Disturbance

I've posted before (here  and here) about Rick the homeless visitor to Swanvale Halt, and in other places about the various irritating little disruptions which can be ascribed to the youngsters who hang around as well. Recently Rick and Joe the chain-smoker, whose second home is the bus stop although he has a perfectly serviceable flat in sheltered housing a hundred yards away, got their benefits sorted out so any financial assistance I had given no longer had any justification (Joe even gave me some of my subs back). But Rick and the two young women who are rivals for his affections, and the troublesome teenagers who seem to know them, and even more troublesome individuals who seem to know them, began to form a sort of vortex of disturbance, substance abuse, and occasionally violence around the church. There were people who felt unable to come in to pray or to visit their loved ones' remains in the churchyard. The police asked to meet with me, and made it clear that they'd really rather I kept the church, this unsupervised space at the centre of the village, permanently locked and the churchyard garden fenced and gated. I wasn't going to do any of these things, and felt vindicated later in the day when I had locked the building and was called by a couple who were desperate to pray for the man's mother who was on her deathbed; but I did agree to ban all the people concerned from hanging around the church, apart from coming to services, including the youngsters who occupy the church porch, and make it very clear that drinking alcohol in the grounds was unacceptable. Things have been quieter since, although the shenanigans concerning Rick and his awfully tangled relations with others have gone on unabated in other places.

This has all been very instructive, as it's the second such cycle of disturbance which I've undergone here. You may recall (I certainly do) my dealings with Micky last summer, which ended in a similar though more limited crackdown. The truth is - the sad truth, which to some degree belies our romantic feelings about the church being there for the vulnerable - is that what the church is really there for is to communicate the presence of God, to stand as a sacramental sign of his love, grace, and redemptive power. And it can only do that a) if it is at least open to people and b) if it resembles him in beauty, peace and holiness. If people can't use it, and if it ceases to be a centre of beauty, peace and holiness, but instead of danger, violence and chaos, its purpose is vitiated.

It's no sin to find yourself homeless and broke; it's an understandable one to be a drunk. But: behind those facts, usually if not always, lie whole lifetimes of disruption and disorder, of broken relationships and disastrous decisions, which the Church, and even more the actual church you might come across accidentally, is ill-equipped to respond to except with very, very limited practical help, with pointing them towards the professionals who actually can do something, and the Mass. Even a listening ear may not mean much because my experience is that the people I'm dealing with don't know what they're saying half the time, or at least not an hour or two after they've said it. The second, even more brutal truth is, that the life you lead (if this is you) means that your disturbance and disruption will suck more after you. Even if you're trying your best, you will be a magnet for evil. And most churches lack the infrastructure to cope with it. They have to recognise that, and so must you. 'Your enemy the devil goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour'.