I learned Bobby’s name from a witch, but I wasn’t even asking.
“You do know Bobby, correct?” she asked.
“Bobby?”
“Yes.” She pointed to a very big Portuguese man who’d been telling a roomful of people lies about the Bible. He had, maybe, two teeth.
The witch introduced herself as Christobel. She was Indian, with a very strong accent, and a very strong command of the Queen’s English, as is common among the wealthier castes closely tied to colonial history.
She took herself to be a spiritual teacher of men.
She wore Indian garb of her own design and handiwork. I once saw her bringing up a sewing machine to her area at the homeless shelter. Her mother was a fashion designer, she said, and she was probably telling the truth about that.
She fashioned herself as a Catholic gurumayi.
I met these two at an amazing Catholic day center for the homeless called Virgil’s, named after the long-time pastor of the Old Mission in Santa Barbara. He died in 2008.
It’s called the Old Mission because it’s old in California years, having opened in 1820 by a Franciscan priest named Junipero Serra. Before Santa Barbara was a city, it was that Mission, and a man named Jose de la Guerra, whose body is now interred under the altar there.
The Franciscan order of “lesser brethren,” as they call themselves, is named after their founder known as Francis of Assisi. After a dispute with his wealthy dad over his religion, Francis ran away and lived on the streets in poverty. He depended on charity for clothes and food.
Francis was a homeless man.
He wasn’t even a confirmed Catholic, but after the Pope heard about the wonders surrounding this homeless man – he prayed with the birds, and they rested on him – he got his own order of monks.
Within a few years, all was compromised by Rome. These steadfast men of God, weak in their own spirit but made strong in faith, got cloistered into holding cells and made to vainly repeat the Hours of daily rote prayer.
Satan captures men of God, making them of no use.
In a strange twist, some Franciscan monks living in the Friars’ Quarters at the Old Mission (a very nice house) drive to Virgil’s to offer their comforting presence to homeless people there.
I seriously mean this: Bless their hearts. But those monks have been captured.
It gets worse. The history of the Old Mission is a history of slave-driving.
It wasn’t African slaves, or Mexican slaves, although Mexicans are now the slave-class in Santa Barbara. I grew up hearing rich people talk about their gardeners as their Mexicans. They’d loan them out to friends who needed stuff done. “I’ll send over my Mexican to do that.”
No, it was the Chumash Indians who got enslaved by Rome. The Chumash built everything for them in early Santa Barbara, including the Mission. They put in the waterways, ran a massive cattle operation and generally worked as the slave backbone of a proto-city.
Do you see the Chumash hands in the Spanish-Greco-Roman mash-up architecture?
The Old Mission SB, Easter 2025
Slave for Christ means slave for the Mission of Christ established by Rome, amiright? That’s just logical. Ask any Roman Catholic apologist.
The dreadful consequences of such a doctrine are clearly evident in the history of the Old Mission. It’s Roman imperialism with a cross.
Indeed, they didn’t inter the dead body of El Gran Capitán, Don José de la Guerra y Noriega under the altar (yikes) because he was a big softy. He was a Spanish comandante at the Santa Barbara presidio, meaning he was head of colonial military, local cops and the general heavy.
You need protection? You go to the Don. Or rather, you talk to one of the Don’s sons.
Law and order in Santa Barbara was mafia order, Spanish style, but really, it’s Roman style, so back to Italian at heart.
I grew up in Santa Barbara seeing Mission-related stuff everywhere. Every public restroom is supplied by Mission Linen. The rent-a-cops are called Mission Security. There’s a Mission Street exit, and Mission Creek.
So I always feel like I’m back on mission when I return to SB…
Then there’s the homeless shelter, which is called the Mission, like lots of homeless missions, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the Old Mission.
Except it’s in a Mission-style building, and it has a giant cross on the roof.
So I was confused over that for a long time. Though it has a cross on the roof, and though it claims to be a Christian ministry, the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission is now fully secular.
It runs like a low-key prison inside, with staff and volunteers acting like dogs, but I figured they were just Catholic.
The shelter was founded by a pastor named Chuck Pope, and he centered all rescue efforts around the chapel.
Check out the prominent directions.
That dude looks bummed
Back then, the regular name for homeless people was wino.
The biblical instructions regarding excessive drinking are the biblical instructions regarding one major reason for homelessness: Partying.
I’m serious. From booze to pain killers and meth, the problem is partying.
The KJV calls it banqueting. It sounds quaint, but I’m still serious.
Whether happy or sad, alone or with others, when you’re taking in substances to get wasted, you’re partying. You’re throwing yourself a cute little comfort party, to celebrate whatever, or just whatever.
I don’t remember when exactly, but I was a child, and I marveled that people threw parties for no reason. Ragers, even.
I still think about that.
And I’ve done my share of partying. I was an atheist, and I played in metal bands, and ran with motorcycle gangs. I’ve partied.
Like my earthly dad, I was a highly-functional (in the world) drunk. We both partied hard and just made more and more friends, and made more and more money in our tech professions. I’m not homeless because of partying, but I’ve got a lot of familiarity with it.
I met Christobel that day at Virgil’s because she overheard a nun call me a preacher.
“Christopher. Let’s eat together,” she said, so we ate together.
She would talk, and when I began to respond, she’d interrupt and, in a way that feigned politeness, say, “Here. Please. Eat.”
“You really must preach in the chapel at the mission, Christopher.”
“I’ve never seen anyone preach there. I thought it was Catholic.”
She laughed. “Oh, you’re silly. They’re not anything.” She patted the table. “You’ll go there and preach, 4:30 on Thursday. It’s settled. Here. Please. Eat.”
I got there at 4:00 and walked into the Director’s office, because her door was open. People call her Jerry, so I’ll call her Jerry. She had recently been promoted to that position.
“Hi!” I said happily. “I’m a Bible preacher and I’m here to preach in the chapel today.”
“Um… l’m sorry, but the chapel is closed.”
I’d been living there, so I knew the chapel doors open and close regularly, and staff and volunteers go in and out, and there’s Netflix on the big-screen, and sometimes trays of food. It was a hangout space.
“Can I make an appointment?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Can I…”
“Sorry. No.”
We had history, and I knew she remembered me. A few months prior, I was blessed with the ability to donate some hygiene products to the men’s side of the shelter, but she wouldn’t let me deliver them. She said they stock all those products. I said those products ain’t in there.
We had a bit of a staring contest, then she told me all donations for specific purposes must go through corporate.
I was still under the impression that the Catholic Diocese ran the place.
“Wait. Are you even a Christian?”
“No.”
“You’re not a Christian?”
“No.”
These witches.
So I’m back at Virgil’s after getting rejected at the mission chapel, and Christobel is shocked, just shocked they wouldn’t let me in.
But she had talked to Jerry, she told me, and Jerry said I could preach in the courtyard.
So I returned to the mission courtyard that afternoon and preached hope and strength in Jesus Christ to about 100 men.
One man yelled out to complain when I said something against his Catholic sensibilities, and that was Bobby. And he’s not even Catholic. Figure that out.
Bobby’s story goes, raised Catholic, starts smoking meth secretly, teeth fall out, wife and family bail, ends up at the mission, found salvation in Jordan Peterson, heckles Bible preacher, gets schooled and embarrassed, apologizes and admits error, goes back to heckling…
Bobby called Christobel his teacher, and she loved advising him on everything. They ate all their meals together.
Then Christobel disappeared, and Bobby stopped heckling my preaching, and he started listening.
And then along comes Grace.
Grace was a runaway Jewish princess-witch who was hiding from her husband and kids, and I never asked for more details. She spent her time talking to men about how she’d sworn to celibacy, then she’d talk only about sex.
Now Bobby was a lapdog to all women, but this was worse.
One morning before breakfast, when only the men are outside, he’s sitting on his table – the one that says DO NOT SIT ON THIS TABLE – dreaming out loud about all the things he’d do for Grace, and how he knows she’d only stab him through the heart, but that’s the cost of love…
I turn and yell across the courtyard, “She’s a deep, dark, ditch, Bobby, and you’re sleepwalking right into the trap.”
That’s Bible preaching, folks. Proverbs. In fact, I’d already preached to those men about the strange woman. They all understood, but few of them listened.
Few listen because they already love the strange woman. Those proverbs are to come to a young man from his virtuous and wise mother.
How often does that happen?
Later that day, I see brother Alfonso carrying Grace’s bags across town. That witch turned my homeboy into a manservant.
Bobby makes the most delicious chorizo breakfast burritos, and he cooks up a whole mess of them for friends on Sundays.
When I mentioned that this was a kind thing for him to do, he was in a season of hating on preacher at the time. He got serious and said, “Who told you?”
One Sunday night, I’m falling asleep at the shelter when a man comes in late. It’s Bobby, and he’s moaning like someone just stabbed him through the heart.
“That woman carries a big knife, too. It’s like she took that knife and stabbed it right through my heart. Right through.”
I’m not an “I told you so” kind of guy, so I don’t say anything.
Grace was the life of Bobby’s breakfast party that day, then she and Bobby were hanging out. I want no further details.
Then Bobby calls me over and says,
“You were more right than you’ll ever know,” like I don’t know.
To keep Bobby level, the nuns at Virgil’s manage his money and give him an allowance. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever witnessed in charity work. The nuns in Daughters of Charity do God’s work indeed.
At the time, he was getting something like $100 per week to spend on movies and junk food. I’d see him in town on paydays, sitting on a wall by the movie theater, talking to everyone about which movie to see, or pontificating like a clown on psychology and social science.
I’ve been telling you about Bobby and the witches, but during this time I was in a spiritual battle trying to storm the chapel gates and preach in there. The cops had been called on me multiple times, and one day I got arrested for preaching in the courtyard and taken to jail.
That address is the rescue mission. Dox me, fool.
Before the cops put me in cuffs, Bobby wanted to shake my hand. He slipped me something and said, “You can use this in county.”
It was $100 for me to spend at the commissary, and the only money I’d seen in weeks.
I got released from jail the next morning and went to Bobby. I tried to return the $100, but he refused to take it. He said it was mine, and reminded me again that I was more right than I’ll ever know.
I hadn’t eaten anything but a baloney sandwich in a couple days, so my feast that day was on Bobby.
So I got Indian food. Seriously. It was delicious, as usual. The Saag Paneer was especially tasty. I didn’t think at all about Christobel, but praised Jesus, the truth, for shining on Bobby, at least for a moment.