Nov. 6, 2009

I’ve written about my friend Bobby before.  He’s a guy I know from “my” Starbucks.  He lives with people who don’t have all of their mental capacities.  You know, unlike you and me.  We’re normal.  Anyway, I’ve been trying to make coffee at home more often so I haven’t seen him quite as frequently.  I saw him yesterday and he looked both good and bad.  Good because he was really cleaned up and, to be honest, his hair was pretty cool.  Bad because he was depressed.  When I asked him how he was he said, “there’s no hope.  There’s no hope.  There’s no hope for me...except for God”.  As we talked about what was wrong he told me about the place he lives (an institution of some sort).  “They’re insane.  They’re all insane.  And I’m insane too”.  He told me that when he looked at them they reminded him of who he was.  I immediately thought about Walter Bishop on the show Fringe.  A greater man would have thought about a Bible story, but Bobby was stuck with me and I thought about Fringe.  Walter is a mad scientist who was released from a mental institution to help solve some “fringe science” cases.  As the show goes on he becomes better integrated into society.  He has a role to play in society, and he has people who are helping him.  It’s important to note that although in different ways, they are helping each other.  His “role” seems to help him get better because it helps him find purpose in his own life. With purposelessness comes hopelessness.  So, there is this one scene where Walter has to go back to the institution he was set free from to talk to an old friend he thinks might be able to help a case he is working.  However, Walter was scared to go back because it was a reminder of how he saw himself, and how the world saw him too.  It was a place which was supposed to help him, but it made him worse.  That’s how it seemed with Bobby.  “They’re insane.  They’re all insane. And I’m insane too”.  Bobby tells me that some of his friends have tried to kill themselves. 
Our cups are on the table.  The words “Hope”, “Wish”, and “love” are written in a happy white font on a red cup.  The words “Hope” and “Wish” are so very different.

I tell Bobby I’m moving to Georgia in a few weeks to work at a church.  “Is it a poor church” he asks cutting to the chase.  “No.  But I’ve been talking with a place called Safe House Atlanta where I will be volunteering and hanging out with the homeless.  I tell him this because I feel some guilt.  He says, “Don’t wear that.  Dress like them.  Be like them.  And no Starbucks”.  He smiled.  His smile said, “I love you but you know what I really mean”.  I did.  He was telling me to give up living in a superficial world of expensive coffee, and laptops, and cell phones.  The “Droid” came out today with Verizon and I’m pretty sure I want one.  I tell Bobby about my struggle and guilt.  I tell him how I used to work with the poor.  I tell him how I spent a night in a shelter and the next night under a bridge a while back.  But, I also tell him that I don’t want my kids living like that.  The two worlds seem to pull at each other.  I tell him about what I learned from a homeless man I once knew named Bernie.  My friend Dave, who was a policeman from the burb’s, told Bernie that we go to the “big rich white church” down the road.  He told him that it would be easy to get him what he needed and asked “What do you need?”.  Bernie replied, “Be my *$&* friend”!  He explained that people give their 5 bucks more to ease their conscience than to help him.  People will give of a lot of things to make themselves feel good, but nobody would be his friend.  Bobby smiled.  He told me that me that people are afraid of the poor and the crazy.  They will give them a lot of things, but not a place to stay.  They are afraid.  We are afraid.  So, instead, we send them to live together - away from us.  We give, but we don’t touch.  The Bible talks about people with leprosy.  Leper’s were people who were diseased and had to live in a community with other leper’s as to not contaminate the rest of the Starbucks drinking society.  They even had to call out “Unclean, unclean” to warn people that they were around.  They were dangerous and useless to the rest of society.  Leper’s still live like this in other parts of the world.  In North America we call them homeless or crazy.

Bobby tells me about the church.  “Bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.  Better, better, better, better”.  He talks about the craziness of trying to win people with coffee and tea.  “You want to win people?  Get to know them!  Nobody will stay if you don’t know them”.

I feel guilty writing about Bob.  I don’t want to use him for a blog entry, but I don’t write about him to tell you that I am changing his life.  I’m write about him because he is changing mine.  I tell him so.  He’s like a prophet to me.  As we end our conversation and say goodbye for possibly the last time before we move he says “Let your weakness be your strength.  Let your weakness be your strength.  And No Starbucks...only every once in a while”.  I’m glad he’s eased up a little bit. 

As I walk back to my car my view of things change.  A lot of my work seems unimportant, or at least in the wrong place on the priority list.  I can, even if only for a half hour, see through the superficiality of the world around me and my own life.  I will miss Bobby.

I like Starbucks, but “Faith, Hope, And love” will always trump “Wish, Hope, and Love”.  Bobby told me that they will remain.  “And the greatest of these”, he says with a big smile, “is love”.

“If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party.  The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business.  The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified.  The world says, Drive carefully - the life you save may be your own - and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love.  The world says, get and Jesus says, give.  In terms of the world’s sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion”.
-Frederick Buechner

(Thanks to Suzi for the picture.  Check out her blog)