I began writing what follows back in Joplin on 11-08-2007. Twelve pages into its penning, I left for Nashville and from there on turned my attentions instead to capturing my experiences hitchhiking. Until recently I had planned never to publish it.
It contains certain, more spiritually oriented, tales of my times spent in Joplin. And though these stories are more than worthy of being told, I feared some might read my tellings of them and find an unfamiliar emphasis on not just the word of the spirit, but the practice of the spirit's honing as well.
It is a shame that the term 'spirituality' now rings in many ears foul; that so oft, whether spoken or not, it receives the perhaps unintended, though often implied, modifier: "new age." For there is nothing new in the means of the spirit, nor anything added to it by this or any age. Meditation and the visions, sensations, and miracles associated with the act have stood hand in hand with prayer and worship since the beginnings of all faith.
Yet still I would have shelved the following text, thinking some to be dissuaded from the path by my recanting of these same meditative doings. Thanks be to the Lord for moving me to include these passages, that those called might know the ways of that great comforter, the Holy Spirit; that it might be revealed what many have hidden, the means of residing between the boundaries of the long sought narrow path.
-
On Friday, November the 2nd I went to visit at Tony’s house. In truth I really wanted to spend some time alone with Tony. Ever since Randy Riggs had been sleeping on his couch I felt as though my friendship with Tony had suffered.
Whenever I came over I would be quickly drawn into conversation with Randy. By speaking in a normal volume to Randy, I felt we were leaving Tony to sit in silence: watching our lips flap with little knowledge what we were discussing and little way to enter the conversation. Though I was seeing him regularly, I began to miss my buddy Tony.
When I walked in I found Randy on the couch, as usual, watching TV. Tony was asleep in the other room. I sat with Randy for about an hour, mostly killing brain cells watching the tube; neither of us saying much of anything. Eventually I heard Tony cough and roll over in bed. I gave a shout: “Tony!”
Randy immediately interjected, “No, no. Please don’t wake him up. He was screaming at the walls all night. This is the first peace I’ve had in a day.”
I was offended. I came here to see Tony. I wanted to spend some time with him, which I had sorely lacked since Randy started staying here. Now Randy was claiming the authority to tell me not to wake him, for his own sake.
After sitting for a minute and carefully choosing my words, I began to say to Randy, “Do you understand your place?”
‘You are a homeless, jobless, alcoholic, sleeping on another man’s sofa and under another man’s roof, by his grace alone. Yet since you’ve been here, you linger and loaf and often appear to do nothing toward changing your station in life. I have seen you commandeer control of the television, convince Tony to stop playing the music he likes because you hate it… I’ve even seen you throw something of a hissy fit when you didn’t get to watch the television program you wanted to see. How do you think you have any place to make demands of the people who have gone out of their way to take care of you?’
Randy spoke in a way that was more inward than to me, ‘I don’t need this right now… I just don’t need this right now. He was up all night screaming at the walls while I was trying to sleep; I haven’t had a beer in four hours; I’m trying to detox myself; and now you’re here telling me all these things that I already know.”
“Wait. You’re trying to detox yourself?” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Well shit. Tell a brother. You tell me you’re trying to get dry and I’ll give you a hundred times more patience and grace.”
It turns out Randy had been trying to detox himself all night. A few hours earlier he got the shakes so bad that he had to go buy some beer. But he was still clearly in pain. Insomuch I could tell that he hadn’t fallen from his intentions, but merely supplemented the minimum to keep him steady.
“I’m just trying to zone out on the TV so I don’t have to think about it,” Randy said.
“Well hell: That settles it. As long as you’re detoxing – I’m fasting.”
He begged me not to but I was determined. If he was going to suffer through the horrendous pains and trials of alcohol withdrawal then I would stand in solidarity with him by suffering the pains of self starvation.
I have a recent fascination with fasting. The bible tells us many stories wherein the main protagonist is found in fast and prayer. Jesus once chastised the apostles for their inability to cast a devil out of a boy saying, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” What is this hidden power, connection with the divine, or self discovered center that resides in fasting?
The concept of fasting has never been explained to me to my complete satisfaction. Many have bid to tell me that fasting is not necessarily deprivation of food, but that it can be self restraint expressed in any form. These same have most often suggested that the purpose of fasting is to increase mindfulness to the Lord; that when we feel the absence of what we have put aside in fasting we will remember why we have denied ourselves: that is, to be mindfully more like unto God.
I don’t buy it. In the verse above Jesus suggests that in fasting and prayer lie the power to cast out powerful demons and to perform miracles. Now, I’m not looking for some ‘Harry Potter’-esque, hidden mysticisms buried in the teaching’s of God, but this ‘mindfulness by way of extraneous self-deprivation’ thing just reads silly to me. Therefore I am hesitant to accept this “increased mindfulness” justification for fasting; and I am left to look for better explanations by interpretations of the spirit.
I’m still unconvinced of the true purpose to the type of religious and spiritual fasting we see all throughout the scriptures. Though my first thought would be this: that the deprivation of bodily need forces even the physical form to look elsewhere for daily sustenance. Perhaps the void of the stomach and deprivation of nutrients derived from food acts to draw in the spiritual. Essentially, we are made to either replace the fleshly nourishment with the spiritual, or suffer and die.
In any case fasting remains a mystery to me, but Randy’s situation doesn’t. He had chosen to get sober and if there is any power in fasting I would put it to his aid.
-
One night, as I walked back to the Refuge from Tony’s, I felt the presence of God lingering around me. So I slowed my walk and tried to become more aware, more cognizant of it.
As I walked passed the small city park where I sat that first day I arrived in Joplin, I felt as though I was being drawn down the alley behind it. Doing as the master would have me, I turned left down the alley – though my planned destination was to the right.
At the end of the alley I walked diagonally across a parking lot and found myself at another crossroads. I took a deep breath and felt the great magnet drawing me to the right. Again I followed. One block further I stood again, looking in all directions for guidance. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the sight of a beautifully dressed 3rd story window. The orange light beaming from behind the blanket-made-curtain had a special, almost sexual allure.
I walked in the direction of the window, and passed it. I was now heading back toward my original destination: The Refuge. Where would God lead me? What was I being drawn to?
Another poke from the Lord sent me down a darkened alley. At the end of the alley I found a familiar sight: The parking lot of a law firm I pass by frequently, lain in colored, patterned brick. I stood for a moment, waiting for inspiration. In the mean time I drew my little symbol in the sand of the alley with my foot: A triangle with three circles hovering outside of it, aligned to the midpoint of the triangles sides. When I finished I placed a stone in its center, as has become my habit, and began to cut through the parking lot back toward my originally planned route.
As I moved across the brick parking lot, I saw an illuminated door on the side of the law office. When I saw the yellow glow around its frame I was torn in two. I felt the urge to walk to that door, open it and go inside. But I was wary. I wasn’t certain that it was God pushing me to it. The movements of the magnet are still uneasy for me to read. Often I wonder whether it is the pull of God I’m following or merely my own intellectual weirdness. Abiding its lead through city streets is one thing. Entering the rear door of closed office buildings in the middle of the night is another.
Nonetheless the urge to enter that building through that door was the same which had pulled me back and forth through the night-draped downtown streets these past ten minutes; and the sensation was a multitude greater than those that had taken me up the alleys.
But where is my faith? If the Lord bids me to trespass: I should trespass. My faith in God is strong. My faith in self is not. But is this an honest doubt? Am I just using my humility to create a worthy justification for not challenging the boundaries of my world; those same that I am called of God to tear down?
I walked passed the door slowly, watching it out of the corner of my eye. I began to recite aloud a line from one my favorite Ani Difranco poem-songs: “Go ahead. Try the door. It doesn’t matter anymore. I know that the weak hearted are strong willed and that we are being kept alive until we are killed.”
When I had walked a ways passed the door I turned back once more sighing. I lowered my eyes to the ground and then lifted them to the sky saying, “I’m not there yet Lord.” And into the night I walked wondering whether God had run me in circles simply for the delay; whether he meant me to enter that building against my lesser judgment; or whether He was laughing his ass of at me for thinking I’d been following Him when all I’d really done was chase alleyways and seductive window dressings.
-
When I arrived back at the Refuge I found a rowdy scene. The bulk of the residents had gathered on the dock, smoking and pressing against the railing for a better view of the parking lot where one of our residents, Mike, was walking back and forth in a huff; shouting profanities and stamping his feet like a bull.
Apparently Mike had gotten a little drunk and failed the nightly blow test. When he was told he wouldn’t be able to sleep at the Refuge that night, he exploded into a rage.
I had already pegged Mike as a good man, but with a penchant for stirring up trouble. In fact, I first took a liking to Mike when I saw him mid-stir: pushing another one of the residents buttons intentionally.
I was sitting in the kitchen reading my Bible and Mike was playfully teasing one of the guys here. Now, at the Refuge we have a man named Charles who often occupies a seat at the corner of the kitchen. God bless Charles but he sits in silence so long that when he finds something to talk about he just will not quit until he’s beaten his chosen topic deep into the ground. He also has a tendency to be a bit of a busy-body: spreading the various rumors about who’s doing what at the Refuge. This I especially lament for Charles’ sake; for there is a passage in the bible which tells us not to be “murderers, thieves, evil-doers, or busy bodies.” I always smile when I think of that: The Bible has placed busy bodies in the same category as thieves and murderers. It’s a beautiful thing.
Anyway, as Mike is teasing this resident, Charles starts to go off on one of his endless babblings saying, “Now just so you know, you shouldn’t tease him. He’s a little different than the rest of us. He can be easily offended.”
Mike responds, “We’re just playing Charles, don’t worry about it.”
“Well I know but I’m just telling you sometimes he can…”
“Charles, I understand. Just don’t worry about it.”
“Well all I can tell you is…”
“Thank you Charles. It’s none of your business.”
“Well he can get offended even when you don’t…”
“SHUT UP, CHARLES!”
I swear that’s the only time I’ve seen Charles cut off a tirade and say nothing more about it. I had to hide my smile when I saw Mike do that. Nothing against Charles, but I don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to do just the same.
And now, here I stood before the dock, watching Mike stomp about the parking lot: cussing and breaking down before my eyes. As I walked into the crowd of rubber-necking residents I heard Mike’s rage turn to hopeless sorrow. The biting anger of his words broke in his throat and the sound of his tears overtook them. Here he was, Michael, this dominant forceful man, calling out chastisements through the veil of a child’s ache: That familiar sound of a tearful voice in pain, unable to understand the world it finds itself trapped within; how it got there; why it should be so.
I sat on the dock and started to roll a cigarette. Even as I sat I felt the presence of God come upon me with undeniable strength, and I knew what I must do. I finished rolling my cigarette and stood up. I lingered a moment as my innate humanism slowed my intent, trying to make me question the wisdom God had placed within me.
To my left I was being called by Missy, one of the head residents, to come blow my breath test for the night. To my right the foremost deaconess of the church, Dani, had come out to try to resolve the confrontation.
As I yet dawdled between the two, Mike had been overcome by his sorrow and taken up a seat beneath the Refuge’s portable basketball net. Trying to force myself forward I turned to Missy and asked, “Would you come with me and not say anything?” Without an answer I started walking toward Mike. Missy was quickly at my shoulder, walking beside me. But Dani called the two of us back. Where Missy stopped I continued. I was convicted now. Nothing would prevent the force of God moving within me. As they both whispered for me to wait, calling me to return, I motioned them not to worry and said in a partial statement, “…doing the will of God.”
As I came to the end of the dock and the ramp that led directly down to where Mike was sitting, I heard his voice rumble in a low and weary, cautionary tone, “Don’t come down here, man.”
His words stopped me in my tracks. And as they passed over my shoulders I felt my whole body light up with the energy of God: that same tingling sensation I experience in meditation or when something pure and true pierces my heart and soul.
I’ve experienced this a few times now since being in Joplin. Where I have encountered a threatening individual or situation, this sensation wraps around my whole body like a passing wind; over my head and shoulders; chest and legs; and then it’s gone. The last time I felt it, I had confronted a homeless woman on the streets who had been crying.
I was in a hurry to get where I was headed when I first saw her standing on the sidewalk with a thick stream of tears rolling down her face. I walked right passed her to reach my destination. The fact that I had passed a woman crying in the streets wore on me as I walked the rest of the way. ‘What kind of Christian am I,’ I thought, ‘to walk passed a woman so clearly in need of comfort.’ When I reached my destination I found that what I had come for wasn’t there anyway and realized the severity of my error. It is indeed possible that God had sent me down that path just to be there for that woman in that moment: and I had blown it.
So when I left my destination, I left in an even bigger hurry than that I came, going out of my way to retrace my route in hopes of finding her again and correcting my foolishness. I ran into her a few blocks from where I first saw her and came upon her asking, “Is anything wrong?”
She kept moving as though she hadn’t heard me so I approached her more closely and asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
She spun around in an instant snapping at me, “I don’t need any help from someone who has their own problems! I’ve got this and it’s all I need,” motioning to a Bible in her arms.
It was when she attacked me with these caustic words that the tingling energies washed over me. Unaffected by the verbal assault I said with a smile, “I saw you back there crying and couldn’t believe myself – that I had just walked passed a woman in tears. I thought it quite unchristian of me.”
She didn’t berate me further but she still had no want of my help. To this day I laugh thinking back on what she said. “I don’t need help from someone who has their own problems.” I feel obliged to say that anyone who won’t accept the help of those who bear their own problems won’t be finding much in the way of help on this planet any time soon; you may want to try Mars.
Nonetheless, I have come to think of this wave of spiritual energy, which seems to come over me in the heat of assault, as the armor of God. The Bible tells us to “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Eph. 6:11-13)
When this spiritual sensation comes over me it seems to cut the blow of whatever strikes it. When that woman spun around, flinging those words of hatred at me, the shock I would expect from myself was noticeably less than I would anticipate, and it gave no birth to any resentful feeling in me, as I might also expect of myself. Instead my response was just as pure and unstained as I would have it, and it came without pause or delay.
Much the same, when Mike sent those waves of cautionary darkness at me from beneath the basketball net, I felt them pass over my body but they did not enter. They did not cut nor leave wound. And I spoke the words that God had placed into this, His unlikely vessel.
“I just wanted to say that you’re my brother and I love you. And this… There is nothing that can ever change that.”
I heard Mike speaking softly, “Thank you, brother.”
Sadly, it was not long after that Mike was taken once more by the demons moving him that night. And he was back stamping through the parking lot shouting criticisms and curses at the group.
I went back to the sleeping area, putting my things away, and when I returned Dani had begun to assemble a prayer circle at the loading dock entrance.
I locked into that prayer circle, burning with the power of God. I stood there with my eyes closed and my mouth hanging open, oozing love and compassion into our midst. I haven’t burned that hot with meditative energies since I got to Joplin. My body was aflame with the spirit and I was taken with the Lord’s presence.
As we were gathered in prayer, I am told that Mike grabbed a metal chair and started motioning to throw it through the windshield of Dani’s pickup truck. But even as Dani led us in prayer, she bid us not to break the circle saying simply, “We rebuke that.”
By the end of the night Mike had not thrown the chair, nor done any other physical harm, no one called the police, and Mike even marched back into the building, passed our prayer circle – physically un-resisted – gathering up his blankets and willfully leaving to go sleep under the bridge.
I don’t know that I can convey what it really was to be there that night. The people at the Refuge had finally coalesced into a truly Christian body, dealing with a confrontation using hope, love, and compassion instead of force and authority. Mike was not run off from the property nor drug away by the police, as I would have expected just weeks before. But he was left to walk off of his own volition. His last sight of us that night was not of a hateful mob sending him away, but of a people who cared for and loved him too much to let one night’s weakness destroy that bond; A peoples gathered in prayer, seeking blessings in his name and release from whatever foulness plagued him. I tell you, God was there.
Mike returned to us the next day, apologetically, and was taken back into the Refuge. That afternoon I met him on the dock for a cigarette and he told me how much what I said that night had meant to him.
He said that in that moment he felt like there wasn’t a soul around him who was real; that everyone around him had gathered, merely to watch the entertainment of his suffering or to appear godly and feed their own egos. But when I said that he was my brother and I loved him, he felt it, and he knew it was true.
Still I tell you what I told him: Though I spoke the words, they were not mine. And though I felt those brotherly affections, such love has long been foreign to me. But these were, rather, placed within me and guided over my tongue. I am made the messenger, but the author of this message is the Lord and it is he who loves you so.
-
The very next night the Mike incident was relived when the aforementioned Paula returned from a three day vacation away from the Refuge, drunk. Her inebriation wasn’t discovered until the end of the night. By then the shelter administrators found it too cold to throw her out without warning. Beside that stood her long service to the Refuge as our cook and backup administrator. I’ve no doubt that the appreciation the other head-residents held for her friendship and good-work played a part in choosing to give her one more night’s stay.
But Paula, too, was rowdy that night. In her drunkenness she couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly kick her out after all she’d done and all she’d seen around here. And with a sloppy, alcohol soaked tongue she began shouting a laundry list of abuses that had been overlooked during her tenure.
It wasn’t long before Paula turned her slanders to Missy. As the two lead females at the Refuge they had developed a special kind of bond and understanding. Now Missy found herself forced into the uncomfortable position of sending a friend an ally to the streets. And the intoxicated Paula found herself being scolded by Missy, whom Paula retained an innumerable amount of unflattering stories concerning.
Cat Fight 2007 was on!
Without getting into trivial details, I’ll simply say that the fur flew and many a scene was made that night. By the end of the evening I was most disappointed, not with Paula, but with how Missy had behaved. She had allowed herself to be drawn into a fight with a drunk, meeting anger with anger and hate with hate.
As I had witnessed the fight, there was a distinct moment where all Missy had to do was walk up to Paula and hug her and the whole ordeal would have ended right there: Much as Mike had the night before, Paula eventually started to break down and her shouts became whimpers. Had Missy taken that moment to comfort Paula I have no doubt that Paula would have turned into a docile kitten; she would have become a little girl being put to bed by her mother after a long cry over something silly.
But Missy chose instead to see the tearful lull as an opportunity to strike. And once struck Paula’s defenses went right back up, continuing the confrontation another ten minutes.
After the fight ended both Paula and Missy were moving back and forth through the Refuge - trying to avoid each other - mostly to and from the dock area to smoke. When I came upon Paula in the hallway, between the kitchen and pantry, she asked me if I had a light for her cigarette. I took the opportunity to deliver Paula the hug that Missy had overlooked. And sure enough she cried on my shoulder for a few minutes, said some things she had been bottling up inside for a while, and went straight to sleep.
As soon as someone showed Paula that she was still loved and needed - as soon as someone issued her a bit of grace and compassion - her demons left her and she became the better version of herself again. Isn’t this what we all seek in our times of weakness? Isn’t this what we all crave when our own strength has failed us? Why is it so hard, then, to give it when another is found wanting? How is it that we can struggle so greatly with these simple teachings of the Lord: To love, comfort, rejoice, and sorrow with those who are found in need?
-
Having seen two good people brought to their knees by alcohol and personal demons - one right after the other - there was a part of me which had become righteously indignant. (aka: I was pissed.)
I was fed up with these evil spirits… the darkness lingering in the heart of man which never failed to beset the otherwise strong and good-intentioned people around me; That great deceiver we call Satan, swooping in to take advantage of humanities frailties.
As I bid Paula goodnight, I returned to my bed carrying a mixture of love for God’s graces and hatred for Satan’s deceptions. I knelt upon the mattress, turning my hatred into passion and my passion into spirit, drawing a great meditative energy into me.
And I called out into the unseen ethereal realm, a battle cry: ‘You want some?! Come get some!’
I’d had it! If these demons wanted a war they would have one this very night. I’d nolonger sit idly by watching them poke at the old wounds of my brothers; reopening long-healed injuries, only to offer them comfort from their pains in a bottle, or a needle, or a rock.
“I am for you!” I called out in my mind to the unseen forces surrounding me.
Great waves of spiritual energy were pouring out of me; beaming from my eyes and burning upon my shoulders. My body was engulfed in a blue flame of the battle-ready knighthood of God.
But nothing came upon me to declare a challenge. And so, finding no otherworldly opponent willing to stand against my declaration I turned my energies upon the Refuge House itself.
I tell you, if the Lord has yet granted me any authority to render blessings, I have blessed this building, and it is now held beneath the light and shield of God’s immunity. Nothing whatsoever evil may enter this place: Such was my prayer to God and my declaration before the forces of evil; so also, in faith, shall it be.
-
The Indian missionary finally came a-calling again. He has now stood twice as preacher for the Refuge’s mid-week “Refresher:” an afternoon sermon typically held on Thursdays. Before the last sermon he delivered, he finally approached me directly, asking whether I had registered his website with the search engines as he had asked me to those weeks before.
I told him no and I was forced to gently confront him on our differing opinions where it concerns the doctrine of Christ. He defended some of his positions and clarified others. Nonetheless when we had discussed our differences fully, I still found him lacking and wasn’t going to aid his goals and testimonies.
Just before we parted I finished smoking a cigarette and he asked me “Has God told you anything about those?” motioning to my tobacco.
I started to say no, but then I recalled a small personal moment a few weeks earlier. I had been sitting outside the Refuge chapel after service, smoking and watching some people do and say some things that I was disturbed by. I can’t recall what they were saying but I remember sitting there thinking to myself, ‘The church isn’t in this building behind us: Jesus tore that church down. But the church is now within each of us, and God stands between us wherever we gather. So why is it that you all act so reverently within that meaningless building, and so grossly in the true church which exists within and between you now.’
As I thought these things, an unwanted question rang out between my ears: ‘Would you smoke in a church?’ If the true church exists not of stone and mortar, but within our fleshly frames, than daily have I filled my church with first and second-hand carcinogens for over half a decade.
I told the Indian missionary that story and he followed it up with some reference to scripture. We looked up the passage he mentioned and he tried to tell me that the verse I was reading meant that I could only take things into my body which could receive blessings from God… or some such thing. Whatever he was talking about, it wasn’t what I read in the text before me and I considered it just one more instance where this man had twisted the text to his liking. Still, I humored him politely.
A bit later, we bumped faces again down in the chapel, at which point he asked me if I could help him set up an online Multi-Level Marketing program geared toward Christians, in support of his fundraising efforts.
Those who know me will understand when I say this: He might as well have asked me to perform felatio on Lucifer. I have a great distaste for all things money oriented. Even when I found myself playing capitalism’s meaningless, unending game I could never bring myself to pursue a paycheck with any real fervor. I justified my labor less by the monetary reward and more in knowing that I was of benefit to the people working around me; and an ease to their burden.
When this preacher asked me to help him start up the same kind of legalized money laundering scheme that put countless white-collar dollar jockeys into prison in the 80’s, and to do so in the name of God Almighty, I suppose I let my civility wane a moment saying simply, “I really don’t think I’m your guy… With all respect.”
After these multiple conversations, concerning the cigarettes, our interpretational differences, and everything else, I really felt off balance and I needed to get away. So instead of attending the preacher’s sermon I grabbed my Bible and began reading Matthew again. I had already been planning to read over the gospels again and these modest confrontations with the missionary gave me every reason to return to this: my first love.
After I completed that first great speech of Jesus’ to the people, between chapter five and eight of Matthew, I was so uplifted and charged with the spirit of the word that I needed a cigarette just to get me out of my chair and free some energy. I grabbed my tobacco and headed to the exit at the dock.
I found the garage door at the dock closed. I didn’t want to open it and allow the cold afternoon air to flood into the sleeping area. So I went down through the chapel instead. As I walked passed the preacher and toward the door, one of the younger residents, Chris, whispered, “I’ll join ya’,” and we exited to fulfill nicotine’s need.
As the story has been retold to me: When the door closed behind us, the Indian missionary stopped his sermon, mid-sentence; beginning again after an extended pause.
While Chris and I smoked we talked about what I’d just read in Matthew and about the missionary preacher. I told Chris that we should always keep our eyes on God. Nomatter where you are or what you’re doing, keep your neck metaphorically cocked back: Gazing up into the heavens at God. For so long as we are looking to God, though we see not what is before us as we walk, He will place in our path everything we need.
I told him that herein is where the missionary had failed. He had seen the awful sights of this world – children starving and huddled together for warmth – and his eyes had been drawn from God. He saw a problem on this Earth and he decided that he was going to fix it. And where his gaze now rested on the tragedies of humanity, he had lost his focus on the Almighty. If only he had kept his eyes with the Lord, he would have been given everything he needed to feed and shelter those children. Instead he now prowls the earth in search of money – that root of all evil – bidding to fix the problems of man with the very tools of man which created the problem in the first place; and leaving no room for God to intercede.
Chris and I were still smoking when the service let out. Shortly after the building emptied I saw the door crack open. The Indian missionary’s head popped out and floated between door and jam. When his eyes caught me, he spoke these words in an angry tone:
“I can’t believe you are out here smoking, and that you lured this boy out of my sermon for it, after what we talked about upstairs. You have evil spirits working inside you.”
His speech became flustered for a moment and I lost track of his words. Then he said in a clear, distinctive tone:
“I rebuke you, in the name of Jesus Christ!”
In an instant this floating head had disappeared back into the building. We stood there in shock for a moment, unsure what had just happened. In another minute the preacher burst out the door, walking through our midst and toward his car. As he got in he leaned back out, with one foot on the floor board, saying, “God is not working in you. God is not speaking to you!”
The door shut and the car pulled away. I had been rebuked!
When the shock of the incident passed, Chris and I began talking about it. Chris spoke something that rang painfully true. He said, ‘You know, if I weren’t already a Christian and I had just come to this church to see what it was all about… and I saw that: this preacher angrily rebuking someone in the name of Christ for having a cigarette… I’d never come back. And I probably wouldn’t have any more interest in Christianity for a long while either.’
True as this is, I took a somewhat more diplomatic stance toward it. In my weeks at the Refuge I had often been taught the lesson that there is no man amongst us who is infallible; and that we must remember: even the men we might look up to for guidance still struggle daily with their own pursuits of godliness and their own relationships with the Lord.
Knowing this, and seeking to be godly myself, I could not harbor any ill will toward the Indian missionary. Instead I blessed him and later prayed for his enlightenment, that he should know his folly and find the unflappable love shown to us by Christ.
As for my beloved – what some call vice – this cigarette: The telling of my encounter with the missionary contains within itself the purest truth and greater wisdom rendered first by Jesus:
“There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.” (Mark 7:15) “[…]whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats[…]That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” (Mark 7:18-23)
Still, I think it unreasonable to presume the Indian preacher’s chastisements to have come merely on the cloud of my cigarette’s smoke. The better guess is that he felt the injury of insult when I refused to assist him in his fundraising pursuits, and that moreso had I offended him by passing through his sermon so cavalierly, without interest in his words.
I have no apologies for the man, as all was done without slight against him, and much to my spiritual needs. Nonetheless, I have understanding of, and all forgiveness for, his anger and subsequent action. And may God be with him.
Still, I would not have him preach at the Refuge any longer, were it within my power. Too often have I found him failed in the doctrine of Christ to grant him a position at the pulpit. His concerns are earthly, his doctrines are tainted, and his understandings of the word are greatly corrupt. He has a mind for many things, and few of these are truly of the Lord. Until he has revived his first love, put aside the finer works of Paul, and focused straightway once more upon the teachings of Jesus, his mere length of tooth is not enough to justify such standing in the church. I pray the City of Refuge puts him away in short manner.
-
The night that I first made my fasting commitment before Randy, he showed up at the Refuge. I would discover later that he had come to speak to the church leaders; letting them know of his intent to get dry and asking for their grace: that they should again give him residence when he achieved his goal. In true godly fashion, they agreed.
Before he left Randy blew a sort-of ceremonial breath test, revealing a 0.4 breath alcohol content. If any have question, a point-four is nearly five times the legal limit for driving in most states, and is more than enough to lay to rest any keg-standing college student at a frat party. Of course, for an alcoholic, a 0.4 is just ‘good times.’
Sometime after Randy left, returning to Tony’s to suffer through another night of alcohol’s withdrawals, I was set in line to blow my nightly breath test. When I pushed my lungs contents through the three-inch straw and into the inner workings of the cell-phone sized device, the red LED display lit up with my results: .02!
I had not consumed any alcohol. Hell, it wouldn’t be much of a fasting commitment if I swore off food to the benefit of my intoxicant starved compatriot, only to replace it with the very vice he now fought so valiantly to rid himself of! Maybe it was a fluke. “Blow again,” they said.
So again I blew. And again another point-o-two. For this I would have to reveal my fast to all; as it was the only unusual factor I could imagine capable of producing such results. When I told them of my nutritional lackings they pulled out the operators manual for the little breath-testing gadget. After a few minutes thumbing through, they discovered a page regarding “false positives.”
Among other things, including certain fruits and breads, low calorie diets and fasting were listed as possible reasons the device might throw false positives, up to a .04 reading. I thought it strange that the effects of my fast should show up so quickly, as it had been no more than ten hours since last I ate. In any case, we had an explanation. Knowing that I was neither a drunkard, nor a liar, the staff catalogued my .02 in the PBT log, placing a little parenthesized question mark off to its right and we all went to bed.
The next morning Randy showed up at the Refuge again. I had meant to come see him after I got my wits about me, but he beat me to the punch. We talked a while and he seemed in slightly better spirits than I had last seen him. When we finished chatting I left him with others at the Refuge so I might go see Tony, whom I could finally visit with alone.
I think Tony enjoyed having me to himself for a bit and I felt a little of our pre-Randy relationship budding again. However, in visiting Tony he would necessarily make me the harbinger of bad news. Tony’s landlady Phyllis had been by sometime earlier. Having seen Randy lounging around the house often, Phyllis had deduced that Tony was letting him stay there and she had come to the end of her tolerance of the situation.
She told Tony that she was not running a homeless shelter and that further, she recognized Randy; that he has been bumming around Joplin for “years;” and she wouldn’t have his sort living off the utility bills that she was paying. Either Randy hit the road, or the they both would.
All said and done, Tony had given Randy more than half a month of borrowed time on his sofa. He wouldn’t risk being put out of house and home for Randy’s sake. As of that moment, Randy was nolonger welcome at Tony’s.
Oh woe unto him who has to bring this news back to Randy… Wait: him is me. Shit.
Here’s a man in day two of a self-made detox program who just lost the only roof under which he was allowed to bed. What better reason might a recovering alcoholic need to return to the bottle in this most trying of times than to find himself on the cold night streets, shaking not only of withdrawal but hypothermia as well. The devil sure is keen.
Who else would manufacture such diabolically perfect timing as to throw a man from the hard pursuit of a good thing but that greatest tempter. Surely some fallen angel was long on bent knee, whispering in Phyllis’ ear, “You’re paying the taxes on that home, aren’t you? And the utilities? Why should you let that half-deaf drunk, Tony, turn your property into a flop-house. What are you a doormat? Or some bleeding heart? You’ve got mortgages to pay. You don’t owe that bum on the couch anything. Meanwhile he’s sucking up the heat, water, and electricity that your dollar provides. Are you just going to give this jobless parasite a free ride? Or don’t you have a backbone?”
No doubt the deceiver made short work of Phyllis, laying his trap quite expertly. Now if Randy really wanted to get sober, the already ninety degree incline to sobriety would be leveled against him that much more; inverting his desperate climb and leaving the path completely without foothold.
I did not tarry long with Tony after learning this, but made haste back to the Refuge that I might spend the remaining day with Randy. I don’t imagine he could’ve taken the news much better; which is to say that he immediately resigned to the Devil’s plans, chiming, ‘Well fuck. That’s it isn’t it. I can’t do this now.’
There was still much of the day ahead of us and so Randy and I abode together much of it, reasoning what could be done. After a long slew of dead-end plans, tears, and self defeating commentary, there were only two real possibilities left standing. Either Randy would have to resign to sleeping outside, and fight the desire to warm himself through the night with liqueur’s embrace, or the Refuge would have to let him sleep within tonight, despite his uncompleted sobriety.
Each of these plans had major stumbling blocks lain in their paths to completion. First, if Randy were to sleep outside there was no way he would do so without the company of a case of ‘Steel Reserve;’ He expressed as much and, honestly, I knew it without need of hearing the words spoken aloud. Second, if he were to be allowed to stay at the Refuge he would first have to ask the administrators for this grace; and as of that moment he was terrified to do so.
I imagine his cowardice was of dual psychological origin. He feared the possible rejection that would make moot all his efforts to date, negating the virtue of the pains he had thus far suffered in recovery. Beyond that, I think he was hoping that if he didn’t ask for their help, I might do so on his behalf; using my relationship with the Refuge peoples as a somewhat sturdier bridge to his relief.
But I was not going to make this petition for him. The scripture goes, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Mat. 7:7-8)
If Randy would not ask, neither seek, nor knock, I would not be his emissary to opened doors. I thought it important for him to put his own reputation on the line; for his reputation is not much of one at all among these people. I wanted him to face those whom he had wronged and forsaken – those whom have every right to deny him – and beg, yet again, for their graces. And if they received him, as they are called of God to do, he might see the better teachings of our Lord at work.
Yet if they denied him, he could not be found wrong in the asking. And more would the Refuge bear the guilt for falling short the creed of their espoused belief. Were I to make the request for him, it would mean nothing if they said ‘Okay.’ For Randy would think it the Refuge’s love of me, rather than their love of him, that made it possible.
Unwilling to be his mouthpiece, I focused on the alternative plan: sleeping rough. I told Randy that if he had to sleep outside, and if he would not turn again to the bottle, I would leave my bed and join him; that we could keep each other company throughout the cold night and ease each others burdens through fellowship.
He flatly refused. ‘If I’m sleeping under a bridge, I’m getting drunk. Besides, I don’t want you suffering any more for me.’
I tried for a bit to turn him toward this idea, but he just wouldn’t have it. I was left with little else I could do for his benefit. He hadn’t yet mustered the courage to ask the staff for shelter, and he wouldn’t have me accompany him.
The final benefit I could offer him was my sleeping bag. It was back at Tony’s with some other things that I had no need of while staying at the Refuge. I let him know that I could run and get it, but if I was going to make the trip it had to be soon. I didn’t want to show up at Tony’s to the sight of a darkened house and have to wake him to get my stuff. Tony has the habit of napping unevenly throughout the day, such that bed-time can strike him at any hour.
I guess this was enough to push Randy from his fear. Before I made the walk to Tony’s he wanted to see if the Refuge would allow him to bed in the shelter. He disappeared for five minutes and when he returned, the grin on his face foretold my brothers’ godliness. The Refuge administrators, knowing what Randy was trying to accomplish, and considering the situation, would give him a space under roof this night.
Randy Riggs: How much does God love you. How many are his children who have forgotten, forgiven, and lent again what squandered times before. Rejoice and be grateful how much the Lord has apportioned you.
As a formality, the Refuge gave Randy another breath test that night. He blew a 0.2; half what he had blown the night before. Not bad. My own breath test would be an interesting diversion. The night before I had blown a .02, thanks be to fasting just some ten hours. Now I would blow again, this time thirty hours into the fast.
The little box lit up with a .04! Where Randy had cut his breath alcohol content in half I had doubled my own. I found it no more than a curious entertainment, but I think at least one of the head residents started to level a squinted eye in my direction. I was, after all, pushing the upper boundary of what we’d been told the device could throw in false-positives; and I think I had become slightly suspect.
In any case, another little question mark was placed in the log next to my name and we all retired for the evening. Randy took a space on a reclined La-Z-Boy and zoned out on TV the rest of the night.
I slept with the hope that Randy would get his breath-test numbers down to double zero by the end of the next day; If not for the sake of his health and jeopardized residence at the Refuge, then for the sake of my own, the same.
-
Early the next day I sat on the dock, smoking a cigarette. We were now into hour fourty-eight of the fast and the word of it had spread thoroughly throughout the Refuge House. Missy, especially, was concerned. As I puffed my cancer-stick she approached and asked me how long I was going to go without eating. I answered, ‘as long as it takes Randy to complete his detox.’
In a motherly fashion Missy started looking for ways to get me to eat; asking whether I’d be willing to put something in my belly if Randy blew a 0.1 or a 0.15. I didn’t give her a firm answer, but she did manage to plant the idea in my mind. And I began to consider breaking my fast if Randy got low enough to satisfy my own standards; low enough to all-but guarantee his continuance to zeros. For that, I reasoned within myself, a .05 would be satisfactory.
Still, Missy wanted me to eat. So, she told me she was going to go give Randy another test, hoping the results would be encouraging enough for me to sate my gullet with some breakfast cereal or something. Then she left me, retreating back into the Refuge to find Randy.
I have a feeling that Missy was part of the driving force behind the decision to allow Randy to stay overnight. From her general demeanor, it seemed that she had thrown her support behind Randy and his goal. I think she may have used some of her influence at the Refuge – whispering in the right ears – to aid Randy in getting this umpteenth chance.
When she returned, she had the early signs of tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She walked right up and hugged me.
I smiled and said, “Are we happy or sad?”
“He blew a 2.4”
Ah, then we’re sad.
Apparently Randy had left the building as soon as he woke up and gotten a beer or two. This wasn’t completely unexpected to me. Randy was trying to step himself down, after all, without the aid of the drugs that detox programs typically use to stabilize alcoholics during the transition period. I suppose he woke up with a bad case of the shakes and just couldn’t suffer it without a supplemental hit.
I wasn’t disappointed, but Missy was. To her credit she didn’t ask me to eat anything after that. I finished my cigarette and went about the rest of my day’s business until dinner time.
It was a Sunday, and on Sundays the Refuge dinner is open to all comers. Often, Sunday dinners will be prepared by volunteers or some local church that wishes to contribute to the homeless community. This Sunday the meal had been prepared by one of the local Baptist churches; Spaghetti, cream corn, green beans, buttered bread, and your choice of yellow or chocolate cake.
What a time to be fasting.
As the church prepared the meal, I sat outside on the porch again, avoiding the smell of warm food and taking in another of my only source of sustenance for the past fifty-four hours: un cigarrillo. As I sat I heard a woman’s scream echo from within the Refuge.
In a blur, Missy came bounding ‘round the corner, hooting in glee; again kneeling to hug me.
“I guess we’re happy this time?” I said.
Missy had been moving on my behalf. She had administered another blow test on Randy, hoping that by some miracle the numbers might have fallen low enough in these few hours to convince me to eat.
Exuberantly she exclaimed, “He blew a .07!”
When Missy’s jubilance subsided I walked back inside and found Randy. We hugged and I told him, “You did it, brother!”
“You promise me you’re going all the way to zero and I’ll eat.”
He assured me he would be to zero by nightfall and so together we filled our bellies with spaghetti, cream corn, and cake.
That night, at the breath test, Randy Riggs made good on his word, blowing two big O’s. Not only had he made it to sobriety, but he was now legitimately a resident of the City of Refuge Ministries once more.
Also that night, at the breath test, I made legal scholars across the globe cock their necks for a better view when I blew a .06! Despite, or perhaps because of, the half-digested Sunday dinner bubbling in my stomach, I blew an “alcohol” content just two-hundredths shy of most states’ drunk-driving statutes; and equally in excess of the supposedly maximum false-positive figures.
Having spent a fair amount of time perusing legal briefs and studying the law as hobby, I find it insanely interesting that a breath test can read so inaccurately, especially considering how heavily they’re relied upon by police in the field.
Anyway, the next day I was back to blowing zeros, as was Randy. He was sober and had a roof over his head. Within a few days he started working again. He had fought the good fight and won; earning back a life that didn’t necessarily include sucking down 24oz. cans of beer behind dumpsters in alleyways and sleeping eighteen hours a day on other peoples couches.
Surely he wasn’t yet fully free of the demon which tempts him. But he had swept the tempter from its comfortable seat atop his shoulders, and that fallen angel would now be forced to run alongside, panting and trying to keep pace with the strength and conviction of my brother Randy Riggs.
Joplin, Missouri - Written 11-8,*;12-4,5,6-2007
Joplin Revisited
The Not-so Weary Road to Nashville
Even before I left Michigan my father asked me to keep the coming Thanksgiving in mind. My paternal grandparents would be holding a reunion dinner in Florida and if I could make it, three full generations of the family would be in attendance. I couldn’t commit myself to be there when I first took to the highways for I knew not where the Lord might lead. But three weeks into October I felt the great magnet telling me to make ready the journey to Tampa.
One of my uncles, Victor would be making his way south from Indiana. If I could meet him in Tennessee on the 16th, he would shuttle me the rest of the way. The plan was to leave Joplin on Saturday, November 10th and start hitching toward Nashville. God was apparently not fond of my plan.
I had been trying to tie up so many loose ends the Friday before that I hadn’t found time to pack my bag. So when I awoke Saturday I immediately started assembling my travel rig.
I had done a dry run earlier in the week; putting together most of what I intended to take with me to see how the burden would wear. But when I went to assemble it on the day of departure it just wouldn’t come together. Nomatter what I did, time after time I would be left with a pile of clothes that just wouldn’t fit anywhere, or a backpack that refused to seal shut.
I struggled with it for hours all Saturday morning to no avail. I had probably packed and repacked the thing three or four times before Randy Riggs approached me. “You want to go for a walk?”
Oh hell. Even as I had been packing it was turning over in my mind that I couldn’t let myself get upset that my schedule was being thrown out of whack. The book of James tells us all about making plans without taking God into consideration; and though I had set myself to leave on Saturday morning I would not spite the master with my own intent. If He had made other arrangements on my behalf, I would conform.
Now, in the teachings of Jesus we are told that if any man asks us to walk with him a mile, we should walk with him two. When Randy asked me to go-a-walking I knew I could not rightly deny him. It was a godly request and I had faith that the Lord was reordering my departure plans to match His, more perfect, schedule.
By the time I returned from my goodbye outing with Randy an hour and a half had passed. I sat on the dock smoking a cigarette, trying to get my wits about me: If I was going to make that backpack come together I simply could not take all the things I had planned on bringing with me to Nashville. But what should I get rid of?
I consolidated my load again, tossing out a scrap or two of clothing and dismissing my sneakers: I would have to make do with the insulated boots I had pulled out of the Refuge donations. Another half hour struggling with it, and my pack just barely closed… I was still wholly unsatisfied. I needed a travel rig that I could get in and out of expediently and this wasn’t it.
It took me one more cigarette to finally get godly about the affair. I realized again what I understood first when I gave up my work-a-day existence and all my precious knickknacks in favor of this, my holy calling: That so long as I walk with God, he will provide. Whatever I need and do not have will be given; and if I am found lacking any thing, He will deliver it.
I went back to my pack, ripping it apart and adding to my pile of abandoned goods and sundries until the mess of hand-me-downs stood a full three feet tall. Oh, the backpack closed up now! Let there be no doubt. As soon as I returned to the teachings of Christ, the uphill battle shifted in my favor, becoming a downward assault.
But it was swiftly approaching dinner time at the Refuge. Should I stay for dinner or make for the hills? As I asked myself this very question, Dani, a woman whose zealotry and passion for Christ has led me to dub her ‘church deaconess,’ approached in a fluster.
Dani had been working on starting up a small, sort-of news circular concerning the Refuge, and she was having trouble getting it to print out appropriately. As the resident on-site computer tech, she came to me for assistance. An hour and a half later I had fought valiantly the demon laser printer and achieved, at least, a partial victory; having printed the circular using a lesser quality, but still acceptable, method. (.jpg in place of .pdf)
It was now 5:30p and I had missed dinner service. I came upstairs and ate the plate of food the staff had set aside for me. By the time I finished eating it was nigh on six o’clock; and thanks to daylight savings time the sun had completely set. I would not be leaving until Sunday. I had lost a full day’s travel time. Could the Lord still get me to Nashville on schedule? (…he asked, knowing full-well the answer.)
-
I awoke Sunday and dawned my golden armor: A green-canvas military backpack with aluminum, back-supporting frame; Within it: a bundle of clothing and my smaller, yellow and black, walk-about backpack. Over shoulder: An Ibanez Talman acoustic guitar concealed in black vinyl soft-case. In hand: The walking stick gifted to me a half decade ago by wandering guitarist and wise-man of Knoxville, Bill Page.
Once I was geared-up, I made for the Refuge chapel. Services had already begun when I walked down the stairs; everyone was singing hymns. On my way out I shook Pastor Dan’s hand, received a hug from Missy, some goodbye words from Nick; and I left them all with my hope of sending back a true farewell message upon reaching my destination.
I was officially on the road! I walked to Main Street and turned south, heading toward I-44. Some forty blocks and three pit stops later, I first set foot to highway.
Some three hours and twenty thousand footfalls later, the thrill of setting foot to highway had worn off a bit. My pack was cumbersome and the aluminum frame was biting into my hips. The guitar I had slung over my left shoulder continually slid away from my body, requiring me to reposition it every two to five minutes. The weight of the full load on my upper body was causing me to stop evermore frequently to rest. And so far, no one had even slowed to consider picking up this wayward soul.
This new experiment in modern hitchhiking had started off heavy on the hiking; but lacking somewhat in the ‘hitch’ department. I was getting frustrated. Each vehicle that passed by me took a small piece of my patience and virtue with it. Over the course of the three hour trek my roadside prayers had decayed from “Give me strength Lord” to “Deliver me Lord” to “Send me an angel, Lord” to “Send me an angel in a Buick” to “How can all these assholes just drive by a man in need!?”
My forehead was salty, my neck was red and sore, and I was struggling to keep my spirits up. Suddenly I had a moment: Not unlike a hot-flash. I absolutely had to get out from under this damnable pack right this second before I dug my nails into it and ripped it from me, incredible hulk style. Heavily and with great drama, I fell to my knees and into the grass beside the highway.
Luckily a bit of wandering concrete, hidden beneath the grass, broke my fall; nearly doing the same to my right kneecap. The impact of the blow was made all the worse by the extra thirty-five pounds of the pack still clinging to me. I stared at the ground for a moment, on hand and knee in agony. Somehow I got free of the backpack and rolled over wincing, holding my knee, and calling out to God, “I am your soldier Lord. Make me strong.”
I lay there in the grassy ditch for a good minute, first letting the pain subside and then just enjoying the sensation of being off of my feet. Blowing up like that was good for me. By the time my theatrics had ended I felt reborn. The last three hours worth of frustration had been released and I was back in a godly frame of mind; laughing at myself for all the silliness.
When I finally started to sit up I caught sight of a van on the side of the highway, backing up toward me. ‘Finally, a ride!’ I thought. Springing back to life, I loaded all the gear back onto my spine and walked up to meet my saviors.
As I approached, a middle aged man came out the passenger door asking, “Are you all right? We saw you fall back there and I thought you might’ve collapsed of heat exhaustion!”
As I started to explain the whole affair another man, yet unseen, emerged from behind us with a hands-free cell phone in his ear.
“I called 9-1-1. When I saw you lying on the side of the road and the van over here backing up. I figured they must’ve run you over!”
I started thanking and apologizing in both directions, each man talking over the top of the other as the traffic continued zipping by just behind us. When the road noise died down I heard the man with the ear-piece speaking to someone over the phone.
“Hi. Yeah, I just called in a corpse lying on the side of I-44. It was a false alarm. He’s up now.”
As I continued the apologies, a full-length fire truck trailed by an ambulance pulled onto the scene, blocking the right lane of highway traffic. Thinking back on it, all the moment needed to be truly complete was a group of half-naked women running around in lingerie to the tune of the Benny Hill theme song. Of course, at the time the tone of the participants was quite serious.
I managed to convince the fireman that I was alright and the roadside tea party started to break up. The folks in the white van were kind enough to give me a lift about ten miles up the road before setting me back on the easement and making their turn off of I-44. Ten miles is better than nothing, but not by much. Still, I had faith the Lord was at work.
The day wore on and I continued, several more hours, this slow and steady trek across the flat Missouri concrete, without a ride. When four o’clock rolled passed me my negativity began to build again, filling my already overweight backpack that much more with gloom.
The sun was setting and I had become bothered. I wasn’t concerned for myself, mind you; I knew that God would deliver and care for me as He deemed fit: If that meant sleeping in a highway ditch twenty miles outside of Joplin, I would suffer that and whatever else the Lord willed for me. I was bothered, instead, for all these commuters who saw me: walking with outstretched thumb; being slowly crushed beneath my load; dusk lingering on the horizon; and who chose to just smile and keep on truckin’.
What they had, I was in need of. They knew this. They could see this - but they did not offer. Here it was, Sunday: What most of these bible-belt Christians consider God’s holy day. Yet not one, this whole ‘Sabbath,’ had stopped for me… That is except when they thought me dead or dying.
At first I was sad for them. I was disappointed in them and I mourned for the growth of their souls. Quickly enough, though, my sorrow turned to a parental, fatherly anger. I wanted to chastise them each individually for their lackings. Much like Jacob on his deathbed, I wanted to scorn them for their heartlessness and make them understand their folly.
I wanted to sit them in a corner and yell, “Oh faithless and depraved generation. You know that you are called by your belief to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. You know: that what you have you are charged by God to give. But here you see your brother and your fellow disciple weary, alone, and wanting of that which costs you nothing to deliver him; and here you would avert your eyes; and here you would defile yourselves by crossing to pass the needy at the other side of the trail.
If you are truly men of God what do you fear? Fear you for your lives? Fear you for your property and purses? I tell you, better you should fear the Lord Almighty whom you have scorned this day; for in Him you threaten to remove yourselves not only of your lives, but of your immortal souls!”
Nonetheless I walked on, thinking rather to bless them who passed me so carelessly; for in God we are called to love and to bless those even who would run us afoul.
When the sun had at last lowered itself one half into the horizon, the Lord finally sent me my angel: He wasn’t driving a Buick, but he’d have to do.
I placed my pack, guitar, and staff into the back of the pick up truck before me and hopped into the passenger seat. My evening’s chauffer was a seventy-one year old man named Tony. He was headed all the way up I-44 to St. Louis. This meant he could bus me straight to my planned destination for the night, Springfield.
In talking to Tony I soon found that I had stumbled on that rare and elusive beast, the Christian. Not just a “Christian,” mind you, but a Christian. As I have shared my story – that of leaving home and job in pursuit of God’s calling – with those in Joplin, I only once felt truly understood by any man: a white-bearded, salt and pepper haired sage by the name of Lonnie.
Lonnie alone seemed to truly know and comprehend what I meant when I told him that I could nolonger play at the world’s game; that the forty hour work week spent in pursuit of money, and the retail goods it would purchase, was completely unfulfilling to me and moreso unnecessary; that though I felt no aversion to any kind labor I would not do it lest the work be godly or the Lord Himself were to set me to it.
Lonnie knew. Lonnie understood. He himself lived in a tent and worked only when it suited God’s calling, or when the workplace was found worthy. He had long since given up the life of personal gain, taking on a persistent mindfulness to the desires of the Lord.
Tony, my new shepherd, was of this same breed. When I told him my story, he got it. And in so many words he congratulated me on escaping the trappings of the deceiver; commending me for my head-first plunge into the teachings of Jesus and the love of God.
Riding to Springfield with Tony was just the spiritual refueling I needed after a long lonely day on the road. The conversation strengthened and uplifted me and his company warmed my heart.
As we drew closer to Springfield I knew not what would come of the night. I had packed for the trip, expecting to sleep “rough” while I was on the road, but a week before I left I had given my sleeping bag away to one of the former Refuge residents who was weathering the thirty and forty degree nights in a tent. As for my sleeping arrangements, I had left it all in God’s hands.
In fact, just getting to Springfield fulfilled the extent of all my planning in the matter. Beyond that point I knew that I would travel east on highway 60, but I had gathered no details nor bothered to consider how I would survive passed Joplin’s borders. This is how I came to Joplin: a bus ticket and faith. And I left her much the same, sans only the ticket. God would guide my footfalls, I would simply move my feet.
With this in mind and nightfall upon me I had no idea where or how I would bed within Springfield. I knew nothing of the town, nor did I want to get bogged down by nesting anywhere deep within it. Springfield was a checkpoint for me, not a rest stop.
Even as my thoughts had just begun to turn toward these things, my day’s savior, Tony, began to speak.
‘Well, I don’t think I really want to drive all the way to St. Louis tonight. Maybe I’ll just stop in Springfield. I like to stay at the ‘Motel 6.’ It’s only a few more dollars for a second person. If you want, I’ll get a room for the both of us and you can get a fresh start in the morning.’
The Lord provides.
-
After a shower and a good night’s rest I was ready to face the road again. But I refused to take that evil, green canvas backpack with me. In the mirror I could see the two red welts left on my lower back by the pack’s “support bar,” which had rubbed infuriatingly against my upper hip bone all day. I could stand to be without this manner of “support;” in fact, I simply wouldn’t tolerate it another day. So I took the bag out back, pulled out my six shooter, and put the old gal down. (Sorry Kyle.)
I pulled the smaller and more comfortable bumblebee-colored backpack from the remains of the defunct, lumbar-mounted torture device; upgrading this yellow and black “American Eagle” to the status of ‘primary pack.’ I loaded the outstanding contents of my former rig into a plastic grocery bag and tied it shut. From here on out I would have to grip this plastic bag with my free hand, letting it dangle beneath the guitar. Despite having all extremities now occupied, leaving that green monster behind made the load a thousand times more bearable.
When we left the ‘Motel 6,’ Tony was kind enough to diverge from his route, shuttling me to the highway 60 onramp; saving me what appeared to be a 10-15 mile walk from the northwest to the southeast corners of Springfield.
As I stepped from the pickup, bidding Tony thanks and farewell, the sky overhead grew fat and dark with clouds. The previous night’s news had called for grey skies and intermittent showers over the next two days. I couldn’t be bothered to wait for foul weather to pass: I only had four days remaining to reach Nashville. I would have to walk through it.
Anticipating the rain, I unrolled my plastic, camouflage rain-poncho; sliding my arms into the sleeves and draping the back of it over the little yellow backpack which contained my laptop. The poncho would not zip closed in this state, leaving the front of my body exposed to whatever weather might come. But should the rain come down it would be able to keep my head, my back, my pack, and my computer dry. This would have to be enough.
I walked east on 60 for no more than a half hour before I found my first ride. He was a recently retired Airforce master chief, now returned from his last mission over Iraq. We chatted for a bit on the topics of religion, the barren wastelands of Anbar Province, and my current travels. Some thirty miles up the road, the rain had finally burst loose the clouds. Meanwhile, my driver was soon to turn from the highway leaving me at the roadside.
Rather than drop me in the downpour, he stopped short of his exit and let me out at a McDonalds, buying me a Sausage and Egg McGriddle at the drive-through in the process. I thanked him thoroughly for his kindness and generosity, gathering up my things and bouncing happily into the McDonalds’ dining area to eat.
I’d never tried a McGriddle before. I have to question the wisdom of putting ‘scrambled’ eggs and an oil-soaked sausage patty between two sweetened, cornbread-like silver dollar pancakes. Personally, I don’t put ketchup on my pancakes; and I don’t know any who do… Nonetheless I enjoy a little catsup with my sausage and eggs. Before I knew how sweet those little pancake bits were, I squeezed a whole packet of the stuff between egg and bun.
It wasn’t bad, per say; I certainly mowed through it without hesitation. I just wasn’t expecting the strange flavor combination I ended up with. Perhaps a warning label would be of benefit: “CAUTION: Adding McDonalds’ brand ketchup to this product increases its sugar content beyond what mortal men typically desire with their eggs.”
When I stopped convulsing from the diabetic seizure I noticed a sign in the window that read, “WiFi Here.” Excellent! I could liberate my laptop and get online: maybe send out some emails and let everyone know how far I had come on my journey.
I tore the laptop from the yellow backpack, booted up, logged onto the McDonalds wireless connection, and opened Internet Explorer. But instead of my homepage – Google – I was greeted by a McDonalds page. ‘Okay,’ I figured, ‘They hijacked my homepage. That’s a bit unexpected but tolerable.’ But as I read through the webpage before me I realized that I should have paid closer attention to that sign hanging in the dining room window.
If I would have been using my TV-Q, I would have read, not just what was written, but what they hadn’t printed on the sign as well. It was lacking that magic word, much loved by the advertising community: “FREE!” If it were free, they would have plastered it all over the signage. But all it said was “Wifi Here.”
In my Internet browser stood an interface asking me to purchase online time; $2.75 per 2 hours.
No thank you. I’ve got $4.00 in my wallet and four days to get to Nashville: I think I’ll pass on the pay-as-you-go wireless. Honestly, I should think it enough that I ate your sweet and salty, syrup, sausage, and egg monstrosity; for that I would expect the internet access to be gratis: Ya’ know: Like it is everywhere else in the free world. But I suppose it’s a brave new generation of vipers out there, and every man’s got a profit margin to pad.
I sealed up my laptop and waited for the rain to slow. As I loaded my things back onto my back, the rain not only slowed but stopped; hailing my return to the highway.
I walked for an hour without a ride; the rain starting and stopping all the way. But it was a light rain, for the most part, and the wind was at my back. So despite my un-sealable poncho, I was kept fairly dry.
Sometime after that first hour the real downpour finally began. The waters came down with a vengeance and the wind shifted against me. My t-shirt stayed dry under the cover of the poncho’s large hood, but my pants were soaked and even my insulated boots had begun to take on a spongy, inner moisture.
After just two minutes walking through the swell I knew I had to seek cover. Just up the road I saw a closed - perhaps abandoned - diesel filling station with a large rain shelter standing over the pumps.
I stepped up my pace, moving off the side of the highway and following the muddy dirt drive to this: my temporary refuge. By the time I reached it the rain was coming down so hard, and at such an angle, that even beneath the filling station’s cover the only shelter from the spray was to huddle against the backside of the pump itself. So I sat, rolling a cigarette and watching the traffic zip by.
About a quarter hour later, the rain had slowed and I knew I couldn’t sit there forever. So it was back under the poncho for me. As I walked down the highway, raising my walking stick in appreciation to the truckers who were kind enough to merge away from me, a pickup truck snuck up behind me and pulled over.
Though the rain had all but stopped, I wasn’t expecting to get many rides for a while, considering how wet I was. But here a half-rusted pickup truck, carting two tireless steel rims was bidding me inside. I hopped in. My driver was a young guy: I’m guessing early twenties. He asked me where I was heading. I told him, “Nashville eventually, but any stretch up 60 east is much appreciated.”
Then he began to tell me his story:
“Well, I was just coming into work at the auto shop when I got in the door and saw my boss sitting at his desk praying. I asked him, ‘What you praying for?’ And he pointed out the window saying ‘See that kid out there walking in the rain? I’m praying for him.’
‘Here’s five bucks. Go pick him up, give him the money, and take him down to the gas station so he can dry off.’”
He drove me a quarter mile up the road, gave me $5.00, and dropped me at the “Lazy Lee’s” gas station. As soon as I walked into the building I turned around to see my deliverer pull away. Just then the rain came down as hard and heavy as it had back at the diesel pumps.
The Lord provides.
I bought a French vanilla cappuccino and sat in a booth drying myself for about an hour there at the “Lazy Lee’s.”
When I finally left the filling station the rain had stopped entirely. The clouds overhead had broken and the sun was shining strong and bright out of the west. All in all, the rain and weather hadn’t bothered me much. In fact, it gave me something to focus on: It distracted me from the mental and physical stresses that had often slowed and stopped my travels the day before.
Once that sunshine came through, it was truly a glorious journey the rest of the day. I walked faster and more vigorously then, than I would in all the remaining of my Nashville-bound travels. Something about the fresh rain air, the flat Missouri plain, and the newly reborn sunshine provided me more energy and verve than I knew what to do with.
I walked for a solid stretch before being picked up by two country boys in an old pickup truck. The driver turned out to be former Airforce - making for the second erstwhile flyboy to pick me up in so many hours. He took me another thirty miles or so up the road. After making a stop in a small town off the highway, he dropped me at the top of the on-ramp back to 60.
I lay my gear where he let me out and smoked a cigarette. I was making great time so far. Despite the rain I had already traveled approximately seventy miles. One more short ride and I would have the hundred miles I had been hoping to travel, on average, each day.
I tossed my cigarette to the curb and laid the load on my shoulders once more. About half way down the on-ramp a middle-aged couple in a four door sedan stopped to pick me up. What luck! I had just been dropped off and I already had another ride. I loaded my gear in the trunk and we were off.
As soon as we hit the highway, the husband outstretched his arm into the back seat, handing me a diet Dr. Pepper and a bag of chips. It turns out this couple had been at the same McDonalds I sat in earlier, eating breakfast and finding harbor in the storm.
They made the long trip into Springfield to see a doctor and found themselves waylaid there most of the day. When they saw me walking down the on-ramp six hours later, something compelled the couple to pull over and pick me up - something they assured me that they had never done before.
As we chatted, raking over the usual hitching dialogue: Where are you headed; Where are you coming from; Where did you live originally; I eventually started to tell what I call my ‘origin story:’ The tale of how I came to choose homeless transience over so-called stable, work-a-day living.
The man sat quietly in the front passenger seat of the car, saying very little throughout my many monologues. It was, instead, his wife who spurred the conversation forward with interjection and inquiry. Eventually I found myself talking about my mother and her situation back in Michigan: She’s been fighting the state for Social Security Disability for two years or more, due to a partially diagnosed spinal and nervous system condition.
As I expounded on her condition and seemingly endless battle for adequate treatment, the wife started nodding her head and looking to her husband, saying, “So I guess it’s not just here; it’s the same all over.”
Apparently the husband shared much of my mother’s ailments. The couple’s earlier visit to the doctor in Springfield was made in hopes of resolving the same type of back pain and deteriorating nervous conditions that she held. And the doctors, HMOs, and government policy makers in Missouri were giving these folks much the same run-around that those in Michigan have long been using to stick-it to my mother.
We continued chatting and I began to tell a few of my many stories from Joplin. As each of these tend to begin and end with the Lord’s direct intervention, the telling of them drew out the godliness of my road companions. The relatively quiet husband had just been baptized a few months before. And I suspected the two of them were silently awed by the seemingly fictitious tales I was unraveling before them.
When we had drawn within ten miles of the couple’s turn-off point I started to think about the coming night. It was fast approaching six o’clock. The sky was now dim with twilight and I, of course, had no idea where I would bed. Nonetheless the presence of God in that car made it nothing worth worrying over; merely an errant thought.
Smiling, I said aloud, “I’ll be curious to see where God puts me tonight. Ever since I set foot in Joplin I’ve been expecting a hard life; sleeping rough and weathering the difficulties of being jobless, homeless, car-less… But so far the only night I haven’t had a roof over my head was when I intentionally turned up two available beds and chose to sleep under a bridge: Trying to toughen myself up for the trials I expected to come.
Even yesterday: I hitched out of Joplin with no more than four dollars to my name. And by the end of the night the Lord had still managed to deliver me into a shower, a bed, and a warm hotel room.” I chuckled, “I mean, when does this start getting hard? I expect it to be hard. Yet I am so-far amazed at the power of God and His provisions. I’ll really be curious to see what He does with me tonight.”
A few minutes later we reached the couple’s destination. They pulled into a gas station just off the highway to let me out. The husband disappeared quickly into the storefront as the wife came around to the trunk, helping me unload my gear and handing me a pair of Minute Maid grapefruit drinks for the road.
As I said my goodbyes to the wife, the husband leaned out the gas station door beckoning me inside. In the building, he introduced me to the woman working the counter telling her to ‘Take care of this boy.’ Then he turned to me, put out his hand, and shoved $100.00 in twenty dollar bills into my palm saying, “There’s a motel right across the street. If you can’t find another ride tonight, get yourself a room.”
I thanked and thanked him, leveling “a thousand blessings” on them both. I followed him back out to the car in persistent, continued thanks until they pulled away. Then I went into the gas station and sat down in a corner booth, thanking God and praying that every good thing should come upon that man and his wife. Not a day has passed since that I haven’t paused at some point, asking God to bless and keep these two.
That night I would sleep in my own motel room at the ‘Motel 60,’ featuring two beds, satellite TV, and for the first time since I left Michigan: privacy.
The Lord provides.
-
As far back as 1916 American farmers tried to introduce the insect ‘Harmonia axyridis,’ colloquially known as the ‘Asian Lady Beetle,’ into their fields to combat the effects of sap-sucking aphids on their crops. The Asian lady beetle is native to northeast Asia and acts as a natural predator to aphids. These early attempts to introduce it to American fields, however, proved unsuccessful.
In 1980 the U.S. Department of Agriculture made their own attempt to introduce these ladybug-like insects into the southeast; again the attempts were purportedly unsuccessful. However, in 1988 an established population of the insect was found just outside of New Orleans, Louisiana. In the two decades following its discovery, this origin-population would thrive in North America; spreading throughout most of the continental United States.
Trust me: It gets relevant.
After a quick breakfast at the diner next to the ‘Motel 60’ I was back on the road. The sky was overcast again and though I would be in and out of my rain poncho much of the morning in anticipation, I wouldn’t see a drop of rain all day. Within the first twenty minutes I found a ride: A thirty-something mom and her teenage son and daughter.
As I loaded my gear into the trunk of her car I noticed a book authored by Ellen G. White – a woman who lived in the 19th century, held by the ‘Seventh Day Adventist’ community to be a modern prophet of God. I asked her about it, thinking I had found an ‘in’ to start talking about God. But she responded as though it were just another piece of trash floating around her trunk.
I skirted around the godly topics for a bit, but found no easy starting point. Instead I found a general aversion to religion altogether; the same I and most of my Michigander compatriots held for so many years. When I picked up on it, I didn’t press the issue much more.
Perhaps someday I’ll be that guy who gets up in your face to tell you just how much you need God in your life, but that’s not in my character yet. She carted me about twenty miles up the road before dropping me across the street from a McDonalds, deep within the rocky foothills of Missouri.
The landscape was beautiful. I stood in the bosom of slightly mountainous, autumn shaded, forest covered hills; sand-colored stone embankments; and rolling mounds of green grazing pastures. I couldn’t think of a better backdrop for another day’s journey.
That is, until I had walked up and down a few of those rocky, forest covered hills. The splendor of a landscape can be quickly obscured by the burden of crossing it, and I would be hoofing it up and down these thirty degree inclines all day. In fact, after that first early morning ride I would be on foot the next five hours or so.
Still, the walk was good and I managed to keep an upbeat attitude throughout most of the day. My burden was eased by the beauty of the backdrop and the occasional company of curious horses and grazing cattle; to whom I would snort, neigh, and moo for my own deranged amusement.
My faith, though, was the greatest load-lifter. The certainty within me, that God was walking beside me and making movements on my behalf, had been made all the stronger by this third outing; in remembrance of how much He had already provided me in days before. All of which had been multiples greater than what I felt myself deserving. So even when I felt my own petulance building, I swatted it away aptly in the firm conviction that my Father was plucking at unseen forces, working an unknown plan.
Nonetheless, four hours into the long walk, at around two o’clock, my pessimism finally found itself a foothold. I had been taking roadside breaks once every ten to fifteen minutes. I would set the guitar, walking stick, and plastic bag on the ground and hunch over myself, with hands on knees: taking the weight of the backpack’s straps off my shoulders and placing its load more squarely onto my upper back. When I needed a greater break, (or a cigarette) I would take the backpack off and sit at roadside for a bit, behind my gear.
Now, throughout the day I had often been accompanied by two or three of these little multi-colored Asian beetles - clinging to my jeans, or walking the length of my guitar bag. They hadn’t been much of a nuisance. Very rarely would one get close enough to my neck or face to draw the flick of my finger. And I figured if I was asking others to give me a lift, it would be karmically hypocritical of me to deny the same to these modestly unobtrusive insects.
Even so, as I have so skillfully foreshadowed, these: my little red and black travel companions would turn from friend to foe at this, the dual-strike of the hour’s sounding bell.
For whatever reason, the Asian lady beetle seems to be drawn to dark colors, and I had found myself walking a roadside littered with thin patches of black shrubbery. Before realizing this I sat down on the concrete for one of my cigarette pit-stops. I dropped my gear, rolled the cigarette, lit it, and found myself staring down at the sight of, not two or three, but at least eight of the little critters climbing the wrinkles of my dungarees.
Still more had flocked to my guitar case. And the bravest of their lot were climbing my – oh Lord – dark black t-shirt. I jumped to my feet, brushing them from my chest and stamping my feet in the effort to shake them free of me. As I peered down the length of my body at the little devils, my eye’s focus shifted to the ground beneath me where they had fallen. There I saw the crushed remains of a little red beetle that must’ve found its way under my roadside Celtic step-dance routine.
As I lifted my eyes to the grassy embankment I saw a virtual armada of flame colored assailants rising from the brush, readying their attack. I had been outflanked! In no less than ten seconds I hastily threw every piece of my gear back onto my person and double-timed a retreat; swatting and brushing at this Japanese horde all the way.
From that moment on I could not stop for rest. Each time that I tried to take respite at the curb I would watch as the same cloud of insects slowly rose out of the black grass; no doubt having been radioed by their allied camp, and now seeking vengeance for their fallen comrade. Damned persistent Nips!
I would walk steadily for an hour, finding only momentary relief at the occasional driveway; where I could hide from the lady beetles just long enough to hunch myself over for a half-minute or two. Otherwise I was forced to continue humping the road non-stop, up and down the inclines, without harbor.
A little before three o’clock, I came upon a monstrous hill. Weakened from the hour’s restless walk I forced myself up the long, steep incline under the self-made promise that there was something special awaiting me at the top of it. Specifically, I imagined a large van parked just beyond the crest, containing a frame-mounted massage table and a masseuse who happened to specialize on shoulder aches and lower back realignments.
As I climbed the daunting road before me I could contain my negativity nolonger. I began to turn my sweaty brow and mounting frustrations upon the passing motorists. Where the Bible tells us to ‘bless and not curse our enemies,’ I had begun blessing the cars zipping by me out of a partially jocular spite. Lest there be any question among you, this is not the intent of the teaching; and I knew it. Still, this is what I did as I climbed that hill.
By the time I approached the apex I had let my tongue so loose of its bridle that I cast my first ill-meaning profanity. I looked over my shoulder, seeing yet another passenger van moving to the left lane, meaning to pass me on the farthest side. I turned my eyes forward again saying aloud, ‘That’s right motherfucker. Just drive by. No need to think of anyone but yourself. I’m just your brother in need.’
Even as I said these things, the same van that I was cursing emerged from my peripheral vision; pulling to a stop at the roadside before me. I walked to the passenger window, greeting the twenty-something male driver with a “Howdy.”
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Well, Nashville eventually, but any stretch up 60 east would be a great help.”
He hesitated, looking down at some papers on the console between the front seats. “Nashville, huh? I think that’s where I’m going too.”
This young man, Ryan, would later tell me of his brother’s recent return to North Carolina from serving in Iraq. He was headed through Nashville on his way to the east coast to visit. And he would shepherd me the whole rest of the way to my destination that very afternoon.
This man, the only who I had truly cursed from the edge of the road, would be my deliverer. He would treat me to snacks at the gas stations, dinner at a Taco Bell, and a cup from a jug of homemade wine which he had fermented himself as a wedding gift for his returning brother.
As a Christian he would bless me with godly conversation, encouragement in my travels, and the sound of a ‘Bloodhound Gang’ CD that I hadn’t heard since high school. I would arrive in Nashville, spiritually uplifted, physically refreshed, and a little tipsy from the wine.
Ryan left me at the same Taco Bell where we ate dinner; just a thirty minute walk away from downtown Nashville. I headed up the street to one of the many hotels on the strip and rented myself another room for the night; using the money gifted to me the day before.
I had made it to Nashville – two days ahead of schedule no less. And never on my journey had I been without a shower or a place to rest. I left Joplin with $4.00 to my name. Three nights and three motel rooms later I had traveled five hundred miles by thumb, foot, and faith alone, and I was left holding a net monetary gain.
Who denies the power of my God? Who denies His provisions? Who shall deny His Love?
Spring Hill, Florida - written 11-*-07
INTERIM UPDATE: Arrival in Spring Hill, FL
I've made it to Spring Hill, Florida and the residence of my grandparents. Turkey day is fast upon us and I look forward to a home-cooked family feast. I am still working on the next post, concerning my hitch-hiking adventures between Joplin and Nashville. Life has been moving fast up until these last two days and my ability to write has slowed to a drip. Hopefully I will have the next article for you all before Thanksgiving.
Until then, know that I am safe and all is well. (Were there ever any doubt.)
Concerning the Week of October 22nd
Randy Riggs is out of St. John’s hospital. Apparently they kicked him out. I haven’t bothered to free the details of the incident from Randy except to say that they told him not to come back.
He came walking up to the Refuge Thursday. When I noticed him sitting on the dock I ran over to see how he was and catch up on his hospital stay. In speaking to him, he seemed as lucid as I’d ever known him to be.
Randy usually takes a few seconds to assemble and complete the sentences that he starts. The deeper into the alcohol he is, the more pronounced the delay seems to become. When I spoke to him Thursday he bore almost no noticeable pause in his speech whatsoever and for once I thought it possible that he was entirely sober.
Knowing that he had only shortly hit the ground from detox, I pressed him to find out what his plan would be in relation to getting ‘back on his feet.’ He told me that first he needed to get new identification. Someone had walked off with a pair of pants containing his state ID and Social Security card some weeks earlier. In order to get above-board, legal work and to take advantage of the works programs in the area, he would need these two pieces, at least. I was happy to hear he had a plan of action.
While we were catching up he mentioned that he hadn’t slept in about two days and when I looked at him, it was evident that he was on the verge of passing out. Noting to myself that it was one in the afternoon, and that just behind me, within the Refuge, lie nineteen or-so empty beds, I offered him mine saying, “If you need a nap you can crash on my bed for a while and I’ll make sure to kick you out with a few hours of daylight left so you can figure out where you’re going to stay overnight.”
He agreed happily and I walked him back to my mattress, where he appeared to immediately zonk out. Then I walked over to one of the shelter officials, Paula, to let her know that I was letting Randy take a nap; in case anyone asked what he was doing sleeping here. (He was kicked out of the joint just two weeks earlier, after all – and some may seek to create turmoil where there is none, taking new offense at his mere presence.)
Paula immediately came at me with chastisements, first saying “I wish you wouldn’t have done that. You need to ask one of us before you let someone use your bed.”
“You know, he did a lot to make people angry around here. Is he drunk?”
I told her that as far as I knew he had just been released from detox at the Hawthorne center and that he seemed about as sober as I’d ever seen him. Then she said something that really tried my patience.
“Well, as full as we are here lately, I wouldn’t be risking my own bed for a guy like Randy Riggs.”
To begin with, that statement is a thinly veiled threat upon my residency at the Refuge. Inasmuch it is also an antagonism intended to lure me into some heated verbal dispute. Further it is as an insult upon a good friend of mine and just the kind of ungodly judgment we are all called to refrain from all throughout the Bible and the teaching’s of Christ; lest we ourselves should at any time risk coming under the same judgment, finding the Almighty for a magistrate.
Most offensive is the lack of charity, compassion, and love in Paula’s response: It was neither a godly, nor a Christian way to behave.
I think when Paula finds herself left in charge she fears, consciously or otherwise, that she might be found lacking or in error by the other ‘administrators’ at the Refuge; perhaps even by the pastor. Therein Paula has a tendency to be overly forceful in upholding the house rules, which are typically left slack by the other head-residents unless a situation of clear abuse transpires. Should any moment arise in which Paula has to make a call herself she will uphold the status quo of the day, even when that status quo stands in opposition to the godly, the Christian, or even the shelter doctrine.
I don’t believe I apologized to her for bringing Randy in, but I simply endured the negativity of her discourse and finished by reiterating my message of ‘Here he is; this is why; and I’m responsible.’
I went back to my bed where Randy was hovering between consciousness and slumber, and I quietly started putting together my backpack for a trip down to the Discount Liquor store to buy some more tobacco. Randy popped an eye open and we started chatting.
He had overheard some of what Paula and I had exchanged, and he didn’t want to get me in trouble. He moved to get up but I bid him to stay telling him, ‘Don’t worry about it: You need to get some sleep and I have an empty bed. It would be altogether unchristian of me to deny a man something he had need of, when I hold the same in plenty. And if anyone here wants to judge me by that, I will receive their judgment happily.’
Quickly our conversation turned to the true nature of God; That God is love. And that our God’s love is made manifest in charity, compassion, forgiveness, and long-suffering. We talked about the Christ-obsession; the notion that tends to run rampant through the Christian church: that acceptance of Christ as personal savior is the end-all, be-all of godliness; and the lackings of such a philosophy in its ignorance toward the doing of the word and even the teachings of Jesus himself.
In the end we were talking about the call to bottomless charity, endless forgiveness, and unflappable love when Paula came walking up in a fluster.
“I’m sorry Randy, but you just have to leave.”
Paula went on for a moment self-justifying and self-excusing as we sat in silence at the end of my bed. Eventually she turned and walked away; with Randy and I following shortly thereafter in her wake. We left the building in awe and laughter, musing over the timing and synchronicity of the thing: Paula appearing to kick Randy out of a Christian shelter just as our conversation had peaked upon the ideals of godliness in charity and love.
The confrontation was enough to snap Randy back to a fully waking state, if only temporarily. We walked off into the sunset in pursuit of tobacco and a bed. I put Randy Riggs back on Tony’s sofa for the night; resolving to return the next day and accompany him on his quest for a new ID.
-
There is an Indian missionary (dots not feathers) who’s been coming around the Refuge sporadically for the last few weeks. He is in his sixties and says he’s been doing missionary work in India and elsewhere most of his life.
Whenever I have seen or spoken to him, he has handed me a new pamphlet or article he’s authored. The first one I saw was on the topic of putting away riches and rewards in heaven.
It is a biblical concept passed down from Paul, I believe, and based upon the words of Jesus, that the good works we do in this life - in ministry, charity, and the reaping of men’s souls - shall be rewarded in heaven. That by doing the work of the Lord on Earth we are amassing a great wealth of spiritual riches which shall lie in store until our arrival at the pearly gates.
The Indian preacher repeats this basic premise throughout the document, both adding to and diminishing it as it suits his overall concept. I took a liking to the preacher when I first spoke to him: The mystery and allure of the overseas missionary and a life spent traveling the globe in service to God was, in and of itself, endearing. So when I read his musings I gave the text my unwavering attention and unblemished hope of good things.
What I found in his pages was disappointing. It focused so heavily on the idea of “running the race” (another of Paul’s writings telling us to work zealously and feverishly for God as if it were a competition that only one could win) and rooted itself so firmly in the philosophies of a reward-based faith that all I could do was smile at its author politely.
Where “running the race” tells us to be zealous in our godly works I am in agreement. But where it may imply that the spreading of God’s message and His will is, or should be, regarded as a competitive event, I am offended. And though there be many passages in the bible which reinforce the notion of a reward-based faith, I do not find it a good teaching.
Instead I find our true reward is first the fruit of our lives lived in the purity and the truth of God. I place this first because it is a much overlooked facet of the life of faith. So much time is spent, in Christianity, teaching to obey God out of fear and reverence; yet nary have I heard a sermon mention the earthly blessings of residing in the Lord; at least none that didn’t suggest God was going to buy you a new pickup truck.
Often we are taught to prepare ourselves for the tribulations that will befall God’s servants on Earth but few have stood to remind us that the pains, trials, and deprivations which the forces of man may lay upon us are but a nuisance when we suffer them for, and from within, the spirit of God.
It is the life of service itself which conceals the lesser, often overlooked, portion of our reward. Following the philosophies, edicts, and commands lain out by Jesus and those of the living God reveals to each who discovers them a life that is truly worth living; where love abounds and worry is no more; where hope, faith, and conviction are multiplied and doubt is lain to rest; where the purity of unbridled freedom flies so that no cage is able to contain it; and where the powers and principalities of the world cannot tread nor bid to loose us of our love.
I am certain that the agony the disciples and apostles suffered when they were tortured, crucified, burned alive, and fed to lions, was a joyous holiday when compared to the endless banality and recurring torment of a life lived complete in ignorance or denial of God’s love.
Herein the first reward of the disciple is in the beauty added to him and to his earthly days in obedience to those perfect teachings of the Father. Yes, greater rewards await beyond the confines of the flesh: Everlasting life; spiritual form; true congress with the Father… But in all honesty, I am content if even only this first reward were true. So much greater is the life I know now than any of my other worldly pursuits - so much the more fulfilling and meaningful than any other person I have been or any other path that I have walked - that I am satisfied to follow God thusly until my last day, receiving none other reward but this I know on Earth; thereafter sleeping forevermore.
So it offends me when this Indian preacher attempts to move people to godly works and charity by motivation of some heavenly capitalism; by the principle that the harder and longer you work for God, the more you get in the end.
After reading it I recall remarking to someone at the Refuge that if there is any such form of capitalism in heaven you can cast me into the lake of fire right now. I wish no part in a heaven that contains the same melodrama of one-ups-man-ship I suffer about me today. I expect and demand more than that of the afterlife. I demand an afterlife that espouses a greater morality than the ‘every man for himself’ ethos of personal gain.
My thoughts turn to this parable, spoken by Jesus:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.
And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.
So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, these last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.” (Mat. 20:1-16)
Later that day the Indian preacher discovered that I am a computer repair technician by trade, and that I know how to program web pages. He has a site up at the web address http://www.wealthyever.com/ and he needs someone to register it with the various search engines.
The website is an even worse version of the sheet I read. In fairness, the man is just looking to generate donations for Christian oriented programs which would benefit the poor and starving in the east. Nonetheless I have never been one to condone or believe in justifying the means by the ends. And when it comes to God, I abhor any who will stoop to ‘market’ His message. Even moreso do I lament those who would manipulate the message toward their own purpose.
So I was uncertain as to whether I should help this missionary register his website. On one hand I am taught of Jesus that those who aren’t against us are with us; and surely this man is ‘with us’ at least insomuch as he exalts the name of Jesus and calls others to charity and fellowship with the poor and in-need. On the other hand I am taught in the second epistle of John that our allies are proven in the doctrine of Christ and that to assist him who is found false in the doctrine is to partake of his “evil deeds.” By measure of the doctrine I find this man waning.
I told him that I would look at it again when next I got my laptop online, making no explicit promise to assist him, neither ruling it out.
The next time I saw him he handed me another of his writings; this one entitled “God or Gun?” Within the three page document I was informed that abortion is wrong because it is murder, but it’s okay to go to war and kill full grown human beings – that is, if your government is endorsed by God. I was also told that the Lord generally prefers conservative politicians and that the Indian preacher himself is responsible for getting George W. Bush elected in America.
He wrote that in the 2000 election, he asked God who was going to win the American presidency. God told him Al Gore would be the victor. But knowing that “God prefers conservatives” he prayed that the voters would be confused and would accidentally vote for Bush instead. His prayers were answered in Florida. Seven years and over one million deaths later, God’s will be done?
So between claiming responsibility for placing a murderous administration into power, and outright contradicting the doctrines of Jesus by suggesting that it is okay to kill your brother under the right circumstances… It is with great regret that I must inform you I will not be assisting the Indian missionary in his online pursuits at this time. May the Lord bless and keep him.
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Since I first decided to hit the road, I’ve been reading through the New Testament. In truth I was drawn first to the gospels and the life of Christ. Once I read, in full, the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I was washed in the beauty of Christ’s teachings and necessarily craved more.
So I continued reading through the letters and epistles of the New Testament. As I write this I can now say that my eyes have touched every word of this latter doctrine, even unto the last marking in the book of Revelation.
But when my readings reached Galatians I started taking notes. I have a pocket sized notebook wherein, when I find a passage that resonates a special truth, I will make a quick summation of its meaning to me, notating the chapter and verse where it can be found. Between Galatians and Jude I have filled three pages with these markers; often writing in a size font-two hand.
Placing the gospels aside, as I hold them in a greater reverence than any other text within the Bible, I have found the general epistle of James to be my favorite. His words are straight and direct, speaking truth after truth with little ceremony or bluster between.
If any read these pages, finding interest in the message of Christ, yet are daunted by the length, parable nature, or sheer gravity of the gospels, I tender you the book of James. In just five chapters and three pages much of the heart of the message is stated.
Of these five chapters I have filled my little notebook with the following references:
Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath; 1:19-20
Be doers, not only hearers; 1:22-27
Those seeming religious, but with unbridled tongue; 1:26-27
Have no respect of persons (rich and poor); 2:1-9
Faith without works is dead; 2:14-17
Keep thy tongue; 3:1-13 (2-3)
Pursuit of earthly means (friend of the world is enemy of God); 4:1-4
Making plans without God; 4:13-15
The rich are corrupted; 5:1-5 (6)
Swear not and make no oaths; 5:12
This epistle of James kicks my ass. It comes hard and fast and doesn’t take pause for comfort’s sake. After reading so much of Paul’s writings, which are often longwinded, heavy, and self justifying, I found relief in the rebellious, youthful vigor of this testament. If you only read one book of the bible, gospels aside, read James.
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On Friday I went down to Tony’s to pick up Randy. We loosed the bloodhounds and began the day’s hunt for a Missouri state photo ID. Our first stop was Soul’s Harbor: the most oft spoken of homeless shelter in the area.
The last time Randy lost his ID – which is an easy thing to do when you’re homeless – the people at Soul’s Harbor helped him fill out the proper forms and do whatever was needed for the state to reissue. With that history in mind, it seemed most expedient to ask for their assistance again.
We traversed the ten blocks to the Soul’s Harbor main office; Randy, who rarely wears shoes, slipped on a pair of sandals; and we entered. I’ve never been to Soul’s Harbor before - either their main offices or the shelter - so I didn’t know what to expect.
My fellow vagrants have told me few positive stories relating to the Harbor. Most often I’ve heard about the heavy handed rules and restrictions placed on its residents, and how those rules led to their eventual ousting. I have gathered, from this second-hand information, that if you are to stay at the Harbor you are expected to be in-house by 10:00p, from then on locked in for the night; You must be out by some ungodly hour in the morning; Attendance of bi-weekly church services and recovery programs is mandatory; And each night an alcohol blow-test is administered. Failure to pass this test results in immediate removal and suspension from use of Soul Harbor facilities for some amount of time.
(To be honest I’ve discovered that the Refuge has much the same written rules. It is only the grace of the staff which allows for the bending and easing of these restrictions.)
My aversion to rule-makers aside, I brought a positive outlook to this first experience with Soul’s Harbor, refusing to judge it by any other man’s opinion. When we walked in we were greeted with the site of an elderly, grey haired woman in the midst of conversation with an older man seated on a bench. A few desks behind her sat a larger, younger, red headed woman at a computer.
Randy was called back by the woman at the computer and I took a seat, expecting a long wait. The older lady quickly finished with the man she was talking to and sent him out the door. Almost immediately she turned to Randy, presumably overhearing what he and the redhead were discussing, saying in a loud, authoritative tone, “I don’t have time for you today, Randy. You come back next week.”
Randy got up from the redhead, walking back toward me, and seated himself on the bench across from where the elderly woman stood.
“The last time you helped me with this all I need was my Medicaid card,” Randy said.
The redhead called out, “No. Your going to need your birth certificate. Where were you born.”
As Randy and the redhead talked, the elderly woman chimed in again with a scorning, motherly tone saying, “I don’t have time today, you’ll have to come back.”
The redhead chimed in, “Actually we’ll be pretty busy Monday too. You should just come back Tuesday.”
As I listened to all this I could feel the hope draining out of Randy’s soul. I had come over to Tony’s and motivated him to get out and work his plan: getting his ID, then his Social Security card, then going down to the employment center. These woman were telling him that if it was going to happen at all, he would first need his birth certificate: a document that can take weeks to get and cost ridiculous amounts of money, depending upon the will of the state. And even if he were to produce this fabled scroll, they refuse to assist him in it for another five days.
I chimed in, asking what-all he would need. If it was going to turn into a huge ordeal getting this ID, I wanted to know all the steps that he and I could take in the interim, on our own. Inasmuch I thought that if I knew what had to be done I could get firmly behind Randy, doing whatever I could to make it happen.
While I was still trying to pry the information loose from the somewhat affable redhead, the elderly woman blurted out, “You’re drunk, Randy. Get out of here!”
With a snap, Randy got up and walked out. I followed quickly, still lingering within a mild disbelief of how he had been treated by this “Christian” woman and her “Christian” organization. These people require their residents to attend church twice a week, yet their representatives “don’t have time” for the needy; had rendered judgment upon Randy from the moment he walked in; and rebuked an alcoholic looking for help.
As the glass door slowly shut behind me I turned around, catching the elderly woman’s eye, and spoke in a clear, sorrowful voice, “It shall be said that when I was an hungered you did not feed me.”
The look on her face was priceless. Her mouth hung slightly open; her eyes wide and brows raised; pupils tight: staring daggers at me. It was an expression of either fear, insult, great hatred, or some mixture of the three.
As I walked away a thought came into my mind that made me chuckle, even as Randy still cursed the world in the midst of his frustration. It is my greatest hope that those women, having done us no benefit and having run us from their property even as we asked for their help, should wonder if, in me, they had just entertained an angel.
The bible tells us to “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”(Heb. 13:2) They did not know me nor have they seen me ever before. I stood in wait of Randy, hovering over him and taking his cause as my own. And when I left them I spoke the words of Jesus. Plus, I look pretty austere in the P-Coat I’ve been wearing. I pulled it out of the refuge donations. I could definitely hide a pair of wings under this thing.
If only a brief flash of question occurred in their minds: that they knew not whom they had just treated with such distain; then I am happy. For therein have they the chance to repent their folly and attempt to change the oh-so-human and oh-so-ungodly behavior that led them to wonder of my origin.
As we walked away I recall saying to Randy, “You know, this town treats you like you’re the anti-Christ. Jesus taught that if a city rejects us we should kick even the dust of its streets from off our feet and move on. You need to get the hell out of here, man.”
But Randy has his own plan. Joplin is a cheap town with cheap living. Randy figures if he can get a job and save up his money, he can return to LA with enough to put the first and last on an apartment. I’ve tried to express to him the folly of making plans without God, but he’s not really a believer in the first place. He abides most of the doctrine of Jesus as a peace loving man, but where I might ask him to accept that there truly is a God he remains agnostic; favoring an ambiguous definition of God that focuses on cosmic energies and nonintervention.
What can I say, except, ‘been there.’ Honestly, there isn’t much to separate our ideals on God’s nature other than that I now accept, wholeheartedly, that God is a father and provider. God does not leave us to fend for ourselves, but when we act in a godly way He intervenes; filling us with His strength and power, protecting us from unnecessary harm, and guiding us to do His will and follow His path.
I still favor an idea of God that looks to omnipresence and ethereal greatness; A God so ever-present that it cannot truly be defined nor contained in the pronoun Him; A thought and nature that does not liken God to any human form, pegging it as some mighty, grey-haired King seated atop a golden throne in the sky. Nonetheless my God understands me, hears my thoughts and prayers, leads and teaches me, and pours “His” glory into my cup that I may use “His” might and beauty to exalt “Him” before my brothers in mankind.
Where Randy and I differ, I think, is where God hears, cares, promises, and intervenes.
A bit daunted by our experience at Soul’s Harbor, we walked on. Randy was certain that he didn’t need his birth certificate to get an ID. This time we would go straight to the horse’s mouth: The DMV.
After a brief respite at The Refuge we crossed the 7th street bridge to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hailing from Michigan I am used to a different setup. In Michigan there is no DMV, only a Secretary of State wherein near every transaction between citizen and state is overseen. So when Randy and I entered the Joplin, Missouri DMV to the sight of short lines and the absence of any Take-a-Number ticket system, I thought it a bit odd.
He walked right up to the counter without wait or hesitation. I lingered, leaning against a wall, across the room while he talked with the DMV agent. When he returned he brought with him a cup full of clarity, though no ID.
First off, Randy would not need his birth certificate to get his ID, but only his Medicaid card and $11.00; just as he had thought. This makes the Soul’s Harbor ladies, not only ignorant of God, but ignorant of their own jobs. Second, it became clear why there was no wait and no line between Randy and the counter: The computers were “down!”
Boy, I hate that term: “The computers are down.” As a computer repair technician it only urks me to hear such a ludicrous statement. If the power is up, the computers can’t be “down;” not all of them. One or two might blow a power supply in sequence but not all of them! What you mean to say, lady, is that the internet connection linking these computers to the offsite servers (aka.: the network) has gone offline. Okay? The computers are up… The network connection is down.
But I digress. We had discovered that we would have no further need of the Soul’s Harbor staff. Though it seemed we would be unable to get the ID today. That meant waiting until Monday, which pushed the possibility of getting Randy’s Social Security card, not to mention applying for work, even farther off. Again we met defeat.
We left the DMV and turned east; Randy wanted a beer. With a friendly tone I shunned the activity, nonetheless accompanying him for the purchase and consumption thereof. Before we entered the store I told him, “I don’t know how much money you’ve got but whatever you do: Set that $11.00 for the ID aside so we can get it Monday.” He agreed, we bought the twelve pack, and he slammed two or three of them in the alley beside the store.
We’d passed about a half hour sitting beside the grocers so when we stood to leave Randy suggested we swing by the DMV again, to see if the “computers were up.” As we approached the DMV Randy queried one of the exiting patrons, discovering the happy news that the computers were functional again.
Out of necessity, I waited outside the DMV as Randy waited in line. We were now traveling with an opened twelve pack of Steel Reserve - 8.1% alcohol by volume - beer. I tucked it behind my legs, letting the back of my coat cover the box, as I sat on the building’s window ledge.
Within ten minutes Randy emerged.
“You got it?!” I asked excitedly, with the day’s victory in mind.
“I didn’t have the money.”
“But I told you not to spend the eleven!”
“I know… but I’ve got another twenty back at Tony’s house that I thought I had with me.”
“Oh hell.”
We sat there for a moment, sulking; more defeated than ever. Soon enough the spark plugs warmed and fired in my skull. A few days earlier my mom had sent me a care package in the mail. In it she stuck a $20.00 bill which now found its residence in my wallet.
I bust out the twenty saying, “Go get your ID son.”
Three hours, two demonic Soul’s Harbor employees, a twelve pack, and one failed network connection later: Randy Riggs now has a Missouri state photo ID.
Let nothing whatsoever obstruct the work of the Lord.
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Friends, I am soon to depart Joplin toward Spring Hill, Florida by way of Nashville, Tennessee. My grandparents will be holding a sort-of reunion Thanksgiving dinner that I have every intention of attending. Within the next 7 to 10 days I will meet the highway and outstretch my thumb, hoping to land in Nashville by the 16th, where I shall meet my uncle who has agreed to cart my vagrant buttocks into the warm embrace of the sunshine state; where friends, family, and – mmm – my grandmother’s cooking awaits.
It is possible that I will winter along the southern Florida coasts if such be the will of God. You may all expect at least one more update before I depart. There is much left to tell of Joplin, Randy Riggs, the Refuge, and its peoples. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to tell it all.
May you walk with God.
Joplin, Missouri - written 10-31;11-1,2,3,4-07