Do you believe in Christmas miracles? I guess I do. I remember the year my dad passed away right before Christmas and it actually snowed in Los Angeles! I like to think that was my Old Man telling God to cheer me up with a white Christmas. A few months ago I was listening to NPR and I heard the story of a man who found his entire life transformed in a church on Christmas Eve.
This guy's name is William Kitt. William is in his sixties now, and he's had a pretty darn interesting life. He's a black guy who was brought up in South Carolina and he started getting in trouble when he was a little kid. He figured out that if you hit or tipped a vending machine in just the right way you could knock some of the change out of it. So he started ripping off vending machines and auto-mats and got himself a juvenile arrest record by the time he was eleven years old.
For some misguided reason, William's mom moved with him to New York City. Maybe she thought a change of environment might keep the boy out of mischief. Who knows? Unfortunately for William, she decided to abandon him as soon as he turned eighteen. He came home to find the apartment deserted and himself with no skills for paying bills or managing as an adult. Now you might think that an eighteen-year-old with a juvenile record might come to no good if left alone on the mean streets of New York.
And you'd be right.
After a brief stint in a homeless shelter, William took to the dirty streets like a lion takes to the Serengeti. He had an instinctive, native cunning about survival. All told, William would spend thirty-four years of his life as a street person. To his credit, he adopted one moral scruple--he would never steal from an individual. Instead, he would rip off institutions. One of his favorite cons was to steal bottles and cans from the city recycling center and then sell his loot back to the same center for cash. Of course, the biggest institution William could rob was the federal government. He made a brisk business out of forging identities. At one point he was conning Uncle Sam out of $2,000 a week in welfare checks. This con could, at the very least, put a roof over William's head had he not by this time developed a rather pricey addiction to heroine, cocaine, crack, and just about any drug he could lay his hands on.
Over time, the drug habit began to exact payment--both financially and emotionally. William began to hear voices--auditory hallucinations which robbed him of his sanity. He described the noises in his head as the voices of demons, goading him with foul and sinister thoughts, urging him to steal and filling his mind with scenes of violence. His very existence became one unimaginable nightmare.
And then came Christmas Eve 2003. For some inexplicable reason, the homeless junkie and conman took shelter inside a church. William says that sitting under the great arched ceiling gave him a feeling he'd never remembered having. Nothing if not a covetous man, William looked around at the faces of the worshipers as they sang the familiar hymns to celebrate the birth of the Christ child. "I wanted to have what they had," he said.
Shortly thereafter, having heard on the street that a housing project was opening in Harlem with preferential treatment for the mentally ill, William approached a social worker and applied for an apartment at the Broadway Housing Communities. Always the conman, William declared himself to be schizophrenic. "I had to act crazy," he said. He put on a show for the psychiatrist, exaggerating the severity of the audio hallucinations he actually heard and was soon granted residency.
For the first several months William rarely stirred from his new home. He did not attend the community functions, nor did he seek rehabilitation or counseling for his drug addiction. Rather--miraculously--he just stopped taking drugs. And gradually, the demonic voices in his head grew silent.
Today William Kitt still lives in Broadway Housing in the same apartment he's had for thirteen years. He spends his time creating exquisite works of art, drawing scenes from around Manhattan which he renders in vivid pastel crayons. His works are vibrant and beautiful. He still claims, however, that he hears one particular voice, but says that it's the voice of an angel who inspires his artwork.
Does an angel really speak to William Kitt, or is it just the residue from his years of substance abuse? I don't know, but I like to think that if an angel would speak to a peasant carpenter, a teen-aged girl, or group of dirty shepherds, one would certainly not disdain talking to a former homeless drug addict.
William is alive and healthy today because of a Christmas miracle. What drew him to that church thirteen Christmases ago? What drives any of us to church on this holy night? Only our soul's hunger to behold the Christ child and receive the peace this child has to give.
God bless you, my friends, and a Merry Christmas to you all.
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| Some of William Kitt's art. |
PS: You can read more about William Kitt by clicking here.
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