QuakerSpeak | A Faith-Driven Approach to Helping Homeless People @Quakerspeak | Uploaded May 2020 | Updated October 2024, 15 hours ago.
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Filming and Editing by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi
Music: "We Are Home" by Four Trees
___
Transcript:
Today I've been reflecting on the need for patience, and one of our mentors Alan Kreider wrote a book called, "Patient Ferment of the Early Church," and the habitus of patience that was forged in suffering. And I think as Friends we have a long heritage of suffering, of marginalization, of being on the outskirts, and of welcoming those on the outskirts, and I think this is an incredible moment and opportunity for us, as the body of Christ, to practice the habitus of patience. And with that comes the habitus of lament, and bearing with one another and bearing with suffering and I think it's a real refining moment for our churches and for us as people. And it's hard. It's really hard.
A Faith-Guided Approach to Helping the Homeless
I'm Joe Pfeiffer and I'm Cara Pfeiffer and we're leading ministry/pastoring at a small church in Midway City, California in Western Orange County called Friends Community Church Midway City.
So we've only seen just really a small portion of the homelessness in Orange County, but we came to Orange County, Midway City with a lot of experience of homelessness in inner-city Long Beach. It's one of the largest homeless populations in the region and maybe even in the country. And so it came to our door, literally, one night in the cold, rainy-- there's not snow in Southern California but it's cold and rainy and wet and a homeless guy came to our door just wondering if we had a food pantry and if, you know... he didn't know where to go, and if he could just take a little shelter from the cold rain. And at the moment we just-- I don't know, there's a sense of the weightiness and significance of... the answer I give would be decisive in a way of a path, and just felt a real sense of-- from Matthew 25 where Jesus says, "What you do unto the least of these you do unto me," even giving a cup of water.
And so that led into unexpected territory of, at the time unknown to us, the county of Orange itself was going in a building, mounting crisis over homelessness because unlike in L.A. county next door which has had to deal with homelessness for years and years, Orange County - they're committed to this picture of the white picket fence, suburban utopia and homelessness messes with that. And so as we began to talk with a few people coming around, hearing their stories, they were used to a lifestyle of keeping a low profile, moving around a lot, hiding, because of hostility they were facing not only from authorities.
So that was a learning experience for us of a different kind of homelessness and then we learned it's actually in the thousands and growing, and even though this is one of the wealthiest-- the wealthiest per capita county in the United States, home prices are high, cost of living is high and increasing housing is less and less affordable, conservative communities are implementing more and more code restrictions to keep high-density housing from being put in, it's creating a real problem that's in the thousands and has really come out in recent years. And so we were just one little piece of that, unknowing of this, but in a few people's lives caught up in it, but we soon realized after some time we were part of a much bigger storm that was brewing.
People Experiencing Homelessness are Increasingly Vulnerable
As we face this COVID-19 moment, in every way the vulnerable are just getting more and more vulnerable, so it's incumbent upon people of Faith, any person of conscience-- Quakers foremost-- that we reach out to those in need, and the homeless in particular are becoming more and more marginalized in this moment. The homeless population already is in a place where they are dependent on services and it's just-- the structures in our society make it so, and they're stuck -- many of them are just absolutely stuck, especially in places like Orange County, Southern California, where cost of living is so high and support is often not matched to that and so they can't really ever work themselves out of homelessness. There's gaps in services right now where people were already feeling gaps in services and so there's fewer resources to go around.
Read more: fdsj.nl/homelessness
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every THURSDAY!
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
http://fdsj.nl/FJ-Subscribe
Filming and Editing by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi
Music: "We Are Home" by Four Trees
___
Transcript:
Today I've been reflecting on the need for patience, and one of our mentors Alan Kreider wrote a book called, "Patient Ferment of the Early Church," and the habitus of patience that was forged in suffering. And I think as Friends we have a long heritage of suffering, of marginalization, of being on the outskirts, and of welcoming those on the outskirts, and I think this is an incredible moment and opportunity for us, as the body of Christ, to practice the habitus of patience. And with that comes the habitus of lament, and bearing with one another and bearing with suffering and I think it's a real refining moment for our churches and for us as people. And it's hard. It's really hard.
A Faith-Guided Approach to Helping the Homeless
I'm Joe Pfeiffer and I'm Cara Pfeiffer and we're leading ministry/pastoring at a small church in Midway City, California in Western Orange County called Friends Community Church Midway City.
So we've only seen just really a small portion of the homelessness in Orange County, but we came to Orange County, Midway City with a lot of experience of homelessness in inner-city Long Beach. It's one of the largest homeless populations in the region and maybe even in the country. And so it came to our door, literally, one night in the cold, rainy-- there's not snow in Southern California but it's cold and rainy and wet and a homeless guy came to our door just wondering if we had a food pantry and if, you know... he didn't know where to go, and if he could just take a little shelter from the cold rain. And at the moment we just-- I don't know, there's a sense of the weightiness and significance of... the answer I give would be decisive in a way of a path, and just felt a real sense of-- from Matthew 25 where Jesus says, "What you do unto the least of these you do unto me," even giving a cup of water.
And so that led into unexpected territory of, at the time unknown to us, the county of Orange itself was going in a building, mounting crisis over homelessness because unlike in L.A. county next door which has had to deal with homelessness for years and years, Orange County - they're committed to this picture of the white picket fence, suburban utopia and homelessness messes with that. And so as we began to talk with a few people coming around, hearing their stories, they were used to a lifestyle of keeping a low profile, moving around a lot, hiding, because of hostility they were facing not only from authorities.
So that was a learning experience for us of a different kind of homelessness and then we learned it's actually in the thousands and growing, and even though this is one of the wealthiest-- the wealthiest per capita county in the United States, home prices are high, cost of living is high and increasing housing is less and less affordable, conservative communities are implementing more and more code restrictions to keep high-density housing from being put in, it's creating a real problem that's in the thousands and has really come out in recent years. And so we were just one little piece of that, unknowing of this, but in a few people's lives caught up in it, but we soon realized after some time we were part of a much bigger storm that was brewing.
People Experiencing Homelessness are Increasingly Vulnerable
As we face this COVID-19 moment, in every way the vulnerable are just getting more and more vulnerable, so it's incumbent upon people of Faith, any person of conscience-- Quakers foremost-- that we reach out to those in need, and the homeless in particular are becoming more and more marginalized in this moment. The homeless population already is in a place where they are dependent on services and it's just-- the structures in our society make it so, and they're stuck -- many of them are just absolutely stuck, especially in places like Orange County, Southern California, where cost of living is so high and support is often not matched to that and so they can't really ever work themselves out of homelessness. There's gaps in services right now where people were already feeling gaps in services and so there's fewer resources to go around.
Read more: fdsj.nl/homelessness
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
