Contributor: Paul Houston Blankenship

Paul Houston Blankenship is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His dissertation is an ethnography on the spiritual lives of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle. Presently, Paul teaches in Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry and attends a small but growing church where unsheltered and sheltered folks worship together. In his spare time, Paul enjoys photography, nature, and walking around the universe in wonder with his beloved partner, Veronika.

Finding Friends of God on the Streets of Seattle

And Listening to the Dreams They Offer the World

Paul Houston Blankenship (). Posted in 21stCenturyCulture, 21stCenturySpirituality, Featured Article.

She said it with a cool indifference, and like she meant it: “If I stayed in Salt Lake City, I would have killed myself.” She said she had options. She had an underwear drawer full of “benzos.” She could cook a lethal overdose of heroin. The drugs weren’t really for lethal possibilities. They were medications, she said—psychic shields to absorb the pain pillaging... Read more

Love Multiplies

3 Confessions from the Streets

Paul Houston Blankenship (). Posted in Featured Article.

Mary’s forehead is dried blood. “He did this to me,” she says. John Jacob is uneasy. He’s not on his game. It’s getting late and he hasn’t sold a paper for an hour. “I bet that bitch told the police,” he says. He is speaking to me but looking at her. I try not to look at her. I look instead at the ground. In my mind, however, I can’t look away. He pauses. A woman... Read more

Make a Place for Yourself in the Darkness

Paul Houston Blankenship (). Posted in 21stCenturyCulture, 21stCenturyReligion, 21stCenturySpirituality, Sacred Space.

It is dark. Rain falls soft and visible from beneath the streetlights. Heard faintly in the cacophony of the night is a homeless man yelling something into the air. Something indeterminate. Unsettling. Avoidingly, nervously, people walk past. Through the glass windows of a Mexican restaurant, I am waiting for him to arrive. He comes in, late, carrying the... Read more

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