A shelter for homeless people
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; 1991] We did volunteer work at a shelter for homeless men. It had the most beautiful chapel I’ve ever seen.
We were told there were nine Christian organizations in Kamagasaki. Eight were Catholic, and one was Lutheran. None were Evangelical, and none were Pentecostal.
We had met our friend Tanaka one of those Catholic organizations. It was called Tabiji no Sato.
Another Catholic organization we came to know was a shelter for homeless people. Older homeless men could sleep there overnight. We never knew the name of the place.
Sure, there were lots and lots of tiny hotel rooms that men could pay to sleep in.
But for those men without the money for a hotel room, this shelter was a godsend.
We never knew the criteria by which the shelter decided who could stay there and who couldn’t.
Given the violent nature of Kamagasaki, I wouldn’t want to be the staff member at the door who decides who can stay and who cannot.
The place reeked. Of course.
By night, perhaps fifty homeless men slept on the second floor. Some hadn’t bathed in weeks. Or months.
And many of them smoked cigarettes. All the time.
Plus, there was an eye-watering stench of vomit and diarrhea.
Sometimes we did volunteer work there. Mainly what we did was clean the second floor.
We shook out the sleeping mats and stored them in their closets. We swept the tatami.
And we cleaned the bathrooms. Those bathrooms were repugnant.
Tom was much better at doing the work than I was. The thick odors made me really nauseous. I was always on the verge of vomiting.
And I didn’t know it then, but I was highly allergic to cigarette smoke.
So I did what I could. But Tom did most of whatever we accomplished.
The third floor of this shelter had a chapel. It was the most beautiful chapel I’ve ever seen.
Most Catholic chapels in Japan look like a miniature version of a full-size traditional parish building:
- There is a special area up front. It is reserved for male clerics. They have dedicated furniture such as a pulpit, altar, and kingly chair.
- Laypeople sit on long pews, arrayed in a military seating configuration.
Such places are made to resemble old church buildings in Europe.
But this chapel was different. Instead of tile or carpet flooring, it had beautiful Japanese tatami matting.
That meant you had to take your shoes off before entering this holy place, like Abram did when he saw the burning bush.
The pulpit, altar and tabernacle were low, as if the minister was to sit on the floor in the formal Japanese way called Seiza.
The decorations were starkly simply: one Ikebana, or Japanese flower arrangement.
The overall effect was breathtakingly beautiful. And unlike all other churches we’d seen, this chapel looked completely Japanese.
The designers of this chapel succeeded in making Christianity seem native to Japan.
It was the most beautiful worship space I’ve ever seen.
RESOURCES
At Wikipedia:
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the World English Bible and the World Messianic Edition. These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.