My neighbors have huge plywood hand painted yard signs that declare messages such as, “The world has never been this bad!” It’s a depressing sight to drive past each day.
My friends who seek their survival outdoors feel the depths of suffering and hard times too; their faces often nonverbally expressing something similar to my neighbor’s yard signs.
This year, the Dry Bones community has experienced illness, wept amidst destruction and relapse, witnessed the tearing down of self-worth through city sweeps and the rapid devastation of fentanyl. We’ve found friends in desperate need of food, clothing, water, and companionship. Friends have gone to jail, spent weeks in hospitals, and months in long term care facilities. One friend was shot 5 times, completely unprovoked (he is recovering). We’ve buried several of our dearest friends.
I’m not discounting any of the suffering because it is absolutely real and present. But…I woke up recently realizing how often the news, social media, and my neighbors are only declaring that the sky is falling. It’s easy for the gloom and doom to become all I can see. This gloom creates the illusion of hopelessness that can control and overwhelm the entire scene.
Acknowledge the bad and become present amidst it? Yes. But then what?
Remember the full spectrum of life. The cycle has many names and metaphors. Some call it “The Paschal Mystery” – Life > death > resurrection as the pattern of the entire world and all of life.
There is an equally profound amount of good that is being born all around us!
What beautiful things have grown or begun around us this year or this week? What are the blessings and gifts of this very moment? They’re all here too, but they sometimes take more intention to witness amidst the constant barrage of bad news. Once the positive breaks through, it too is overwhelming in the most remarkable way.
In 2022, Dry Bones has celebrated new jobs, the birth of new children, college and high school graduations, fresh starts, new housing, victorious days of sobriety, weddings, birthdays, and countless new beginnings! We have all experienced the expansion of our faith in God. We honored Robbie’s 20th year with Dry Bones! We graduated program employees from Purple Door with shouts of joy and celebration. We sold more coffee allowing job training to expand. Our vision trip programs for visitors touched lives in ways that will resonate perhaps forever. We have been the recipient of generosity that has allowed for expansion and growth and moved our hearts to overflow with unspeakable gratitude.
We’ve felt the truth of this statement in its fullness, “Life is beautiful!”
We ask that you continue to move through this balance of perspective with us. We need you! Dry Bones needs your hope, your encouragement, your healthy vision of the world, your prayers, and your support.
As you see in this newsletter, exciting things are happening. We commit to remain near the heart and realities of life’s suffering. We also promise to let the nonverbal yard signs of this organization speak a message of hope, new possibilities, abundance, healing, support, belonging, unconditional love, and new life in all that we do.
On behalf of the Dry Bones Community – filled with hope,
Matt Wallace, Executive Director
