There was a program on television last night and it got me thinking. It was about runaway kids living on the streets of Portland, Oregon, some of them living this way for a number of years. Portland has become a magnet for the kids because the city has taken a soft approach with them and also because a cheap heroin is available. Many of the kids spend their time panhandling for the ten dollars it takes to get a hit of the drug, but of course the cycle never ends, and once they satisfy their craving, they’re scrambling to get enough money for the next hit. Most of them are good kids, but terribly, terribly lost.

homeless

The thing that struck me was how destructive their response is to a need that is good and liberating, the need for authenticity. One of the girls, eighteen and pregnant, was criticizing society and all the so-called “normal” people who go off to work every day and raise families, pigenholing everyone living this way as phony. At the bottom of her criticism there is some truth to be sure; there are many such people living on a superficial level, chasing after money and possessions and avoiding the deeper realities of life. What is sad is the self-destructive reaction to the inauthenticity the kids see all too clearly around them. Sticking a needle in your arm only deadens the reality, and in the end makes them very much like the people they abhor.

It made me think of the monastic response throughout history to this very same question of authenticity. Men and women seeking to live honestly and genuinely, and pursuing the truth wherever it took them, have fled not to the mean streets, not to drugs, not to self-destructive isolation from others, but rather to the desert (garden!) of truth , of self-giving, of identification with all humanity in solitude and silence. The monastic life, when truly lived, has opened up to countless thousands throughout history the truth that I am not different than you, but that we all are engaged in the same search for the truth, brothers and sisters in the seeking. The tragedy of the kids on streets all over our country is that in many cases what compels them is good, but their choices are self-defeating.

I have a good friend, who one day way back now in the early 70s was found lying on the sidewalk somewhere in Manhattan, dying of a drug overdose. He was rushed to the hospital where they saved his life. Not long after, while recovering, he had a vision of God’s love for him, which changed him forever. Henceforth, he only wanted to seek God and knew a monastery was the best place to do his seeking. Well, he didn’t become a monk, formally, but he’s been living as a lay worker at a Trappist monastery for over twenty-five years now. He lives his own form of monastic life, supported by the prayers and witness of the monks.

There is no difference between what drove my friend first to drugs and ultimately to God’s love, and what drives the kids today on the streets of Portland. God rescued him because he sought the truth. May God have pity on these kids and may they find their way to the really Real, God’s love for each of them personally.