The Spirit of Homelessness

I have a friend who recently was rendered homeless. At least in common jargon. He and his wife are OK, but it caused me to thing for a moment. They aren't homeless. Not by any means.

I have been homeless in the same way. I know what it's like. To be more accurate; I know what it's like to NOT own a house or a place to live. To live out of a suitcase. To live without a place that we can call our own. To have no address. To have to go pick our mail up at the post office because there is no postbox to put it in. Homeless? We didn't go to a shelter. We didn't live in a motel. We stayed with friends for a while till we had a place to live. It's important to have friends. To us they were Mi Casa es su Casa.

Please don't feel sorry. It was long ago. We came thru it. It was cleansing. Kinda like the comment the Joker makes to Batman in the first Batman movie of the modern age. "I've been dead once, already. It's very liberating. You should think of it as therapy."

Once you've been thru it, the fear is gone.

I have come to the conclusion I no longer believe in Homelessness. It doesn't exist if you really understand home.

An old saying was, Anywhere I hang my hat is home. OR. Home is where the heart is. Both are true. Neither talks in terms of an edifice A building. A structure.

So, if a person is focused on the main thing being the main thing, he or she can never be homeless. It's impossible. They may have no place to live. But never homeless.

In this economic change we are going thru many people will be turned out of the structure they live in. It will be difficult. But not terminal. They will be out of a house, but not homeless if they are not demonized by a spirit of homelessness.

Homelessness doesn't exist except in the heart. It's a state of mind. One of the reasons I object to some of the ministry to homeless is it fills a need without dealing with the heart issue. I am glad people reached out to us in our time when we had no house. I'm glad there were options. We never felt deprived or lost. We were always whole.

Some people who show up at homeless shelters are offered a bed and something to eat. What they really need is heart help. Both are good too, but one fills a wrong need.

Homelessness is a state of mind. I think about that woman who cried to Obama about being homeless a week ago in Florida. You might have heard of it. It was a sad pitiful tale. She got a place to live. Free. From a local businessman. She is living in a house with her family now. But I know her heart from people who have tried to minister to her. She knows how to work the system.

She's still homeless, even though she now has a place to live. She is demonized with a spirit of homelessness. Unless that spirit is dealt with, nothing else matters. She is still homeless.

This is the problem with much of the foolishness the Obama program for stimulus and saving of "homes" is generating. It's dealing with the manifestation of a homeless spirit, not the empty heart that caused it. A true home cannot be saved or destroyed except in the heart.

I no longer believe in homelessness as a lack of a building.