A Day At Greater Birmingham Ministries

 

    A day at Greater Birmingham Ministries is like meeting a city, a real city, made up of real human beings.

    Not a city where the poor, the disabled, the abandoned, the homeless and the frightened are kept—or swept— out of sight, lest our vision be offended or lest we worry that our image in the eyes of the world be damaged.

    Here need appears. Pain is heard. Hope struggles to be more than words.

    Who are these people? These real, flesh and blood human beings, these people in need. What’s wrong that they find themselves at GBM? That’s a question we ask ourselves. But, there is another question that lurks just outside the door of GBM which we also hear in the broader community: What’s wrong with these people that they find themselves at GBM?

    It’s early in the morning, and there is already a long line of people waiting at our front door. Some have been here since 4 AM hoping for a place in line. We can only see 40 people on any given day. When the doors are opened, a line of tired, burdened people file in. Now the waiting room is packed.

    Over there sits a grandmother on Social Security, but whose rent takes more than half her monthly income. There's little money for groceries and utilities, especially when cold weather gets here and her heating bill goes up.
Beside her sits another grandmother, a different color of skin, but who has no Social Security because her dead husband never had a job that reported his income or paid his taxes. And when she worked as a maid, her employers always paid her under the table to keep from paying her Social Security. Now she has nothing to live on, to speak of, except a small disability check that she gets because she's old she's considered disabled.

    In one corner sits a man whose water bill is higher than his rent because his landlord won't fix the leak under the apartment he rents. He's worked for 26 years at the same job, raised a family of four, but now he has diabetes and his doctor has told him that if he keeps on working, he'll lose his feet. He's already had gangrene in two toes, which were amputated last week. He is late with his rent this month, and he already owes last month's.

    And over there sit two women, one in her nineties with her daughter next to her in her sixties. Her daughter never married, and now the older woman is so weak, disoriented and frail that her daughter dare not leave her alone during the day or night. So, she can't go to work any more. They live together in an old house that they own, but which is falling in around them. Water pours in during rain. The heat barely works. They have no money for repairs. You see, they have no family left at all. They don't know what is going to happen to them. They're terrified. It's just the two of them alone--here in the midst of all the rest of us.

    There is another woman who works at Wal-Mart to keep her children fed while her husband tries to recover from back surgery, which they couldn't afford and will probably be paying for the rest of their lives. You see, neither one of them had health insurance at their jobs when his back went out on him. So, by the time they pay the monthly payment on the debt to the hospital and the doctor, there's just not enough for all the kids need for school or even clothes. It's a good month when they have the groceries they need and gas for the car. Right now she has a tooth with an abscess. She doesn't know what to do about that.

   

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    There is the man calling from the hospital who needs help with his rent, because his landlord is about to evict. There is the young woman who's husband left her to raise her daughter alone. Her gas is off, and her part-time job cleaning a local church has come to an end. She's looking for work, but her car needs tires and she's behind in the rent. And it’s so very cold.

    And, the man who got fired from his job because the bus service is so lousy in Jefferson County that he was always late. He's not mad at his employer. He understands. But he's out of groceries, and the power is already off. He wishes they'd just get the buses out to where the jobs are in the southern part of the county.
    Now there is a call from a woman trying to stay in a rehab program to beat her drug addiction, but she has a hard time coming up with the rent at the rehab home. She's terrified that if she leaves, her old friends will find her and she won't have the strength to resist.

   

   

    The receptionist tells the line of people at the door that we can't see any more people. That we already have more than we can help. She goes back and forth between the phone and the door to tell the people the same thing. Does she know another place? Well, have you tried these places? They sent you to us? I see. Well, no. I don't know anywhere else to try. I'm sorry.
“I'm sorry.” We say those words every day. They're honest, but they stick in our throats like a giant dusty lump. They sicken our hearts, to know about need and not be able to meet it.

    

    Meanwhile upstairs, people who had been escaping homelessness by living at Metropolitan Gardens Public Housing community are talking with each other about the fact they've been told they've got to move out of their homes to make way for houses for people with more money. They're not sure what to do, and they’re nervous about saying too much for fear that the Housing Authority might make it rough on them. 

    Why are all these people here? Did they commit some horrible sin in the eyes of God—or at least in the eyes of all the rest of us? Well, they are not perfect, that’s true. At GBM, we're still looking for perfect people. Maybe you are, too. But these people's main problem is that they were born human, with flesh and blood, and not made of stone. If only they were made of stone, then they wouldn’t feel the power of fear, pain and abandonment. If only they were made of stone, then they could stay outside in the cold and the rain and the wind and the heat. And their children wouldn't get hungry and their elderly wouldn’t cry out in the night.

    Yes, if only they were made of stone, and not flesh and blood. Then they would not be here at GBM or need the rest of us. Then their need would not remind us that they are human and, in doing so remind all the rest of us that we are, too. That's the real problem. They're human, and they remind us that we are supposed to be, too.

    Maybe what’s really wrong is the fact that they are flesh and blood, while all too often those of us with money, cars and houses have hearts that somehow turn to stone so as not to be bothered with these flesh and blood creatures, with needs and hurts and hopes. Are we shocked that people have needs? Shocked that none of us make it on our own? Shocked that people need people? 

    The main problem may very well be that we expect people in trouble to have a magic wand that can turn the rest of us back into human beings with blood and compassion flowing through our veins and our souls instead of walking around heavy with possessions but even heavier in heart because hearts are not meant to be made of stone.

   

    We were born to be human. We are here to be together. We are each other’s business.

    It is true that stone feels no pain and no compassion. Stone does not breathe. It cannot love.

    It cannot live.

    Never wish that others were made of stone.

    Never wish that your heart were, either.

 

 

2304 12th Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35234

(205) 326-6821  Fax: (205) 252-8458