Someplace to Come To

Description

Listen & Peruse

Someplace to Come To

based on conversations with  Springfield Street Choir members about The Connecting Grounds, a church that welcomed them

I lived a rough life my whole life Slept in a cardboard box full of broken dreams Seeking safety and finding danger Trying to meet some basic needsThis claustrophobic crowd We’re like micro-nomads The same tribe of people Walking from place to place With people who don’t feel like my people Thrust together in poverty and spaceBut this is a place to come and feed the spirit A home away from homeless Where we know they love and see us A place where we can be us

We’re wearing wet socks all day long Walking miles and miles till our feet bleed Nowhere to lie down, no where to heal Nowhere to sit or sleep or breatheAnd some of it is not as bad as people think And some of it is way worse And I’m dancing just as fast as I can And somehow I’m going in reverseBut here It gives you a peace, a sanctuary Someplace to come to This door’s always been open Someplace to come to Someplace to come home to Home.

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“This is a very bittersweet song about a special place that is gone now. The Connecting Grounds was the church where the Street Choir rehearsed from Day One until the pandemic halted our rehearsals in March of 2020. It was a church, yes, but it was also a shelter, a cafeteria, a meeting place, a grocery store, a clothing boutique, a bike-repair shop, a field hospital, a foster-visit center, and whatever else it needed to be, all in three bays of a strip mall up against the railroad tracks, in a shady part of town. It was all that, but it was so much more than that.

Every person I interviewed for this project — the ones quoted here, and the ones not — used words like “sanctuary” and “home.” “They love us,” they said, over and over and over. And they did — they do — love the homeless and marginalized so well that the neighbors complained. The neighborhood organized. And this little church was told that they either had to stop serving their beloved homeless friends, or they had to leave. So they did, and have created a wonderful constellation of outreach services and others elsewhere in the city that quite literally have kept our homeless population alive. And yet, the thing that is missing is the place for everyone to be together under the banner of love. A place for everyone to come to — home.” – Katie Kring