Bones was a homeless man. He was emaciated. I imagine that's where he got his nickname. I didn't ask; I just snuck him extra pieces of pie the weeks I was doing dessert at the Denver Rescue Mission.
The things I learned about God through the eyes of people who had no homes or, in many cases, families- rescued me. Skinny Bones changed my big life.
It becomes easy to make God many things, all of them unloving and condemning. It's simple to dumb God down to a book that was "written thousands of years ago and was a game of telephone; hardly accurate." (Actually, Homer's Iliad was written 500 years post his death and only 643 manuscripts have been found. The New Testament was completed within 25 years post Jesus' death, burial, resurrection and ascension, and there are 24,000 manuscripts and counting found to confirm actual translation, historical landmarks, etc...perhaps a post on things like this later. Historians have written about Jesus too, a man who was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. Josephus is one of them. OK, ya...maybe another post about this later. And he either was God or was not. Something cannot be true and false. Right...maybe another post on this later.)
Well, anyway, it's passive to make God a magic trick because we can pull him out of our little hats and expect the rabbit to dance, we can make him the angry index finger-lightning striking God that resembles a statue because it means we never have to face wrong choices. The consequences of our living become God's fault. Bones didn't have this view. He didn't blame God for the fact that his daughter never called him. He blamed Meth and his choice to smoke it. (Dad, as in the man who adopted me because you were always hand picked to be MY daddy, if you are reading this you can rest assured I no longer talk to Meth addicts when I am alone- but I may still occasionally slip them some pie.)
What emaciated life moments or, in some cases, emaciated people taught me was that God is God. He is not what I say he is. God is who He says he is. God is faithful.
Bones knew he would probably not live a very long life. I wanted his daughter to forgive him, to reach out to him. I wanted Bones, a 60 something man that could not even cast a shadow, to have someone who would smell his shirts when he died and remember him as someone they could have talked with. I didn't care about Bones' shirts because his stuff mattered to him, but because no one else seemed to care about what happened to him at all. When I realized, years ago, that Bones had probably died, it stung me in a place I could not quite put my finger on. It was mostly because I felt injustice. That man was trying and damnit, that should have counted to his daughter. That man was alive; and that should have counted to all of us.
Bones reported excitedly the day he got a job. Three weeks later he walked up to the pie cart and handed me a sweatshirt. Bones handed me a sweatshirt. I had five extra coats, I'm sure, in my car. Bones. Handed. Me. A. Sweatshirt. He had bought me a gift with his first paycheck. A homeless man bought me a present.
I think many homeless people I give change to DO buy alcohol. I really believe that with all of my heart. And I think that the point in me giving them money is that I made eye contact with them. They were people, not pigeons begging for bread in a park. They had a name for that moment. They had someone say, "Keep trying. Just keep trying."
The point in giving them money is not to control how they spend it. The point in giving is to keep MY heart pointed towards rescue, towards people, towards a Bones who maybe wants his daughter to call him back...my quarter will not change anything. My quarter will not change that that woman may still die alone.
My quarter changes my heart.
I'd like to think Bones was able to recover and that he died in his sleep. Yes, maybe that his alarm clock was set for 6:45 that morning, chain of the fan clinking against itself, his dogs asleep as the foot of his bed. And maybe he was asleep with plans to see the Doctor that morning. Maybe his daughter was going to pick him up for that appointment.
Who knows what happened to Bones, or what I did with his sweatshirt or if he even liked the pie...but seeing a man who kept trying with nothing, who was happy about two pieces of pie, about being able to give out of his very little- reminded me that I always have something to give. And Bones didn't care if I kept his sweatshirt and I didn't care if he liked my pie.
And none of that was actually the point, now was it?
And none of that was actually because God was wrong.
And none of that was for nothing.
You see, I think in God's faithfulness he allows us to be homeless (some of us figuratively). It is when we have no roof above our heads, at times, that we notice the stars for the first time. And maybe when it feels like I am God's victim, like he is just out to get me...well, maybe I am just lucky enough to be right about that.
incredible.
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