I should be dead right now. If not for the intervention of God, I would be. Instead, He chose to save my life and inject one of the truths of life itself into the very marrow of my soul. The truth is that we can physically and irrefutably prove that God (Good) is already inside each and every one of us, in believers of any faith and non-believers alike.
I was honored to be asked to share my evolution from a homeless addict to an advocate, from a drunkard living in my car to being invited to the White House to participate in a summit focused on ending veteran homelessness. What? Me? No way.
I suspect my evolution is the same as some of you and those we serve. We run into obstacles in life, large and small, through our fault or no fault of our own, and we can either overcome them and evolve, or surrender and die spiritually as well as physically.
We chose to overcome them and now some of us find ourselves called to serve others who are now going through our past torment. This, I believe, is probably why God had us go through that painful torment in the first place – to equip us now to help others.
THEN
I was a professional comedian in the late 80s traveling around the country, making people laugh. I started seeing more and more people homeless on the streets of America.
During the recording of a comedy album in early 1990, I read a study that 60% of the homeless in Toledo were families with children. Having been homeless myself, I found it unconscionable that kids were living on the streets and decided to try to do something about it, but I had no idea what to do.
I was driving from the recording studio to the bar when God again intervened to give me a complete plan He wanted me to execute. During the short drive, the structure and content for the Homeless Awareness Project Tent City (HAP) was revealed to me in total – the “who, what, when, where and why.” I raced into the bar and in a ten-minute brain download, told my good friend Lyn Casye about it. She said three of the most powerful words I have ever heard: “Let’s do it.”
That weekend I was performing at the Mad Hatters Comedy Theater in Painesville, Ohio. It was half comedy theater, half tanning salon. But they had one of the first computers which they allowed me to hijack all weekend to type up that plan.
In November 1990, we held the first Homeless Awareness Project (HAP) Tent City, a week-long festival of compassion and services bringing the community together with the homeless. One hundred percent of the money raised was used to provide rent deposits and 6-month rent subsidies to help families with children move from shelter to domestic autonomy.
In 2007, American singer John Mellencamp, a longtime advocate for the voiceless, made a visit to Tent City. What was to be a ten-minute stop turned into an hour. He was so moved that he invited all of the guests at Tent City to the show. One came back after and said: “Ken, John talked to us from the stage. I guess, I really do matter.” This was the moment ‘One Matters’ was born.
Two years ago, we created a new program, “Veterans Matter,” to help house 35 local veterans. It is going viral and has now housed over 500 veterans in six states with the support of nearly two dozen celebrities including Katy Perry, Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, Kid Rock, Stevie Nicks, Ice-T and others. It was a very long and painful road to get here.
THE BEGINNING
I visualize abuse as the intentional stabbing of the heart. The heart is strong so it withstands many blows but, eventually, the outer layer is sliced open to reveal the second layer. Constant attacks of the second equally strong layer, over time, gives way to the next. Over time, it gets deeper, much like peeling the layers of an onion.
The constant abuse, eventually, exposes the bare, raw, pure, vulnerable soul in the center of the heart. Once exposed, it is then intentionally and mercilessly stabbed and beaten into submission until there is a hole in the soul. From this soul seeps one’s humanity and God until dry. The damage is severe. Many never recover.
Once empty, desperation sets in to somehow fill the hole in the soul and again feel pleasure. Not knowing a healthy way to fill the gaping hole in the soul, many attempt to fill it any way we can with drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling – anything – that can spark the synapse in our brains to release the dopamine and endorphins that can replace the pain of our emptiness with pleasure. That was my path. Beginning at age 12, cigarettes and stolen Boones Farm wine were my methods to try to fill the hole in my soul and provided the escape and comfort for me.
Each puff of a cigarette or drink provided pleasure as nicotine or liquor hit my blood stream making its way to trigger the release of my pleasure senses. Ahhhhh. It became addicting.
In high school, I began my “pharmaceutical career” to elevate the escape and pleasure. Each drug provided that next level of pleasure until my resistance was built up enough to make me pursue that next level of release. There were consequences. At age 16, I got fired from my first retail job when the manager allowed me to drink the backroom “Christmas punch.” Apparently, my intoxication became obvious to HR when I began falling down.
When I was 18, two major lessons would shape my eventual destiny. The first was a job selling insurance for Combined Insurance Company, founded by W. Clement Stone, one of the leaders of the Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) movement. Of course, I was fired from the insurance job after my manager found me drunk in a hotel room after not working or reporting in for a week. One lesson PMA instilled in my marrow is: “You can get anything you want out of life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
I then moved to California with the second powerful lesson, the counter-intuitive philosophy “poor people should take rich people to lunch.” For example, I wanted to learn publicity so I took to lunch a man named Terry McGeary, a big-wig with United Press International. What took him a career to learn, he distilled into one sentence: “Ken, the only thing you need to know about publicity is that the news are there only to fill the space between the commercials.”
As the reporter’s job is to gather news, all I needed to do is help them get what they want, honest high quality content/stories/news that made their job easier and made them look great to their bosses. I wasted these lessons over the next decade and a half as I gained and lost a series of jobs as I advanced my career as a ‘party animal.’
Despite the fact I was using people, stealing from people, becoming homeless and living in my car, I still believed I was on top of the world and was a superb ‘party animal.’ This delusion covered the truth that others saw me as an alcoholic and addict.
It was during this time that God absolutely directly intervened in my life for the first time. One morning, I had a brief moment of clarity and saw the truth; I had become a pathetic, soulless lowlife.
I cannot speak for all addicts but when you get to the root of addiction, it was simply the will to die. You knowingly engage the risk of a fast or slow death in the desire to escape. I knew in my head I was trying to kill myself but I didn’t care because I viewed myself as worthless. Both of my ‘party animal’ parents would tell me this daily so that must be the truth. When you tell a child daily he is a bad boy, you should not be surprised when he becomes one.
As the recognition and hopelessness set in, I decided there was no way out other than to kill myself. As both a narcissist and hedonist, I began a qualitative analysis, seeking the method that would be the most painless and that would leave a perfect corpse.
Then, for some reason, which I now understand to be God, instead, I blindly went to an “old-age home” and talked to old people. No idea why or how I got there or how long I stayed as I had no prior concern for the elderly. I now view it as compassion black out. But, when I came out, I no longer wanted to kill myself as I felt joy – true, pure joy. I felt somewhere in me might be a good person. It was this day I learned what would become a tenet of my life, “When you feel you matter to no one, just go matter to someone.” I celebrated my “goodness” by going out and getting drunk.
At one job that I enjoyed in the mid-80s and was good at – executive recruiter – I was fired and rehired like 6 times. The best firing was when I was called into the boss’s office. While I was thinking it was bonus time, he handed me a card. I opened it up and it was a camel lying on his side with the caption “I can’t stand to see you go. Bye Bye!”
I then got into comedy which I truly enjoyed and was pretty good at. Classic story – it was a childhood survival mechanism; making people laugh helped me avoid some of the “spankings.” I quickly rose to headliner and thought this was the perfect job for me. They flew me around to get free booze, free drugs, and when I get done working my one hour a night, women want to, um, entertain me? Whoa!
This is the journey that led me to Tent City and the Homeless Awareness Project.
THE CHANGE
It was truly the battle for my life, or my death. On December 5, 1990, I was pushed to the breaking point. I had just spent a week doing the first Tent City, the best thing I had ever done in my life. It was that buzz I had always sought. I was starting to believe I just might truly be a good guy. Meanwhile, on the other side of my brain I already knew I was “really” an alcoholic and addict, a bad guy.
I remember writhing on the bedroom floor in tears pleading for God’s help.
I resolved that I had to decide right there, right then. “Man up, Ken, which one is really you? The good guy that just did this good thing? Or the bad guy destined to steal the money and ruin what had just been done? Which do you choose – certain life or certain death?”
I decided. I stood up and literally ran to AA. Busting into the meeting I was crying and admitted to myself and others, for the first time in my life, that I was an alcoholic and addict, that I was out of control, I wanted help, and a higher power could restore me to sanity. And no one said a word; they went on to a completely different topic for the next 15 minutes and then the meeting ended. I thought AA was a scam. Until a man came up after and introduced himself and told me he was an alcoholic, too. He also told me I had barged into a meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholics and they do not like alcoholics. Oopsie!
I stayed for the real meeting 30 minutes later. AA taught me that the hole in my soul was a God-shaped hole. God is my cork. Once He entered, I began to fill up again. And each rising level re-covered another layer of my shredded heart. As I write this today, December 5, 2014, I have now reached 25 years of sobriety and am still working on recovering.
FAST FORWARD
With an increasingly clearer head, I started finishing things I had begun and found good results. Amazing!
In 1994, I looked at my 401k and decided I needed a “real job.” I phased out comedy and decided to return to executive recruiting. I interviewed with several firms and decided to join the progressive firm, the only one already using a computer system. Besides, the owner, Gary Fruchtman, looked exactly like Billy Crystal, and had a warm sense of humor to boot. He ended up teaching me one of the most valuable lessons I had never learned – trust. Gary remains my teacher, best friend, guardian angel and Best Man.
In 1997, he helped me start my own firm and I did well enough to become a philanthropist. I was able to provide startup funding to several new programs including our local Continuum of Care governing body, and street papers in Ann Arbor, Detroit and Toledo.
That buzz of giving still fills me. Right now, most of my time is spent expanding our Veterans Matter program. Our goal this year is to house 1,500 homeless veterans. Please pray for us, and gift us if you feel called to help us.
THE PROOF
I believe in humankind, that all humans, everyone of us, by nature, are born to be kind, that all are automatically born with Good (God) already inside us. This can irrefutably be felt by everyone no matter our faith – or lack of one. This Good can never be beaten out of us, just repressed or muted by abuses or addictions. But no matter what, it is still always in us!
I believe hatred is not innate in us. It is only added later by others who teach us to hate through their words or deeds. We have to be taught to hate the poor, the gay, the sinner or the different. I look forward to the day I can wash the feet of Pope Francis who walks the path of what we are all called to do: Love all, then down the road apiece, God will do the judging.
Here is your indisputable proof the warmth of Good (God) is inside every one of us. Have you ever gone and done something, anything for someone, expecting nothing in return? How did you feel from that unconditional giving? Right, and do you feel that warmth of Good every single time you do unconditional Good?
Right, that warmth is the irrefutable proof that Good (God) is inside you, and is inside every single one of us. What trips the trigger every single time? Only unconditional good.
And if, like me, you believe that this Good is truly a manifestation of God, then you, logically, must accept that God is present in every human being regardless of their religion or creed. If He is in all of us, this means God has a universal heart. Which means, only by loving all can we love all of God. God is Good, and Good is godly. So has been my journey.
The pain of the first half is now balanced by extreme joy. The joy that comes from my Faith, an incredible wife, great friends and mentors, and from giving to those we serve. No matter where you are serving your mission in this world, we have all ended up here because we found that, by doing His calling, we feel the grace of peace inside that is His alone to give.
It is His mission; we are just His missionaries. It is with privilege I am honored to serve with you. Thank you.
