By Stephanie Mancini
Published December 2024
Driving through rural Ontario, it is not unusual to see signs with Christian messages surrounded by colourful leaves at this time of year. I was struck recently by one sign that read, “Harden not your heart”. As we were driving by this sign, we were also receiving updates from our shelter team that there were four overdoses happening at the same time.
One overdose can be a traumatic experience, as the highly addictive drugs are laced with other drugs, and small mistakes in the compounds can produce a lack of oxygen to the brain, can cause people to drop suddenly to the floor as we stand beside them – potentially from life to death in an instant. We have built the tools of responsiveness – chest compressions, recovery position, ambu-bags to provide oxygen, naloxone – acting as first responders until EMS and police arrive on scene. We act as a team with 2 or 3 of us responding to bring people back, to help people through this deep body trauma. This is how we stand each day with people grappling with an addiction so deep, so life-changing, that it robs them of capacity and autonomy.
Reading The Rose Bird, A Mother’s Perspective on Loving and Losing Her Daughter to Fentanyl, (see the books section of this newsletter) Helen writes: “I have come to understand that much of Katie’s fear and aggression could be blamed on the increased presence of fentanyl in the illicit drug supply. Fentanyl, with its far higher levels of potency and toxicity, simply spawned higher levels of risk and dependency. It is indeed a pure poison that draws its victims closer and closer, and for Katie, there was no coming back from its rock bottom.”
Contrast this reality with standing in meetings with neighbours, who are also grappling with the impact of homelessness and drug addiction on their neighbourhood, boldly stating they are happy to help people who are homeless, but that our shelter resources should not be available to people who use drugs.
As we expand our community responsiveness to homelessness, we are inviting neighbours to join us in opening our hearts and make space for people Sam Quinones dubs “The Least of Us”.
How do we not harden our hearts to those caught in a cycle of homelessness and addiction? It becomes hard as a community to not be driven by fear, by a desire to return to what we once knew, to cleave to a desire to change people and to help only those who are “deserving” of help because they are willing to change.
Are shelters a space only for those willing to commit to change? Our experience is that lasting change happens when people feel stable and cared for. Good decisions are seldom made out of desperation. The Working Centre is modelling a form of shelter based on inclusion and acceptance first, and strongly standing in the kinship relationship to invite people to see themselves as part of a community. We keep people company on the journey as they learn to trust and experience acceptance. Living in community has its expectations, within the shelter and within the neighbourhood, and the relationships we build reinforce that people are a part of community – that what they do matters.
We know that many people are estranged from their families. The disruption and breakdown that occurs leaves people outside, the complexities too deep for the family, the way back to family too fraught with shame and choices and wounds. Where are the places that people can find belonging rather than face increasing isolation and dislocation?
Increasingly, the dialogue is that we only want to spend our social supports on people who are deserving of help, who are willing to change, to fix themselves.
Harden not your heart – this invites us to rethink the things we can see are not working, to trust in the ways of the heart that welcome people back into community as people who are loved and cared for. We recently walked with one of our shelter residents through his death. He didn’t want to leave the shelter because he felt the shelter was his family – “I want to die here with people who care for me.”
The common critique then is that we are making people feel too welcome because they won’t want to leave shelter to find housing. We think we can face that reality, support people into housing, as those realistic housing options are viable and available to people who are facing mental health, addiction, poverty, and deep loneliness. In the meantime, we continue to care for each person.
Fr. Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries states: “You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.”
Harden not our hearts.
