My experience of being homeless… & other comments
Christmas Season, 2009

My Dear Friends…

I am so excited about the new Collector’s Edition of Conversations with God-The Movie!  Thank you for coming to this site!  It gives me a chance to share with you some comments about my life --- and about the movie which has been made of it.

Of course, for a real peak into my experiences around everything that has been depicted in this film you will want to play the Commentary Track that is on the Collector’s Edition DVD.  There, I walk through the film with you, frame by frame, and chat about each moment of my life that is shown there…

It was quite an experience making this Commentary Track with my dear friend and brother  Stephen Simon, who co-produced and directed this film, because it brought back for me so many of the feelings and remembrances of the actual times that are covered by the movie’s plotline.

Everyone asks me, by the way… “How real is the movie?  How close is it to the way things actually happened?  Is it ‘true to life’?”

The answer is, the movie is very true-to-life.  Screenwriter Eric Delabarre sat with me in development and scripting meetings with Stephen and others for three whole days (and long days they were), and then met again with my, in person and by telephone, through months of preparation for the start of filming.  During this time, Eric asked me a thousand questions about every moment of my experience, probing for detail after detail, so that he could come up with a script that was never fictionalized, but as true to the events of my life as filmmaking would allow.

What that means is that there were, for sure, certain filmmaking conventions that we had to follow… such as, for instance, consolidating a few of the people who moved through my life in those moments into one or two characters…simply to keep us from having to come up with a “cast of thousands” to tell my story…

So, some of the characters in the film are composites, representing two or three people in my real life story.  But all of the experiences they depicted, all of the words they spoke, came out of my actual experience. 

Likewise, a few locations were changed in order to consolidate the filming schedule and reduce the number of separate sets that had to be found or constructed --- but here again, none of the experiences that were depicted were fictionalized or “created” just for the movie.  Everything that happens in the film happened to me, right down to the exact words that were spoken.  Eric and Stephen allowed me to review the script and make adjustments or alterations to ensure that all the dialogue was real, and none of it “manufactured.”

So I am very happy with the result, and I commend and deeply thank Stephen, Eric, and everyone on the movie production team for their decision to “stay with Neale’s story” and not try to “Hollywood-ize” it with more action or more gimmicks of one kind or another.  I am very grateful, because I think the story speaks for itself and doesn’t need any “Hollywood-izing.”

I am grateful, too, to Henry Czerny, a really fine actor, a true artist, for his extraordinary work in portraying me on the screen.  Henry spent very little time with me prior to the start of filming (about 15 minutes, actually, in one brief meeting), but he managed to capture “me” in so many details that it is a bit “scary”!

And, too, to all the people in the cast and on the crew, my heartfelt thanks!  What a wonderful film they made!

Now…may I say a few words about the experience of being homeless, which is so perfectly captured in this movie?

I became homeless after surviving a car accident in which I broke my neck.  I was separated and divorced from my wife and supporting my children as best I could.  When I found out I had a broken neck, I was given a Philadelphia collar, a protective device to support my neck that I wore for about twenty months. I was not allowed any kind of exertion at all, and I was soon out of work.  I couldn't even get a job as a bagger at the supermarket.

What little benefits the government gives a single man ran out very quickly and before I knew it, I was a homeless.  I was given a tent and a sleeping bag and I found a campground where I could set myself up for a while.  I thought, “Well, I’ll be here for a few weeks, but I’ll pull out of this. I’ll find a job --- there must be something I can do --- and I’ll get a little place and start over.”

It didn’t work out that way.  The longer I was on the street, the harder it was to find work.  I looked worse and worse, I smelled worse and worse, and my chances were looking worse and worse by the day.  It took me nearly a year --- and a small miracle --- to find a way to earn a little money.  I lived in that campground for all that time, walking the streets by day picking beer bottles and soda cans out of trash containers all over town, to turn them in at the nearest store for the 5-cent return deposit, and panhandling for quarters and dimes on the street to augment when I could put together in this way.  I lived under the stars in that tent (and a tent can get mighty cold some nights, may I tell you…) for nine months.  Then I was finally able to move to a tiny cabin in the same campground, where I hung out for another 90 days.

May I ask something of you?  Please, don't ever pass anybody on the street who you can see is in need without offering some kind of help . We've all got a quarter or a dime or a dollar or a fiver that we can let go of.  And you can make somebody's whole day with fifty cents or a dollar.  I know there’s a temptation to judge “street people” and to wonder, “Why don’t they just get a job, like everybody else…?”  But having been “out there,” it’s not that easy. You can’t even afford carfare to get to a job interview even if you caught news of one…to say nothing of how you would appear once you got there.

Spending money for a haircut is totally out of the question, of course.  Even gathering the change you need to get to a Laundromat and wash your three shirts and two pair of jeans is a once-every-three-months deal.  Unless you’re near a public shower (how many of those do you see where you live?), your fragrance is not going to be very fresh.  Shined does are a joke.

You can see what kind of challenge this all is for the homeless.

So help out if you can.  Try to never, ever, ever pass anybody in need.  If you see somebody on the street with a hand out, please be generous.

Tips for interacting with a homeless person:

1. Make no judgments.  You have no idea how they got to where they are, and I can tell you from life experience that it is not always simply because they were “lazy” or addicted to alcohol or drugs or that they are nothing more than “stumblebums” who just don’t want to work.  I fell into none of those categories --- although I could see from reactions to me that many people assumed I did.
    
2. Look “street people” in the eye and say hello.  This simple, dignified human interaction could make their day.  So many of the homeless feel as if they have been ‘disappeared’ from society.  This, of course, greatly discourages them from even trying to find work (even if they could, which is most cases is very difficult) and to reintegrate.
    
3. Offer whatever you can in terms of coins or cash.  It doesn’t have to be a twenty or a fifty dollar bill…but if you have a One or a Five or even a Ten you can let go of, know that you can not only change someone’s day, but shift their entire experience of, and hopes about, life with a single act of such generosity.
    
4. It’s often been said, “Don’t just give ‘em money and walk away.  Buy them lunch!  Offer to take them to a clothing store and get something new to wear, purchase a bag of groceries, etc.  That’s all very well and good if you have the time right then and there to stop what you were doing and go with them to get that done.  But my experience has been that this would be pretty unusual.  Most people are “on the go” and needing or wanting to get somewhere.  If you’re in that kind of situation, please don’t pass a needy person on the street simply because you can’t make one of those Good Samaritan gestures.  Just give ‘em money.  If you think they’ll spend it on something other than what you hope they will spend it on, take that chance.  Give them back, at least, the power to make some of their own decisions again.  For many, such empowerment goes a long way to revitalizing a sense of personal responsibility.
    
5. If you see a homeless person who looks like he or she needs immediate attention, please don't ignore it.  By calling the police/paramedics, you are taking the first step in linking people to much needed services and housing.

I am grateful to Stephen Simon and Gay Hendricks, as executive producers, once more to Stephen as director, to Eric Delabarre, the screenwriter, and to the entire Spiritual Cinema Circle filmmaking team for making this movie so true-to-life with regard to the plight and circumstance of the homeless.  I was “out there,” on the street, for two weeks shy of a year.  I can tell you, nothing in this film about that situation is exaggerated or overblown.  And I have been told by many folks who have seen this movie that it brought them to a profound awakening and to a better understanding and to a new level of compassion with regard to homeless people and their experience.  That alone makes the film a wonderful gift --- to say nothing of its inspiring and accurate depiction of the actual Conversations with God encounter.

If you have already watched the film by the time you read this, I know that you enjoyed it.  It was beautifully made.  If you have not yet seen it, you are in for a wonderful treat.  And I hope you will agree, it would make a very special gift or “stocking stuffer” for a CwG reader that you know (or, really, for anyone) this Christmas.  I know this film can really “get the word out” even further about the Conversations with God experience, and it would be nice if you saw yourself as playing a part in that process, which I believe will truly bless the lives of others.

I send you my love.  If you wish to stay in touch with me, you may wish to explore the option of connecting with me through membership in the Messengers’ Circle at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com

Blessings…

Neale Donald Walsch