Christmas Lunch UTB

The old guy from Capricorn Park walked all the way to come find me, he said. He had heard about it on the radio. He had left home just after 4am, he said, not realizing it was just for the people living there. So he had walked the more than 20km to come and find us, he said.

I dragged one of the extra chairs closer. He had missed the starters, but Shahiedah immediately started behaving like it was actually our VIP guest waiting for his. Dominic was employing different ways of assuring him how happy we were to be able to provide for him. Shaz blasphemed and cussed, luckily under her breath. Jasmien did that thing where sounds of empathy escapes her lips while she's busy. Stephen, Sue, Brett, Bryan, Richard, all of us for a moment quite intent on making his walk from the other side of the Peninsula resolve into a moment of meaning.

He relished the beautiful food and the heady atmosphere and when he eventually left with two, full shopping-bags, almost-hobbling with age or tired legs up to Somerset Rd, I had slipped him the twenty I got off Brett for taxi-fare to spare him the long walk back.

And my heart has been broken since. How he came looking for us and all we had was a meal and two shopping bags that would be done when they were done. And that very likely this experience in his life would be an anomalous one. Where all indications were that he mattered.

Unless we start doing things differently. We are going to have to do more than talk about a new way of living, we're already late in actively engaging around it.

Because #ChristmasLunchUnderTheBridge confirmed - we accomplish extraordinary things when we stay with our intention, and that original intention is pure. And though it makes you vulnerable to disappointment and betrayal, some things can only be built on trust.

For our guests too, the #ChristmasLunchUnderTheBridge carried a sense of disbelief and then an eventual acceptance from them that there was no requirement, no agenda, no judgement-to-make-me-able-to-deal. Their stories are all our stories, just the milieu and details changed to exacerbate the impression of 'otherness', and the dawning understanding that the mercifully employed are also but one payment away from desperation.

*Though this was one of many moments of heartbreak, like when Sue was pleading with me, almost begging me to intervene when she was told Waterfront Security was busy confiscating the belongings of one of our guests from the street one along. I know how powerless I am in these instances, and how like dying inside it feels to witness.

It was incredible though, the display of love from all sides, and the hope that this was the start of the idea of bridges being connecters, facilitators and access points for ameliorating the plight of the less fortunate amongst us.

You know, that Christmas spirit the whole year round. And that care for each other

#ChristmasLunchUnderTheBridge