JOHN DEMPSTER: Cale House in Inverness embodies God’s radical welcome
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A FORMER resident of CrossReach’s Cale House describes how, when feeling anxious, he’d drop into the office and find in the welcome he received there a sense of calm. And when I visited to talk to service leader Deirdre McGovern I too felt a warmth and a welcome.
Cale House in Inverness is part of CrossReach, the Church of Scotland’s Social Care Council. The House offers short-term accommodation to up to 22 people who are on a journey of recovery from problematic substance use, committed to abstinence from alcohol and drugs.
Deirdre, whose PhD examines the theory and practice of ‘hospitality’ in three major faiths, is a fierce advocate for those in her care, utterly committed to seeking the best for them.
Residents are referred by agencies including the NHS, Beechwood House in Inverness (also a CrossReach project) and Criminal Justice (Deirdre has a particular sense of calling to support ex-offenders).
The professional service offered at Cale House is underpinned by CrossReach’s Christian ethos. How, I ask Deirdre, is that expressed in their work? “It’s about compassion, and dignity and respect,” she says. “We’re not here to convert people. It’s like the hymn says: ‘You’ll know we are Christians by our love’.” Refreshingly, she admits “we don’t always get it right because we’re human and we make mistakes”.
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Personal faith supports the team in doing this often draining work – sometimes a resident’s behaviour can be challenging. There are daily staff devotions and visits from ministers who lead prayers with the team. Some of the residents have requested that a minister be invited into the House to pray with them as a group.
Deirdre also seeks spiritual support outwith the workplace. A Catholic Christian, she finds this in retreats to Pluscarden Abbey (“my safe place,” she calls it); in talking to a trusted friend who helps her recover her sense of perspective; and in reading.
She shares with me a prayer by John Henry Newman which she often reads after mass, a prayer asking Christ that we may “begin to shine as you shine: so to shine as to be a light to others”.
And these words capture exactly Deirdre’s approach at Cale House: “Make me preach you without preaching; not by words but by my example and by the sympathetic influence, of what I do – by my visible resemblance to your saints, and the evident fullness of the love which my heart bears for you.”
Small wonder that former resident experienced peace in visiting the office. Small wonder that the resident I met was so positive as we chatted in his flat high about Millburn Road, for in that building something of God’s radical welcome is at times palpable.
