Regarding the Homeless in the City series, thank you for letting me know that a part of me has found a way back home.

The young man named Craig especially caught my attention. He’s the same age as I am and while I don’t know him personally and our stories are quite different in terms of details, the essence remains the same: his heart was broken and he found himself to be lost for awhile, trying to repair it.

In some ways, we’re all searching for those pieces of our hearts that have been broken and lost to our awareness due to a multitude of circumstances.

Perhaps there’s no need to focus on defining those circumstances so much; it could serve us better to focus on rebuilding the one heart that we all share – the heart of compassion for mankind.

Although I don’t know Craig personally, hearing that he made it off the streets was like hearing that a part of me that was lost has been found.

We all need to wake up to our hearts and understand that regardless of how a person comes to be homeless, it is up to us to bring them back home.

We all share the same heart of compassion for our fellow man. Regardless of whether they are an addict, are deemed mentally ill, are bankrupt, or have lost the church’s money to gambling, when it comes to mending a broken heart, it matters not the why of it.

What counts is the how of it. What makes the difference is coming from a place of unconditional love, so we can facilitate healing at the very core of the discourse.

There’s a doorway opened by grace that we can all walk through when we surrender judgment and practise unconditional love. Through compassion and for the love of mankind as a whole, we bring our hearts home.

Darcie French