Faith Works 3-7-2025

Faith Works 3-7-2025
Jeff Gill

You can't go home again, at least the same way
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For everyone involved with this past winter's Emergency Warming Center effort, the level of commitment from volunteers has been inspiring.

Over a hundred people gave at least one shift, some multiple shifts within any one activation, from setting up to closing down and all the midnight hours in between.

There are two kinds of conversations I've had with volunteers that stick with me as the daffodils bloom and warmth increases both day and night. One sort is with people who came to our training last fall (we'll do that again in another eight months or so), or who wanted to participate after the winter season of warming center nights began.

That first kind of conversation is with someone who wants to help but isn't sure how well they can handle the situation. It may be a practical question of their ability to stay up at unusual hours like midnight to 5:00 am or so, or it can be concerns over preparedness for talking to people who are the guests of this operation. In general, I have no trouble being very encouraging, and explain that between coffee and more experienced volunteers, little comes up that anyone couldn't cope with. If you've been a band trip chaperone, it almost seems familiar (shout out to band parents everywhere!).

The tougher one is with people who've done a shift with the warming center, and have encountered what I think may be the hardest part of volunteering with an effort like this.

Going home, yourself.

Many people who have done a first experience with the warming center as a volunteer say they knew homelessness was a problem, was real, and happens to people very much like you or me. But then you help serve meals to people who are dealing with homelessness, assign cots and pass out blankets, pour coffee and hot chocolate for appreciative guests . . . and when your shift ends, go home. But it gets hard, sometimes on the drive home, occasionally once you're back to your own secure, warm, often quiet house in the middle of the night. And it hits you, hard.

I don't have a simple answer to how you handle the strange feelings that wash over you in that moment. Some people, I know, have done a single shift, and didn't come back not because the work of volunteering was so challenging, but the trip home felt almost impossible.

In fact, your own home looks and feels different when you return to it after working closely with a basement full of people whom you know don't have a place to go when our activation is over. The next night it is "only" 22 degrees out, and we stand down. Those who are living unsheltered, even when there's a clear path ahead in a week or two or three to a place they can rent or borrow or be assigned to, they have in the interim no place to go but their car, or some stairwell, or (insert options I'm aware of but don't want to describe lest others move to close off: this has happened before).

For myself, it's often a time of prayer and reflection that late night or early morning after I've done my shift, and I'm back in my own home. I don't want to say I feel less secure, but the contingency of any one person's situation is much more real to me. I see the jagged edges of the cliff now that were fogged and invisible to me before. It's better to know where they are, right? In the fog you can't see the abyss, but it's there. Now that I see some of those hazards, it's also hard not to think about how you could help others avoid a fall.

But home does not look the same. Which is fine, if it leads to thankfulness. That's a good place to be, wherever you find yourself.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows there's no place like home. Tell him how you found your way to yours at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.