School Chaplain

Light in the darkness

On a Friday evening in August, 19 St George's students joined more than 500 students from over two dozen schools at the WACA for Anglicare's annual Sleepout. Swapping their comfortable beds for sheets of cardboard and sleeping bags, the students spent the night outdoors, raising funds and awareness for Anglicare's Street Connect service, which supports young people experiencing hardship on the streets of Perth.

It was an incredibly cold night, and for one evening the students experienced some of the discomforts and frustrations that can accompany homelessness. Through a simulation exercise, they attempted to access various services, only to find themselves delayed, frustrated, or turned away altogether. Many spent considerable time, sometimes without success, trying to obtain a JobSeeker payment or its equivalent.

I am sure the students left with a deeper appreciation of some of the challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness. At the same time, they understood that this was only one night in their own lives, and that they would return home the next day to the comfort and security of their own beds.

As anticipated, I, along with everyone else, slept terribly. What struck me most, however, was how much I wanted to see the stars and how impossible that felt in the middle of the city. Light pollution obscured the night sky, making it difficult to find even that small source of comfort and perspective. It is obviously not the primary issue faced by those experiencing homelessness, but it nevertheless seemed cruel that even such a simple consolation should be denied.

Yet there is another light that is often obscured, not by the brightness of the city but by the distractions and preoccupations of our own lives. Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and clothe the naked, we are doing these things for him:

 “whatever you did for one of the least of these ... you did for me” (Matthew 25.40).

The poor, the homeless and the vulnerable are not simply people for whom we are called to feel compassion. Rather, they are people in whom Christ asks to be recognised.

It would not be quite right to say that we “experienced homelessness”. We slept on cardboard for one night, knowing that we would return to our own beds in the morning. Yet perhaps such discomfort can begin to break open our hearts to those for whom this insecurity is not a simulation but a daily reality. If it does, then perhaps one gift of the Sleepout is that it helps us look again. Having spent one night searching the darkness for the stars and failing to find them, perhaps we might return to our ordinary lives more willing to recognise Christ in those who suffer, and more ready to respond with mercy and action.

Fr Rhys Roberts-Brown

School Chaplain