Elaine, is part of the Edges Team, She looks back over the last ten years.  This September, I will have
been at St Anne’s House for 10 years! Leading up to 1993, I was becoming
more and more aware of an underclass in Blackburn; people who wandered about
looking forlom and aimless; clearly struggling and out of the mainstream of
local society. But what could I do? I hadn’t a clue.On September 1 st, 1993, I met Jim McCartney, a newly ordained priest and the most visionary person I had ever met. He was already well experienced in matters of the homeless and marginalised, having worked in that field in London, Newcastle and Manchester. I knew instantly, that the Almighty was at work in my life; which was then ruled by a slowly degenerating disease – I was knotted up by huge frustration at my inability to channel my mental and spiritual energies. I felt marginalised by health problems and assumed this was it! I never dreamed that 10 years on I would be writing this article! The calling was powerful and immediate; from which point an intense revelation of the intricacies of the human condition unfolded itself daily in my life. Even when nursing in earlier days, I never met such vast numbers of people with such differing life stories and individual needs; I refer to the volunteers who flocked to help us as well as the clients who came for help. People tend to think that volunteers give and clients receive: not true! Like all of my colleagues, I have received back so much over the years, and often from people you could be forgiven for crossing the road to avoid. I learned very early on, that the most difficult people, whom society excludes, have a special beauty born of particular types of struggle. And their faith in God can put us all to shame. A lad whose life-style had left him with only a sleeping-bag and the clothes he wore (he slept under a tree in a local car-park and came for breakfast and a dry-out most days) said to me once: |
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| "When life is reduced to a sleeping-bag and a fag-end picked
out of the gutter, there is no clutter to come between you and
God." |
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| An early
lesson to us was that running a drop-in centre is not just about filling
stomachs. It is a means of creating trust in which the to-ing and froing of
love liberates people to open up to their needs. This revelation was the seed
from which all our other projects have grown. Addressing all the huge diversities of needs required organisation; funding; staff; more space and above all, a willingness to change and expand with the trends of the moment. In the early days, most of our clients were town folk whose predominant problem was alcohol. The drug scene came two years later. It brought with it a whole new scenario of needs and how to address those needs. T.H.O.M.A.S was in its embryonic stage at the time. It could be argued that it is always in an embryonic state, which keeps it open to new perspectives and ever – growing yet never static or fixed. Countless volunteers have given devoted help (and salaried staff, eventually) and have each left their imprint on the organisation. Ten years ago there were two of us; immediately three; four etc. Today I have lost count! I always tell new staff, whose families worry, about the unpredictable nature of some of the clients, that the only danger here is from the humour that flies around and should carry a health warning! There is always such warm camaraderie and such laughter! Yet also huge support on a dark day. Staff thrive on the unpredictability of what might happen in a day’s work; a spark which keeps the place so alive! I remember in the early days, when we were just a few workers, one could be cooking for fifty people as well as listening to a client sat in the kitchen, plus answering the door; the phone; other immediate needs, whilst praying the food wouldn’t stick to the pan! And of course I was green and easily conned, but not for long! A young man came to the door in floods of tears; his mother had died etc. I offered him a lift to Preston but he said he needed to get flowers first, then he’d come back. So armed with my money, off he went, never to return. Someone whom he had mentioned and I phoned said to me "If you ever see him again, ask him if she is being buried in the same place as the last five times she has died"! Over ten years, I have developed the knack of looking as if I believe every word I’m being told yet knowing when I’m being spun a yarn! The entire house is now given to the T.H.O.M.A.S organisation and its exciting projects. There are offices; computers; a switchboard I will never master; session rooms; interview rooms etc. Large numbers of people come through the rehab scheme; come to meetings; conferences –all sorts- yet, thank God, the ethos of the early days prevails. Jim taught us an invaluable lesson in the early days, to look at someone who is marginalised and excluded, and to look into his eyes and feel Christ standing within him saying to you: "Who do you see when your looking at me?" I have learned that we are all broken. Some of us can hide our brokenness behind our affluence; others are exposed to the indignities of public scrutiny. Therefore, I need to hope that the excluded person can see Christ standing within me too. We all reach out to each other in the end. We talked and planned so much for the future, but I never imagined we would come so far so fast. It is said that people don’t care any more. NOT TRUE! The generosity and enthusiasm constantly shown by a public which reaches far and wide have been, and still is, overwhelming. We have seen so many success stories; especially in our rehab unit. People say to me; "You must feel a huge sense of satisfaction at the success of T.H.O.M.A.S". Of course I do! Yet I hope never to loose sight of my original calling which was to reach out to those for whom there is only ever the survival of ‘today’. People who have the same value as those who make it from despair to university; from aloneness to being reconciled with family and society. The people for whom there is no sense of ‘tomorrow’, and there never will be, they come to us for a moment of warmth in the vastness of their devastation. We must never loose sight of the importance of that ‘moment of warmth’ along their rocky road of life. Huge thanks, for which there is no adequate word, to Jim and to the hundreds of people who have touched my life at St Anne’s House in the last ten years and to my long-suffering and incredibly supportive husband; Here’s to Jenny and Christine, who used to strangle me with boozy hugs and tell me I was a ‘boshy cow’; to Danny (aged 88) who used to wink at me and say: "Cor… if only I was ten years younger…..! Well, I feel ten years younger than I did in 1993. So on that naively optimistic note: Here’s to many more decades! |
