We live next door to hobos. Literally.

She has been hobo queen a couple of times. He has been hobo king a couple of times. When we first moved into our house, we hosted a hobo cookout in our backyard.

The hobo queen is also a caregiver. They have live in foster care adults. One of those adults died a couple of weeks ago. They asked me to do his memorial. So, we did a memorial with several hobo friends in their backyard. The ashes went into a hole in the backyard. Don’t tell the funeral home.

Pastoring in a city has all kinds of adventures. Being a pastor on a block with hobos has been quite the adventure over the years. A backyard funeral with the ashes going right into the ground is definitely a first for me.

The group was as eclectic as they could come. A caregiver spoke. (He read a poem he wrote on the bus coming over, which included a line about Gus now being burnt to a crisp.) The agnostic sister spoke. An autistic young man shared stories, then played the theme from Jeopardy on his recorder because he and Gus would watch Jeopardy every day.

Pastoring is quite the journey. This is the stuff that doesn’t play out in your mind when your sitting in a Bible college class. Yet, this is stuff I don’t want to forget. I will carry a card from Gus’s sister with me the rest of my ministry. She told me Gus’s story of how Gus was diagnosed schizophrenic back in the 1940s in his teen years. The standard procedure in those days was a lobotomy. Their parents didn’t go that route, but they did allow electric shock therapy. Finally, medicine caught up and Gus could have some medication that would help, but the years of bad medical practice had taken their physical toll.

This is the stuff I don’t want to forget. None of it.