A walk for pride
It began over a bottle of water.
One Sunday afternoon a few years ago, Shaggy H. was hanging out with some other homeless guys on the Common. He noticed volunteers handing water to folks who had finished Project Bread’s annual Walk for Hunger. He asked them if he could have one.
No, they told him. These are for the Walk for Hunger people.
Shaggy — tall, skinny and usually laid back like the Scooby-Doo character he’s named for— was incensed by this.
“You’re walking for the hungry? Well, I’m hungry,’’ he recalled saying. “It just didn’t make sense.’’
He was sitting on a bench, fuming, when Tina Rathbone happened by. Rathbone is an Episcopal deacon in a mobile congregation of homeless people and their friends called Ecclesia Ministries. She’d gotten to know Shaggy pretty well through Ecclesia’s outdoor worship services.
“I’d never seen him like this,’’ she recalled.
Together, they hatched a plan to get Shaggy all the water he wanted: Ecclesia would field a team for the next Walk For Hunger.
And so, in 2008, they recruited a few others and formed a rag-tag team. Shaggy didn’t walk all 20 miles, but it was still very satisfying.
“I ate about 12 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at Mile 9,’’ he said. “Then, when I got back to the Common, there was free ice cream.
“So yeah, it was a good walk — for hunger.’’
And for other things. Shaggy sees a lot of kindness living on the streets near South Station. From the “customers’’ who drop coins into his cup on Summer Street and ask how he’s doing. From the rail workers who let him crash inside the station on frigid nights. From the many volunteers who feed him.
For a long time, Shaggy, 53, felt like he didn’t deserve any of this. He did a lot of bad things when he was using — lying, harassing people, stealing whenever he could. The walk helps balance the ledger.
“Crack made me do stuff I didn’t want to do,’’ he said on a recent morning, sitting on a couch at St Paul’s Cathedral, where he meditates with Rathbone. “So I’m building up a positive resume now.’’
For Shaggy and others on the Ecclesia team, the walk offers something that’s in pretty short supply when you’re on the streets: an accomplishment.
Kevin isn’t homeless anymore, but he still comes to the fountain by the Park Street T on Sundays to worship at Ecclesia’s Common Cathedral. When he first met Rathbone, the 46-year-old who now holds down several jobs wasn’t even sure he wanted to go on living. He reckons Ecclesia and Rathbone saved his life, and that the walk played a part.
“To walk 20 miles — sometimes I couldn’t walk 20 steps,’’ he recalled, sitting on the grass as a few dozen worshipers held hands and sang “We Shall Overcome’’ on a recent afternoon. “Crossing the finish line, it felt like, for once in your life, you achieved something.’’
That first walk gave Kevin and the others a way to puncture the endless sameness of life on the streets. It gave them something to look forward to, an excuse to be with other people, the feeling that they were valued.
“People were standing on the streets, clapping, shouting ‘Go, go, go!’ ’’ he said with pride.
Last year, it took Ecclesia’s team of 13 more than nine hours to finish the walk. They raised $950. This morning, Rathbone is expecting 25 walkers to meet on the steps of St. Paul’s on Tremont Street. There, they’ll slather their feet with Vaseline, stock up on sandwiches, don matching T-shirts, and set off with thousands of other generous souls.
For one glorious day, they will disappear into the crowd.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at Abraham@globe.com 
