I had an unexpected experience when I recently visited Culver City, California, near the L.A. area. With too much time on my hands, I decided to kill time in a local Starbucks coffee shop on Venice Street. Already inside this too small and over crowded Starbucks, seated at a small round table is, Billy. Billy was pushed tightly against the side of a wall, into the window using his lap top computer, typing away at it like a madman, while stuffed under his chair he had also brought and plugged in an extension strip, into which he had plugged his lap top, his cell phone, his printer and other people’s cell phones. Beside his feet and against the wall he also had several rather expensive looking professional cameras. All carefully packed, then unpacked for his use each day.
He was very presentable, wearing a clean, unwrinkled blue dress shirt, newish looking blue jeans with shiny dress shoes. His hair was clean and well groomed, styled and he was clean-shaven. Later, I learned he has a very complex routine for personal care which he has perfected over time and which explains why he is so well groomed. As I stood near him, because it was elbow-to-elbow room only, he glanced up acknowledging me with his eyes and nodded toward me. We began a conversation while I waited my turn in line. I thought it would be our one and only conversation at the time, but I was wrong about that. Really, I was both intrigued and surprised to learn from Billy in that first conversation, that he was a working poor, homeless person living in his van while suffering from schizophrenia. I can be a very good listener, I had lots of time to kill and Billy really wanted to talk, so I learned a lot about him, rather quickly.
Billy eventually reported to me that he has suffered homelessness and the condition of Schizophrenia for the past ten years, although from what he actually told me about himself, I believe it has been longer than that amount of time for at least the Schizophrenia. He allowed me to read what he had so intensely been typing into his lap top computer and I definitely could see he had issues-real mental issues.
He rather compulsively types pages and pages, working longer than a forty hour a week job would ever require of him, completing what at first appears to be capitalized rantings made up of parts of love song lyrics, parts of Bible verses and signage out takes which he either gets from somewhere on line or from his own very professional photographs. He makes a collage like mix of these, both in his writings and in art-like-quality photo collages, which he also spends a great amount of his time designing. His writing and his photo collages seem, at first, to be just non-sense, until one listens to his explanations of them, really listens to him. After Billy explains what they mean, what his intended message is for his writings and his photo collages, one can actually begin to decode what he is trying to convey in them.
Overtime, and after really listening to Billy, one learns that he is suffering from a mental disease and chooses to cope with his mental disease and his homeless condition in a most positive manner. He uses the talents and gifts, which he does possess while not focusing on his problems. He does not drink, smoke or use illegal drugs and often encourages others around him to avoid these, too. Using his Christian faith and writing or doing art whenever he cannot find handyman jobs to do, is his answer to what he suffers. It’s what he does just to live one day at a time under his circumstances. Billy is completely about living in peace, love, having faith in God and finding a reliable job, while he suffers a very unusual mental flaw.
I grew to admire Billy and realized we have more in common than not. Billy is a dedicated artist, hard-working writer and a confident believer in God who actively relies on his own faith every day, each day just for his survival. He is never mean in any way to anyone else. He “just is”, as he says it best, about himself. He is, for me, a real and human reminder to love others as Jesus loves people, right where they are, just as they are; love them without prejudging, without judging them at all. Actually, Billy challenged me to, “just love people”, both by his words and by the way he lives through each day as a homeless, schizophrenic man of love and faith.
After “hanging with” Billy for several days and many hours in those days, I found that Billy had lucid moments, moments of clarity when he too knows and can tell you that he has something “wrong “ in his head, in his thinking, mentally. One would expect bitterness, anger, or at least some complaining from Billy’s rational and sane realization about himself, but nothing of that comes from him. He consistently projects peace, love, belief in God and a desire to find a reliable job for himself.
Finally, if you are fortunate enough to find my Billy or one of your own, most likely at a Starbucks coffee shop, please at least buy him a cup of coffee or better yet, buy him gas for his van so he can get to work. Knowing that Billy is harmless, but struggling to live The Jesus Way-to live in a loving way the life he has been dealt, maybe one could give him that reliable job he so badly needs while one works to accept a person like Billy, flaws and all, just as he is, choosing to see his goodness over his challenges. In the end, if you can do this for a person like Billy, my experience of it proves, it is you who can be blessed more than Billy by helping him!
