We were dreamers living under the bridges and in the train yards of my hometown. I was the youngest member of a small band of vagabond romantics who had, for various reasons, shrugged off the traditional yoke of young adulthood and had chosen to live outdoors as sort of self-realized urban survivalists and junkyard angel romantics. We held court during the daylight hours at various locations around our small, northern Michigan town, drinking and hustling by day and drinking even harder and singing/playing guitar by night.
We were a closely knit group of friends and dreamers, all bound together by a common dream: the dream that we could forego the meaninglessness of adult responsibilities and live our days out as free rebels.
Many of us were alcoholics.
We were unburdened with societal convention and dedicated to the art of experiencing the fullness of unfettered existence in the grand tradition of our homeless literary, musical, and artistic heroes. We were young, we were in love with life, and we had nothing.
I can’t speak for the others, but I had experienced a somewhat normal upper-middle class upbringing. Although adopted and problematic as a child, one could say that, for the most part, I had every advantage regarding my childhood home and education; and yet, just beneath the surface, I had always experienced something very different. I had always been wild, rebellious, and discontent with what I perceived as the expectations of regular society—especially my parents. Their lifestyle was something so alien to me in terms of satisfaction, and I was ever the disinterested third person observer in that life. That all changed for me when I left home for the first time and experienced the boundless freedom of the street life. It was as if I had been set free from prison for the very first time while yet completely unaware of the fact that I was ever a prisoner until I finally stepped outside of the boundaries of that middle-class paradigm of social control and struck out on my own to live on the street and explore.
I was in love with it from the very first moment, as were the others whom I inspired to follow me. There was my friend Sean, 23, who had been a waiter and barely made enough to live in a motel and eat sparingly. Shortly after I left home and took to the street, he followed suit and joined me for an adventurous two-year journey across America. Then there was my friend Dano who had moved here to escape his abusive stepfather and had worked various factory and restaurant jobs, always toiling so hard to barely subsist on cheap junk food and booze, drinking and singing his only form of entertainment, and a room in a shoddy hotel that was the final resting place for many of the chronic alcoholics, addicts, and mentally disturbed—his only refuge.
Dano and I shared countless campsites on and off over the course of the next 15 years and remain solemn blood brothers to this day. There were others too. Most of them had met us at some point while we were drinking and caterwauling under the bridges or in the rail yards and had fallen in love with us and our devil-may-care lifestyle, but most of them were part-time hobo’s at best. They came and camped for a time, and then they went home to their loving families when it got cold outside or they became sufficiently homesick or the street life had, for them, lost it’s luster. Dano, Sean, and I, however, we were chronic homeless cats from those days forward.
In retrospect, I often wonder if those early homeless roadtripper years were the greatest days of our lives or if the greatest days are yet to come. We lived. I mean we truly experienced life on a level that I wish everyone could share because it was more than just a string of drunken street adventures. It was a truly spiritual experience whose lessons have made me a better man and have accompanied me throughout the rest of my life. Though we had nothing in any material sense, we discovered a vast fortune in the non-material realm. For a few years, the entire North American continent was our playground, and we explored it as daytripping bodhisattvas, living and learning, and writing, and loving our way collectively across the country and even into Mexico. We played concerts under bridges—sometimes with audiences of 20-30 people drinking and singing along. We met the local homeless people in every town we drifted through, and we broke bread with them, shared our stories, shared our art, our music, our poetry, and most importantly we shared our hearts—we loved them as our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.
Being joined by similar circumstances in our homelessness cultivated a familial love and bond like something I have seldom experienced in “normal” society. We shared the last of what little we had without second thought. We protected one another. The older more experienced taught us survival skills like we were their own children, and in return we loved them with a fierceness and broken-hearted compassion that still evokes tears to this day when I think of them or speak of them. I met men and women whose creative/artistic/musical talent surpasses that of anything I hear on the radio or television. I shared campfires and meals with people whose propensity to love and care for their street brethren outshines that of many of the churches I have entered; whose kindness, compassion, and generosity shines like a million candlepower compared to what I experience in my daily life today.
I also experienced another strange phenomenon during those years: I witnessed my situation bring out the very best in many of the working and average citizens of communities I visited. There were so many wonderful people who had homes and jobs who ventured out to meet us and hear our stories, to feed us, buy us things, or give us their spare change. They stopped to tell us God loved us, to offer us temporary shelter in their homes, rides to their churches, food and clothing, even the occasional day’s work.
One time, while drinking on Pacific Beach San Diego, a local gentlemen came and joined our campfire. There were about six of us, including Sean and myself, and, after drinking and sharing our fire and stories for a few hours, he told us the least he could do was to rent us a motel room for the night because it was cold out! I saw so much of the best in people during those years. Sometimes I wonder if I ever will see so much of the divine spark, which is so fastly fading in these times, with the frequency and magnitude that I witnessed it in the heart and spirits of the people I met along the way during my drifting years.
In the end, I lay back at night and I smile and sometimes I laugh quietly, and still yet other times I softly weep mourning those angelic vagabonds whom I met and lost along the way. I hear so much talk these days of “Homeless Blight” and so many tales of misery and destitution, and I have no doubt that it is all very real because I too experienced my fair share of that as well. There are those who live on streets because of no choice of there own and who suffer immensely. It saddens me because there is so much stigma attached to homelessness, and so much of it is spawned from ignorance and misunderstanding. We all, as a collective race of human beings, have the ability to love—-and thereby change—the experience of another person for the better. Even when it is merely in the smallest of ways, like dropping off a bag of burgers to a homeless person. So why don’t more people do it?
I also hear the common rationale that “God loves those who help themselves,” and that angers me because it is so blatantly senseless. Whatever the reason behind their economic situation—whether it be by choice or as a result of misfortune and tragedy—is not everyone worthy of being treated with the same love and compassion, regardless of their financial status? I believe they are; and if you are of a similar mind, then I beseech you to make a conscientious effort to begin taking notice of those “Invisible Citizens” living everywhere you go all across your country. They are not a Blight or an eyesore but rather a wealth of human value with a heart that bleeds just like yours and a story that may just inspire you more than anything you have ever experienced. They are gifted, talented, beautiful--though often broken. They are sometimes the most spiritual people on Earth, while other times, perhaps more than just a little lost and in need of spiritual comfort. They are gravely misunderstood and tragically under-appreciated.
One of the greatest lessons in my life has come as a result of my experience as an alcoholic, an addict, and an invisible citizen.
That lesson is what it means to have a spirit of humility.
Jesus spoke highly of the poor, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”
If I can leave you with one final thought today, Invisible Citizen and Visible Citizen alike, let it be this, the summation of that greatest lesson which I try to live by as my guiding principle today: live without expectation, love without condition, and obey your God without question.
If you do, a light will shiine into the hearts and minds of others and illuminate the darkness of night, transforming your lumens into a brighter future for all.
Powerful! So much insight, love, and compassion. Thank you.