Dear Me

The love we give away
is the only love we keep.

~ Elbert Hubbard ~






Mo and Me



Compassion is not a relationship between the
healer and the wounded. It's a relationship
between equals. Only when we know our own
darkness well can we be present with the
darkness of others. Compassion becomes real
when we recognize our shared humanity.

~ Pema Chödrön ~



Dear Me,

Throughout the past year I have come to know many people, now friends, who for various reasons, are or were homeless. Giovanni, sleeps on a park bench and was beaten, had his teeth kicked out, for no other reason than the lifestyle he has chosen. He is a small, gentle man who has a phobia about enclosed spaces.

Greg, sleeps on the sidewalk in the freezing cold. I see him every morning and am never sure if, when I lift the corner of his sleeping bag, I will find him dead or alive. Sometimes, he confided, he would prefer never to awake.

Mo, is a close personal friend who fell on hard times. She has slept behind a dumpster in back of Starbucks. I have seen her with blackened eyes, bruised legs, cracked ribs, cut and swollen lips. I usually see her sitting on the sidewalk 'panning' for change.

http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog/2011/09/mo-homeless-ottawa-ontario-canada/
(scroll down)

In the past six months I have witnessed an upturn in Mo's fortunes. She now has the proper credentials to obtain medical assistance for her bouts of pneumonia, kidney failure and mental disorders. Through diligence she has saved enough money to share, with several other people, a warm, clean, safe house.

I can't do much for these people except to show them love, compassion, an ear to listen, a hug to comfort, perhaps a breakfast sandwich and a coffee. I would like to do more. To know them is to love them. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I have started to write an account of their daily lives. I intend to turn this into a book and have it published. That is my goal.

Check my daily progress at:
http://www.writing.com/main/profile/blog/dcardiff

I hope that readers of this will open their hearts, in any way possible, to the homeless in their part of the world. They can't help themselves.


Cheers,
Me



(Word count: 358)