I am indebted to John Trotter who inspired this conversation, and to
John Taylor who contributed material.
What he said rocked my
world.
It wasn't
the way
he said it, and it wasn't that it was something I'd never
heard
before. Rather it was the fact that he said it at all. When he said it,
he took it out of the realm of specialness, of
privilege,
of
insider
knowing, and put it squarely into the public domain where it surely
belongs and where it
works
best - which is to say by saying it, he confirmed for me it's
already
available in the public domain where it surely belongs and where it
works
best.
I learned from a
friend
he's a member of our gym thanks to a
generous
scholarship granted by the management. Another tells me not a day goes
by when he doesn't visit the local Roman Catholic
church
where he can be seen, even when there's no official
service
going on,
sitting
alone in a pew contemplating whatever there is to contemplate in an
emptychurch.
He
sleeps
in a local homeless shelter and
gets
his meals from one of the
services
which provides meals for the homeless.
The thing about the
guy
is he's
present.
When I pass him in the gym halls, he smiles. But his smiles aren't
painted
on like they're covering up embarrassment. They're smiles of
hospitality, of
openauthentic
greeting. And so it was one day as I was
walking
toward a treadmill and he was coming in the other direction out of the
weight room, when he
stopped
in front of me and, looking me
dead
in the
eye,
asked
"What's the
word,
brother?", a kind of folksy streetsmart hello. I didn't
know how to respond. I slowed down, and out of
my mouth
in passing spilled two trite responses.
"Love?"
I said, "The
word
is
love?"
then, changing my
mind,
said "...
er
... the
word
is
it's all OK?",
you know, as
questions
like I was trying to
get
it right. But I was just making stuff up, trying to be clever.
So I
askedhim "What is the
word,
brother?" (reciprocity was the next thing to try).
It
stopped
me
dead
in my tracks. A pregnant pause, disbelief. I said to him
incredulously
"The
word
is ...
possibility?
Wow! That's awesome, dude. Where did you
getthat?". I really wanted to know.
"I mean anything's
possible,
brother" he said, still folksy, still streetsmart. I leaned
closer.
"Do you know
Werner?"
I
asked
him. "No. Who's
Werner?"
he replied. "Are you a
graduate?"
I persisted. "A
graduate
of what?" he
asked.
And again, the
open
smile. He hadn't just said it like he was reading "Anything's
possible"
off the paper insert in a Chinese fortune cookie.
The way
he said "Anything's
possible"
sent shivers up and down my spine. As we talked more, I realized he
really
gotpossibility.
And that's when I realized the
guy
had engaged in figuring it out for himself - which is to say had
inquired
into it for himself in his life. I came to the gym to run three miles
on a treadmill. In addition I
got
evidence of the ready-availability of
possibility,
validated by a homeless man who in many
ways
was more
open
with it and more
generous
with it with a total stranger (ie me), than I am with strangers in many
cases. Furthermore, he hadn't
participated
in
Werner's work,
so what he'd
gotten
for himself so far, he'd
gotten
by himself naturally,
authentically.
You could say we've a long
way
to go before a homeless man can prove to have
mastered
inventing
possibility
for himself and his life. That may be so. It may not be. And that's not
for us to judge.
What got me
was the fact that I was in a
conversation
for
possibility
with him at all ... and ... I was
getting
the space of it from him.
