Adapted from a 12/03/15 e-mail to my brothers and some others.

Given instability at the shelter where I’ve been for almost five years, I decided to apply to a certain program affiliated with a major national charity and major local soup kitchen.  This program is residential, has a nice facility, and (as I understood it) was geared toward taking men with histories of addiction or homelessness and rendering them self-supporting.

Since it is a residential program, I would no longer have to carry my bags everywhere I go, vastly increasing the radius within which I can look for work; and, I supposed, I would be able to work any shift.  After all, unlike the shelter where I’ve been, they’ve got a big shove towards self-sufficiency.

They rejected me.

I wrote:

Baptismal grace means: when you get knocked down, you get back up.

Blog post (from October ’14, about getting back up): Life in the outer darkness

In the immediate future, I will be checking out options in transitional housing, and case management services at the clinic where I’m currently in treatment for everything I’m in treatment for.

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What happened?

Continue reading This program turned me away. →