Ryan's Journal

every once in awhile i'm in central square and i run into a familiar face. one without a home, or without a job, or without a meal. some have all three, but their lives are somehow intertwined with those who are lacking.

i have a story to tell about tonight, mostly it's about my foolishness. every warning to 'not talk to strangers' or 'watch your back' got ignored, and maybe the amazing thing is that no harm came to me, but that's not the important thing.

a familiar face popped up while i was scrounging for a place to buy dinner, the one that always asks for $20 so he can stay somewhere at night. i could say his name, knowing he'll never read this, or perhaps change it to protect an identity only a few people will recognize. he's 34, he has schizophrenia and every once in awhile feels like he's tina. he smokes, he had an apartment in sommerville until he tried to move to arizona, a failed enterprise that left him without a home, a fact he discovered after hitchhiking from arizona back to massachusetts. his father-in-law hates him even though his mother loves him. he met jesus in californi a at the young age of 23, a full year older than where i am now.

i'm shrewd. i find i have to question whether this man does know jesus or whether he's found that $20 arrives faster when you can quote romans 6:23 and claim to pray in every church in cambridge because you love god, forget the fact that these churches have names and none of them are known to you. after finding out all about this man, i make my first mistake and offer to walk him to his home for the night.

only there isn't just one place. he rattles off three people's names. i have to wonder - what kind of people are charging a mentally ill man $20 a night for a place to stay? how much better is it than the shelters across cambridge and boston? what do they do for a living that makes them run a mini-hotel business? is he really getting a place to stay or finding a place to fly high? we start walking towards one. then his 'bodyguard' shows up, an amiable man with alcohol on his breath. they joke about the bodyguard mislabel and decide another place is better. mistake number two, i follow.

i follow them through that alley near blockbuster to the lower rent places behind the parking lot. i'm not really thinking anything. the man's friend is describing his job, how he's about to get a place of his own, how the other man doesn't shower enough. innocuous enough. we reach the building, ring the apartment. no one answers, as i'm hoping we can leave, the bodyguard whistles up to the top floor - and someone replies.

the man who needs $20 starts yelling up to him about how i'm giving him money. i'm not that dumb. neither is the bodyguard, who immediately shuts him up. they're buzzed in. mistake three, i go in and somehow have ended up going up flights of stairs between the two of them. common sense takes over, as does the bodyguard's own shrewdness. i give them $20 right there, which the mentally ill man says the bodyguard should handle, because he's too mentally ill to deal with it. the bodyguard, having received the money, follows me out and quietly explains that it isn't such a safe idea for me to be in that place with money. i agree.

i'm home. safe. and the question i have is not why am i so stupid - i'm out $20, and i probably could have been out by more, not just money. despite warnings about the dangers of central square, i wasn't really afraid until near the end. the real question is, what am i supposed to do next time?

what does caring for a homeless man with schizophrenia mean besides $20 a night to sleep in a place i don't feel safe just looking at? we don't have hands just for giving handouts. our hearts aren't supposed to turn blind eyes to their hands asking for money and something more. god's own heart is aching for them. whe re do evangelism explosion, medical christian fellowships, seminary, and the message and mission fall into this picture? what now?

this thought of the moment was born of an empty stomach and a rather long stream of consciousness.

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