“Re-examine all you have been told in school, or church, or in books…”
– Walt Whitman
The encounter I had this weekend left me pondering some larger questions about life. I began to think about the term “paradigm shift” as I sat with my wife talking over a beer at a favorite brewpub in Glenwood Springs. Join me as I share a bit about the gentleman I had come to know through my work, and the questions that came after we had both gone our own way this past weekend.
NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE HIM AGAIN…
I was in Glenwood Springs over the long holiday weekend. If you’re not familiar with the town, it’s a nice little weekend getaway from the front range of Colorado, a bit over two hours west (on a good traffic day) of Denver, and a bit over an hour east of Grand Junction on the western slope. It’s famous for the hot springs pool, the vapor caves, and being the place where Doc Holliday died…among other things.
We got going early on Sunday morning, wanting to grab a coffee and breakfast before hitting the hot springs pool. As we walked from our hotel along W 6th Street, we approached two people, a female walking on the sidewalk towards us and a man sitting on a bus bench with his head down appearing to be focused on his possessions in several bags.
We all came together right at the bus bench, and as I made eye contact with the female and said hello, the gentleman still had his head down and appeared to be talking to himself. I continued moving along the sidewalk toward the coffee shop which was a bit over a block away when I heard the man’s voice raise as he said something. I did not turn around, not sure if he was talking to the woman, or still talking to himself. Then suddenly I hear in a very loud voice, “Hey!”
Now, you have to understand where I come from. I have spent a career working with marginalized populations, so when I heard the man’s voice raised, I had to acknowledge him, I had to turn around. As much as I did not want to enter into a conversation with someone who’s motive may be to give me some story in order to get money from me, I have the hardest time ignoring a person… people have to be acknowledged…their life does matter.
As I stopped and turned around, I noticed immediately that the man was directing his attention toward me. He was looking directly at me as he stood with arms raised. With his arms held wide above his head, I suddenly heard him yell my name. This was one of those moments where information was coming quicker than I could process, so I admit I was confused initially. In that same loud voice, he asks, “Don’t you remember me?” It then hit me… it was Philip, from jail.
My first response was, “what are you doing back here?” Stupid question really because I’d forgotten some things I’d learned about Philip in the short time I worked with him, and one of those things was that he was a drifter. Apparently in that moment I couldn’t break away from asking the traditional dumb questions we ask of people we haven’t seen in a while… like, “are you working back here?… and do you live here now?” I’d definitely remembered Philip, but I’d forgotten about his lifestyle.
I’m going to share some of it now, because I spent much of the remainder of that afternoon and the rest of the weekend pondering things, and it was brought about by my encounter with Philip.
PHILIP
Philip was a favorite of mine. He was a homeless guy who had moved around a lot… Canada, Taos, NM, Boulder, CO for a time, and late last year, he was charged with trespassing in my county, so that’s how I met him.
What stood out to me about Philip is the stories he would tell me when I first met him at our intake interview in the jail. Nothing about the stories were remarkable initially… they all sounded like delusional tails I’d heard from other clients coming through our mental health docket. However, as I started looking into Philip’s stories, I began discovering certain facts about his tails were true… and this caused me to start wondering what else was true in these “delusional” stories he was sharing.
Philip talked of having ownership interest in a fishing lodge on Lower Foster Lake in Saskatchewan. “Okay… yeah, whatever…”
But then I found the lake, a remote fly-in lake that appeared on the map to be one of many lakes, in north central Saskatchewan. I found this to be curious and wondered why that lake was part of his “delusion”.
As we talked more, he mentioned being on a specific episode of a fishing show that was carried on various television stations for over 20 years. He challenged me to find it and I would see he was on the show. So, what did I do? I found the show… and I saw Philip. He was a younger well put together version of himself being interviewed by the host, but then, he was also the guide on the small boat assisting the TV host on their fishing adventure. I watched in amazement as I saw a very sound and normal version of Philip participating in the show. But this then led me to the question… “What the heck happened in Philip’s life?”
After seeing the episode of the show, I continued to work with Philip inside the jail, assisting him in getting through a court-ordered evaluation and making referrals to community agencies in efforts to connect him once he posted bond. However, our conversations took a very different turn because I began to suspect that much of what this guy had been sharing was likely to be true and not a part of some “delusion”. I needed to know more about the trail his life had taken. I needed to understand how a man could go from the life I saw on television, to the place where he was homeless, drifting from county to county and state to state, and more recently picking up misdemeanor charges (none of them drug-related), and now to a place where his competence to stand trial was being questioned by our legal system.
OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO PHILIP!
Philip had a connection in the Boulder area, a former landlord, whom he had come to rely on when things took a turn for the worst in his life, and that’s how he ended up back in our area most recently.
As he shared his story, he talked of having a spiritual experience while in Boulder, and this led him to Taos, New Mexico where he met a spiritual person at a conference. He talked of staying in Taos a while learning from this person before migrating around southern Colorado where he developed an ability to pray for people. Because of the connection with this former landlord in Boulder, he came back to northern Colorado, and this is where he became entangled in the legal system. I was fascinated with Philip’s story, and I was also amazed at how fragile we can be.
Philip’s time in our court system ended in early 2025, and I remember saying goodbye to him at his last court hearing. He was still in the custody of the jail, but he was able to plead guilty and get credit for time served along with some additional jail time, and this allowed him to be released once those remaining days of jail were served, which to my memory was only about another week.
And that was it… that was the last I saw of Philip… until Saturday… in Glenwood Springs, some 220 miles to the west, on a random street, at a random bus stop… waiting for the bus to come along… during the moment I would just happen to wander by.
…AND IT GOT ME TO THINKING…
I’ll admit, it made my morning to run into Philip in Glenwood. I was happy to see him, and happy to see that he seemed to be doing well. He never asked me for any spare change, never asked for a thing. He was happy to see me, respectful to my wife when I introduced him, thanked me for all my help getting him through the legal process, and he demonstrated the social awareness to know we were on our way somewhere, so he kept our conversation to a minimum. I shook his hand again as we parted ways and thanked him for yelling to get my attention. I wished him well, and I walked on.
That day went well. My wife and I spent about three hours at the hot springs and then left for the afternoon to wander around the downtown area and grab some lunch. We ended up at a favorite establishment – The Glenwood Canyon Brewpub, where we ordered a beer and an appetizer, and enjoyed conversation.
Philip was gone, but he was still in my head.
As I pondered the likelihood of crossing paths with him in western Colorado, I began thinking about some of the stories he shared about his life. He was in Canada, he was in Boulder, he spent time in Taos… and now, I see him in Glenwood. A guy who came across completely content on this morning… traveling around praying for people.
My thoughts turned to the idea of “freedom” … whatever that may mean.
WHO’S IN BONDAGE AND WHO’S FREE HERE?
I couldn’t help but wonder as I considered Philip’s life… who’s getting it right and who’s missing the mark here? As I say this, I feel like I need to go off on a 1,000-word defense for all the assumptions I am making as I share these thoughts. But… I will resist. Please see the spirit of a seeker here… a questioner.
Philip has learned to be a survivor. He is homeless… but what if instead of using the word homeless, I said he was living a “mortgage-free”, or “rent-free” lifestyle? Philip may not always know where his next meal is going to come from, or where he will obtain the resources to purchase important items such as shoes, coats, gloves, etc.. But what if I described him as being free from carrying the weighty burdens of making an employer happy, of having to be at a job on a specific day and a specific time, of having the cares of this world that so many of us operating within the “normal” range of our culture carry within our own lives?
I began considering how, at a fundamentally basic level, our lives are about making choices that allow us to obtain “things”, and then, after obtaining those “things”, we make decisions around protecting those things from being lost or stolen. After having the most basic of things, we begin to add “experiences” to the list of things we want to obtain. As we obtain “things”, and “experiences”, we also desire to save enough money to replace some things with better quality things… and we continue down this path for our lives. We buy houses and we fill them with our “things”. We make decisions around investing so someday we can have all our “things” paid for and no longer have to work… then we can have our “things” safe while we go off in search of more “experiences” … if we planned properly. (I was a late bloomer to this planning game, so I’m left to figure out a shortcut that allows me to catch up with all of you who planned better than me for retirement.)
Perhaps my line of thinking has many flaws to it, but my encounter with Philip really had me wrestling. Who is looking at this thing called “life” in a more accurate way? Maybe neither of us…
QUESTIONS ONLY – NO ANSWERS
I’m not pedaling some agenda where I offer any answers here. I am driven by questions. I look around me and wonder why we do the things we do, think the way we think, believe the way we believe? What drives us to make the decision we make? What “rules” about life were we indoctrinated with as we grew up, what rules have we accepted as rules we need to play by? What expectations were placed upon us early on by parents, teachers, pastors, coaches, that we adopted as our own somewhere earlier in our life?
As a probation officer, I was driven by the need to ask questions. It was not my burden to have my clients embrace a certain way of living; it was my burden to ask the questions that challenged my clients to think for themselves… to ask themselves the “Why’s” about their decision-making. If they could live with their answers, I could live with their answers.
This is how I am wired. I’m asking questions… and those questions are in many ways very similar to the “rabbit hole” Morpheus speaks of in The Matrix. Do I want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes? If I do, I suspect it’s going to require me to continue asking questions about what I see and what I think… but for now, I better shut this post down. Otherwise, it needs to be an early chapter in the book I have in my head… the book I may get around to writing if for no other reason, to challenge my children and grandchildren after I’m gone… to think for themselves.
I’ll remind you of the quote from the beginning of this post:
“Re-examine all you have been told in school, or church, or in books…”
– Walt Whitman