{"id":906,"date":"2018-12-31T14:36:44","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=906"},"modified":"2018-12-31T14:36:44","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:36:44","slug":"931","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=906","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Review: WELCOME HOMELESS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018Notice it doesn\u2019t say, \u201cFeed the hungry, unless you think he might just have the munchies \u2026 Or, \u201cClothe the naked, unless he doth get drunk on Jack Daniel\u2019s.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

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Alan Graham was struck by inspiration in 1998: food trucks. He envisioned a truck to feed Austin\u2019s homeless where they live. Graham recruited five friends (the \u201csix-pack\u201d), and they pooled their money to buy an old catering truck. Inspired by God\u2019s choice of Mary, an impoverished, uneducated peasant, and the example of Francis of Assisi, Graham understood that it\u2019s about \u201ccommunion through community, and community through connection,\u201d and \u201cbridging the gap between the divinity of God and dignity of man.\u201d New, warm socks and a choice of Popsicle flavors are useful for this.<\/p>\n

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Some twenty-odd years later, Mobile Loaves & Fishes has served more than five million meals with the help of more than eighteen thousand volunteers. The mission has expanded to include (\u201cThrow your fear away\u201d) Street Retreats during which volunteers live on the streets with the homeless, micro-enterprises that allow the homeless to earn money with dignity, and the Community First! Village that includes not only housing but a grocery store, workshops, a clinic, a playground, and a dog park, among other amenities.<\/p>\n

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Welcome Homeless: One Man\u2019s Journey of Discovering the Meaning of Home<\/em> is Alan Graham\u2019s spiritual memoir and autobiography, but more than that it is an explanation of \u201cthe gospel con carne,\u201d and a demonstration of Mobile Loaves & Fishes\u2019 philosophical cornerstone of community. Related in an engaging, colloquial style, and filled with gentle, good-natured humor (\u201cIt was like something out of a fairy tale, except instead of a Renaissance era king and queen, it was a badass Latino gangster and his wife\u201d), Welcome Homeless is an inspiration and an exhortation to abandon our comfort zones and to attend not just to the passion, but to the compassion, of Jesus.<\/p>\n

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Believing human connections are meant to be \u201crelational, not transactional,\u201d Graham befriended the homeless men, women, and children on Austin\u2019s streets, and it changed his life and his faith. \u201cIt allowed me to have the kind of faith that doesn\u2019t ignore what\u2019s underneath the overpass \u2026 behind the back alley \u2026 digging in the Dumpsters,\u201d Graham writes. \u201cIt allowed me to know a God that doesn\u2019t pretend what\u2019s happening isn\u2019t happening but, rather, is in the Dumpster too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Graham sprinkles facts and figures throughout his narrative, and quotes the Didache, C. S. Lewis, and Saint Augustine, but the bulk is comprised of the stories of people he has met. We go Dumpster-diving with J. P. Burris, meet Gordy the Gentle Giant and a transgender Navajo woman who earned a master\u2019s degree in engineering from the University of Texas while living on the street, and follow the ups and downs of the love story of Br\u00fck and Robin. The photographic portraits of these individuals are a thoughtful inclusion.<\/p>\n

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In the introduction to Welcome Homeless<\/em>, Graham states his goal for the book: He hopes \u2018[we] will start to see the great \u201cI AM\u201d in the \u201cleast of these.\u201d\u2019 Mission accomplished, Mr. Graham. I laughed aloud, and I wiped away tears. I can\u2019t imagine a better book for this Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \u2018Notice it doesn\u2019t say, \u201cFeed the hungry, unless you think he might just have the munchies \u2026 Or, \u201cClothe the naked, unless he doth get drunk on Jack Daniel\u2019s.\u201d\u2019   Alan Graham was struck by inspiration in 1998: food trucks. He envisioned a truck to feed Austin\u2019s homeless where they live. Graham recruited five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,12],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookreview","tag-lonestarreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}