I am extremely grateful and very happy that you are a part of my life.
I hope that doesn't give you a twinge of embarrassment to read, which I say because I always feel embarrassed when you praise me. But don't stop doing that. You're perfect the way that you are, and each time you give me another chance to practice humility.
I need to practice a lot of things, like humility, just as a guitarist plays every day even when he's performing every night.
Being human is to practice our virtues. Or for some, our vices. And if those practices become obsessions, then the Universe (or God if you will) punishes us until we learn our lesson. Or His embrace becomes firm and complete. And then our friends speak eulogies, spread our ashes, and try to make sense of it all. For some of those obsessed practitioners--the addicts, the drunks, the terminally lonely--the only friends left are the ones who Jesus led to them.
So let me say how extremely grateful and very happy that Billy, in that mythic moment years ago on the streets of Hyannis, was embraced by God long enough, but not too firmly, so that you could share the Light of the World with him.
Billy now walks around a home on Ocean St. and tells people that God is working here.
And he is right--God is working there, through the mind and spirit of a man held in God's loving embrace, but not too firmly, so that he could walk among us and help Others save themselves as they save others.
I am extremely grateful and very happy that this miracle walks among us as I sit and type this, tears rolling down my face.
"The Miracle on Ocean Street"
I've been thinking of asking Sean Gonsalves to write a non-fiction book about that, using profiles (anonymous or not) of our residents. First I thought that I would write it. Then I read Sean's column about HnotH and thought we could write it together and that the book could be a kind of 3 Cups of Tea, which we could use to spread the message and raise funds. Then this morning, I thought, you know, why not let Sean get all the glory as the author. That was one of my ideas this morning.
But I write to you about another idea: an idea which is my gift to you.
For the last decade or more you have lived a life that embodied a certain passage of the Gospels, which you often cite--Matthew 25.
The results have been everything you could possibly ask in one man's relationship with God. If I may be so bold (and I hope not rude), I think that you identify with the downtrodden in that particular passage. You see That of God and yourself in the stranger or the outcast, and you have tried to reach God's embrace in a similar way to your brush with God as you dangled from the water tower, waiting for Him to catch you when you lost your mortal strength. At that moment, when you heard the voice of that guidance counselor who let you know that there was good in you--then you began to understand the work of God. The path from the mind to the heart and back again, which your grandmother had attempted to forge deeply in your soul, finally lit up with the speed and certainty of a well-wired room, and you knew, you knew, you knew, Thank God, you knew that the light of God was in you, that your life was worth living. When you climbed down from that water tower, there was no going back. You would be tickled, teased, caressed by, tangled with, dismissed, forgotten--all--again and again, until the day the whisper became a shout, Matthew 25:40 came blasting through every cell of your body, and you turned to help others. You have no choice now to Quake in the face of that Truth. You are a Quaker.
What occurred to me this morning was how much different your life could be if you focussed with all the same energy, not on Matthew 25:40, but on Matthew 7:7. What will your life be like if you put that line before you in the morning before your feet hit the floor? What will your dreams look like each night if you recite that line over and over again to push away the horrors of the heart that you witness each day in your work and your Work? "Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall open. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened."
My desire for you and, in a way, my Greatest Wish for everyone in your life is that you find wonderful gifts--spiritual and material because these our Friends on the streets need you in the full abundance of God's glory.
And, as Forrest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that."
Your friend,
Jeff Howell
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