Phyllis Cole-Dai - The Emptiness of Our Hands: 47 Days on the Streets

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The Book of the World: A Contemporary Scripture

Phyllis edited this contemporary scripture on behalf of an unknown author. It speaks on behalf of no religion but offers alongside other holy books its own poignant witness to compassion, love for the neighbor, love for the enemy, care for the earth, and more. Read and test its truths in everyday life. Perfect for daily meditation or group study.

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Practicing Presence: Insights from the Streets

This is a companion reader to The Emptiness of Our Hands, which Phyllis co-authored with James Murray (3rd edition, 2018). She wrote this series of forty-seven blog posts in 2009 on the ten-year anniversary of living voluntarily for 47 days on the streets of Columbus, Ohio. The book includes photographs that until now have never appeared in print. Deepen your understanding of the practice of being present while learning more about Phylliss time on the streets.

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To all of us,

that we might learn

through the tender and tough tutelage of spirit

to be more present to one another

We must love one another or die.

W. H. Auden

From February 17 to April 4, 1999, James Murray and I lived by choice on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the fifteenth-largest city in the United States. We went to the streets with a single intention: to be as present as possible to everyone we met, offering them our sustained and nonjudgmental attention. Such attention is the heart of compassion.

Those forty-seven days changed our lives forever.

We later chronicled our streets experiences in The Emptiness of Our Hands, a meditative narrative accompanied by Jamess pinhole photographs. This is the third edition of that book, lightly edited. It will thrust you out the door of your comfortable life, straight into the unknown. It will force you to confront what might happen to you, and who you might become, if suddenly you had no home.

Though the events recounted in these pages occurred in 1999, this book remains as relevant as ever. More than half a million Americans are without homes on any given night. Under the policies of the current presidential administration, that number is almost guaranteed to grow, as the income gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans continues to widen. And the prevailing cultural climate, so polarized and full of spite, will only perpetuate the epidemic of violence against homeless individuals across the nation.

James and I intend to resist the ugly cultural forces now in ascendance however we can. Thats why weve chosen to issue this new edition of The Emptiness of Our Hands and to distribute it in new formats. Im also making available for the first time Practicing Presence: Insights from the Streets, based on a series of blog posts I published in 2009 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of our time on the streets of Columbus. A companion reader to this book, it contains forty-seven brief chapters, one for each day we were out. Each chapter fleshes out an excerpt from The Emptiness of Our Hands at a decades remove from actual events. The book also includes photographs that have never appeared in print until now. Using it alongside this volume, you will further enhance your understanding of the streets and the practice of being present.

If you happen to be Christian, you might consider using one or both of these books as resources during Lent and Holy Week, which served as a backdrop for the period James and I lived on the streets. However, you dont need to be a Christian to take this stumbling journey into the practice of presence. Just allow these forty-seven days to be for you what they were for us: a deep embrace of core values that human beings around the world have held in common for millennia. These values might best be articulated as questions:

How do we treat others as we would have them treat us?

How do we love our neighbors, including those who seem alien and other?

How do we extend hospitality to strangers, allowing them an honored place among us?

These age-old questions have no simple answers. They must be answered with our lives.

James and I hope that your reading of this book will heighten your awareness of people who experience homelessness and strengthen your compassion for them. More broadly, we hope it will inspire you to intentionally practice presence on a daily basis in the various settings of your life. Practicing presence isnt easy, but its powerful. It can change lives, including your own. It can even change the world.