Homeless Vigil Remembers Dead

From dusk to dawn, 10 men and women talked, prayed, and dozed
beneath the cold, cloudless Isla Vista sky last night, December 21.
They were part of a vigil for the 20 homeless Santa Barbarans who
died on the streets in 2006 and the innumerable others who preceded
them.

Huddled around a campfire on the grounds of St. Athanasius
Orthodox Church, the participants were the stalwart remnants of
a 25-person crowd that gathered at 5 p.m. for a meal and religious
service marking National Homeless Person’s Memorial Day.
Father Jon-Stephen
Hedges, pastor at St. Athanasius (who also tooks these
photographs), organized the event along with members of the
chruch’s outreach ministry, the St. Brigid
Fellowship. At the Vespers service, Hedges read the names
of 40 dead homeless people. When the sun set and the temperature
dropped, the crowd thinned to the core group of 10. Three were
homeless themselves, the rest were outreach workers and citizen
advocates seeking a measure of closure on the grief that needless,
lonely deaths elicit. Since 1992, National Homeless Person’s
Memorial Day has been commemorated on December 21st, which is also,
quite fittingly, the Winter Solstice — the longest night of the
year.

To the shivering souls who participated in the dawn-to dusk
vigil, it certainly felt like it. Noemi (Mimi)
Doohan, a family physician with the medical street
outreach organization Doctors Without Walls brought along only what
she could fit in a shopping bag because that is all a homeless
person would have. Father Hedges was bundled in a black coat and
black woolen hat. Hot coffee was provided along with marshmallows
for roasting.