Once, I was helping a man to take this kind of test for a job at Home Depot. I read the questions and answers out loud to him, hoping that hearing it aloud would help him recognize the reverse aspect of some of the questions. After pausing a long while, he said, “I think they’re trying to trick me.”
Emotional up and downswings caused by relational conflicts or life disappointments are magnified by the struggles of living outside in the sweaty heat, freezing cold, or soaking rain. Add mental illness and addiction and the fight to hold on to hope is desperate. Finding joy is a treasure.
From day to day, I never know who will show up or how many. Some days it’s a dozen. Other days 25 people gather to eat and connect. We check in on each other, notice who we haven’t seen in a few days, offer encouragement, and eat yummy food.
When the protests began, I knew I needed to listen, to read books on racism, to watch movies and documentaries, to hear the lived stories of black people and to sit with the awareness of racism and try to pay attention to where it is—not just in our society and in our systems, but in me.
One of our young #lovegang guys loudly complained, “Fruit in meat. That’s just not right. I don’t do fruit in meat.” I asked him if he had tried it before. He said, “I don’t need to try it. I know fruit don’t go in meat. My mom always made tuna salad . . .” and he went on to loudly proclaim what things belong in tuna salad.
As Brandon eats his chicken noodle soup, we put a hat on his head. Someone hands him a pair of those warm socks, and the new guy wraps a warm blanket around his shoulders. Snot drips from Brandon’s long nose.
(Excerpt from Beloved Chaos. “Chuck” died in his sleep on the back porch of Joe’s Addiction on May 24th, 2019. He died at home.)
The difference between this young man’s life and Drew Barrymore's in “50 First Dates,” is he has no supportive family to lovingly help him through each day. His father died years ago. His mother is an addict, who is suffering a long, slow, terminal illness.
A couple of minutes later, a Love Gang guy came to me and said, “I’m going out there. She just looked through the window with that ‘Rescue me’ look in her eye.”
They told him to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and to empty them when they finished washing. Chuck is a bit OCD, and it bothered him that sometimes dishes came out with cooked-on-crusties.
He pulled up his sleeve and extended his arm toward me. Tracks marked the inside of his arm. He pulled up the other sleeve and swiped his fingers over the red places.
I received a text from Judy, one of our leaders, saying, “The hot water heater is leaking.” She discovered it, because it was dripping on her head. Yes. On her head.
They overheard a woman (who is also part of our Community) in distress. A man was in her tent, and she was shouting, “No. Stop! Get off me!”
Now here he was, four years later, and looking lots of years older. I went to him and said, “Malcolm! It is so nice to see you! We have missed you!” I hoped for a hug, but he put out his hand. I shook it and invited him to sit down at a table with me.
He’d stand on the front sidewalk and smoke a cigarette, and he’d talk. Not to other customers. To himself.
I put my hand on his arm and told him to calm down, that we’d figure this out. (I was doing the best I could to keep my own anger under control.)
The message is basically that we need not get frustrated when we are sitting under a tree and pigeon poop lands on our head. The pigeon is simply doing what pigeons do.
I kid you not. At one point, all four Vietnamese voices together began to sing,
So . . . I did a thing. I got a tattoo. On my face.
One night he got confused. His mind doesn’t process things well. He was pushing the four wheeler through the long parking lot (where it would have been okay to ride). He got to the intersection of two main streets, climbed on it and rode it through the intersection. A police car was sitting right there.
