Mark the Matchmaker (Part 3)

I met the proposed match at a dog-themed coffee shop at ten in the morning.

We talked and talked, mostly about members of the Old Crow Book Club and their influence upon us. She had met them before I did, not long after moving into the neighborhood four years ago. She was walking a neighbor's puppy down by the river, when the puppy broke loose and started running away. She flew into a panic and saw a gathering of homeless men. She ran up to them. One of them was Sean, a charter member of the club. She relayed the story and Sean took off running after the puppy without saying a word. He rescued it.

She met Mark not long afterward and they forged a friendship and talked on the streets on almost a weekly basis. It was exactly what had happened to me.

Fast forward to now. She had almost completed a two-week training/study program (not online) through a nonprofit organization to become certified as an outreach worker for the homeless in the Portland area. She had no previous social service experience. She did have a degree in psychology and it was finally time to put it to use after all these years. She was going to apply for a job through the nonprofit and wanted something out in the field. That's where the need was greatest. Just look around us! There were so many unfilled positions of this type because the pay was so low. She didn't care about the money, however, she had other means that I didn't ask about. Oh, and she was writing a book, too.

This dramatic career change had come about because she'd met members of the book club, particularly Mark. She realized she wanted to get more involved in helping alleviate this crisis than just befriending homeless people, although that might be the best start all of us could undertake.

It occurred to me that stories such as hers (and mine) were happening all over Portland and Oregon and the nation.

The great Oregon poet William Stafford once wrote, “Justice will take a million intricate moves.”

Let me update that quote for the homeless crisis in America: solving it will take a million intricate moves by ordinary people. By those with housing, and those with not. A million moves every single day that are guided by competent officialdom or entirely devised by freelancers. It's already happening.

As for the potential match set up by Mark the Matchmaker...I think I may have found something much better: a collaborator in the cause.