Punch-uation

D is generally a nice guy. Soft-spoken and mild-mannered, he came to the Mission last month after being thrown out of another shelter in a nearby city. The other shelter will take just about anyone and has made the news a lot lately because several of its residents with mental problems have caused trouble among that mission’s neighbors. I wondered at the time what D would have had to have done to be thrown out of that place, but since his conversation generally doesn’t make much sense, there was little chance that I’d have been able to discover the true reason.

D follows a fairly predictable pattern: for the first few days, he’s very compliant and expresses gratitude that we have taken him in and given him some little tasks to do. We couldn’t give him anything difficult or complicated, but he did well washing dishes or cleaning floors. He usually worked slowly, but without complaint and did a fairly good job.

After the first few days though, he would begin to become agitated over otherwise inconsequential things: strong smells would upset him, loud noises would irritate him. He’d develop stomach aches and other minor physical complaints. When these things began to appear, I knew it was time for him to start leaving during the daytime and returning only to sleep at nights.

He’d usually go somewhere west of town to visit family, but one assumes he followed the same pattern there as here and within a day or two he’d be back eating and sleeping at the Mission. After several days, he’d come asking if he could start staying at the mission during the day and the pattern would repeat itself.

We don’t usually let people go from one classification to the other like that, but I knew that D wouldn’t be able to handle either situation full-time, long-term, so I tried to work with him. Things were going well enough and I thought we’d found a happy compromise that worked well enough for all.

However, on Sunday, D became agitated when I asked him to help do the dishes in the kitchen. He’d gotten up late and had been grouchy all morning, so I knew the time had come for him to go visit his family or start staying only the nights, and told him so.

This time, though, instead of agreeing with me, as he usually did, he grew very angry and punched me in the jaw. He then grabbed me by the arm and shoved me into a counter, ran around the prep table, grabbed a knife and started waving it around.

As soon as a couple of big guys had gotten into the kitchen and convinced D to put down the knife, I went and called the police. D wouldn’t leave the property, he claimed, until I did. I don’t know what he hoped to accomplish by that, but if he somehow thought that he had some grounds for pressing charges against me, it would be the second time a resident had unsuccessfully tried to do so.

The police came quickly, since we’re located just across the street from the station, and got D under control. I told them what had happened, showed them the letter the Mission gave me authorizing me to evict residents and call the police, and gave them a statement.

“Do you want to press criminal charges?” the officer asked.

I didn’t know exactly how to answer him; on the one hand, I didn’t especially want D to go to jail, but then sometimes the police get a little upset if you call them and then don’t press charges.

“I want to cooperate fully with you guys,” I temporized, “if you’d rather I press charges, I will, but as far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy if he just leaves the Mission’s property and doesn’t return.”

In the end, we filed an official trespass report on him so that if he ever returns, he’ll be charged with criminal trespass, and then let him go his own way.

In hindsight, I probably should have pressed criminal charges; not because I want him to go to jail, but because he really doesn’t have anywhere to go and the nights are pretty cold right now. If he’d have gone to jail, they’d have probably put him somewhere for psychiatric evaluation and possibly committed him to one of the state mental institutions for his own protection.

This job is filled with all kinds of decisions that I have to make on nearly a daily basis where a person’s welfare hangs in the balance. I’ve never had to make decisions like this before and I have no idea how well I’m really doing. There’s a lot of stress involved in that, but at the end of the day, I just have to trust in God to lead me and guide me in my decisions and give the stress to Him.

Pray for D.

Conscience?

“Did you get enough sleep?” The night man asked me.

I just looked at him like he was crazy; it was 7 am and I hadn’t gone to bed last night until 3.

“Your conscience?”

I had to curb my anger when he intimated that I should have a guilty conscience. You see, the night before, I’d had to tell our youngest resident, we call him Billy the Kid, that he had lost all of his priveleges and was being moved to the “line”.

Line people are those who are nightly residents. They leave the Mission early each morning and go out and do whatever returning at lunch/and or dinner. They have to be at the Mission each afternoon at 4:45 in order to stay the night, they attend a Bible study, eat dinner, shower and then retire to the dorm where they must stay until the next morning. They have no TV room priveleges.

Billy the Kid has been with us for about 6 weeks; in that time, he’s broken several rules–some of them severe. We caught him “huffing” paint to get high soon after his arrival, and we’ve had various other problems with him since. He’s basically a good kid, but sadly has become somewhat institutionalized in group homes and the like. He’s one of the smoothest liars I’ve ever encountered and an expert at not looking guilty when caught in the act of breaking a rule. It’s obviously held him in good stead over the years, but in government-run institutions. In a place like ours where we use the leading of the Holy Spirit to (hopefully and prayerfully) guide our actions, it doesn’t float.

After his penultimate infraction, I’d evicted him from his semi-private room into the men’s dorm hoping that he’d see both the precariousness of his situation and the serioius need to change his attitude. Last night, though, I discovered that he assumed he could just sleep in the dorm, but still use his former room as his own at any time he thought I wouldn’t know about it. So, at 11:00 pm, I let him know that he’d be leaving on the line this morning.

“No, I have no reason to have a guilty conscience. This is my job. I have to make sure that people understand that they have to follow the rules whether someone’s looking at them or not. If God sends someone to Hell, because they refused to accept the gift of His Son’s shed blood as payment for their sins, He may not feel great about it, but I’m sure he doesn’t feel Guilty. Billy chose to break the rules, I didn’t make him do that, so the guilt is his and his alone. I don’t feel happy about having to discipline him, but it has to be done if he’s ever going to stop being a kid and start being a man.”

Evidently it hasn’t worked yet. I found out when I came down this morning that Billy had left with an attitude: “I’d better get out, I don’t want to be down here when he get’s down or I might do something else stupid and get thrown out completely.”

He didn’t have to be here to have done something stupid; I told him to “pack whatever you can carry and put the rest in the donations to go to Mexico. You came with only what you could carry and if you get back on the program, you can get more stuff then, but you have to carry everything you own with you every time you leave the mission.”

Instead of packing everything to go out in the donations, he put it in the laundry room hoping that the clothing would be washed and put in the cabinets to be later reclaimed by him, should he return on the program. Again, a little thing, but direct disobedience to an order: his forte.

I pray for the boy, that he’ll learn to be a man.

Madhouse!

The problem with serving meals to the general public is that we have no idea how many will show up. We could have no more than the people who are currently staying at the mission, or we could be packed to the rafters. It’s extremely hard to prepare for a meal when the projected numbers range from 0 – 1,000.

The girl that’s working for me in the kitchen is a real hard-case. She used to work in this very kitchen before, unsupervised, before someone turned her in for a couple of past warrants and she was sent to prison. We’ve had a rocky road so far, I’ve had to really get on her to prove that I’m in charge and that things are being run differently from when she was here before.

Before, her pimp was the director of operations.

That’s right, her PIMP.

He had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes and was the second-in-charge at the mission. He got three girls that used to work for him to enter the program and was pimping them out to residents at a nearby motel before the Pastor finally figured it out.

We figure it was he who turned the girl in because she didn’t follow him when he was ejected from the mission. Even though she apparently wants to change her life, she still wants to receive the special treatment she used to get, and to be able to break the rules whenever she wants like she was able to before.

After a particularly nasty set-to between us over her poor attitude, she retaliated by cooking two turkeys without unwrapping them.

On the positive side, though, we got in a guy from Alaska who’s a wonder. A good, hard worker, he always has a smile on his face. He can fix anything electrical and has already fixed our lawn mower and two weed eaters. We’re going to try him out on the plumbing next, he says he’s just as handy there.

I was a little worried about him at first sight–he rode a bicycle all the way from Juno Alaska because he has a social anxiety disorder and won’t get in a car. He’s hippie looking and a little flakey until you get used to him, but I gave him a chance and we couldn’t be happier about it. He’s agreed to stay until Spring!

And, we’ve got plenty of food even with the two plasticized turkeys. Just yesterday we had 10 fully cooked, smoked turkeys donated. We deboned them and put them in roasting pans and those should be all the turkey we need for both meals. In the past week, we’ve also had several pumpkin and pecan pies donated, we’ve gotten in roasting pans full of stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans and lots of gravy. In fact, we haven’t had to cook anything especially for the day except a few trays full of deviled eggs.

Still, in order to keep everything fresh, we had to freeze the pans of stuffing, beans and potatoes. Now we’re racing against the clock to get all of the pans heated up in our one working oven.

I’m heating up the gravy in two crock pots and a pan full of turkey in a portable steamer. We’re not confident in the steamer because we had to pull it out of mothballs just this morning; I should have checked it out to make sure it worked before, but I’ve just been snowed under with work for the past week and it slipped my mind.

Still, if everything isn’t defrosted well enough an hour before we’re supposed to serve, we’ll start nuking.

I don’t anticipate any serious problems, which means that we’ll probably have them!

At the end of the day, though, this is Thanksgiving. I’m thankful that I have a job; a place to stay and food on the table. I’m thankful that I have the confidence of the executive director and the board of directors and that I’m proving equal to the task–something that was in question as little as a month ago.

Additionally, I’m thankful that I’ve found a place where I can freely share the gospel and help people to get their lives together. I’m thankful that I’ve had some notable successes in that area; I’ve got two guys that have made remarkable progress and I have hopes for a few of the others, as well.

Most of all, though, I’m thankful that God sent His Son, Jesus, to live a sinless life, but die on the cross accused of my crimes; that Jesus was buried and went to Hell in my place, but rose from the dead, ascended to Heaven and sits now at the right hand of God the Father. I’m thankful that Jesus’ blood paid the price for my sins in full, my sins of the past, present and future. That there’s nothing more that I could do to make His sacrifice more complete, that my sins are forgiven and that Jesus is waiting for me to join Him in Heaven when my work on Earth is done.

In a recent post, I quoted a person who blogged about his homelessness. His blog is what he’s calling a book–a guide if you will–to help people be homeless. A careful purusal of his entire site will quickly inform the astute reader that he advocates homelessness as a legitimate alternative lifestyle. I base this conclusion on statements such as these:

• I’m not the first to do what I did, to live homeless well. I’m not the first to find advantage in homelessness. It is a well kept secret that homelessness can be freedom and comfort can attend it. The secret is well kept …
• You’d be surprised how many advantages there are to a homeless lifestyle. While there is an aspect of difficulty and hardship, there is also an element of easy living. I was made homeless by circumstances, but I stayed homeless by choice.
• The freedom is awesome. [...] In the end, the freedom to do as you please is addictive.
• There are advantages to homelessness. You are no longer slave to a wage.

So, what appears to be his not-so-hidden aggenda, is to encourage people to consider homelessness as a viable alternative lifestyle. He points out in some of the same posts from which I took the above comments, that sleeping in public is against the law. He puts it “there are laws against homelessness” which, in my opinion, is stretching the point. Not only homeless people sleep in public–I’ve fallen asleep more than once in a park on a beautiful spring day and even on a bus bench after a grueling day at work.

What he never acknowledges in any of his posts, though, is the fact that in order to continue to live homeless as he did, one must at some point seek government or charitable aid. He never at one time (and wisely so for his purposes) acknowledges the fact that he was either on food stamps the entire five-year period, receiving food from food banks, eating regularly at shelters or other charities that feed the poor, or all of the above. However, anyone with half a brain can see that he did. He says:

Imagine working two weeks to pay for your expenses for two months. You can easily go to college with an income requirement so low. My expenses, excluding food, averaged $300 per month for the five years I was homeless.

So, if he worked only for his expenses, which he clearly states excludes food, where did his food come from?

At the end of the day, virtually every homeless person in the world has to rely on government or charitable aid to survive. Without it, they would have to (gasp) get a full-time job and go back to being “a slave to the wage” like you and I. Like every responsible person in the world who is not independently wealthy.

Now, I will give him the credit for apparently living by his own resources more than most other homeless do, and kudos for that. If you have to do something, by all means, do it well. However, every time you read anything autobiographical, you have to remember that all of the information, regardless of how selfless and open it may appear to be, is filtered through the writers opinion of himself. Every autobiography also leaves out a lot of information that may well prove to be essential, but which would put him or her in a negative light.

Nobody ever writes anything autobiographical which would ultimately paint him- or herself in a negative light.

At the end of the day, though, as I highlighted in the collection of quotes above, while he blames his homelessness on circumstances (which he would like us to assume were out of his control, but remember, this is the one who claimed that his voluntary withdrawal from college coupled with being a male from a non-ethnic background was to blame for his homelessness), he clearly states that he could have moved off of the streets–thus stopped taking government or private charity–sooner than he did, but that he remained homeless by choice. Homeless people are a drain on any society. Even if they do not actively take money out of the government till, neither do they contribute their fair share. With Social Security on the brink, we need everyone working and contributing as much as he or she can–and that’s just one example.

The fact is, homeless people see themselves as the beneficiaries of goods and services, but for any society to work, we need to think of JFK’s admonition to stop asking what our country can do for us, but rather what we can do for our country.

Which reminds me of another presidential quote: President Regan said that lots of homeless people were there by choice and getting a lot of flack over that statement. How is it now OK for a homeless person to say the same thing and think himself to be immune from criticism?

Watchmen

Son of man, I have made you a watchman [to your own nation]: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, “You shall surely die; and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at your hand. Yet if you warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul.
Again, When a righteous man turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because you have not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also you have delivered your soul. (Ezekiel 3:17 – 21)

The most common criticism I hear about Gospel shelters such as ours is that we “force” our beliefs on others. I just love the way our critics are changing the word “force.”

What we do at the mission (and what is done at the majority of Gospel Missions) is to require that clients sit through a Bible study before lunch and another before dinner. I make it very clear during the intake process that we are a Gospel shelter and that they will have to attend these meetings, but that they do not have to believe what we say. I state clearly that we do not require them to convert to Christianity from another religion or from no religion at all. I assure them that we in no way base our decision to give or withold services on a person’s religious beliefs, that we of course would love it if they would become Christian, but that decision is strictly between the client and the Holy Spirit.

So, saying that we “force” our beliefs on clients is to stretch the meaning of the word to the breaking point. The same people who make this claim are the very ones most likely to hold demonstrations on the streets and engage in civil disobedience and other political maneuvers. We could easily draw the same parallel that these people are “forcing” us to listen to their political viewpoints, but then add that they don’t even give us any kind of service afterwards.  At least we can say that we give a hot meal and a bed for the night!

However, even if a convincing case could be made that we are forcing our belief system on others, according to our religious beliefs, we are commanded to do just that.

Home missionaries are among the watchmen of the nations. We are the ones who are charged with the Heavenly mandate to warn the wicked and remind the righteous. As the scripture at the top of this post clearly states, if we do not do so and the wicked continue in their wickedness or the righteous turn from their righteousness, their blood will be required of us.

I for one feel that I have enough to answer for in my own actions without having to answer for the actions of others, thank you very much!

Saying that people are free agents and self-determined is all well and good, but freedom has, or should have, limits. Our political system agrees with me on this: Just consider seat-belt laws and the like. If a person’s freedom of choice so endagers his or her own life, and the soulution to the problem is a thing as simple as wearing a seat belt, it is legal to require him or her to do so.

In the same way, if a person is bound for Hell, and the solution is as simple as receiving Jesus Christ as his or her saviour; accepting the sacrifice of His shed blood on the cross as payment in full for our sins, it’s such a small thing to voice a simple warning–whether the person listens to that warning or not.

Lame Cop Out #1

Everyone has a back story. A back story is a person’s personal history. It applies to any history, good, bad, or neutral. However, it is most commonly used for the most significant negative thing(s) that happened to someone, usually in that person’s childhood, but sometime in the past. Back stories are used by many people to generate sympathy or to justify a reason for a person’s negative present. When they’re used for this purpose, I call them sob stories.

Sob stories are most effective when given to the privileged–especially those who for some reason or other feel guilty about their comparative success. People who’ve inherited their money sometimes feel guilty for having unearned resources; people who have won the lottery or had extreme good fortune in their job. Scam artists know or sense this, and capitalize on it (in the purest sense of the word.)

Now, remember, I only call back stories, or personal histories, “sob stories” when they’re used, consciously or unconsciously, to generate sympathy for the purpose of manipulation, getting material goods, money, or forgiveness for bad behavior. Some people can have genuinely terrible things happen to them and use their awful past to enrich their unproductive present. I don’t use the term “sob story” to lessen the wrongness of what happened to them, only to show my disapproval at their motivation for sharing it.

Some common sob stories are:

• An abusive past. This could include abuse or molestation as a child, an abusive relationship, being a victim of a violent crime or other such events.
• A misspent youth. This can include a criminal past, wild teenage years and the like.
• Economic victimization. This category includes being the victim of a scam artist or bad investment advice or even being laid off from one’s job.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

When you hear these stories–most of which are true–your first instinct is to feel pity and horror at the teller’s misfortune. Your next instinct is usually to try to do something to either fix the problem (men) or alieviate the suffering (women).

However, if you carefully analyze even some of the worst stories, the basic events are not at all that uncommon. A huge number of people come from dysfunctional families and suffer abuse at the hands of family members to some degree or other. Significant numbers of the population, if one believes the crime statistics released each year, are victims of physical, mental, and sexual abuse as well as other violent crimes. Even more are victims of bad luck with finances and lose their jobs to downsizing or a bad economy.

These things, no matter how horrible they sound at first hearing, are not all that uncommon. This does not make them right or lessen the damage done, but neither does it make the person unique or special; life is tough all over.

The fact is that most people to whom bad things happen recover at least enough to function at a minimal level in society. Some overcome the negatives in their lives so well that they actually use them to spur themselves on to remarkable successes. Some, however, chain themselves to them so completely that these negatives constantly bleed into their present and damage their future. God has provided the best advice ever on the subject in the book of Philippians chapter three and verse  thirteen when Paul says that he is “forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forth to those that are ahead…” Forget the negatives of the past and concentrate on your goals for the future.

That’s what successful people do.

Losers, on the other hand, blame everything on their (usually distant) past. Some losers come ready-equipped with a good sob story to use; maybe their dad was a violent drunk. Others have to really stretch to try to generate one. Case in point:

I’m not a bum either, and I never have been, but in 1996 I had a reversal of fortune. I’d gone off to college and it just didn’t work out at the school I’d chosen. Unhappy, I dropped out and headed back to my hometown. With dropping out my financial aid came to an end, and I found myself nearly broke and without an income stream. Homelessness followed quickly and naturally from the situation.

I just love that. “Homelessness followed quickly and naturally…” from dropping out of college.

How many people drop out of college every year?

How natural is it for homelessness to result?

Um, HELLO!

The above quote was written in 2004, but in reference to a stretch of homelessness that lasted for five years. That means that the writer is blaming his then homelessness on a fairly common and extremely mild sort of event that happened to him FIVE YEARS before finally getting himself off the streets. So, what … in FIVE YEARS he couldn’t find a way to overcome the disappointment of dropping out of college?

Come on!

And that’s not even all. Wait until you hear how he twists good to make it appear evil.

What you are more than who you are will determine the resources that are available to you. Women can rely more easily on family than men can. A man who runs to his parents suffers an amazing ego shot, in addition to the abuse he takes from others. Certain ethnic groups are good at supporting members until they get on their feet, immigrant groups for instance. If you are a single, young, strong man, of American birth, then you, my friend, have no one but yourself to depend on.

In other words: I’m a White Anglo-Saxon male, probably from a good family (ergo the ego hit).

Can you stretch “coming from a good family and an advantageous heritage” into “coming from a priveledged background made me homeless” any better than that?

Homeless People Who Blog

The Pastor was really surprised when I told him about the forums I found for homeless people. He’s from another generation and couldn’t really understand how the homeless can maintain a blog or the purpose of creating or contributing to forums.

I explained that it’s really a no-brainer when you think about it: Almost every library in America has computers available with free internet access. Lots of chronically homeless people spend most of their days at the library, because it’s the one place where you can sit around all day inside with access to a toilet where you never have to buy anything and they can’t ask you to leave if you’re not bothering anyone. A homeless Mecca, if you will.

Overseas, where this may not be as common, there are loads of internet cafes that are cheap places to spend a lot of time out of the cold wind or away from the hot sun.

So it’s no far stretch at all for them to jump online and create a blog or go to one of the online begging sites or contribute to one forum or other.

When I lived in overseas, I met an American guy who had been homeless for a while and maintained a blog. It actually worked out very well for him, if you only look at externals. He found a patron who supported him for more than a year to the tune of $25- $30,000 USD: That took the form of more than $1,000 a month for the rent of a 2-bedroom apartment for a year and an equal amount in spending money. There were also extras: bonuses and trips, a computer, a safe and other perks. Eventually, he was deported for not maintaining a visa, but not before he found another naive patron who was willing to set him up in another country. He now operates several online porn sites, but to listen to him in person, or read his blog, he’s the soul of moral integrity.

Most of the rhetoric out there by and/or about homelessness is of the politically-correct or liberally-minded variety. In addition, it’s only natural for a person to put his or her own situation in the best possible light. Even people who pride themselves on being unbiased and brutally honest do this; some of the people who think they are the most brutal about themselves and their situations are the most prone to sugar coat the reasons for their continued homelessness.

Still, if you are truly familiar with homelessness and can read between the lines, there is a lot of information to be found in forums and blogs maintained by the homeless. Sometimes, you even find dirty little secrets that they usually don’t like to let out, like this quote from a homeless panhandler:

Ok, I know what you are thinking, there are the people that spend that money on drugs or alcohol. To be completely honest you are correct. Most of the panhandlers I have met have serious addictions and some of them are not even homeless to begin with. This is ironic but after what I’ve seen I will think twice before I give my money to someone holding a sign in the future. Let me just give you a quick snapshot of what I am talking about. Two guys I know hold signs even though they are not homeless. They stay in a hotel, do drugs, and collect SSI. The worst part is one guy puts a fake cast on his arm and the other guy stands on the freeway offramp with a cane yet he walks perfectly fine after he’s done and walks away. Another guy I know holds a sign saying he’s an Iraq Vetran which he is not, he’s never even been in the military. He spends his money on beer, weed, and gambling. I mean he blows it. Give if you want to but don’t be naive where your money is going. I’m just being blunt and telling it like it is. Panhandlers don’t want you to know the truth.

Most of the homeless who blog consider it their divinely-inspired duty to critique the efforts that others make on their behalf. I’d really be interested in any statistics available that track just how many people who become and then continue to actively help the homeless were formerly homeless. I’m not talking about people who volunteer at the shelter that they have to live at because they want a meal upgrade or not to be forced to leave every morning, but people who work their way off the streets and then go back to work full-time in a shelter or other organization that deals directly with and primarily for the homeless. I would think that the numbers of these individuals when compared to those who were never homeless would be low. I might be wrong, but I don’t think so.

I think that most of the chronically homeless continue as they are, not because they don’t have any options, but because they have a flaw in their character that allows them to accept a lower standard of living than the average person would. I have had a few bouts of homelessness in my lifetime and the reason that I always worked my way off the streets very quickly was because I couldn’t stand to live at such a low comfort level. Notice that I didn’t say that’s why they became homeless, but what makes them accept their condition for so long.

Once they’ve accepted their condition as normal, the ones who are activists usually follow a predictable pattern: They start out making appropriate observations and intelligent suggestions, but their dialogue invariably degenerates into a list of entitlement demands.

Take this list of “suggestions” made by a homeless blogger about a program where various churches in the Nashville area pick up the homeless from a central point and take them to their own facilities or individual homes for a meal and a night’s sleep:

• When the homeless arrive at your church, they are tired.

Here he starts out with an appropriate observation that many well-meaning workers might not have considered.

• Homeless people want to have as much space as you can afford to give them.

No doubt. Don’t we all? His sense of entitlement is starting to show through in this one. Naturally people want their own personal spaces not to be intruded upon, but we all, homeless or not, have to face situations where we have to put up with crowding. In the paragraphs just before and just after this bullet point, he complains that there’s not enough space between beds in some facilities and that they’re crowded into church vans. I find it just too hilarious that he feels it necessary to add ” …especially with other homeless people…”

When I lived overseas, I often stayed in hostels where the conditions were far worse than any of the shelters I’ve ever stayed at and on top of that, had to pay a pretty penny for the privilege. Some of them didn’t even offer linen for the beds. I’ve been crammed into airplanes for 18-hour flights in seats that were so narrow an Ethiopian would feel crowded, had the guy next to me snoring and leaning his drooling face on my shoulder and had to pay several hundred dollars for the experience. The homeless and all-too-often their advocates somehow have this idea that the free conditions offered them should be consistently superior to those that the working non-homeless pay for.

• Most homeless people would rather you not preach to them.

I suggest then that most homeless people go to the shelters operated by Atheists.

If they can find such an animal.

• Homeless people have standards.

This one is so telling. On one level it’s a serious “duh” moment. Who doesn’t have  any standards? On most levels though, it’s just his sense of entitlement complaining that the free accommodations that he’s being provided are not up to snuff.

Tuff.

• Engage homeless people when appropriate.

This is another fairly reasonable observation, but smacks a bit to me of expecting the workers to be mind readers.

• What you have the homeless sleep on makes a difference.

Again, who doesn’t know that an army cot or a mat on the floor are not the most comfortable sleeping surfaces? The underlying premise is that: A) he assumes we’re not doing the best we can with what we have and B) we don’t care.

I’m not implying that all homeless people don’t have common sense or have no real concept of what it takes to be a manager or organize successful products or services, but an unsurprisingly large percentage of them don’t. Hasn’t this writer considered that there was an ad-hoc or steering committee in charge of working out all of the details on how these churches would deal with the homeless people they serve?

There is an additional element that none of the homeless like to consider: the more comfortable you make it for the chronically homeless, the less likely they are to be motivated to change. Like it or not, every person in the world who works with the homeless does so with the intent of getting these people off the streets.

It never fails that well-intentioned people who want to help the homeless listen to these homeless individuals and give far more credence to their opinions than they deserve. Working with the homeless requires a particular mindset that seems very counter-intuitive. I had to undergo a radical paradigm shift when I went from thoughtful about the homeless situation to actively working with the homeless. I think that the best rule of thumb for those who are concerned, but not actively involved, would be to trust those who are active in the field and not the homeless themselves, whose judgment and choices have (after all) already proven to be less-than-sufficient to meet their own needs.

Turkey Anyone?

The Mission is turkey rich. Every year, people donate turkeys to the Mission. Not only during the holiday season, but throughout the year. We have lots of chest freezers that are full of mostly turkeys. Unfortunately, most of the kitchen staff who were here before me had no idea what to do with them. When I came, I started cooking and serving them on a regular basis. I’ve always believed that Turkey is good any time of the year.

Now that the holidays are approaching, and the possibility of serving a lot of people on Thanksgiving and Christmas Days with them, we’re cooking one large or two small turkeys a day. I don’t get fancy, no marinades and no injections. I put them in one of those disposable aluminum roasting pans and then cover them with another large (but shallow) oven pan.

I use metal butterfly clips to hold the two pans togetherthus saving a bundle on aluminum foil. It also keeps more moisture in and reduces the need for basting, etc.

I cook the turkey or turkeys for 5 hours at 325 and they come out falling off the bone tender. Sometimes, since some of the turkeys have been in the freezer for a year or more, they’re a little dry, but that’s what gravy’s for, isn’t it?

After the turkeys cool, we debone them. We take the bones, together with the necks and giblets, and boil them for stock.

We take the deboned turkey meat and pack it into gallon-sized freezer bags, press them flat (so that they’re easier to stack) and stick them in the freezer. We cool the stock overnight in the refrigerator and scoop the resulting gel into gallon bags, press them flat, and freeze them in pans overnight. Once they’re frozen in a flattened state, we take them out of the pans and stack them next to the stacks of turkey for use in making gravy, soups and dressing.

This way, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, the kitchen staff will just have to thaw out the deboned turkey, put it in roasting pans and heat it up for an hour or so before mealtimes. We have dressing and sweet potatoes pre-cooked and frozen as well so that we can just heat them up in the same way.

Throughout the fall, whenever a pumpkin or pecan pie comes in, I stick it in the freezer so that we can just thaw and serve. Lately, we’ve also been getting sweet-potato pies as well.

Add some corn, a green-bean caserole and lots of dinner rolls and you’ve got a good, satisfying holiday meal that doesn’t work the staff to death!

Happy Holiday Cooking!

Privacy

The knock came at the front door, but because we never use that door, we think of it as the back door. Luckily, I had just come downstairs and heard it, there’s no bell and the sound of knocking at that door doesn’t carry very well.

“Yes, may I help you?” I asked the young lady who was standing outside near an SUV which another woman was driving.

“Yes, we were wondering if you could tell us if my father is here.” The girl said.

“I’m sorry, but by law we aren’t allowed to either confirm or deny whether or not anyone is a resident. How long has he been missing?”

“About a month.”

I masked my surprise. Usually when people come looking for a loved one, it’s a matter of hours or at the most days.

“Have you filed a missing person’s report with the police department?” I asked.

“No. If I show you a picture could you tell me if you’ve seen him?” She persisted.

“Let me ask you this: is he healthy? Is he all right mentally?” I countered.

“Yeah, it’s nothing like that. He just left and we got worried about him.” She sounded evasive, so I decided to probe a bit further.

“Is he here legally?” I asked, since both women were obviously Mexican and the girl had to translate for the woman in the SUV who I took to be her mother. “We don’t care if he is or isn’t, I was just thinking that he may have been deported.”

“Oh no!” The girl assured me, he’s legal. It’s nothing like that.”

I wondered what it was like that she wasn’t telling me. It was something, of that I was sure.

“Does anyone live here, now?” She said, looking at the deserted looking exterior of the building. Since all of the activity takes place on the other side of the building, most people who come to that entrance might wonder the same thing.

“Sure there are. Look, I’m sorry that I can’t help you. I understand that it must be very difficult for you not knowing if he’s OK or not. However, people decide to leave their homes all the time and we have to recognize that they have a right to do so.”

“Is there anywhere else you could suggest we look?” She asked, ignoring my last statement.

“Other than filing a missing person’s report, I really can’t tell you where to go.”

“Is there anyone else we can talk to?” She asked, looking me up and down as if assessing my legitimacy.

“No, I’m the chaplain here, and there’s nobody here that could tell you anything different than what I’ve told you. If you’re not willing to file a police report, your best bet is to just wait for him to contact you. Either he will or he won’t, but if he’s in his right mind, either way, it’s his right. I can, though, post your name and number on our bulletin board, with a short message. That way, even if he’s not here now and comes sometime later, if he sees the message, maybe he’ll call. I always encourage all of our residents to make contact with their families; I look up addresses and phone numbers and we give them paper and envelopes and stamps.”

The girl spoke to her mother, explaining about the police and leaving a message, but in the end they declined. I don’t know what the real situation was, but I do know that they weren’t telling me anywhere close to the whole story. It made me wonder (and not for the first time) how people expect to receive full and truthful answers to veiled and deceptive questions.

I watched them drive away from the dining room; they craned their necks as if they could somehow see inside by sheer determination.

I lifted a quick prayer that they find their loved one if it was God’s will.

Banned!

After visiting a forum which said it was there for current and formerly homeless individuals and service providers, and telling a few stories, I received this message when I tried to log on.

You have been banned for the following reason:
Time for you to reflect on what we are trying to achieve here at the homeless forums…

Since all I’ve done is relate true events from my experience here at the Mission, evidently what they’re trying to achieve has nothing to do with the truth.