I'd known John for a little over a decade. I met him in the social hall of my little church, after he arrived one Sunday morning on a bicycle laden for life outdoors. Folks in my congregation already knew him, or knew of him, and as he sat through worship that day, his lean, grizzled geniality changed the spirit of the morning. There was, if I am honest, a tiny bit of wariness. One doesn't ever know, when folks who are wired in radically non-standard ways enter your space, how things are going to go.
It went fine. He sang our sturdy old hymns and prayed with us and was clearly at ease. He knew he was welcome in that gentle little sanctuary.
Talking with him over coffee and snacks later that morning was...different. John was different. In a less gracious age, we'd have called him mad, or crazy. Now, mentally ill. Or better yet, neurodivergent, if we're feeling welcoming. Having worked with the homeless mentally ill for years at my home church, I was more in that latter camp. Some neurodivergence runs so deep that it sabotages and fragments the soul. John's was, for the most part and most of the time, not of that type. John was just very idiosyncratically himself. He was "shamanic," or so I decided.
John was fun to talk with. He was wildly unpredictable, utterly chill and intense all at once, with a mind that flitted from concept to concept in ways that required attention and adaptivity. I immediately liked him, because he was immediately likeable. I enjoyed how he made himself at home, receiving and harmonizing with the hospitality he'd been offered. I enjoyed talking esoteric theology, or of our mutual appreciation for the music of Tom Waits.
John visited us many times over the years. Some visits, just for a day, as he got provisioned and repaired and did what he needed to do. Other visits, for longer. One miserably hot and stormy summer, he camped out on our property for a bit, coming into the fellowship hall to get cool and escape the dank mid Atlantic swampiness. He stayed with some church members for a while during a bitterly cold early Spring in 2014, when the roads and trails were sheets of ice. That Sunday, when he came to church, he asked if he could come up to the pulpit and read the scriptures as our liturgist, and after some thought, we said...sure. He did so ably, and with grace, like he got up and read the Gospel in front of folks every day.
John was a friend of the church, and his arrival was always welcome. Travelin' John, we called him.
I learned things from John. As the sort of pastor who is awkward at fundraising, John Fain taught me the art of the ask. Because John had need, and was utterly unselfconscious about naming it. He needed food, because he was hungry. He needed clean clothes, and repairs for his bike and trailer. He needed a place to stay, because it was smotheringly hot or bitterly cold. These weren't trivial things for him, and were genuine needs that were within our power to meet. He asked without shame, but also without any sense of grasping. If you said no, he'd just nod, and be cool with it. No hard feelings, but hey, could you maybe do this, instead? And often you would, because you could, really, without even missing it.
His last years weren't spent travelling, as his discomfort around uniformed law enforcement got translated into getting into the care of the county. Even so, he'd message me now and again, just to say hey. I'd found myself thinking a month or so ago, when a different traveler came through looking for provisions, that I'd not heard from him in a while, and wondering how he was.
Not well, evidently.
I and all the souls at Poolesville Presbyterian will miss his visits, and his presence, and his spirit.
Godspeed, John. May the sun light the long road of peace before you, and the wind be at your back.
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