Last night I ate dinner with Food Not Bombs out in the parking lot of the IRC under a bright three-quarters moon. Someone brought out the piano from our warehouse and George Achini, a great musician and one of our guests, played soulful jazz as people lined up to go down the buffet tables. The man standing behind me said “It’s been a long time since I could afford to go to a piano bar!”
After I filled my plate (rice, sweet potatoes, eggplants, fruit salad) I found a seat in one of the casual circles of folding chairs scattered across the asphalt. It gave me a chance to talk to one of our guests, a young man who has been coming to the IRC for some time with his mother. He and his mother have both exhausted their times in local shelters and have been sleeping outside (some of his fellow IRC guests affectionately call the man “Linus” because he comes in every morning wrapped in his blanket; he’s afraid to leave it behind for fear it will be stolen). For the last couple of weeks they were staying at the Occupy Greensboro encampment on the old YWCA property, more for the companionship than for anything else, but that camp came to an end on Sunday and he and his mother have moved their things to a little patch of woods close to downtown.
“It’s OK,” he said. “I liked being with other people, but we feel pretty safe where we are. We’re going to need more blankets soon but as long as we can come here during the day it’s not too bad.” He smiled and said “I like it here.”
It’s really tough out there. It’s tougher than it’s been in a long long time and it’s getting tougher. Everyone on the streets and everyone working with people who are homeless knows that right now there are more people sleeping 
outside than are sleeping in shelters because there simply aren’t enough shelter beds. Even when the Winter Emergency program opens back up in a couple of weeks there won’t be enough beds.
But the human spirit is tough too. Every day I’m humbled by the strength, resilience and kindness I see in people whose lives are consumed with the struggle to survive. I sit in my office at the IRC and listen to laughter and good-natured joshing coming from the day room. The best part of the human spirit, the generosity, the desire to share and support each other through adversity is what survives after stability has crumbled away. Someone said to me the other day that there is no order of magnitude in miracles. There are no small miracles, no big miracles, only miracles. What else would you call a homeless man playing the piano under the stars?
Some of you reading this will have received an email from the IRC asking for a donation, and others of you will be receiving a letter in the mail in the next couple of weeks. Please give. Give to know that you have given, that you have opened your heart to the painful reality of the world right now. Give as a collaborator with those who are out there doing the hard work of surviving. Give because even on the coldest day, on the darkest night, in the hardest year, there is joy. People are amazing. If for no other reason, give because you’re amazing too.
Liz Seymour
