I know how men in exile feed on dreams.

The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried,... still displays the self- reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside.

And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

There was a certain freedom in being on the outside. He watched instead of being watched.

Did all outcasts come to this realization at a certain point in life? That being outcast from a bogus and pornographic society actually was a good thing? I hoped so. I hoped there was an army of us out there, smiling about it that very moment.

If you read Scripture scholar Marcus Borg and go to the index in search of 'sinner,' it'll say, 'see outcast.' This was a social grouping of people who felt wholly unacceptable. The world had deemed them disgraceful and shameful, and this toxic shame, as I have mentioned before, was brought inside and given a home in the outcast.

Jesus' strategy is a simple one: He eats with them. Precisely to those paralyzed in this toxic shame, Jesus says, 'I will eat with you.' He goes where love has not yet arrived, and he 'gets his grub on.' Eating with outcasts rendered them acceptable.