"Heard GBH made my decision.
Punk Rock is my religion."
-Rancid
I saw the knife sink into my knuckle before I saw the blood.
Putting the bread knife into my knife roll, I slid the top of my finger right down the edge of the fillet knife and nearly sliced the top knuckle of my middle finger off. There was a lot of blood. And since I still had work to do a patch work job of bandaging happened that had more to do with masking tape and paper towels than medicine.
People kept seeing the blood and the cut and asking me if I was ok.
It didn't hurt, fuck a few hours later and it still doesn't. This isn't the first time that I have cut myself, and unfortunately it probably won't be my last.
This has become my life. Not cutting myself, but this life of kitchens, and food service, and the like. I will burn myself, and I will cut myself, and I will be able (with the help of two other cooks) cook for 400 people in about six hours. This is a life I love, and it is a life that I never should have left in the first place, and now with Me. by my side, and a world that is a little more stable, I realize that things don't always need to be as hectic as I thought they needed to be.
But more than anything I realize that my life for a very long time has revolved around food. I find myself watching TV about food, reading books about food, thinking about what I'm going to cook at work, and what I'm going to cook at home. I live a life about food. Sure there are other things going on in my life. The is a relationship (with my lady and my kids), a band, reading, writing, all that other stuff that happens during life. But a big focus for me in my life is food. And tonight, was about food too. In a different way.
-
We were on our way to see The Business.
Walking down Broadway towards the Larimer Lounge.
And as we walk we pass Triangle Park right across the street from the Denver Rescue Mission. This place where the homeless congregate in, and looking at Me. I made the passing comment, "Look baby, the Army of the Homeless." It was a joke that me and a couple other of my totally unfeeling friends made one time, and I felt that it was pretty funny this time. Because I'm an asshole, and don't think in terms of people's pain all the time.
But Me. she sees the world a lot differently than I do.
She didn't see people that are to cracked out, or drunk to keep jobs, and thereby a roof over their head. She saw people. People in need. And it broke her heart. She new then and there that she had to do something. There was the kind of pull in her heart that I have only really understood a few times in my life, and that pull could easily be termed, "a calling."
I personally think this kind of experience happens to people all the time. That tugging at your heart telling you that you should be doing something. I just think that we have all been conditioned to ignore it as much as possible. Because that tugging is always telling us something like, "Quit your office job and go back to cooking," or, "You should just live your life simply, money doesn't matter," or, "Life is good just the way it is for you, but what about that homeless guy over there, you should go help him."
Maybe those voices are just my version of a mid-life crisis (which I'm old enough to have I just realized). But from those voices come some pretty incredible things. Walking away from a life where I could afford things, to a life where things were small, and I was poor, somehow made it so I was more content with my life.
Sure there were moments where I felt like a total piece of shit, but honestly there were a lot less of them once I gave up on living "The American Dream" or a good job, and lots of money, and the like.
Well Me. was listening to the call instead of The American Dream that night.
-
sM. gets a lot of my respect for doing the same thing.
His project was short lived because his ex-wife got in some legal trouble and he had to rush back to his daughter's side and be full time dad, which I also respect a ton.
But for one day at least he chose to be homeless, to live on the charity of others, because he was going to live and be with them. It was a beautiful idea. To walk away from everything. Not just from a job, and from a steady paycheck, but from food and shelter, and simple basic things.
This is where this post gets a little preachy.
He went to churches and told them what he was doing. Asked for prayer. Explained that he was looking to help the people that were left alone on the streets from the inside out. That he was wanting to go to them, instead of asking them to come to us.
He got some prayers, and a couple pats on the back, a good job, and then it was gone. No one wanted to maybe feed him, or give him a roof for the night.
The silence from that sector said a lot.
-
Me. started to reach out to people about helping get some food to the homeless in Triangle Park.
She had decided that it would be great to hand out sandwiches to them, maybe with a juice box, and some snack stuff. Not much, but at the very least a meal for some people that may or may not have something to eat. There were some people that wanted to help, and I was one of them. But I have to admit that I had very little desire to help, largely because she was asking other people to help do it.
I had spent to many years in ministry asking people for help, and being rebuffed. I had learned that there is really only one way to get something done. On your own.
I have stopped asking people to help with projects like this, because everyone has a reason not to. They don't have the money, they don't have the time, they don't have the desire. And I'm not ever going to force someone to do something. So why even ask.
But when she posted it on Facebook I decided to share it.
In a couple of days everyone that I knew had said no. No to helping, no to praying, no to really even reading what the message had to say I'm guessing. I wasn't surprised, and I'm not even angry. Just knew it was going to happen.
-
I called Da. to tell him some good news, and as usual we started talking about God and the church in general, and how people react to us and how we are trying to live out our faith.
The question that I always get asked is, "Do you go to church?"
I tend to answer no. Because I don't go sit down once a week to listen to a pastor and sing some worship music. My church has become the time I spend talking with sM. about helping the homeless. Or the time I spend with Da. on the phone talking about faith and love, and living for God in spite of our flaws.
That has become my church, because when I'm in a church I hear a lot of people talking about what we should be doing. Couldn't the hour we just spent listening, be used doing. They will know us by our love, not our awesome worship service.
Don't get me wrong, church has its place. And there are amazing people in every church I have ever been to. People that I have loved, and that have loved me back. People that I respect, and people that do.
But I don't have the desire to sit and learn over and over that Christ died for my sins, and that I should be helping those less fortunate than me. I know that.
I need to just do that.
-
In 1997 I was just getting out of high school, and really just getting into punk in a very serious way.
I was reading everything that I could find to learn about new bands, and get my head around a genre of music that had several decades of back catalog on me.
I found Warzone that year.
Some CD re-release of "Don't Forget the Struggle, Don't Forget the Streets." And like I did with every CD that I bought, I read the lyrics and the liner notes, mostly to discover new bands, and to know what they were singing about. And Warzone was all about the working class, and the poor. In the liner notes were stories about how their merch table would have pamphlets telling you where you could get help with depression, condoms, clean needles, and all sorts of other social problems. They wanted to elevate people beyond their circumstances.
Sure they were just another punk band, but they wanted to help people. That was their church. And they helped their people.
Sure I was just another punk, but I wanted to help people too. I wanted to be the kind of person that would go out and give help to the helpless.
And because I had been raised in a church, and with the platitudes of the church, I always thought that is what the church was all about. Whatever you do for the least of my brothers and whatnot.
So I was in a band, and all after high school that band was all about Jesus, and all about trying to spread the good news of the gospel, and in my heart I always wanted to make it about more. About more than the gospel, about giving back to people, about finding a way to help the least.
And then in 1997 Raybeez died. I heard about it from a friend, an older hardcore dude that I really looked up to. And he told me a lot of the same stories about Raybeez and Warzone. That they were constantly trying to help people, and give direction as to where you could go to get some help, with addiction, with depression, with real life problems.
He died of pneumonia. Because he lived with the people that he cared about. He lived like the people he cared about. He didn't give a fuck that he was poor, or sick. Because everyone around him was poor and sick, and he loved them all the same.
It was then that I realized that I wasn't really a "Christian." At least not the way the church thought I should be. I wasn't the guy that sat in a pew and listened to what I was supposed to be doing. I was the guy that needed to go out into the crowd and find the people that needed help. I needed to live with them, and work with them, and be like them. I wasn't a Christian, I was a Punk that loved Jesus. And those are very different things.
-
I began to work in kitchens then.
And I learned that everyone in them has a story, and place that they are coming from, and that a lot of the time those people have been hurt so much by the church that they will never want to hear what you have to say about God. And I learned that they are always surprised to find out that someone like me loves the God that they feel has hurt them so bad. A God that they probably felt I had a right to be upset with.
And that is the world that I choose to live in still. This pirate ship of damaged people. People like me.
-
We made sandwiches. With some help from a couple of friends, and some money was collected so we could buy enough for 200 people.
And we took them out to Triangle Park. And food was very much on my mind. Because the men and women there rushed us. With arms outstretched then were desperate for what we had to offer.
And when it was over and done it was such an intensely personal experience, that I'm happy no church people were there to encroach on it. I'm glad that it was just me and Me. And that I didn't have to listen to a sermon, or pump myself up with a prayer, or worship music. We got the boxes of food and handed them out. No questions asked. And when we got back into the car (after less than an hour of work) Me. broke down and cried, because there were people that didn't get anything, because she wanted to do more. Because that is what it is really about. Helping others.
She turned on Toots and the Maytals, and he sang about love and a life of poverty too, and I looked out the window with tears streaming down my face.
-
D_n. and MJ. come into work all the time. Nearly every day honestly. These two old school punk guys. Former promoters, and band members. Guys that grew up in the same scene, and with the same struggles that I did. Guys that see the world in much the same way. As a struggle against the police, and Nazi's. Against drugs and booze, and falling into the traps of women that want to keep you, in a negative way. As opposed to a fight against The Devil, and My Sin Nature. It is all well and good to oppose the devil and all his ways, but this world is his, and we all have to live in it. I'm going to fight the shit he puts in my way, and not worry to much about him (he's defeated anyway).
They ask me what I was up to this weekend, and I tell them about the sandwiches.
And they are the first people that I know that say, "Awesome man. That is good work, you need to give back to the community."
They have been there, in the streets, poor, desperate.
They maybe have sat in a church before, I couldn't tell you. But with those few sentences I realized again, that I'm not really a Christian, I'm a Punk. I may love Christ, and his sacrifice, but I will never be a part of the church as it is here and now. I don't fit, I don't belong, I belong with my people. I belong in the gutters and the alleyways. I need to be helping a guy up off of the barroom floor, or passing out sandwiches to the homeless. I need to be talking to my friend who is suicidal, or the one that is an alcoholic and doesn't want to tell his wife. I need to be with the people that He went to. And if that means I die sick and poor than all the better.
Because those are my people.
And that is my faith.
Putting the bread knife into my knife roll, I slid the top of my finger right down the edge of the fillet knife and nearly sliced the top knuckle of my middle finger off. There was a lot of blood. And since I still had work to do a patch work job of bandaging happened that had more to do with masking tape and paper towels than medicine.
People kept seeing the blood and the cut and asking me if I was ok.
It didn't hurt, fuck a few hours later and it still doesn't. This isn't the first time that I have cut myself, and unfortunately it probably won't be my last.
This has become my life. Not cutting myself, but this life of kitchens, and food service, and the like. I will burn myself, and I will cut myself, and I will be able (with the help of two other cooks) cook for 400 people in about six hours. This is a life I love, and it is a life that I never should have left in the first place, and now with Me. by my side, and a world that is a little more stable, I realize that things don't always need to be as hectic as I thought they needed to be.
But more than anything I realize that my life for a very long time has revolved around food. I find myself watching TV about food, reading books about food, thinking about what I'm going to cook at work, and what I'm going to cook at home. I live a life about food. Sure there are other things going on in my life. The is a relationship (with my lady and my kids), a band, reading, writing, all that other stuff that happens during life. But a big focus for me in my life is food. And tonight, was about food too. In a different way.
-
We were on our way to see The Business.
Walking down Broadway towards the Larimer Lounge.
And as we walk we pass Triangle Park right across the street from the Denver Rescue Mission. This place where the homeless congregate in, and looking at Me. I made the passing comment, "Look baby, the Army of the Homeless." It was a joke that me and a couple other of my totally unfeeling friends made one time, and I felt that it was pretty funny this time. Because I'm an asshole, and don't think in terms of people's pain all the time.
But Me. she sees the world a lot differently than I do.
She didn't see people that are to cracked out, or drunk to keep jobs, and thereby a roof over their head. She saw people. People in need. And it broke her heart. She new then and there that she had to do something. There was the kind of pull in her heart that I have only really understood a few times in my life, and that pull could easily be termed, "a calling."
I personally think this kind of experience happens to people all the time. That tugging at your heart telling you that you should be doing something. I just think that we have all been conditioned to ignore it as much as possible. Because that tugging is always telling us something like, "Quit your office job and go back to cooking," or, "You should just live your life simply, money doesn't matter," or, "Life is good just the way it is for you, but what about that homeless guy over there, you should go help him."
Maybe those voices are just my version of a mid-life crisis (which I'm old enough to have I just realized). But from those voices come some pretty incredible things. Walking away from a life where I could afford things, to a life where things were small, and I was poor, somehow made it so I was more content with my life.
Sure there were moments where I felt like a total piece of shit, but honestly there were a lot less of them once I gave up on living "The American Dream" or a good job, and lots of money, and the like.
Well Me. was listening to the call instead of The American Dream that night.
-
sM. gets a lot of my respect for doing the same thing.
His project was short lived because his ex-wife got in some legal trouble and he had to rush back to his daughter's side and be full time dad, which I also respect a ton.
But for one day at least he chose to be homeless, to live on the charity of others, because he was going to live and be with them. It was a beautiful idea. To walk away from everything. Not just from a job, and from a steady paycheck, but from food and shelter, and simple basic things.This is where this post gets a little preachy.
He went to churches and told them what he was doing. Asked for prayer. Explained that he was looking to help the people that were left alone on the streets from the inside out. That he was wanting to go to them, instead of asking them to come to us.
He got some prayers, and a couple pats on the back, a good job, and then it was gone. No one wanted to maybe feed him, or give him a roof for the night.
The silence from that sector said a lot.
-
Me. started to reach out to people about helping get some food to the homeless in Triangle Park.
She had decided that it would be great to hand out sandwiches to them, maybe with a juice box, and some snack stuff. Not much, but at the very least a meal for some people that may or may not have something to eat. There were some people that wanted to help, and I was one of them. But I have to admit that I had very little desire to help, largely because she was asking other people to help do it.
I had spent to many years in ministry asking people for help, and being rebuffed. I had learned that there is really only one way to get something done. On your own.
I have stopped asking people to help with projects like this, because everyone has a reason not to. They don't have the money, they don't have the time, they don't have the desire. And I'm not ever going to force someone to do something. So why even ask.
But when she posted it on Facebook I decided to share it.
In a couple of days everyone that I knew had said no. No to helping, no to praying, no to really even reading what the message had to say I'm guessing. I wasn't surprised, and I'm not even angry. Just knew it was going to happen.
-
I called Da. to tell him some good news, and as usual we started talking about God and the church in general, and how people react to us and how we are trying to live out our faith.
The question that I always get asked is, "Do you go to church?"
I tend to answer no. Because I don't go sit down once a week to listen to a pastor and sing some worship music. My church has become the time I spend talking with sM. about helping the homeless. Or the time I spend with Da. on the phone talking about faith and love, and living for God in spite of our flaws.
That has become my church, because when I'm in a church I hear a lot of people talking about what we should be doing. Couldn't the hour we just spent listening, be used doing. They will know us by our love, not our awesome worship service.
Don't get me wrong, church has its place. And there are amazing people in every church I have ever been to. People that I have loved, and that have loved me back. People that I respect, and people that do.
But I don't have the desire to sit and learn over and over that Christ died for my sins, and that I should be helping those less fortunate than me. I know that.
I need to just do that.
-
In 1997 I was just getting out of high school, and really just getting into punk in a very serious way.
I was reading everything that I could find to learn about new bands, and get my head around a genre of music that had several decades of back catalog on me.
I found Warzone that year.
Some CD re-release of "Don't Forget the Struggle, Don't Forget the Streets." And like I did with every CD that I bought, I read the lyrics and the liner notes, mostly to discover new bands, and to know what they were singing about. And Warzone was all about the working class, and the poor. In the liner notes were stories about how their merch table would have pamphlets telling you where you could get help with depression, condoms, clean needles, and all sorts of other social problems. They wanted to elevate people beyond their circumstances.
Sure they were just another punk band, but they wanted to help people. That was their church. And they helped their people.
Sure I was just another punk, but I wanted to help people too. I wanted to be the kind of person that would go out and give help to the helpless.
And because I had been raised in a church, and with the platitudes of the church, I always thought that is what the church was all about. Whatever you do for the least of my brothers and whatnot.
So I was in a band, and all after high school that band was all about Jesus, and all about trying to spread the good news of the gospel, and in my heart I always wanted to make it about more. About more than the gospel, about giving back to people, about finding a way to help the least.
And then in 1997 Raybeez died. I heard about it from a friend, an older hardcore dude that I really looked up to. And he told me a lot of the same stories about Raybeez and Warzone. That they were constantly trying to help people, and give direction as to where you could go to get some help, with addiction, with depression, with real life problems.He died of pneumonia. Because he lived with the people that he cared about. He lived like the people he cared about. He didn't give a fuck that he was poor, or sick. Because everyone around him was poor and sick, and he loved them all the same.
It was then that I realized that I wasn't really a "Christian." At least not the way the church thought I should be. I wasn't the guy that sat in a pew and listened to what I was supposed to be doing. I was the guy that needed to go out into the crowd and find the people that needed help. I needed to live with them, and work with them, and be like them. I wasn't a Christian, I was a Punk that loved Jesus. And those are very different things.
-
I began to work in kitchens then.
And I learned that everyone in them has a story, and place that they are coming from, and that a lot of the time those people have been hurt so much by the church that they will never want to hear what you have to say about God. And I learned that they are always surprised to find out that someone like me loves the God that they feel has hurt them so bad. A God that they probably felt I had a right to be upset with.
And that is the world that I choose to live in still. This pirate ship of damaged people. People like me.
-
We made sandwiches. With some help from a couple of friends, and some money was collected so we could buy enough for 200 people.
And we took them out to Triangle Park. And food was very much on my mind. Because the men and women there rushed us. With arms outstretched then were desperate for what we had to offer.
And when it was over and done it was such an intensely personal experience, that I'm happy no church people were there to encroach on it. I'm glad that it was just me and Me. And that I didn't have to listen to a sermon, or pump myself up with a prayer, or worship music. We got the boxes of food and handed them out. No questions asked. And when we got back into the car (after less than an hour of work) Me. broke down and cried, because there were people that didn't get anything, because she wanted to do more. Because that is what it is really about. Helping others.
She turned on Toots and the Maytals, and he sang about love and a life of poverty too, and I looked out the window with tears streaming down my face.
-
D_n. and MJ. come into work all the time. Nearly every day honestly. These two old school punk guys. Former promoters, and band members. Guys that grew up in the same scene, and with the same struggles that I did. Guys that see the world in much the same way. As a struggle against the police, and Nazi's. Against drugs and booze, and falling into the traps of women that want to keep you, in a negative way. As opposed to a fight against The Devil, and My Sin Nature. It is all well and good to oppose the devil and all his ways, but this world is his, and we all have to live in it. I'm going to fight the shit he puts in my way, and not worry to much about him (he's defeated anyway).
They ask me what I was up to this weekend, and I tell them about the sandwiches.
And they are the first people that I know that say, "Awesome man. That is good work, you need to give back to the community."
They have been there, in the streets, poor, desperate.
They maybe have sat in a church before, I couldn't tell you. But with those few sentences I realized again, that I'm not really a Christian, I'm a Punk. I may love Christ, and his sacrifice, but I will never be a part of the church as it is here and now. I don't fit, I don't belong, I belong with my people. I belong in the gutters and the alleyways. I need to be helping a guy up off of the barroom floor, or passing out sandwiches to the homeless. I need to be talking to my friend who is suicidal, or the one that is an alcoholic and doesn't want to tell his wife. I need to be with the people that He went to. And if that means I die sick and poor than all the better.
Because those are my people.
And that is my faith.
"You Gotta Keep The Faith."
-Warzone
File Under Virtue.
File Under Virtue.
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