Our fire within

A few nites ago with the weather being so cold and knowing how cold Chicago was going to be I had dreamed of a homeless man I had breakfast with in Chicago a few years ago who told me something I’ve never forgotten.

“Being homeless ain’t about not having four walls, or not having stuff or an address,” he’d said. “It’s about not being from somewhere’s.” I will never forget this mans face as he was saying this.. never.. “Ya’ll carry that somewhere’s that you’re from inside of you. It’s part of who you are.” He paused, making sure that I was understanding him and looked directly at me with his pale blue eyes.“You?” he said, nodding his chin in my direction. “You’re not just you sitting there across the table from me. You’re a person with a place—a fire. It’s part of your identity and it protects you. Me? I don’t have that fire. So, being homeless is the same thing as being empty.”

While my life or my situation doesn’t even begin to compare in intensity or in need with that of so many others experiences, in some small way it still helps me to understand all the more keenly what it’s like when the changes and tragedies of life steal our fires and leave us homeless. Life doenst make us this so called homeless.. it people in our lives that can steal our hope our dreams they kill ina sense a part of us and when they do that it can leave us empty.... so in ways we are our own kind of homeless.. only we have the four walls and we have the family yet we are empty, lacking a part of us that we yearn for..only we can rekindle our fires.so its true..

IN SOME SMALL WAY WE ALL SHARE EACH OTHERS’ EXPERIENCES — (EVEN HOMELESSNESS)