show me the river
that leads to my home.
-eastmountainsouth
friends and family,
three weeks from today benjamin and i will be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. the question that i keep hearing is “aren’t you scared?”, and for whatever reason, i am not. i am not afraid of what will happen in philly. maybe it is because i don’t know the danger you may think. well, i do know the danger. i’ve been reading and hearing about philly and DC lately. welcome to the city. things get ugly, but that is why ben and i are going. that is why we mustlearn first-hand. honestly, yes, i realize the dangers that we will rub up against, but if we plan our trip in order to avoid those then we might as well not go. i’ve been thinking today about the fact that we have been planning our trip. somewhat ironic, isn’t it? because we all know that a man that loses his job, is kicked out of his apartment and has no place to go actually planned all of the insanity that is now his life, right? okay, maybe not. so, we will be writing here for you, mom, and you dad, and you grandma and grandpa and sisters and brothers and my wonderful nephew who i will miss so much (nothing personal to the rest of my family 
oh and (for ben) jess too… and when i say mom and dad and so on i mean for ben as well because it would be quite unnatural if anyone related to either of us wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. we’ll be writing here to calm your nerves. if you believe in God then trust that we’ll be in his hands. if you don’t believe in God then know that we’ll leave this world doing something we needed to do. again, if you believe in God disregard that last statement.
moving on… another question i hear all the time is … “why would you want to be homeless?” personally, i love this question. it really just makes me laugh, and most of the time i laugh out loud. sometimes i am able to contain myself and i only laugh on the inside, but most of the time … no, i merely lol if you will. yeah, and that was corny. anyway, when i was quite young, my older sister answered a question for me (something she does often… and actually it is something that a lot of people do for me… hmm…) someone asked me a question, and mindy said something to the effect of “timmy doesn’t understand people very well,” but what she meant was that i don’t express myself very well. if i get into an argument i achieve nothing but anger. i yell and blabber, but nothing intelligible comes out of my mouth which is why i love to write. i have time to process my words before they come out of my mouth. genius. anyway, most people ask me “why?” and i have a line that i have memorized due to practice. it is the following: i am going to be homeless to experience the lifestyle first-hand because i feel a deep need in my heart to help these people and i want to look into their eyes and know from where they are coming. honestly, the words have never left my mouth so eloquently, but you get the point. anyway, it is hard for me to digest my thoughts and convey them on command which is one reason i’ll be writing about our journey.
in order to ramp up for our adventure, i have been living out of my car for a couple weeks now. “huge, magnificent freedom! itty bitty living space!” a quote from Aladdin… slightly modified. i’m realizing how much of a shock this is going to be because even while living in my car, i have several blankets, two pillows, a consistent living space away from other people, and locked doors… even if they are merely car doors. soon, i will have one small blanket, a concrete mattress that changes daily, no privacy, and no protection other than having a person next to me. crazy.
another reason i am going on this journey is because i need to escape the consumerist world of america. i’ve been thinking and talking about this with my friend tony who is kind enough to have me stay in his home this weekend while he is out of town. so many people cry and gnash their teeth over not having enough while they put a huge flat screen tv, an extra computer, a massive house, a hot tub, a few brand new cars and a movie ticket on the weekend on the list of possessions and activities. however, i see friends who have nothing but get along in life and are as happy as can be. i wonder why we as a culture get so caught up in keeping up with the joneses, called it providing for our families and in the process… we’ve lost our happiness. yes, you can may say i’m young and that i don’t know what it is like to raise kids and so on… but speaking as one who believes in Jesus… why has the typical american christian lifestyle come to look so much like the rich american lifestyle? why do we pay ministers 6 figures to preach God’s word when Jesus and his disciples had no place to lay their head because they had work to do? why are the churches fighting over the worship and the color of the curtains while the poor need money for food? this is why i am choosing to live with the homeless…. because the churches that i have grown up in have lost sight of the goal, and i realize that they are not solely to blame because they have lost sight over the generations, but it is time not for revelations, or new church furniture, but for revolution. christians fight with each other, spend ungodly amounts of money on church cosmetics, and wonder why one who doesn’t ”believe” doesn’t want to come in and join them. hmm… no thanks.
won’t you help to sing
these songs of freedom.
-Bob Marley
timothy
