When I ask why they don't even put out a little jar for unsolicited donations they say "that's not what we're about." And this after having to buy $20 of spices and propane that the farmer's market couldn't provide. Money for this type of thing comes from working odd jobs. Someone will, for example, clean up pumpkins after Halloween for $5.25/hour for 8 hours and come back exhausted and put every cent into the "kitty". Their absolute willingness to do this -- to work all day and keep nothing -- smacks to me just a little of cult behavior.

There really is something religious about these folk, cult-like or not. They're ascetic to the bone, keep no material possessions or other worldly attachments, dedicate themselves to the service of others, have no private property except their clothes (and only then because nobody wants to wear each other's stink), covet nothing, preach and for the most part practice non-violence. And they're fully immersed in the buzz of it all -- they're feeling the benefit of that sort of behavior, not doing it because some dogma or a fear of punishment tells them to. It's Buddhism and Christianity in their purest forms, before all the metaphors and symbols become literal. Compare to Lord's Prayer

When I get a little money I suddenly feel outside the group, like I'm betraying it, committing blasphemy. I have to be broke and (involuntarily) ascetic before I can communicate with them.

A case could be made that the whole gutterpunk poverty thing, which is so often (understandably) dismissed as trust-funded homelessness, is an attempt at something like an independent and pure religious experience. Just because they don't wear monk's robes and just because they drink Old English might not disqualify them from being in their own way religious.

But I digress. Bear with me for one more digression: