So this is me catching up to myself, and this process of endless awakening is really the same path towards finding a home.
We all must navigate a society that endlessly attempts to diminish our relationship to soul-spirit-body-heart-mind-God-earth.
I say that it attempts to diminish the relationship, which is very different from stating that it diminishes the soul itself. That never takes place, even though we all believe it does somewhere in our deepest suffering.
The sun is as radiant today as it was the day I was born. And I write these words right after realizing that even though I am living in San Diego, it is a very cloudy, chilly, November morning. But the sun is simply covered up a bit.
I actually adore the changing weather and seasons. I grow tired of endless 75-degree sunny days with blue skies and only a few clouds. If the sun is the radiant soul, then go ahead and put some clouds in the way. I am fine with that. I am fine with the rain as well. I am fine feeling cold now and then because then the summer sun will resonate with my shivering body in a sacred way, reminding me that the nights never last forever.
I mean, really, there is no night or day, is there? Am I going to be some white, blessed pure angel drinking nothing but herbal tea my entire life and looking at some other sacred soul puking in the gutter and thinking he is less than me?
The so-called “homeless” are not simply solitary islands of poverty disconnected from the world around them and the community of which they are members. Their poverty—whether it is poverty of a lack of basic needs being met or poverty of the soul—is not millions idiotically impoverishing themselves.
We all are collectively impoverished and this needs to be accepted and embraced as a collective tragedy. If you are all that, then offer me your sacred soul sun love to my dark, dark homeless night. I invite you. But you may have only a moment of transcendence in your day. I wish you have more so that you can offer me as much as you and I both have always deserved.
The other day I met a possibly homeless woman a few blocks from my home. I asked her how she was and she said she was happy to have woken up this morning. I asked her, “Are you still waking up?”
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Jesse Mentken is a 57-year old white Jewish Buddhist poet yogi survivor of incest, homelesness, solitary confinement and years of psychiatric hospitalization. He has lived in San Diego for eight years, but is about to hit the road and hopes to create an economically sustainable creative sacred life in a hyper-capitalist society. Any donations by Venmo @Jesse-Mentken will be acknowledged as energetic blessings (and will also help Jesse do the laundry).
