ABSTRACT
This chapter opens when a rail-riding homeless man furnishes the local Cathedral’s front porch as his new home. Part creative whimsy and part defiance, his couch, bookshelves, kitchen table, and more, embody the human yearning for home-making and the socio-political resistance required to maintain daily life when one is without shelter or in transit. Thrown into these live contradictions, I, as the Urban Ministries staff person, turn brittle, unwilling to face ongoing failure in service with homeless people. The chapter explores the ways in which we can learn to pay deeper attention to the sources of our struggle and resentment in order to let go of self-judging willfulness and begin reconstructing service. A walking meditation practice settles this new principle in the body.
