The Sloth: On reflection of being suddenly homeless

A few weeks ago I walked out into my yard and found my neighbor looking toward the highway at a large plume of black smoke.  I seemed only a few blocks away and, of course, raised some concern.

Making a quick check on a local website I read the fire was a dilapidated old house behind the Nazarene church.   There was a chat going with speculation of the cause of the fire, mostly accusing that it was probably a homeless person.   

So my neighbor and I speculated on the cause and chatted with various people who had come to look at the fire

The fire was investigated; no person charged with arson.  

So who got the blame, the homeless.  Maybe they were squatting, maybe just looking for shelter or a place to do drugs….   Somebody needs to pay for disrupting my day.  I was angry!  

But it is not the nature of a sloth to hold a grudge or make a quick decision. I looked for empathy, a way to understand this mystery fire.   

Then I remembered a 20-year-old college student, recently dumped by the only woman he had loved, living in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and going to a small college I had little interest in. My family could support me, but I wanted to be independent.

So, I found a house that was in terrible shape. The house had a very old coal stove, no furniture, and I was living alone.  It was January in Iowa, a foot of snow on the ground and about 10 degrees.  A few nights later I woke in my sleeping bag.  I was freezing so I dumped as much coal as I could into the stove and went back to my sleeping bag.  

About a half hour later I woke with a good foot of smoke in the ceiling in all rooms. I grabbed my only valuables; two box stereo speakers, an amp, and turntable and sat them in the snow and watched smoke coming out the openings.  It was a life low point. I was the homeless person.

As luck had it, I had started a moderate chimney fire and there were enough leaks to bring smoke into the dwelling. The house did not burn.

The next morning I was looking for an apartment.  

I had no intention of starting a fire, I was just trying to survive in a crummy situation without wanting to ask to come back home to Oregon and the safety of my family.

This all rolled through my head 50 years later, living in Oakridge happily with my wife, her mom and two hairy dogs. In the next days I felt the sadness of those living in Oakridge without a home and without the family resources I had to fall back on.

It wasn’t just sympathy for them, but a deep empathy of the fear and insecurity that must fill their lives.

The question for me now is what comes next?  Can I just return to my home, tend to our gardens, live whatever years I have left quietly?  I want to be a good neighbor and citizen of Oakridge.   But it feels like I need more, a ‘meaning and purpose’ beyond personal comfort.  

Although I can’t know what a sloth thinks, I suspect it plans carefully because it may take all day to get where it intends to spend the night!  I’m NOT a great planner, but at 71 I’m still hoping I can help a few lives, bring a little peace, sow some seeds of compassion for the least of us.  I’m gonna try.  Lucky for me, Oakridge is full of kind and compassionate people who I can learn from.