My dear friends,
Something caught my eye yesterday. I looked out of the window, saw falling snowflakes, and thought ‘Yippee! It’s snowing!’ A childhood delight in snow, I suspect, lies buried inside all of us; even if the sensible part of our brains acknowledges that snow can also be a nuisance if one has to go out in it. However, as I made my way to church this morning, the fields around our parish looked wonderful: the snow had transformed them and they looked like part of a beautiful seventeenth century Dutch painting of a winter scene.

At the same time that I was enjoying looking at the snow, my mind turned to those for whom snow is never good news: the homeless. In 1986 when I was studying for ordination and living at Oxford, I helped in a very minor way to set up The Porch centre for the homeless at All Saints’ Convent, which was home to an Anglican religious community, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor. Their convent in East Oxford was a large, rambling Victorian building with a stunningly beautiful chapel. The grounds contained Helen House children’s hospice and St John’s Care Home. The Sisters and several lay helpers had decided that they would like to do something practical to help the large number of homeless people who gravitated to Oxford. They had an old apple storage shed in the grounds with a door leading onto the street, and they raised money to turn it into a drop-in centre for the homeless.

I heard about this project and thought I would like to lend a hand. I was interviewed by Jeanne Lindley, a marvellous retired English teacher married to a clergyman. Jeanne had been a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the war. She was the sort of person who called a spade a spade, and who would give you the last coin from her purse if you were in trouble. I came to admire Jeanne greatly. The other person I remember is Sister Beth, a tiny bespectacled nun aged 90 who looked as if a gust of wind would blow her over, but who was in fact as tough as old nails. Sister Beth did the washing up and rather ‘mothered’ the homeless.

We called our homeless visitors ‘callers’. Everyone was known by their first name only, and was accorded every courtesy and civility by the staff. They were nearly all nervous when they first walked through the door: in some of them, this showed itself in their being loud and noisy, whilst others were silent and withdrawn. Gradually, they found their feet and become less noisy or started speaking a little, as the case might be. Some were former soldiers with what we would now call PTSD. Others suffered illnesses of various sorts. A number had gone to pieces following the death of a wife, lost their jobs, been unable to pay the rent, and had become homeless. Their appearance varied greatly, too. Some who begged on Magdalen Bridge looked very grubby, greasy and bedraggled. Others managed somehow to wash and shave and keep themselves looking neat and tidy.

One of my jobs was to go to a nearby baker’s shop where they baked their own bread and ask if they had any of yesterday’s bread going cheap. Upon my return to The Porch, I would set to, making cheese sandwiches and pouring cups of tea. In odd moments I would chat with the callers – who sometimes exhibited a dry sense of humour – and play dominoes with them.
One of our callers was nicknamed Ezekiel because he had lots of hair and a flowing beard which made him look rather like an Old Testament prophet. One morning I was pouring Ezekiel a cup of tea when something upset him. He launched into a vibrant combination of every obscenity and swearword imaginable, all directed at me. Everyone else froze – the callers hated unpleasantness of any sort – the colour drained from Jeanne’s face. This outburst lasted for three or four very long minutes. Eventually, when Ezekiel paused for breath, I said ‘Did you want sugar in your tea?’ ‘Yes please,’ he replied, and sat down as quiet as a lamb. He became a regular and very well behaved caller after that.

Our callers were not all saints – but neither were they dreadful people. Things had gone wrong in all their lives. As my mother used to say, ‘They are all some mother’s sons’. My reflection is that Jesus Christ died on the Cross, full of love for them, too, just as he died for the rest of us.

I remember one smug theological student, when he heard of my weekly work at The Porch, saying ‘You are only putting a sticking plaster on the problem of homelessness: you are not addressing the underlying issues’. I was rather upset by this (and I noticed that he did not volunteer to help). I thought: ‘Successive British governments and charities have not managed to get to the bottom of homelessness, because it is so complicated. All I can manage to do, in between my studies, is to go to the baker’s to fetch the bread, make cheese sandwiches and pour cups of tea; but that surely is better than no bread, no cheese sandwiches, and no tea’.

Over the years since, I have come to see that as we go through life we discover God and serve Him in lots of little things, faithfully undertaken. As far as God is concerned, loaves of bread, cheese sandwiches and cups of tea matter a great deal. They are ways in which He can reach out to touch people’s lives.

Sister Beth and Jeanne Lindley are long dead. Jeanne really deserved a medal such as an OBE in recognition of her wonderful work at The Porch; but she would probably have been too modest to accept one, and would simply have said ‘I saw a need, and as a Christian I did what I had to do.’

Our world is full of Sister Beths and Jeanne Lindleys: unsung heroes and heroines, quietly getting on with the work, putting their Christian faith into action and helping other people. Let us daily thank God for them and ask Him to bless their work. Let us, too, remember the homeless, all whose lives are hard, or have gone wrong, and look ourselves for opportunities to help them. If there is little we can do, we might recall that a kindly word sometimes goes a very long way.

With my love and prayers,
Father Robert.