Sunday night was surreal.  The fog was so thick in downtown Knoxville that you could hardly see 15-20 feet in front of you.  This is not a good situation to be in if you don't know where you are going.  Such was our predicament on Sunday evening.  Before our Moravian Love Feast on Sunday night a young lady showed up at our church.  She was homeless, escaping from a bad family situation, and looking for some assistance.  It is an odd situation (calling it awkward seems to blur the moral urgency of it though) to have a homeless person show up at the steps of a fairly affluent church and not have a home for them to stay in.  Her situation came into clearer focus when we found that the local safe houses had no vacancy.  She had no family or anyone to turn to in Blount Co.  Her only other family was in Texas.  

Faced with the decision to either put her up in a local motel for the night and essentially prolong her current situation by one more night seemed vain or get her on a bus to Texas we opted for the latter and thus began our excursion into Knoxville late Sunday evening.  Our plan was to have her stay at the Knox Area Rescue Mission and get up early enough to catch her 6:40am bus to Texas.  It seemed like a good plan to me.  Luckily Roger was able to come with me and knew the downtown area well enough to get us to where we needed to be.  The fog that night was thicker than I have seen it, especially in a city.  Things always look much different in the absence of light and the denseness of fog.  Even in familiar places you lose your way and in foreign places you are simply trapped in your lostness.

Upon arriving at the Knox Area Rescue Mission we were greeted by some homeless people wandering the street and a gentleman passed out and mumbling something to us as we requested admission to the building.  When we got to the check in desk, it was evident that the folks staying the night had lived hard lives.  The fear and anxiety written in the face of the twenty-two year old girl we had in our charge was apparent.  It is in these situations that the quandary of our current church social structure is undeniably painful.  We have places for people without means, and they are not in our homes.

At this point our only other option was to leave her at the bus station overnight.  They have 24 hour security, well lit facilities and she would be less likely to miss her bus.  Roger, who had worked as an inner-city basketball coach in Knoxville for 3 years, guided us to the greyhound station on Magnolia Ave being careful to make sure we didn't park in certain areas.  The reason he told me after we were on our way home is that the area of Knoxville we were in was where 90% of the rapes, murders, and robberies took place.  Most of these are never reported on the evening news.  The few blocks around the station are known by the Better Business Bureau as the 'gun-zone'.  Unbeknownst to me, a young girl walking alone in the dark early morning hours from the rescue mission to the bus station would have a good probability of getting robbed, raped, or worse.  So, while I felt pretty spineless leaving a young girl in a bus station in downtown Knoxville overnight, in hindsight it was probably the safest solution for her we had at the time.    

As we left we had to navigate around downtown to find our way back to 129.  We took a wrong turn and ended up in Old Town.  I have only been to Old Town twice in the past.  Both times during the day when it was busy with commerce and tourism.  It the light of day it is a very eccentric part of Knoxville with whimsical shops and venues.  However, as we passed through I was struck by the numerous homeless men wandering, drinking, or sleeping on the streets normally traveled by folks who go home to a warm bed and plenty of food.  I guess the biggest shock was that I had forgotten that ghettos are in my own backyard.   

Posted In: social-issues life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon