| December 07, 2018 By Chick Carroll Giving Voice

The Gathering Place began in 2011 as a disparate group of people. Some were homeless. Some had places to stay but they were lonely. Some were handicapped. Many grappled with mental illness. Many were disabled. A few were able to work. Almost all faced the difficulties of being so poor they couldn’t even afford the necessities of life, let alone the luxuries. Perhaps one thing they had in common was the lack of respect with which they were sometimes treated in town by the working and the middle classes. And how society expected them to survive on tiny amounts of money. Those who worked were usually given only part time jobs so the employer need not provide fringe benefits. For many, their weekly earnings at minimum wage and for part time work gave them a gross of only $180 or so per week. Try living on that! And for those on disability, and there were many of them who were and are, their monthly check was, and is, often about $700 per month. Or that! These factors were what our guests had in common. But our volunteers, some of them relatively well off, began to notice something we had never expected. Gradually, these folks, our guests, started to become a community, a community where folks began to care for each other, to take care of each other, even to put up with the faults we each have. Whether just sharing cigarettes, taking care of each other’s children, helping each other to move, loaning each other money to get through the month, we noticed our guests began to care for each other. All of them? Of course not. People are people, and they don’t always get along. And some just don’t get it. But mostly they do. And then something else became noticeable. Our volunteers began to become a community also, caring for each other, stepping up to take another’s shift, sharing rides, accepting the foibles and faults of other volunteers, for we have those too. And, wondrous to our newer volunteers, guests and volunteers became a community as well. Despite the frequent differences in income, and in age and health, guests and volunteers found things in common. They discovered they share more in common than what might separate them. Not only at The Gathering Place, but on the sidewalk in town, or at the Farmers Market on the green, friendly greetings are exchanged, a chat is had, a joke is shared. Not just among guests but among guests and volunteers too. And so important have become the major events in our lives. We have celebrated a marriage of two guests, people have shared the joy of a new baby, we have mourned the sickness of guests or volunteers, conditions that are truly disabling. And, of course, to the sadness of all have been the deaths we have seen among our guests, and very recently Barbara, a long time and faithful volunteer. Fortunately, only a few times, but too many, we have mourned at a memorial service held at The Gathering Place, officiated by one or two of our volunteers who are also members of the clergy. We have mourned those who have died suddenly or unexpectedly, and those who have suffered and died from extended illness. The suicide of Doug, a beloved guest tore us apart. The sudden heart attack of a guest who visited on our first day and almost every day since, Alvin, did the same. We mourned deeply the death of Tina, Dave’s daughter, and the passing of Daniel, who had been married at The Gathering Place, and later separated, and who later suffered the terminal agonies of long term illness. And now all of us suffer the sudden passing of Barbara, one of the gentlest and most compassionate people imaginable. We mourn her passing and the joy she brought us. And in time we will recover from her death, and move on to join in the joys and the sorrows of guests and volunteers alike. And, perhaps strongest of all will be the joy for many of us, not all but many, of coming to know loving and compassionate community. For this many of us will thank our Creator. Chick Carroll is one of the founders of The Gatherin Place, its past president and current board member. He has served as deacon at St. Paul’s Episcopal church, retiring later this month.Giving Voice is a weekly collaboration among four local non-profit service agencies to share information and stories about their work in the community.