My Journey through Homelessness Part Four: Body Armor

My Journey through Homelessness Part Four: Body Armor

Commentary by Andy Pope | FāVS News

I don’t know how cold it was in Berkeley in April 2011 when I first decided to become homeless by choice. I do know it wasn’t as cold as it is in Moscow right now.

Nevertheless, whenever I woke up in the morning, I woke up shivering. But then a strange thing happened.

After about four or five weeks, I stopped shivering. On awakening each morning, I no longer felt cold.

“That’s because you’re developing your body armor,” explained James, a man who was trying to coach me on the basics of intentional homelessness. “We all have it. It keeps us from feeling threatened by the elements.”

I wasn’t sure who he meant by “all.” But I did notice that there was a contingent of homeless people in Berkeley who were not hassled by weather conditions. Naturally, I joined up with them, for it was they whose ways I felt I must learn.

I remember asking how people could possibly panhandle. I told them I either felt afraid to beg for change or else I felt too proud.

“Pride and fear are feelings,” said James. “You lose that s—t once you’ve been outside for a while, and the reason you’re able to handle panhandling is because you no longer give a s—t.”

And many other people did I meet and network with, in this mysterious new world of an intentional homeless community. I soon discovered that for these people, a conscious decision was made to reject what they called the “Mainstream” — the world where people live indoors, and do all the things they need to do in order sustain indoor living.

Maybe someone had decided they didn’t want to come up with money for rent anymore. Or maybe they didn’t want to deal with roommates anymore, or contend with household chores. Or maybe they lived in an abusive environment, and they finally took the plunge, and left without knowing where they would land. Whatever the case, these were people who had decided to live outside, and who found it preferable for a season. For them, the conscious decision to reject the Mainstream was a life-changing, liberating spiritual choice. 

On April 15, 2011, after enduring seven years of homelessness and borderline-homelessness, I shared in that life-changing choice. And the ways of my new world, while not entirely inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus, were at the same time remarkably at odds with the teachings of the modern-day world. This caused, among other things, the conversations we held with people who represented the religions of this world — i.e., pastors who held public feeds for the homeless at their churches — to be very strange.

Concepts that pertained to the Mainstream had no relevance to the world of those who lived outside. This baffled religious leaders and others who were intent on “helping the homeless.” So let’s take a look at what some of those concepts are — and how we who were homeless discovered concepts to replace them. 

Safety or Readiness

“But will you be safe?” asked Pastor Sarah, as my new friend John and I were departing from the feed.

John and I looked at each other and then at Sarah, not knowing the answer.

“The question is inapplicable,” I finally said. Sarah looked baffled and we moved on.

Why is the concept of safety inapplicable to the world of outdoor, unsheltered living? Because there is no such thing. We did not have walls, doors and locks on those doors. There were no tangible barriers between where we tried to sleep and where prowlers nightly roamed. We who were outside already knew we were never safe — at least, not as the world counts “safety” — so there was no real sense in searching for something that did not exist.

For me as a Christian, I found I had to trust completely in the safety that Jesus would provide for me, being as there was no guarantee I would make it through any given night sleeping on the streets. I naturally looked back on the all the times I had taken the sense of safety in a sheltered environment for granted.

“Was I actually safer in the Mainstream?” I asked myself. “Or was I only being sheltered?”

The more I thought about it, the more I came to believe the latter. The Mainstream, as I have come to know it, seeks to hide people from something that runs contrary to its values. It provides a false sense of security, when in reality it as unstable and volatile as they come.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” — Romans 12:2.

The values reflected in that verse have nothing to do with the prevailing values of the Mainstream. As we all know, those values are: “Get a job, buy a car, buy a house, get married, have kids, send them to school and have a successful and lucrative career!”

Two pretty different pictures painted — and one of them not so pretty. The only true safety, the only true security, comes by Jesus Christ.

Comfort or Hardiness

For over seven years now, I have lived inside in a part of the world that gets pretty cold. Naturally, I have been reintroduced to the concept of the “heater.”

The heater is a highly expensive contraption that purports to make your home nice and warm and cozy. The point of running the heater is to become comfortable inside your dwelling place, where you will be shielded from the cold.

Well, I don’t know what happened when I moved to my new apartment, but suddenly I got a utility bill for $125. Was I actually running the heater that much more than I was at the old apartment? 

Yes, I was.

Had I really lost that much of my “body armor?”

Yes, I had.

There is no other explanation. Why? Because somehow I bought into the lie that I am supposed to be “comfortable” now that I live inside again. But comfort cost me $125. So what do I do instead?

I seek a value other than comfort to replace it. After all, I was never comfortable on the streets. Can you imagine becoming “comfortable” with homelessness? Sure I did my best to accept it, to embrace it, to make the most of it and to learn from it. But comfort?

Think about it. How often have you engaged an unhoused person and identified them as “comfortable?” Rarely, I would think. Like safety, the concept of comfort is inapplicable.

So when we were homeless, we did not seek comfort. We sought hardiness and strength. When it was freezing cold, we put multiple layers of clothing on our bodies. We walked briskly and got into a high energy space of vigorous exercise. We got ourselves ready for anything to happen at any time. We were not comfortable — we were hardy. 

Hardiness therefore is the condition I should seek to strive for, even now. Even now, living indoors, I must seek to regain my body armor! Rather than run the heater in my apartment, why don’t I just put multiple layers on and leave a few windows cracked? I won’t get a $125 utility bill, and I’ll be a lot better off. I may not become as cozy, but I’ll definitely become stronger.

Seeking comfort weakens us. It reduces our readiness to handle adversity, because we come to see trials as intrusions that disrupt our comfort. Better to “count it all joy” when trials arise, and endure them with a thirst for the challenge. (James 1:2-4) There will always be trials in life, but we become strengthened through enduring them.

And the comfort the mainstream provides is an illusion. That false sense of comfort will disappear at the grave. Rather than seek physical or material comfort, why not seek the peace that comes from doing what God asks of us: “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God?” (Micah 6:8) This is the true comfort that only God can provide.

That kind of comfort endures forever.

Boredom or Gratitude

I knew a homeless guy who got a government check once a month and took his money to an out-of-town motel. There he stayed the first 12 days of each month, eating junk food from the fast food joints across the way. When his money ran out, he came back to Berkeley and lived on the streets till his next check came around.

“You should try it, Andy,” he said. “You might even become bored!”

“No!” I said. “It’s not possible!”

We both laughed. There was no such thing as “boredom” in homelessness. And believe me, when you’re at my level of ADHD, you get bored pretty darned easily. And yet, I never got bored when I lived outside.

Why not?

Because it’s homelessness — and you have to be ready for anything. It’s not often you ask a homeless person how they’re doing and hear them say: “Just kinda bored.”

We had to have eyes in the backs of our heads down there. Drop your guard for a moment, and your stuff is stolen before your eyes. And who knows who’s sneaking up behind you in the dead of night? Boredom was basically unthinkable. And yet, having lived inside for years now, how much time have I spent in boredom?

Too much. Too much for the sake of my ego, and too much for the sake of my conscience. I was immersed in a violent, volatile world for years. I was expecting to die a miserable, meaningless death in a Bay Area gutter. Yet God saved me from all that horror. Here, he has given me a fresh new start, full of new possibilities and hopes.

Should my response to such a blessing be boredom? Of course not! Better make the best of every moment, and conquer my boredom with gratitude.

Gratitude is the value that got us through the strangest and scariest of times. My friend Jerome would sometimes frown and say: “It’s awful down here, Andy! We’re 24/7 on a quest to survive, and struggling, and everyone treats us like we’re pieces of s—t!”

“Yeah?” I’d reply. “Tell me about it.”

There would be a silence. Then at some point, Jerome would speak again,

“You know what, Andy? We got it great down here! We don’t have to work, we don’t have to get up on time, we got food and friendship, we got . . .”

Whether inside or out, gratitude is the antidote to boredom. It reveals it for what it is. Boredom is for those who are complacent and directionless. It is not a value that applies to those who are driven by hope.

Conclusion

So I just want to give you all something to chew on, in case you happen to have mostly lived inside. There could be another Dark Ages on this planet, if certain things continue in the direction they’re headed. More and more people could be thrust out of their homes, and you might as well get yourself ready.

A guy we called Tennessee had an eerie way of referencing people inside: “the ones who are still in houses.” It was as though he tacitly assumed that everyone would lose their home eventually. But what if he was right?

We need to stop mandating people who live outside to housing in situations they would not choose of their own free will. We need to stop focusing on “getting them housed” and start accepting that people have a right to sleep outside on public land, and that homelessness may well be here to stay. 

I myself could be homeless again at any time, any month or day of the year. If I keep running up $125 utility bills, it might even come sooner than I think.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to turn off the heat and get my body armor back. I just might need it in a while — and you might need some, too.

If you’re interested in the other parts of the series, here’s “Part One: Turnstiles and the Night Sky,” “Part Two: A Prayer that Released Me from Shame,” “Part Three: A New Pair of Glasses” and “Part Five: Learning to Live Outside the Box.”

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.