Back in the late 1990s, I volunteered with a local theatre company whose productions were in a Methodist church in the city of St. Louis. The church itself was a sprawling, multi-story castle that had a kitchen, a couple of chapels, a gymnasium, offices, strangely spaced bathrooms, and vast storage spaces. There were often a couple of different groups having functions there, so it was not uncommon to run into strangers in the kitchen washing dishes or something. And the minister mentioned that he’d had a problem with homeless people unlocking doors while the front door was open so they could come in and sleep there.<\/p>\n
So I got to thinking about a novel about a young man in the mid-twenties crisis who meets a man who has, unknown the the church, moved into just such a church and lives on the premises gratis through some trickery and even receives some mail under the name John Methodis. I was going to title it The Gospel of John Methodis<\/em> and study how this older fellow went off the grid and why that appealed to the boy in transition from the immediate post-collegescence to growing up–or not.<\/p>\n I didn’t get too far into writing that because it seems a bit thin of a plot to hang a whole novel on and the incidents within the book never materialized or connected themselves. Also, I’m lazy and have managed only two novels out of a couple dozen novel ideas.<\/p>\n Somewhere I must have read the story of Chheng Guan Lim<\/a>, who for several years in the 1950s did just that.<\/p>\n The world is far crazier than my imagination.<\/p>\n