I  hit the jackpot.

Double nickels.

At 4:21pm this Thanksgiving day,  I officially join the ranks of a population I’ve served for the last two years at a job I love. It’s a cohort which has inspired more stories on my website than any other life experience to date. And I’ve had my share.

Butch (my dog and resolute Facebook icon) shares my birthday, entering his third year on four legs. Our “Thanksbirthday” celebration (I tried “Birthgiving,” but it sounds like a bloody placenta–which is kinda gross–though I understand there are some cultural traditions known for eating one now and then,  and if I don’t stop here,  I’m gonna barf a pumpkin pie) will be with family and friends…and festivities most will enjoy and appreciate this holiday.

Most.

Across town,  generous Thanksgiving  workers will be sweating the stuffing that matters.  St. Thomas More Catholic Community is carrying out their part of a huge mutual tradition we began together 20 years ago delivering meals to 800 senior citizens who have neither family, food nor invitations elsewhere. Casa de Luz is feeding 600 families, ministering deep within the district of the desolate Naked City.  Indeed, across America, prompted by the abundances in their ovens and on their tables, kitchen cooks will find themselves inspired to extend spontaneous invitations to strangers and almost forgotten others, and will send them off with leftovers and homespun experiences most never had and many never will again.

Every breath I take is a moment growing older. I hyperventilated once in February and lost count but I still calculate 55 years breathing and I am more alive today than ever before. This past year, some have lost that gift and the many who remain will spend some part of the day and much of the ensuing season lost in fond memories and teardrops that will decorate their brittle little Christmas trees.  Older now, I find life is a lot less a celebration of another year or another holiday than the simple thankfulness that I’m still very much alive to write this short story for your Thanksgiving day.

Writing stories for people is my passion. Today, this one marks the 150^th on my website. And as usual, I’ll be posting shorter ones on Facebook for followers to catch a laugh or two.  I will also be thinking about my dad and others who will enjoy breathless feasts in a faraway place somewhere at a table which will soon hold a place setting bearing my name, and indeed, will take my own breath away and not make me fat.

But while I’m alive, I write my stories and breathe life into those around me just as are those servants across town at this very moment.

Stories sparked by inspirations are gifts to those who need reminded that someone cares. The season for making memories is now in high gear.  For me, it’s not because it’s our birthday, my official entry into senior citizenship and the dreamy discounts at restaurants, nor is it because it’s Thanksgiving.  It’s because I’m not yet a corpse. And that’s pretty remarkable if you ask me considering the life I once lived.

So, as the parishioners of St. Thomas, the servants at Casa de Luz, and the many quiet summons from early morning cooks in country kitchens everywhere, I will extend an invitation to the uninvited, hoping to breathe life into someone and to write a truly unforgettable chapter in their lonely life.

Indeed, bigger things are happening in our world today. Much bigger than birthdays or birds on dinner tables. Yet in the midst of the daily news, the best  human kindness begins with an invitation and a pen to author generosity in the life of someone who really needs some. That’s how love works.

I tell my stories using words as tools to warm breathing hearts.

Yours can easily be with a place setting a hot meal.

Happy Thanksbirthday to my dog and me, and happy human kindness to all who still have breath and life and a hot meal to share with someone.

LMSM, Don

Paris is burning, but Megan is on the bus home from her second job at 2am and hardly knows today’s world news. She’s thinking about what she can make for three school lunches that need to head out the door in a few hours, how she will pay her overdue rent and if she can get just three hour’s sleep before leaving to her other job.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
I know John has been up most of the night not because he’s a night owl, but because he’s an 81 year old vet whose gas was shut off last week. He’s cold and can’t get a warm meal until next week sometime when his $700 check arrives to pay the bill, the rent and a ride to the food bank to pick up leftovers others have donated.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
And here I sit in shiny black shoes and a borrowed suit at 430am at my office, because I know they’re awake and they are the important things and because I think I’ve crafted a plan that might help their tragedies.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
I’m always in the office at this time of the morning. It’s quiet and I’m alone to think about these important things. I’m not generally wearing a suit and shiny shoes, but tonight I will be at an event with over 400 people who need to hear about what’s important.
I honestly don’t care about winning, but I do care about the possibilities it may bring to our little non-profit in old Henderson and how, if translated correctly, some important people tonight might pause and hear about people like Megan and John and 10,000 more like them. And maybe they’ll give a dollar to help.
Our agency was nominated for Outstanding Non-Profit of 2015 and the winner will be announced this evening over a gourmet dinner in a room full of suits at a luxury hotel. Win or lose, all nominees will win something for the people they serve every day. A voice.
People don’t like sad stories, but sad stories can move the right people to do the right things to help make fewer sad stories. I believe that’s important.
So I’ll sit there for a few hours, maybe win, likely not, but I’ll have the captive ears of a privileged few who need to know the important things that are happening in this world, right here at home.
And taking off this suit and uncomfortable shoes, I can sleep well tonight, knowing I went to bat for the tragedies which begin at home and end with charity.

LMSM, Don

Uninvited, he slipped in. Undetected.
It could have been any unguarded entry but at this point, it didn’t matter.
He was unwelcome.
But he was insidious.
Scanning the surroundings, looking for place and opportunity, he found both.
It was there he began his evil conversion, enveloping others, a serial killer, slow enough to go without notice, fast enough to do the job.
His host: clueless.
His strategy was brilliant. He was a fast mover, acting like he owned the place, which indeed, given time, he would.
All seemed to be okay for a while, but he would soon become the most feared and hated guest at the party, and far from the life of it.
The silent intruder gained momentum and his impact was first noticed on that Friday morning by a man in white who recognized him and called out his name for the first time to my father, who was told this party would soon be over.
“Cancer.”

This coming Friday, Mike Miller will have been gone from our family for his first year. Ultimately, the invader was unsuccessful, for dad’s legend and legacy are still very much alive and celebrating at a party which never ends and where every guest was invited.

Life means so much.
Accept the invitation.

I’m not online, in a tweet or on a post in Facebook.
I’m not at the store, don’t shop from home or at the mall at all.
I’m not on the road, in the car, catching a bus or ride to anywhere.
I’m not at work, on the job, working hard or hard at work.
I’m not at a movie, out to eat, at a friend’s or having a drink.
I’m not around and nobody is looking.

I am invisible.

I haven’t much time, but enough for you.
Rich in history and stories true.
I haven’t much money, but I’ll give to you
A rich adventure before I’m through
If you seek me out with time to spend
To make me visible before the end.

And you might find that I am priceless.

Enrich your life. Make a new friend and hear their story.

Friday August 21st is National Senior Citizen’s  Day.

Big drops,
falling,
landing.

Faster now,
they race
for
standing.

It’s a table for two or a couple of drinks, with pairs everywhere, sometimes it stinks.

Always plural or double, left unjoined in a nuptial, in a bubble, being single can be trouble.

There’s two-fers and deuces, running short on excuses, rarely place for the Ace, no space.

I would have placed you masked on a dark journey to understand the perils of blindness.

I would stuff your ears and send you into a noisy world to understand the piercing silence of the deaf.

I would strap you to a wheelchair to navigate a busy street to know the traps of the disabled.

But to understand the plight of the truly homeless, hungry and impoverished,

I would simply leave you alone and invisible to die in a blind, deaf, immobilized world

where nobody sees you, hears you or comes to your aid.

It was on a Sunday.

While I don’t remember all the converging circumstances of the moment,  my entire paradigm shifted about five years ago while eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

If you’ve never really had nothing, it may be difficult to grasp the power of the instant  you realize it. Since, I’ve had countless recollections and dreams  of sitting at that table chewing on that sandwich until now when for some reason, the significance of that moment has become amazingly clear.

I’d been clean only a few months after eight years on a methamphetamine diet when eating a sandwich was something you did only because people said you were getting too skinny as meth often does.  I had been an unemployed and unemployable mess for so long, I’d stretched my last $300 down to just $6.72 and the shame of who I’d become after all those years had eaten through any remaining pride or self esteem as I walked to the store to spend it on the ingredients for what I believed was my last meal.

On the cusp of poverty and homelessness,  that bacon sandwich changed my life.

I had always considered myself a sympathetic man, thinking of the plight of others before myself.  The many epiphanies I’d experienced during my cold turkey withdrawal from the drug months before (see “My 9-1-1” story from September 2013 below) were just the beginning of a deeper, more profound purpose and direction for which my life was now headed.

I vividly remember each bite and swallow, the feel of the hard chair on my bony ass and the cup of warm tap water I used to wash down the agony of each bite.  I was flooded with emotions and realizations of what my life had come to.  I was a poor man. Once rich in spirit and life, I’d become a shambled, lonely, pitiful mess of an addict in recovery eating his last supper.

I was not at all unlike so many other newcomers to my recovery meetings who, having abandoned a life of drugs, theft, porn and sex, were clean but poor and yet without aim.  I now believe this is why so many return to the destructive lifestyle, lacking something bigger than themselves to grasp onto in exchange.

I say again, by the grace of God, I was saved by a bacon sandwich.

At that table, on that chair, at that last bite, I literally felt my head twist to the right a little and buried it in the crumbs on my plate, having realized what my life was meant to be.  It wasn’t going to be drugs, poverty or a mere bacon sandwich anymore.  I was being called to become an agent of change for the drugged, the abandoned, the homeless and the hungry.

I think I fell asleep at the table for a long while, waking with the crumbs of the past stuck to my face and experienced my first real glimpse of hope in many years.  I would like to say I remember the dream I had during that upright sleep but I don’t.  I can only recall the waking and the twisted change it had made in the way I have since viewed my single, celibate, drugless and solitary existence.

Several events occurred in the days following.  My house got cleaned, I reached out to friends and associates from long ago, I redrafted my resume, and I began writing again.  Soon after, I was very graciously hired as a janitor at my church and eventually worked into my current position with a charity that had been waiting  patiently for my occupation.  I again now count myself a rich man.

To this day, I am the highest  when with the lowest.

They say that finding your purpose in life is an alignment of what you’re good at, what you love to do, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

For me, it was revealed in the most unlikely of places.

A divine moment on a Sunday afternoon between two slices of white bread.