Fall 2021 Community Update
October 20201 Community Update
Dear Friends,
Our community is formed to be a safe, kind, healing place for people whose lives are in transition. The core of our work is supporting people while they build stability: emotional, relational, physical, financial, many kinds of stability. Some of the work is common to all: settling into safety and cooperative communication, caring for the house where they live, and saving for the future. Other work is driven by what the person knows they need: doing therapy, repaying debt, reaching out to family, or spending time in the garden. These are the constants of Guadalupe House. Our work is shaped in response the needs of the people who live with us.
In order to offer this stability to people, the houses and land need care too. This summer we accomplished a long list of projects, including completing the siding on the south side of the house, growing and harvesting veggies and preserving them for winter, finishing the drywall in the hall of Jean’s House, dealing with plumbing problems, cleaning out the garage storage, re-insulating two houses, and more repairs to crawl spaces. The hours we spend doing maintenance ourselves are valuable, because they help us make the most of your gifts. We got a bid to clean up and re-insulate a crawl space under one house for about $4000. But instead we decided to spend a few days, $850 on materials, get ourselves some good coveralls and do it ourselves. We invited guests and friends to climb under the house with us, and they did! Even this gross task can be a community builder.
Our budget remains small, and we rely on individual donors who know our work and care about what we do. Aside from insurance and utilities, this kind of maintenance is our largest expense. This fall we need to cover our basic costs and have enough to repair the plumbing in the laundry area so that both washers can be used at one time, and complete the crawl space repairs under Guadalupe House. With your help we hope to raise $14,000.
In early summer we hoped that we would be able to gather for Tuesday liturgy again, since so many people were vaccinated and COVID cases were so low. We have really missed gathering for prayer and reflection, and preparing food from the garden. We miss the ability to offer such a broad welcome. But by July is was clear that gathering with so many would risk the health of unhoused neighbors, especially those that are unvaccinated. We long to gather again, but we know it is not time yet.
The work we get to do with guests in the house is profoundly hopeful, but in the neighborhood as a whole, we are still in a hard season. One of the hardest parts about being here is that we are always walking alongside many kinds of suffering happening on the street that we can’t change. There is so much need for mental healthcare, more housing, help with healing from past harm, treatment, and stable work. We offer help where we are able, but our efforts seem small. Sometimes we want to close our eyes and ears to what we don’t have the ability to change, but it just keeps coming anyway. The serenity prayer has accompanied us as a community for a long time, but I sometimes chafe at the “accept the things I cannot change” part. There are too many ways to hear the word “accept” that seem to dismiss or close our eyes to harm. But a wise friend offered me some freedom to think of it in a new way. She just said, “I use the word witness instead.” Sometimes we just try to witness the things we cannot change, without guilt that we can’t do more, without hardening ourselves against it. We stay alongside our neighbors as well as we can, and remember to care for ourselves so that we can come back again tomorrow.
We are grateful for the many years of care and support. We are providing stability for people who need it. And you are that stability for us.
Thank you.
Michael, Harlan, Peter, Nora, Gary, Melissa, and Liz
