Falling down is the opportunity to get up

There is a beautiful story about a young boy who, while running a race, falls three times. I cannot win he tells himself as he lays there the third time, far behind the crowd. I cannot get up. But he hears his father's voice calling from the sidelines, 'get up and win the race'. The little boy wipes the tears from his eyes, gets up and finishes the race. 'I lost real bad' he tells his dad. 'To me you won,' the father replies. 'Each time you fell, you got up and kept on going. In life, whenever you fall, getting up is all you need to do to win.'

Life is not just in the leaps and bounds. It is in the hurdles, the bumps and scrapes, the bruises of running full tilt into the moment, living it for all you're worth. It's found in the tears of lying on the ground after we fall. And its lived in the moment when we get up and keep moving on, keep moving forward, holding onto our dreams and aspirations like a relay-runner holding onto the baton, leaning into the wind, leaning forward, arms outstretched towards the next runner, the next dream, the next goalpost.

I didn't know, on that morning of May 21 five years ago when my dark world was suddenly shattered by the arrival of the police, how far I'd fallen. I only knew where I'd fallen was a hard place to land. I didn't want to stay there. It was far too uncomfortable. With the removal of the man whom I had believed held all the cards, I could see I had a choice to play a different card. I could choose to play the card I'd found lying down on the ground, or I could get up from that place where I was lying, broken and bruised, and move away from where I didn't want to be.

To let go of the discomfort, to find myself amidst the destruction all around me, I had to get up and move away from that place of horror, of shame, or fear and sorrow. I had to get up to show my mind through my body's motion where I wanted to go. In getting up, my mind awoke to the truth that I could keep on running, keep on racing. At first, my gait was not very fluid, my pace not very strong. But, like a child learning to walk, with each step I took, with each foot forward, amidst the stumbles and slips backward, I kept moving forward. I had to. There were lives at stake, dreams to awaken, wounds to heal.

Life is filled with obstacles. It is filled with opportunities. How we see the road ahead depends upon our attitude. We can leap out of bed with cheerful anticipation of the adventure to come. We can lie in bed, steadfastly holding onto our wait and see what happens next trepidation, as we wearily throw back the covers and force our body into action, or we can lace our shoes up with dread and loathing as we fear the path ahead, knowing nothing will ever change because we refuse to see that to change our journey we change our attitude.

It's all in our attitude.

Five years ago I awoke to the loathing of another day to be spent in hell. I had given up all hope of a better future as I saw each moment through the filter of the dreaded past. I stepped out of bed, tired, weary. I believed what I was living was all I deserved. Even death had no time for me as I lay supine on the road to hell wishing someone would come and release me from my existence. And then, one moment changed. The light shifted, the world revolved one more turn and my worldview expanded to include the possibility of life away from abuse.

In having fallen so hard on the road of life, I know it's hard to imagine there's a better way, another place that you can be other than the one you're in.

But there is. There always is. As long as we're breathing. As long as there's life flowing through our veins carrying blood and oxygen to our heart, our mind and limbs, there is always another way. You just have to stand up and claim your right to take the next step away from where you don't want to be. You just have to claim your right to be a winner by getting up.

In my getting up from that hell I was lying in, I convinced my mind that I had the ability to change my attitude and my aspect. From supine to standing up, there's a world of difference.

In standing up, I'm learning to walk tall, live large. I'm learning to live fearlessly, passionately in love with the good, the bad and the not so pretty aspects of me.

Once upon a time I fell upon the road of life and didn't believe I could ever get up again. I proved myself wrong. Five years later, when I fall, I fall in love all over again with me, myself and I. I fall in love with my ability to get back up and take another step forward. I fall in love with my attitude of possibility, my attitude of believing there is always hope as long as I keep breathing that this race will be different. All I have to do is do it differently than I did when I didn't believe I was worth living for.

The question is: What's your attitude? Are you looking at the ground, your nose pressed into the dirt breathing in the musty odour of failure? Or, are you getting up and taking a step away from where you were lying so that you can walk tall, living large?

Fierce Conversations

"Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important sometimes." Richard Bach

Recently, there was an incident at the shelter where I work that made me cry. Two years ago I started an art program in a multi-purpose room. Several times a week, clients can use the space to paint, draw, play music. It has had a profound effect on two clients in particular. Keeping the program running has been a constant struggle to balance the use of the room with other groups, and the fact, creating is at times a messy business. On the weekend, the floors in the room had to be stripped and waxed. The art needed moving. A staff member, heard the order from one of the directors to 'get that garbage out of there ' and got to work moving the art -- into a huge pile on the loading dock where the next natural progression was to throw it out. It was an indescribably sad act. To see the creations of those who have nothing treated with such disregard, such utter disdain.

I was angry. Upset. Sad. I showed the Exec. Dir. the pile of art on the loading dock and he immediately had it returned to the multi-purpose room. But that didn't save all of the art. Several pieces were destroyed.

I had been trying to find one of the artist clients to apologize for what had happened to his art. Unfortunately, he has been missing in action since discovering what had happened. Yesterday, I found him.

The gift out of all of this, I told him, is that we've been given our own creative space, a room that will be used for the purpose of creating art, music, drama.

"There's more to ending homelessness," he said, "Than just providing for food and shelter."

"So true," I replied. "Gotta go."

Missed conversations are never retrieved.

"Adam" gave me an opening to listen yesterday and I walked away. I wasn't really listening to his response. In wanting to talk to him, I hadn't entered into the conversation with listening on my mind. My purpose was to acknowledge his art had been destroyed, and to let him know, it wasn't all bad. There was a silver lining.

Adam doesn't really care about the silver lining. He's much more focused on the here and now, on surviving one more day. The art program has given him an opportunity to see there's a possibility for 'more' in his life. A possibility of change. Over the course of the two years he's come to the program, I've witnessed the change in him. So have other staff. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear what he wanted to say about his change of state, and I walked away.

That's a big aha moment for me. How many times do I engage in a conversation because I have something to say and want to be heard? Rather than engaging in a conversation to give the other person a chance to be heard so that we can deepen our relationship.

Susan Scott, in her book, Fierce Conversations, writes, "The conversation is not about the relationship. The conversation is the relationship."

For two years, I have worked to engage Adam through the art program with his creative core. Over the past few months, he has alluded to a deepening of spirit, an awareness of the need for change. In having his art destroyed, Adam has had to face what it means to him. The value it has in his life.

I have held back from deepening the conversation with Adam because I have been worried that he will take flight if I probe too deeply. My job isn't to probe. My job is to listen, with an open mind and heart, to create a safe place for others to speak from their hearts so that true understanding can happen. In not hearing what he had to say yesterday, I realize it is my fear of the outcome of talking to him that holds me back, not the fear of what he'll do. There's a simple truth in all of this. Adam lives at a homeless shelter because he has nowhere else to go. Even when things are bad, he will come back. Not having a conversation with him isn' about his fears. It's about mine.

To help Adam find his place somewhere else beyond a homeless shelter, I need to be willing to engage in listening and hear what he has to say. I have to step away from what I want to say about where I think he's at and needs to go, and here him tell me where he's at and where he wants to go.

When I am intent on delivering my message, I walk away from the opportunity to engage and be present in hearing someone else's message to me.

Time to put my fear aside and step onto 'fierce conversation' footholds. Time to take yesterdays wrong turn and turn it into an opportunity to overcome my barriers so that I can have a meaningful conversation with someone who deserves my rapt attention.

As Susan Scott suggests in "Fierce Conversations", it's time to oil my reverse gear and create a space where Adam, and others, can be heard.

The question is: Where does your fear of listening keep you filling the space around you with your words? Where do you avoid fierce conversations because what you have to say creates a barrier between the wants and needs and dreams of those you love?

Lost and found

It is just a piece of paper hanging on the wall of the Day Office where I work. A white piece of paper with a picture of a man standing between two teenagers, his arms around their shoulders. I can see their smiles but the faces of the teenage girls are blanked out. The man's face is visible. He's wearing a cowboy hat. Black shirt. Black jeans. He's got a Johnny Cash kind of look, a cocky stance as he smiles, obviously happy to be between his daughters. I know he's their dad. The message on the page tells me. "Has anyone seen this man?" And then, beneath it, "Dad, please call home. We love you."

A simple, heartfelt message. A pain too great to fathom.

It is a story often repeated at the homeless shelter. Mother's call in looking for their sons. Daughters looking for their mothers. Brothers come in search of their twin, wives in search of 'their better halves'.

It is a story that reminds me of what I once did to my daughters. Disappeared. Vanished. Left with no forwarding address.

Hard to imagine. But true.

I look back on that woman who believed so completely that she had no value, no meaning in anyone else's life but the one she was enduring. I feel the pain of those lost souls trying to escape the loving arms reaching out to them, wanting to tell them a simple truth, We love you.

It's hard to hear someone loves you when you believe you are completely unworthy.

The mind cries out. You must escape from the burden of their love, escape from the truth of the hatred burning inside for all that you are, all you've become.

When my daughters were born I entered a sacred trust, a circle of love that could not be broken. At some point in my journey, the responsibility of that love became too great, too hot to touch. I had fallen so far from grace I had to deny the one thing I craved, the one thing I yearned for -- to be connected through that circle of love to the one's I loved more than my own life.

And so, I ran away. Disappeared. Vanished.

I was blessed. I was found before I was erased from this planet. I was found before all I left behind was the painful memory of my journey through hell, a bitter reminder for those who loved me to grapple with, make sense of, understand. In my 'finding' I found the gift of healing, of forgiveness, of love.

At the shelter, sometimes the lost are not found. They pass by and pass away, their lives an untold story never to unfold. Like the young man a volunteer told me about on Saturday. Her husband had befriended him. He was a schizophrenic. Twenty-eight years old. He used to sit on the sidewalk outside the man's office building and panhandle. Her husband would give him coins, buy him coffee and a muffin, sometimes take him for lunch. And then one day, he disappeared. The husband wondered where he'd gone and then continued on with his life. Until a week after his disappearance when the police appeared. The young man had died. An overdose. His story ended. We found your business card amongst his belongings, they told him. You're the only contact name we have. Can you help us connect with his family? The husband knew of a brother, which led to a parent. Thanks for letting us know, they said. They didn't come for the funeral. The volunteer and the husband were the only one's there. Two strangers whose lives had touched briefly, but meaningfully. At least the family knows what happened to him, the husband said. At least they won't have to keep worrying about him.

Sometimes, the lost cannot be found again. Sometimes, there's no one looking for them.

I hope and pray those two daughters find some sign of their father. I pray one day he will find himself on the road of living in love and joy.

Until that time, we continue to do what we do to keep hope alive. For those who are lost and those who are searching for the one's they love in the hope that they will be found before all hope is lost with their passing from this place.

When I can do nothing.

In Steven Covey's, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he suggests we look for the 3rd alternative to solve problems. To move beyond the tried and true and see the problem as the solution, to look for answers outside the realm of where the problem lies and find solutions that involve more than just our limited thinking.

There is a Zen koan, "When you can do nothing, what can you do?"

It is in the realm of believing I can 'do nothing' that my answers come.

This is a month of memories for me. Five years ago, on May 21, one moment changed my life. At 9:14 am, two police officers walked into a room and arrested the man to whom I held myself captive with invisible bonds of terror. In that moment, my universe shifted. My status quo crumbled. There was nothing I could do to change what was happening. There was everything I could do to change how I perceived the events that had led up to my self-destruction, and everything I could do to change how I stepped out of that room and into my life today.

At the time, I couldn't see the gift his arrest represented. I could see that something was terribly, terribly wrong. I could see that I was broken, shattered into a thousand pieces. I could feel my pain. My sorrow. My horror at what had become of my life. And, I could feel the relief of knowing his physical body had been removed from my presence. In having him removed, I felt fear. Deep gut-wrenching fear. That fear held the door open. It held me open to the possibility of freedom from the past.

In those first moments and days of freedom, I couldn't feel the joy and happiness I would know today. I couldn't feel the love I know today. All I could feel was the realization that something had to change and it wasn't going to be the past.

In believing there was nothing I could do to change what had happened, I left myself free to experience what was happening then. In taking my eyes off what he had done to hurt me, I gave myself the freedom to feel my feelings about what had happened to me, without judging them, forcing them away, or contorting them into some other sense of being. In knowing there was nothing I could do to change the past, what he had done, or even what I had done, I let myself change in the moment from a woman who was abused, to a woman who was healing from abuse -- as best she could in that moment.

When I awoke from the horror of that relationship, I didn't have a roadmap that read, This way to healing. Healing was not a destination defined by signposts guiding me to a place I wanted to get to. Healing isn't a place. It is an idea, a concept, a bunch of feelings that add up to my life today. Healing continues to add value to my life when I focus on love and joy and laughter and let my emotions flow freely without falling into the belief I am my emotions. I am more than the sum of my emotions. I am like nothing I could imagine when I lived in fear.

What do I do when there's nothing I can do?

Open up to the no-thing that is staring me in the face, and ask myself, if I did know, what would I do?

In that question, my courage awakens to my inner knowing. In letting myself fall into the 'iffy' void of acknowledging that not knowing is the doorway to seeing answers beyond my known, I open myself up to doing something differently than I've done before. 'What if I did know?' draws me out of my fear-driven resistance to change into the possibility of seeing that change is possible, 'if' I'm willing to look for answers within me.

Thelma Box, founder of Choices, always tells trainees on the first day of seminar, "I don't have your answers. I only have questions. Tough questions. But they're the questions that will help you find your answers within you."

"I don't know," can only be answered with the question, "What if I did know? What would I do?" "I don't know," is my gateway to possibility. When I answer a question with "I don't know," I'm admitting to the possibility that whatever I do know, it's not the answer I'm looking for. It's my acknowledgement that thus far, nothing I've done has changed the situation. If, as I say, I want change, am I willing to look within me for my answers? What is my answer?

On May 21, 2003, I didn't know what I was going to do when the police removed Conrad and set me free. Freedom didn't feel that safe. It didn't feel that good. At the time, I did the only thing I could think of after I asked myself, What if.... I called my sister and asked for help.

Asking for help was outside my realm of possibilities until that morning when the world tilted and the pain of being an abused woman slid off into the sorrow of having been abused. Asking for help was not 'my way'. Asking for help admitted to weakness. It admitted to 'not knowing'.

Truth is, I didn't know. I didn't know I'd been abused. I didn't know I was lost. I didn't know what I was going to do.

In not knowing what to do, I did the only thing I could do. I asked for help.

In the five years since being given the miracle of my life, I have been blessed with the love and support of family and friends. I have been blessed with the gift of time and space to heal and live and love and grow into my beautiful life today. Today, I count my blessings and know they are greater than the sum total of that 4 year 9 month journey into hell. They are the total of a life lived learning and growing and becoming all I am meant to be when I live fearlessly in love with me and the world around me. I am blessed.

The question is: When you can do nothing, what can you do?

At home where I belong

One of the many things I love about C.C. is he enjoys entertaining as much as I do. Last night was no exception. We were eight for dinner. My sister J.T. and her husband, and two other couples.

The evening began with a bang when one of the guests sat on an antique wooden chair and it collapsed beneath him. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt though he did have to put up with our laughter and teasing for the rest of the evening. He managed to do it with equanimity and grace -- though he did keep repeating everything he said three times!

What struck me last night was the sense of familiarity. As though that scene was one I'd experienced many times in my life. It felt like a place where I belong.

Belonging and what it means -- to Be and to Long for something -- has always fascinated me. My parents' nomadic lifestyle uprooted us several times, two of them across the Atlantic to distant shores. For my mother, those journeys took her to a place where she found her 'belonging', at home amidst her familial roots, at home with the language and culture of her birth. I've often wondered where my father found his sense of belonging. At the age of nine he was 'sent away', across the sea and further yet across Canada to Gravelburg, Saskatchewan where he attended a Jesuit school. It was a long way from his home in London. For a child, that uprooting left him without family, without a home where he belonged. Perhaps that is why he held his family so close to his heart. He filled his longing for belonging in the familial structure he had never known growing up.

John O'Donohue, Celtic poet, scholar and philosopher speaks to what he calls the deepest calling of our soul: the longing to belong, in his book, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. He says, "To be human is to belong. Belonging is a circle that embraces everything; if we reject it, we damage our nature. The word 'belonging' holds together the two fundamental aspects of life: Being and Longing, the longing of our Being and the being of our Longing."

In the Tao, everything is connected to everything. As humans, we are connected through the act of creation and the rites of passage we must all travel to come into this world. We arrive, unaware of the importance of our being part of the human race, of the significance of our soul's journey in relation to the world around us. As we grow, we begin to find the meaning, or maybe not, in our journey. We begin to understand our soul's yearning for belonging and look for ways to soothe the ache of not always knowing where we belong.

Sometimes, we know little of what we must do to feel like we belong because we've never known a sense of belonging. And sometimes, in our attempts to break free of places where we don't belong, we carve out our own unique place in the world that keeps us apart and unsettles our belonging. We can't see in our struggle that where we belong is not dependent upon where our roots were set, or where our familial bonds kept us captive. Where we belong is where our spirits find peace and comfort. Belonging is not a place. It is the spirit's voice within us, calling us home to our soul's journey back to where we were always meant to be, back home within ourselves.

One of the couples last night spoke of their roots set deep into the prairie soils generations ago. T.A.'s family came to these lands as homesteaders four generations ago. D.A. doesn't question how deep her roots are. As far back as the family stories are told, her family has always lived upon these lands.

Deep roots. A known sense of belonging. A being at one with the lands that support her, ground her and give her life rich and vibrant meaning.

As I sat at the table with evening light deepening into night, candle light casting a golden glow upon the smiling faces gathered around me, I felt my belonging settle into knowing.

This is where I belong. Gathered around a table laden with food and wine and surrounded by loving people. A place where friends meet to exchange stories and laughter. A place where caring for each other deepens as we see each other in the light of friendship strengthening with our shared experiences.

In creating an environment for others to find a place where they belong, a place to come home to for however long they stay, my longing to be accepted is soothed, my yearning for belonging eased.

It is here I belong, in this place called home, a place where I am free to be me, in all my beauty, warts and all. A place where C.C. and I grow together as our unique and individual journey homeward frees us to be all we're meant to be. As we create memories that belong to the unique story of our love growing ever deeper, we become rooted in the truth of who we are, together and apart.

This is my place to belong. My place to come home to. This is my soul's journey into love with all I am and all I can be when I am at home where I belong within me. It is here that love grows. It is here I belong.

The question is: Are you at home longing for belonging, or have you come home to the wonder and joy of being right where you belong?

I'm worth it

On Thursday, I gave a course in self-esteem at the homeless shelter where I work. The attendees are part of a program called, Career Training Initiative. They earn certificates that will help them get jobs on construction sites and warehouses and they learn about computers as well as life-skills.

The ages ranged from 25 to 50, two natives, 6 caucasion, two of whom are women. Each person in that room has been defeated in some way by life. Each person wanted to find a way to leave the past behind and step into a different future.

At one point, I asked the students if anyone could think of a time, in the recent past, where they had let bad news, or a difficult situation, pull them from their path. "Joe" sitting to the right of me, said, "I've got a good one."

He'd sent out his resume in response to a job he'd read about in the paper. He received a reply and immediately read it to mean, "You've got the job." On closer examination, he realized they were responding to ask for more information.

"I thought, screw them," he said. "I sent them my resume and answered all their questions. If that's not enough, who needs them?"

"You want the job, right?" I asked trying to understand why he'd be so upset about a potential employer asking for more information.

"Yeah. But when I read the email the first time, I thought I had the job. So I felt really bummed when I realized I didn't."

"What was the additional information they wanted?" I asked, thinking that perhaps the information might have been invasive.

Turns out, it was what they wanted that caused him the most angst.

They wanted to hire him. They needed a couple of references.

"I don't have any references," he said. "It really brought me down to realize that my history is so messed up I can't call on anyone to give me a good reference."

He then went on to describe some of the reasons why.

A long history of trouble with the law. Lots of jail time. A rapid-fire temper. A violent home-life. A dad who believed the best way to teach him a lesson was to beat it into him and a mother who drank.

I asked him if there was something he could do to not let the need for references get him down or stop him from pursuing the job.

"I don't know. I'm just really bummed out," he replied.

"Well, what about this course? You're taking a course, you're getting the certificates you need to get work. When you applied for this course, you had to do an interview. Couldn't you get the administrator to write you a letter on your behalf?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," he said. "It's just frustrating that I messed up so much in the past."

"Do you want to keep messing up in the future?" I asked.

"Absolutely not," he vehemently replied. He thought for a moment and then smiled. "I am doing something about my lack of references. I'm taking this course. I've got to at least get some education so that I can be qualified."

I asked the group. "Can everyone see how powerful this is? He's not letting his past bring him down today. He's taking postive steps to create change."

The guy looked at me and said, "I am?"

"Absolutely," I replied. "You've changed your glasses. What was a difficulty is simply an obstacle because you're not letting lack of references become an excuse to not pursue this job."

"Yeah," he said. "I guess I am."

"Look what you've learned about yourself," I told him. "You're courageous. You're willing to learn, to keep taking steps forward to create the life you want. You're able to acknowledge your past, and know it is not your future."

"No kidding," he said. "Being in jail felt like a life sentence. I sure didn't want it to be my future forever."

What a powerful statement.

Regardless of his past, regardless of how much time he spent in jail, it was never a life sentence.

Time to start living outside the comfort zone of my limited thinking. In my quest to continually search for the 'right' answer, I've given myself a life sentence of never being satisified with the answers I've got.

Life isn't in finding the answers. It's in exploring all my options and opportunities and living it up with absolute passion because, the only answer I need to find is my truth today -- I'm worth it.

The question is: What kind of prison cell are you living in? Is your thinking keeping you confined to a narrow corridor where black is black and white is white with nary a colour between them? Are you treading furiously in the backwaters of life, or are you living it up in a sea of passionate colour, floating on the joy of knowing your bliss?

In celebration of a heartfelt man.

Her cheeks are caved in where once her teeth held the shape of her face in place. Her dark eyes dart around the room as if constantly searching for an exit or perhaps she's just making sure she's ready to make a quick exit in case someone comes to tell her she has to leave, this isn't where she belongs. The pinkish white flesh of her scalp shows through between the strands of her salt and pepper hair which flies about her face like feathery whiskers on a cat. She's tall. Thin. Almost emaciated. She never wears shoes, her stockinged feet shuffle as she walks.

She isn't comfortable sitting amidst the black suits and dresses. And yet, she's come. She's here. She must pay respects to the man who gave her a gift no one else ever had.

She cannot get up to speak at the podium, "Talking in front of people makes me nervous," she tells the MC. She sits in her seat and holds a conversation with him as if there's no one else there. We strain to listen, to hear her. What she has to say is important.

"I came in one day, stoned, like I always was," she says, her eyes never leaving the MC's. "I'm an addict," she says by way of explanation.

Her entire body is in motion where she sits on the edge of her chair, leaning into the conversation. She nods, her arm lifts up, she straightens her pointer finger and jabs the air. "He saw me stumbling and came out from behind the glass window towards me. I could barely stand. I was crying. He came over, put his arm around me, held me up and said, 'It's okay. It's okay. You've got a good heart."

She stops and swallows. "He said that to me. 'You've got a good heart.'" She shakes her head. "Nobody's ever said that to me before. He did. And I'll never forget it. You've got a good heart."

She sits back in her chair, her thin lips pulled back from her reddened gums in a smile as innocent as a baby's. She nods her head, mutters to herself and rocks her body. "I have a good heart," she whispers.

He died last Wednesday. This man who could see the good heart within each of us. His care giver had turned away to make a cup of tea and in those brief moments, he slipped from his earthly form to another plane.

It is how he lived his life. On his terms.

It is how we are celebrating his passing. Nothing fancy. No formal service. Just a roomful of people gathered to celebrate the life of a man whose past is a blur, but whose impact in the ten years many had known him was profound.

I'd only known him two years. Since coming to work at the homeless shelter. I knew him as a security guard. Committed to giving his best. To ensuring the rules were followed. Procedures maintained so that everyone was as safe as possible in an environment where chaos is the order of the day. He always had a kind word. A gentle smile. An outreached arm lengthened by his pointer finger jabbing the air to get your attention or to bring your attention to a point that he believed must be made.

He'd once been a client. A man, like so many others, struggling to let go of a past that haunted his waking moments as he slipped into a bottle that gave him courage to face the day. It was a past that slithered through his nights on velvety whispers that would not let him forget where he'd been and what he'd done.

But he wanted to. Forget that is. Forget what he'd done. Forget where he'd been. Forget the past so he could be free to live today for all he was worth.

And he did. Let go. But he couldn't forget. He didn't really want to. It was his legacy, and his way out. He couldn't forget it, but he could at least forgive himself and the past that had caused such trouble in his life.

At the shelter he found the road out of the past to living each day with dignity. He found the path away from the darkness of the addiction that gave him false courage into the sobriety that gave his life meaning.

I remember him making his rounds of the building. He was a tall man. Thin. Handsome in a Clint Eastwood kind of way. He wore his black vest with the gold lettering with pride. His footsteps were measured. Sure. As he walked and tested doors, he held his clipboard in one arm, carefully checking off that locks were secured and everything was as it should be.

The routine gave him meaning. It made me feel safe where ever I was in the building.

If it was after hours and no one else was around he'd sit for a moment in the blue chair across from my desk and chat. Sometimes, he'd tell me a story of another time. He wanted to share what he'd learned through living life on the wrong side of the street he told me. He wanted to use his story to give hope and strength to others who were lost on the road of life like he once was.

"I gotta give back to give meaning to my life today," he said.

He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, I listened.

"I once tried to go back," he told me. "I thought it was time I reconnected to my past. I went east. Checked out some of my family. It didn't work out. Too much water under the bridge. So I came back. Here. Where I belong." He paused, lifted his right arm up, extended the pointer finger, nodded his head and said. "There's never any going back. You've always got to find where you belong right where you are."

Yesterday, dozens of people gathered together to celebrate the life of Augie. A gentle spirit. A wise soul. A heartfelt man.