Why I Write

(My apologies..in addition to my phone not working…Wordpress is now …today, stripping all my carriage returns out of my prose. Rather than fight it all morning…I GIVE. You therefore will have all lumped text with no paragraph breaks. You have to choose your battles folks and this is not one to fight all morning with. The MEANING of my message is here and that is what is important).

An old friend I met in the homeless shelter in Marin wrote me the other day and said “well the best I can figure is you write either for God or for Molly.” Then he proceeded to suggest that both were either disinterested or too busy (although he said if I found that God wasn’t I should let him know.) Well we all fight the fear of insignificance – some men more consciously than others. I happen to be one of those guys who, from age 20, when I read Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, and then Pascal’s Pensees, would always KNOW that the question of “meaning” would be at the core. And let’s face it, things have not exactly turned out all that well for me when it comes to human meaning. I have fought epic battles but no one cares and my friend suggests that the two most significant beings in my universe don’t care either…or even have time to care. He thinks I do not know this. First of all Molly doesn’t read anything that I write and has as little to do with me as possible NOT because she hates me, but because she loves me. Her attempt to break and unbreakable bond is to try and utterly have nothing to do with me. It is not working for either of us. It has been eight months (was supposed to be six) and when we saw each other it was like a bomb blast. Yeah, good luck with that…for either of us. It can be three years from now…nothing will have changed. I’m just adjusting my several safety belts for the long haul. God cares more than my friend understands – but not about numbers. He cares about faithfully telling the Truth. This is what “witnessing” truly is – not that BS with the funny little tracts. So why do I write Sansadobe? Being homeless is an excruciating situation that few understand who have not lived it. Those who live it can rarely articulate its ins and outs. I can (and I write fast). I learned that from this GUY. You have to LIVE in the middle of it – be INCARNATE. That is the way of God. Jesus, God in the flesh,  “pitched His tent” (John 1:18) and dwelt among us. It’s audacious love. And when He was done, others wrote about it. It’s called the New Testament. Now I am just writing from inside Homelessness…just one facet of the human condition. I am, right now, not homeless. I am sitting at my desk in my roomy one room little house. But I could be again at any time.

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Thoreau said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” This is because of the meaning part. I don’t write because it gives my life meaning. It does not. If so I would need a big audience to affirm my primary value. No, I write simply to tell the Truth. One of the aspects of that Truth is that recently these posts are too much about ME. That is why they are somewhat humorless. I don’t find myself funny. I’m scared I will lose this place now that I am here. Faith is a rough object and when you have been a disciple for a long enough time God expects you to have “grown a pair.” I have two weeks to come up with maybe a grand. My phone is still not working and the new one continues to not arrive. It’s …um…unnerving. Most Christians won’t write about this stuff. They talk all about “victory” and candy-coat everything. It’s a huge marketing campaign. Most of it is a lie. Most of Paul’s letters were written from Homelessness (prison). And there is no escape. No drugs or alcohol. No woman. I live alone and my one close friend (The Great One) is too broke to even really visit me. The last time he came he stayed over and his back hurt him so bad laying on the futon on the floor. Finally I said “get up in the bed ya big lug.” And that reminded me, as we both lay there, of who God has been making me in this whole process because I can’t think of any one of my friends who would invite a 400 pound black man into their bed without having some problem with it. But I just don’t. And I do find that meaningful about my life, because underneath my fears and all the stuff I have to battle there is tensiled steel that only God can forge. I can be with anyone, love anyone. Of course it is not hard to love The Great Reynaldo – but then many people would hate him not having eyes to see his true beauty. I have that too. If I am Homeless again at the end of the year I will probably leave Santa Cruz (having had my ass kicked here one too many times). But I hope God comes through and I get to stay. The one thing is I won’t give up and I won’t give into fear or faithlessness. And I will still love Molly and I will still place my utter trust in Christ. I am obviously not doing these things out of emotion. I write because I am supposed to.  No one is under any obligation to read.