Orlando Blooms

Hello...

Today was a message, the message was unavoidable. The bus stopped rolling at 5 am and I stepped outside. While standing in the streets making sure that our vehicle was clear from the construction zone I met Billy. Billy, a 60 year old homeless man on his bicycle, tells me his life story and explains that he needs breakfast. I look Billy square in the eyes while he sings me a song and I can't help but notice he has no teeth. Something was honest about Billy, it was easy to help him. Billy then reassured me that he would protect our bus from any and all evil doers, he turned and rode away on his most prized possession.

8 hours later I woke up to find out my front porch was a crowded downtown Orlando with two parking tickets. After loading in another gentlemen walked up to my door and asked for a drink. With a few cases left over from Jacksonville on the counter I couldn't even try to turn him away. I didn't hesitate and he took two then said, "God Bless" and I turned to him and said the same. He left quickly and I was left with mixed feelings. He would later return past midnight and volunteer to vacuum our rugs just outside the RV for some money to buy food, he did a great job.

After the show I was standing outside the trailer with guitars in hand and there was Billy looking up at me. He told me he stood outside and listened to our whole show and even knew that we had two albums out. I laughed and realize I was correct in my assumption about Billy's honesty. I asked him how his breakfast was and his face lit up. Billy then told me about how the bible says to be careful because we entertain angles unaware and that "I" was his angel. It was quit a funny moment because I thought for sure that he was mine. Thinking my day of philanthropy was done, I sent Billy off with some fresh clothes and enough money for a few meals and a nights admittance into the local homeless shelter.

We leave and then pull into a parking lot around 2 am to sleep, I then walk inside a 24 hour grocery store and still feeling quite awake, I decided to rent a $1 dvd from a large coke machine looking device in the doorway. Of all the movies on all the days I rent a film called, "Gone, Baby Gone". Laying in my bunk watching the film I begin to see the correlation. The film is about a low income mother who's child is kidnapped and a younger private investigator is hired to find her. Later the investigator is forced to make a judgment call when he actually finds the little girl. An upper class family faked a kidnapping to replace their own lost child and were claiming to have "saved" this little girl from a miserable childhood and bad situation.

The investigator is forced to make the right decision. After the movie I lay there in my bed and realized that the movie was asking the viewer to consider the right decision. Is freeing people from poverty or giving a child back to what she was born into the right decision? The end of the movie is beautiful. The investigator upon making his decision returns to the mother and child and walks right back into the unhealthy lifestyle, he knew it would be so. The mother on her way out asks him to sit for her, he accepts and the films ends with both strangers, so different yet so connected, sitting side by side.

I realize that no change will ever come unless we involve our lives in the lives of others. Unless we get to know people by their names, their stories and their struggles, change will never take place. The right decision I believe is allowing people to make the right decision for themselves and to be there to help them through the process, to be their community. We can't make the decision for others, we can only be available and this is the hardest thing to do, this involves more than just handing a man enough money to buy a meal.