02/07/2024 0 Comments
From the Vicar: Life and Loss
From the Vicar: Life and Loss
# News
From the Vicar: Life and Loss
Dear Ones of St. Columba's,
This past week we got some sad news about two members of the Reachout Shelter community - both people who stayed with us while we were hosting the shelter this past spring. Being without shelter is dangerous, and shortens lives for all sorts of reasons. In the past two weeks two of our shelter residents, Taryle (Tara) Slalter and Bobby I Oxford, have passed away. Their deaths were unrelated to each other, but the thing that holds them in common is that both Tara and Bobby died while homeless. Neither of them were able to be successfully moved into alternate shelter after the winter shelter finally closed - which is partially a result of choices they made, and also a side effect of the lack of summer shelter in our immediate area.
This is a hard reality to come close to, that people we have served and known and cared for are at real risk of early death because there is no place for them to find shelter. Of course their lives were complicated by many things. And, I feel deep sadness that this is the way their journeys on this earth came to an end.
I am reminded, as I mourn for Tara and Bobby, that the work we do with the Reachout shelter each winter is life saving work. Having a place to come and sleep, to eat some food, to find a little bit of warmth and community - this can be something that prolongs a life, and maybe saves one. And there is more work to be done.
At this time there are no plans for memorial services for Tara and Bobby, but I have offered St. Columba's as a place for such an event if it to happen. I ask you to remember these two children of God in your prayers this week, and to say their names. They mattered to us, who sheltered them, and they are beloved of God, who holds them now.
With sorrow and hope,
Alissa
O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our brother Bobby and our sister Taryle. We thank you for giving them to us, to know and to love as companions on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn. Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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