A Wealth Beyond Measure.

Each week I hold a short orientation on Mondays at 10 a.m. for the Homeless Court in the visitation center at SVdP. The first couple of ones were lightly attended, which was actually a nice chance to get my spiel down, but this week about a dozen people showed up. As last year’s JV warned me, there are always a few people who with legal issues that we don’t handle and are slightly perturbed, often times at me, when they realize they have wasted a good portion of their morning. Beyond that, the thing that has stood out is the inability for people to deal with their legal problems, many having let fines and citations spiral out of control to the point that, aside from Homeless Court, jail time is their only option.

Later that afternoon as I sat in my office, my mind drifted to the party my housemates and I threw on Saturday. About 20 people from local JVC houses showed up, I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say we set the bar pretty high for future JVC gatherings. It amazed me that in just over a month’s time, we had already created this large network of friends and lifelines scattered all throughout California, a place where few of us had spent extensive time

Then, I thought back to earlier in the day, one man stayed after everyone else had left and asked me if I could provide him with additional assistance. He was on disability due to a brain injury and he was also illiterate. I helped him as much as I could, walking him through the instructions several times and helping him figure out the areas in his life he could document as progress and offering to help write his letter to the public defender the next time he comes in. I’ll be honest and admit that I have my doubts whether he’ll actually return, but I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful because he was genuinely grateful that I had attempted to help him, and because it was clear that he has few other options.

On Monday night, the temptation of watching my Denver Broncos play the Oakland Raiders on national television was too much, so I grabbed my bike and headed to a little sports bar on the other side of Lake Merritt. The Broncos pretty much dominated the Raiders in every single aspect of the game, but I was careful not to get my hopes up too high for the rest of the season—the Raiders are really just that bad.

As much as I enjoyed watching the game, I also felt a level of homesickness that I’m not sure I’ve experienced since freshman year of college. It was lonely being the only Broncos fan in the entire bar.

The next day, I made the connection between the loneliness I felt watching a sporting event to the isolation and hopelessness many of our clients must experience on an every day basis, whether it’s dealing with court fines or simply finding a safe place to sleep at night.

I realize that it may seem shallow, and it probably is, to think that I have even the slightest idea about what our clients deal with, especially since my struggles involve cable television and a cold beverage or two that may or may not have left me red in the face—but it’s the best I can do for now.

One tenet of JVC is simplicity, which is sort of enforced through the $85 per month stipend we receive for personal expenditures. But what I’ve come to realize is that this year is not about pretending to be poor--that task has already proved impossible. Trite or not, the value of friends and family and the ability to turn to others in times of need is a privilege and a blessing and a wealth beyond measure.