The other day I was walking along the street on my way to a book store when I encountered a relatively young homeless man sitting on a bench outside of a line of shops. He had long red, shoulder length hair and he reminded me of the hippies who reigned supreme back in the 1960s. 

Just over three years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Within hours of receiving this news my whole life and everything I thought I knew began to shift. Up until that point I almost never thought of death ... especially my own. 

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness (see http://www.endhomelessness.org/) there are over 300 municipalities across the country that have adopted 10 year plans to end homlessness in their communities.

The majority of these plans are modeled on the 10 essential elements articulated by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) as  recommendations for ending homelessness in this country. One model that is currently very popular is the so-called Housing First Model to end homelessness. This model calls for rapid housing of homeless people regardless of their current condition or situation. That is, there are few requirements or criteria that a person needs to meet in order to be placed in a subsidized apartment.

Essentially, a homeless person can qualify for an apartment and refuse participation in any form of services that might help to preserve their tenancy. It's a bit of a "place and hope" strategy that is ignoring an essential truth - the desire to connect to some "one" that makes us feel whole.

The thinking is that homeless folks just want a place to live and they do not want to be "hassled" by do-gooder service providers. There is much truth to this notion. However, the proponents of this belief may be right for the wrong reasons.

It is more likely that they don't want to be hassled by service providers who have in the past been largely ineffectual. But that doesn't imply that they don't want to remain in community with a group of people where they feel accepted and experience a measure of belonging.

As a Zen Peacemaker, I have spent time living on the streets along side the homeless, sleeping in shelters, eating in soup kitchens, begging for money and wandering the streets.

See (http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/mi/programs/Street_Retreat.htm). 

During my excursions to the underbelly of our society, I have witnessed and experienced incredible acts of kindness and compassion from guess who? The upstanding and successful citizens of this world? Actually no - they are the ones who have frowned upon me, ignored me, and treated me with revulsion and disgust.

The acts of humanity that have blessed my time on the streets have always come overwhelmingly from other homeless people. They have taken care of me, watched over me, guided me and accepted me without question.

They have provided me with a sense of belonging. And I can tell you that when you are hungry, tired, lonely and in need of a friend, the homeless I have met are always there for you.

So how can this sense of "community" exist within a model to end homelessness that places people alone in single scattered apartments with little or no connection to others?

Just look at your own life. We spend much of our life building up our defenses so we can keep out those who would hurt us. We drive our expensive cars round and round in circles searching for the next feeling of completion. We live in our expensive houses next to neighbors we almost never really know.

And then one day ... heatbreak visits our successful lives ... maybe it comes calling in the form of a divorce, loss of our job, the death of a loved one ... suffering is a perpetrator with a thousand different faces.

If we are lucky ... this experience of suffering will lead us to a higher state of grace ... we will realize that without love in our life ... not much else matters ... for without love we are homeless ... we are lost ...

Until we find the "one" that makes us whole ... we never quite feel we have found our true home ... the place where we belong.

So it is not just the homeless that experience homelessness ... in some ways we are all homeless until we open up enough to allow love to enter our lives and convey us to our true home.

All to often, the services we provide to the so-called homeless do not come from such a place as this. We do not provide them with services that can realistically be called "loving actions." It is not enough to just give them a place to live ... we must provide the supportive services that will empower them to find their true homes.

I was thinking about homelessness the other day and decided to search for songs on this subject on ITunes. I came across a new British artist by the name of Louise Setara. She has just recorded her first album at 18 and is already being compared to the likes of Joss Stone.

Below are the lyrics of one of her songs that conveys so beautifully the notion that we are all, in the final analysis, homeless until we find "the one" that completes us.

From a zen perspective, "the one" we are seeking is none other than our "true self" ... our true home.

Look over these lyrics and if you get a chance, listen to her song. You may discover that we are really no different from those we call homeless. We are all searching for the "one" that will complete us and make us feel whole ... like the homeless people I met on the streets who cared for me. Because when I see them ... I see my true self.

I worked for 30 years in the field of residential services for children and youth ... these are the kids that are no longer able to live with their families ... many of them had been bouncing around from placement to placement from an early age often averaging 5-6 placements over the span of 10 years ... the so-called "throw away" kids.

It is a known fact that children and youth in residential treatment programs are at high risk for suicidal ideation, gestures and attempts. In one large residential treatment center I worked at in the midwest, two adolescent boys took their own lives almost one year to the day of each other ... both lived in the same group home although they never met each other.

During my career in residential services, I was in positions of responsibility and on call 24/7 to handle crisis situations which arise almost on a daily basis.

I was often called in to conduct a lethality assessment to determine whether a youth was actively suicidal and needed to be hospitalized for their own safety. I spent many hours of my career looking into the eyes of kids who had given up hope and were on the verge of taking their own lives.

I remember a particular youth I was called in to assess after he was caught trying to swallow a bottle of aspirin. It turned out that I didn't have to hospitalize him and after I returned home from the call, I wrote this verse:

A few years back I was working as the Vice President of Residential Services in an organization that served youthful sex offenders, violent offenders and severely traumatized latency aged children (5-10 year olds).

After a year of re-organizing I instituted Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) as the clinical model for the organization. DBT is a clinical model that combines traditional psychotherapy, behavior analysis and zen into a comprehensive model of clinical treatment with an emphasis on mindfulness as a core skill set.

I ran a DBT group for latency aged boys twice a week focusing on skills that would help them address and cope with the severe trauma they had experienced in their still young and tender lives.

I taught mindfulness by taking them through experiential exercises that focused awareness through their six senses: taste, touch, seeing, smelling, hearing and thinking. Each week we would focus on a different sense modality.

For example, one week I would bring in different smelling substances and have them sit quitely for 5-10 minutes focusing their awareness on each smell...describing their thoughts and feelings and memories associated with various fragrances.

The next week I would focus on another sense modality such as touch and bring in a number of objects that had different textures asking them to mindfully explore each object in terms of its "feel" and the associated memories, thoughts, emotions, etc., that each "feel" occasioned in them.

The purpose of these exercises was to help the lads develop pure awareness of their senses while defusing the psychological functions that were associated with painful memories associated with these various sense objects.

When we got to the sense of hearing I had them engage in mindfulness meditation for a period and then listen to a song by Martina McBride entitled "Concrete Angel" 

As we sat together and listened to this song I watched each child become transfixed by the words and music...quitely staring into the space in front of them as if they were witnessing an internal movie of a past experience.

There were no tears, no comments, no cries of anquish or angry outbursts...only silence...

When the song ended, I asked them to share what they had experienced while listening to this song...but no one spoke...my eyes welled up with tears...as they sat there in silent recognition of their pain.

I did not try to compel them to speak...we just sat together in silence bearing witness to their powerful aknowledgement of the moment.

As the session ended the boys silently filed out of my office...the last fella out turned at the door and said, "Thanks Jim.."

It has been several years now since that day...I will never forget the way each of those boys bore their suffering with such strength and beauty...I will never forget the adamantine spirit of these extraordinary "concrete angels."

Awhile back I heard that in some countries where monkeys are plentiful...they use a special trap to capture them....This is how it is works...

They get a heavy clay pot with a very narrow opening which is just big enough for a monkey to reach their arm into. Then, they place a banana in the pot. When the monkey discovers there is a banana in the pot they stick their arm through the narrow opening and grab the banana.

Now it turns out that monkeys have huge attachment issues surrounding bananas. Once they grab hold of the banana they won't let it go (see dog with a bone phenomenon). Unfortunately, because of their banana attachment issues they end up getting trapped in this situation. How is that you ask?

Due to the narrow opening of the pot, they are not able to pull the banana out through it. The pots are also very heavy so the monkey can't drag the pot to escape from an approaching captor.  The only way to get free of the pot is to let go of the banana which, of course, they either won't or can't do.

For whatever reason, call it genetics, call it banana love gone bad, call it collective monkey karma..it turns out that the inhabitants of the monkey world just can't let those bananas alone. Consequently, a crafty human comes along and "harvests" the monkey with almost no effort other than placing a banana in a heavy clay pot with a narrow opening, waiting for monkey banana attachment phenomenon to runs its course; and bingo....you've got yourself a monkey.

So what can we learn from this lesson of the animal kingdom? Be careful about what you hold onto ever so tightly...possessions, relationships, ideas, ...name your poison (maybe you too are into bananas). It may turn out that those "things" that we attach to with such ferocity...are in the end...a trap...

Sometimes when I really get dug in...thinking something "can only be this way," I have to remind myself to LET GO OF YOUR BANANA monkey man!

A cop was walking through the park and came upon a man sitting on a bench wearing tattered clothes...unshaven and bleary eyed.

The officer asked him, "Are you homeless?"

The man answered, "I have neither a home nor am I without a home."

The officer said, "then why are you on the streets?"

The man stretched out his arms horizontally from both sides of his body while emitting a large, protracted yawn.

Where is our true home?

When I was a kid, my family would gather around our TV on Sunday evenings to watch the Wonderful World of Disney. In those days, the late 1950's, the show would always open with Jiminy Cricket (http://solosong.net/wish.html) singing the following song:

I really enjoy listening to the group Simply Red. The band is fronted by their lead singer Mick Hucknall. He has a truly amazing voice.

I was listening one day to their song So Many People which is a song about the environment and our relationship to it. The lyric implores us all to see the world as one interdependent, interpenetrating whole. From this vantage point the lyric asks that we see ourselves in all things so that our "love is not only for the humans."

Our love can be for everything, ourselves, our families, our friends, our community, our nation, our planet; and for the trees, birds, mountains, rivers and all of the "ten thousand things."

So why isn't this the way we relate to it all? Because we are conditioned from birth to believe we are truly separate from all things. I am "here", "now" and you and everything else is "there" and "then." I am not the trees, the rivers and the mountains...those things are separate from me.

The sweet prajna wisdom informs us that this is a false view and the source of all suffering for ourselves and all of life.

Because we cannot "see" our connection to all things we act in a unilateral way...as if we are disconnected free agents whose behavior has only limited consequences for everything else . It is this view, the one that situates us here and everything else there, that makes the small self...the selfish self. The self that can dispoil the environment without guilt or shame.

It is this distorted perspective...the view of "I", "my", "me"...that the song laments in the lyric, "Looking from our eyes is the burden of our lives."

So how do we remedy this problem. Simply Red says it all in the last line of the song when they ask us to realize, "God is the universe, and the universe is you."