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Pregnant Pause
February 28, 2006 - 12:44 p.m.

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Have you seen that TV commercial in which the little baby has a "surfer dude" voice? He's wearing a new diaper and raving about how it "fits me so great" and how he can work out, "get totally ripped."

Yeah.

I so hate that commercial.


Another Tuesday, another early morning. It was a rough night...I didn't sleep well at all. In vague and confused dreams I thought that I was responsible for getting a group of people out the door and to the church. I'd wake up, all worritted and chivied about my imagined charges, and then I'd be too worked up to go back to sleep for ten or fifteen minutes. No fun.

I'm sure it came from being "the guy in charge" again, and from the fact that Fr. W wasn't there today...if I didn't show up to open the doors, there'd be no breakfast. A load of cold and hungry people needed me to be awake.

My general sleep habits being what they are, I tend to be nervous about having to wake up early. Really, single digits and I don't get along. Add to that the fact that if I miss the bus at 3:40am I can't get to St. Bart's till 5:00...that's enough time to make breakfast, but the people who show up at 4:30 would have to spend another half hour in the cold.

And boy, was it cold.

Anyhow, dragging myself out of bed was about as hard this morning as it's ever been. But I'm glad I did it.

There's always a clutch of people waiting at the door when I arrive...today there was a young woman among them. She was bundled up, but even through a bulky coat it was obvious that she was very pregnant. She looked exhausted, beat down and haggard. She said she was hungry, that she was eating for two. I asked when the baby was due. "Early April," she answered.

Once the chairs and tables were set up, the mother-to-be took a seat and fell fast asleep. She woke up a couple of times to get food, but then went right back to sleep...once still clutching a donut. I've never seen someone sleep so soundly in such an uncomfortable position. True, the mood today was subdued and the room quiet, but even as we cleaned up, banging chairs and tables, she slept on. I wish we'd had a more comfortable spot for her.

We have a lot of sleepers. They finish their breakfast and find a corner of floor. Some lay out their coats as a bed. One guy brings about seven bed sheets, covering up like he's in a tent. Some just sprawl on the hard wood. It's warm in the parish hall, so it's probably the best sleep some of them get.

I like to see them sleeping...it might be the only really peaceful moment some street people have, the only time when they can do whatever they want to. As Dumbledore says in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, "For now let him sleep, for in dreams we enter a world that's entirely our own. Let him swim in the deepest ocean, or glide over the highest cloud."

This young woman's face, so worn and anxious when she came in, calmed and smoothed in sleep. Free of her cares, relieved for a while of the burdens of life in the margins, she was beautiful. We all are, when we're most ourselves.

I didn't want to wake her but I had to. It was that or leave her sleeping on a chair in the middle of the parish hall as we mopped the floor around her. If I was going to be in the office today I'd have left her...she wasn't doing any harm. But it's not my parish and I don't think Fr. W or the children's centre workers would appreciate finding a strange woman balanced on a chair in the basement.

Of course, now I'm worried about her. Does she have a home? If not, did she find a warm place? Did she get enough to eat? Why was she so tired? Did she sleep last night? If so, was it on the street?

We can't save everyone who comes to St. Bart's for breakfast. The church is too small to house everyone and we haven't the resources to care for people beyond a meal or two. Really, we can't save anyone...not in any substantial manner. All we can do is give what we have and treat with love everyone who walks through our doors. We have to let people, even pregnant women, leave our warm shelter and go back into the cold, into a life that is very probably harsh and difficult.

It's easier to say than do.

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