I consider myself to be a lucky man. This time last year I was working at a great job with a major hi-tech company and engaged to be married to a wonderful woman. She was, at the time, working at Trinity Center, a daytime resource center for people experiencing homelessness and poverty in downtown Austin which is affiliated with St. David's Episcopal Church and housed in their basement. Through her influence I began volunteering on a very occasional basis. Trinity Center refers to their clientele as their neighbors, the people who share the downtown neighborhood with them. This also recalls the challenge in the Bible to love their neighbors as they love themselves. The people of St. David's recognize that challenge and do their best to rise to it. It's easy to recognize the downtown business community as neighbors, and St. David's does. It's also easy to dismiss or ignore the neighbors sleeping in the doorways of those businesses and they try diligently to do neither.

It's a very powerful experience to volunteer for Trinity Center. The gratitude that our neighbors show for a simple meal of sausage and fruit far exceeds the gratitude I've shown for much more substantial gifts at certain times in my life. I was able to recognize that I was lucky to have found a job that not only kept me off the streets, but gave me great experiences, new skills, contacts all over the world, and work that I enjoyed.

My wife and I were married at the end of May. I was laid off from my job in the middle of March. And I still consider myself a lucky man. If I had been forced to face this period of my life alone, there's no telling where I'd be right now. Perhaps it would be back to my hometown. Perhaps I would have been one of Trinity Center's neighbors. There but for the grace of God. I don't feel sorry for myself because as I continue to volunteer, I am constantly reminded that things could be so much worse.

How much worse? Some of you may recall the death late last year of Jennifer Gale in the walkway of a church in Central Austin. That's how much worse it can get.  Jennifer, I'm sure, will be one of scores of people who died on the streets of Austin in the past 12 months who will be remembered at a Sunrise Memorial Service at 7am on 22 November on Auditorium shores between the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue and the Fanny Davis Gazebo. The homeless are difficult to count. The names read at the service of those who died in the past 12 months are only the ones we know about. In 2007 there were 93 names. Last year there were over a hundred.

I will be attending this memorial service for the second time this year. By itself, my attendance will not save anyone's life, nor will it get anyone off the streets. What the memorial service does is make me think. Why does it have to be this way? Does it have to be this way? What could I do to make things better? My wife has long been the generous type to support groups like Trinity Center or House the Homeless and though she no longer works there, we both volunteer at Trinty Center. She has helped me to see (in a way I hadn't before) that I have a responsibility to my neighbors as fellow human beings, even if I'm not responsible for their circumstances.

Shortly after I got laid off, I was approached by a gentleman who asked me for money to help him pay for car repairs. He was out of work and his wife was ailing and he apologized profusely for even asking me in the first place. "I'm wrong" he said, over and over. I had no income of my own, didn't know when I might have income again, but I had a fresh infusion of cash from the layoff and my wife's income was enough to support us. I was doing okay. I had no idea if his story was true or not, but it didn't matter. I gave him a few bucks, because I could imagine myself in his shoes, having to swallow my pride and ask a stranger for help. If our positions were reversed I hoped I would be able to find someone who could help, even if it was only a few bucks. I treated him as I would want to be treated in that situation. Because there but for the grace of God...