I spent most of my working life in sales & marketing to the ultimate consumer.  Many of those years were spent in sales training and in managing and directing sales organizations.  However, no matter what my main responsibilities were, I always made time to work with the consumer.  Professionally, I believed then as I do to this day, that it was wise for me to stay grounded by constant contact with the people who we were actually working for, that is the consumer.  But there was much more to it than that.  I love the people.  I loved going into their homes and offices and talking to them over a cup of coffee and finding out what they liked to do and how they interacted with their family members; this was all a joy for me.  Without the constant influx of new people in my life, I got bored, I still get bored.  Not to say that I don't keep long term relationships, I do, and I also strive to keep meeting and getting to know new people. 

Starting in a New Direction

Professionally, I worked  mostly with men, and I found I was being utilized by these men for personal counseling- consulting on the whole multitude of general life issues.  More recently, I’ve found two other categories of men who felt the need and the comfort level to want to confide in me and seek some guidance.  These two distinct groups of men both spring from a type of ministry that I particularly love: Catholic/Christian men’s retreats. 

Group 1

I’ve been involved in retreats since 2005.  I was a reluctant participant of the first retreat that I attended, a Cornerstone weekend, something other than my will got me to attend.  But a great group of guys won me over with their genuine caring for the comfort and participation of each of us retreatants.  Having had experience in putting on professional productions similar to it, I could see the great amount of work that went into that 50 men weekend retreat; and knowing it was done not-for-profit impressed me a great deal. 

The weekend was very enjoyable, I was on a high for the next few weeks.

I made a number of friends in the Cornerstone movement since then; it seems most of my closest and most valued friends have had something to do with Cornerstone. 

I have become a great proponent of Cornerstone movement, aside from being president of Cornerstone alumni in Action, Inc., I have been on many of the teams that put on the annual retreats.  I have come to know and work with many of the men.  Actually, many of us have become the great charitable organization of Catholic men, the Knights of Columbus, which does a lot of needed work. 

Group 2

At the invitation of a Cornerstone brother, I next attended a REC retreat (Residence Encountering Christ) as a team member with mostly Cornerstone men.  The residents of this particular retreat were residing at Otisville Correctional Facility.  Yes, a prison. 

We arrived at the prison gates (wow, that was an experience in itself, just arriving at the gates.) at around 10 AM on a Friday and left at around 8 PM to spend the night in a nearby retreat house named Deer Park.  Saturday we were there from 9 AM to 8 PM, and Sunday from 9 AM to 2 PM.  It was a wonderful, rewarding experience. 

An important thing for you to understand is that the inmates attending the REC retreats are not the general population of the prison, no, no.  These are members of the Catholic community (and other religious communities) in the prison.  For the most part they are men who have come to terms with their situation it life; they have renounced their crimes and have reconciled themselves with God.  A minority are men who have heard a call but have not yet made the conversion. 

An Educating Experience

  Many of the men I've worked with over the years have abused alcohol, and not a few abused drugs, as well.  Certainly the prison population is comprised of a large percentage of substance abusers.  Alcohol and other mind altering substances have a substantial role in crime.  This led me, with some strong guidance by my spiritual director, to going for some formal training in alcohol and substance abuse counseling.  I learned that mental health issues play a large part in chemical abuse patients; and I also learned that the criminal justice system is very strongly involved in mandating people to substance abuse counseling.  The information I received in this schooling took all of my experiences with people, all of the knowledge that I gained over the years about individuals and how they think and behave, all the psychology training I'd received for business purposes, and of all my studying of the Wisdom of the Scriptures and of Christianity, and reorder them.  

This new way of looking at people and their psychological issues and behavior, well, it opened a new world to me. 

Fully Alive

The Life Lived Fully Alive program came out of these experiences, plus one other.

I have come to realize and believe that men, and women, need an ongoing connection to like-minded individuals, that they should form formal, professionally facilitated groups that meet on a regular basis, to explore and share their lives for the purpose of mental/emotional and spiritual stability, and to grow and perfect their being. 

Without this connection, but with all the distractions of modern life, it becomes virtually impossible to keep oneself moving along in the correct, consistent, moral direction, that is one's destiny.

We all have in common, to lesser or greater degrees, a propensity to enslave ourselves to aberrant behavior.  I’m not just talking about addictions, though those are the most obvious examples, but to activities that we get ourselves in the habit of doing to the extent that we feel compelled to do them.  Activities that take us away from living the life we are truly meant to live.  And, in the end, this is not so different than addiction.  We must be free to live the life we are best suited to live and are most productive and fulfilled in the living of. 

The Creator gave us freedom that enemies and despots and governments of all sorts, as well as, gangsters and bullies, even parents, siblings, spouses work to take away from us.  And here we are enslaving ourselves, and for what?

Thus, we are not living fully alive, we are living away from Truth, our own personal truth.