everybody work harder!” problem?

What if those with past trauma are unable to trust  institutional structures? What if someone who was part of a residential school can’t bring themselves to spend one night in a shelter with the name ‘mission’ on it. Or in the basement of a church? What if someone with longstanding substance use can’t simply sober up by sheer willpower alone in order to jump through the hoops of ‘dry housing?’ What if someone can’t focus on job training before they find a reliable place to sleep that night? What then? 

What do we do when someone won’t “get better”? When we can’t win, can’t fix?

Do we ignore our humanity? Our ability to see the person in front of us as more than a problem to solve? Do we stand outside holding signs that say “not welcome”, or suggest to our followers that we make the city as unwelcome as possible? How do we possibly justify that?

And what does that do to us?

Our compassion matters. It matters to the people around us, and it matters within us. The moment I saw the front page, and that “Not Welcome” sign, I thought of Jesus’ warning that it is possible to gain the world, and forfeit your soul. I know that sounds religious and weird. I don’t care if you believe in the soul – don’t get caught up in terms. Exchange the name for whatever is our ground of being, the core of our best possible humanity. I grieved for a soul so willing to display it’s fear and hatred, and filled with enough shame to hide its face. I wondered how that person could gather presents for their relatives and write Christmas cards of love and celebration with the black paint still staining their hands. Staining their soul. I think about the soul of someone who thinks that the way of Jesus includes making a whole city unwelcome. Who reads a story of compassion and healing and justifies that some are undeserving of help or healing. The soul of someone who sees the coming snow, and doesn’t think of those sleeping in tents as deserving of warmth. That soul is cold.

And that soul is my soul, too, of course. Who hasn’t turned away from a stranger asking for help, hiding behind judgements of deserving or undeserving? Who hasn’t hoped that the next shelter would be miles away from their house, their work, or their children’s school? Who hasn’t made a group an ‘other’ to fear, or a project to solve? It’s easy for me to focus (self proclaimed) righteous anger on an outspoken community pastor, or an anonymous sign holder, but each time I choose judgement or dismissal over compassion, my soul is wounded too.

Here too, we need compassion to heal us.

I wonder if our purest love is shown best in the darkest places. When a perfect outcome seems impossible, when we barely move the needle. When nothing is winnable or fixable, we have only our compassion, our desire to reduce the hurt. We touch the wound, and we are the ones who are healed. 

I know that there is a place for a call to action. A call for businesses, communities, and organizations to partner. A call for personal responsibility, for those housed and unhoused. A place for compassionate municipal strategies. Power structures can change. Systems can ensure less people fall through the cracks. Outdated ideologies can be replaced. But our compassion must be non negotiable. 

I know people who are sure they will see an end to homelessness. Their focus is unwavering, until they make it reality. But whether they are right or wrong, whether the numbers of unhoused decrease or increase, one thing I am sure of is this: they will work to that end with dedication and compassion until their dying day. With their every action, in a thousand different words, they will tell the soul in front of them: “you are deserving, and you are welcome here”.

And they will see none of it as wasted.