Outsourcing God's Labor: Free Food on the Road

     My backpack weighed between 40-60 lbs. Wherever I found safe to sleep was typically about a mile away from any opportunities to make money or food. From the time I woke up every morning, to the time I go to sleep, and beyond, I was working. Fighting for my own survival. Some days were definitely easier than others, but there were no days off.

     Oddly enough, I found groups to volunteer with. Many of us do. I spent my days thinking of others and their needs, rather than just my own. Working with free food kitchens is awesome. It's emotionally rewarding, and it keeps you busy. It gave me community and family at all times, and gave me a purpose greater than my self. 

     While not all homeless people are hopped up on civic duty, it's surprising how many of us were. When our bus rolled in, you fawned over us, giving us everything we needed to feed your town and the next. But...why? Why did the homeless in your area need a fresh faced approachable mascot to donate to, when the need had been there the whole time?

     We are, as a species, lazy. Rather than take on the emotional and physical labor of solving problems ourselves, we outsource our problem solving to God. Here's the kicker, we were already given this job. Praying about it and walking away won't get it done. God isn't going to send superman to fix things for us. He sent us. We are his outsourced labor. 

     So why are we, as a society, leaving the task of crowd sourcing and distributing food security to those experiencing lack themselves? Why can't we, as a nation, be bothered to care in a way that doesn't leave such a deficit that homeless people are picking up the slack?

     So many people want so badly to believe that homeless people are homeless due to their own faults as a way to make us feel safe. So much so that society is projecting it's feelings of self on to the homeless. Victim blaming helps separate the masses from the ideation that it could be anyone. 

      But it doesn't do much else, to demonize victims of class warfare. It doesn't change anything to say that all homeless people are lazy, or on drugs. 

     I've visited a lot of makeshift housing communities, strung along the side of the highway. Many of the inhabitants work during the day, if they can. They make a home in the cluster of woods, with no real walls. They are going to sit down and eat a meal together tonight. Propane stoves when fire has been outlawed. Tarps where they are not permitted tents. 

     They are patriots. Carving out a life worth living where there was none. Fighting for every day freedoms we've all but forgotten we have. 

     And sure, some of them are on drugs. Or alcohol. Because this life has taken so much from them and left them with a hole no one and nothing can fill. A middle class woman in the suburbs somewhere is having a pharmacy for breakfast and no one cares. But a homeless person self medicated and suddenly it's a viable excuse to withhold resource? Yeah ok. 

     Some of my best friends are still or have been homeless. 

     Most of us didn't consider ourselves homeless, because we found homes on the road and with each other. We were at home doing God's work that society refused. Scraping together change to buy coffee cups so we could serve one another as equals.

     Every single day, each of us is given opportunities. Opportunities to change things, however slightly. We are each given chances to pick up some of the slack. Chances to shine, and to do His good work for Him. The question is what are you going to do with yours?


Loading excess gear on to the top of a bus

Writer riding one of these free food kitchen buses.

A coffee station while you wait for food

Bagged feminine hygiene products to give away

A feed we did in Kentucky

Chopping veggies for the soup in the back of the bus/kitchen

Why I Won't Participate in the Female Blackout

     It's as simple as this. Men exclude women from plenty of their spaces enough as it is already. I won't be depriving them of my presence. They're happy enough without it. I'm not going to forgo hard earned placement in society for the sake of men.
     Not now, not ever. History shows times when women were hardly permitted anywhere. Marketplaces, taverns, men's only clubs, voting booths... You get the jist. I'm not going to amend my daily behaviors yet again for the sake of men.  Especially for the portion of men to blame for contributing to and benefiting from violence, both psychological and physical, toward women.
       I refuse to compromise anything in my life to 'those men'. I don't think acknowledging what has already BEEN compromised requires me to.

A little about myself: Disclaimer

     I'm not normal. I never claimed to be. I will not apologize for not being so.
      I am schizophrenic. And since I first started getting diagnoses, there has never been room in the mental health closet for me. It wears on me in a noticeable way, making the alternate name for the classification, salient syndrome, that much more fitting.
     I am an artist. But only after years of being a traveler, experiencing the symptoms of homelessness. I have always been an artist but being a traveler is limiting in what you can have as you'll have to carry it. My life has been just as atypical or abnormal as I am, and any art is merely a consequence or result of that. I like things aged, dingy, unclean. I like them worn and haggard. I cannot help but to distress almost everything for this reason. I don't know if the symbolism reads through, or not.
     There are a lot of great and inspiring artists in the world. And I'm sure many of them are mentally ill. I am just another one of them. No artist is probably normal, I'd imagine. That sight comes with a knowing that will twist you in some way. Maybe there are art forms that don't require you to be broken somehow, but for the most part, transmuting pain, ugliness and decay, into beauty and elegance, requires one to be aware of all of these things on a deeper level. To trigger a reaction within others, you've got to relate to them first. Or they've got to relate to you, anyway.
     But
     How can you not relate to any artist, as vulnerable as they are in their moment of expression, as raw as ever. We've all been there. I'm not sure I'm broken really. Just that I was given a kaleidoscope eye upgrade with which to view the world.