Create with great people cool solutions that effect change.
This is our purpose, and sometimes we are asked to quantify “great people” and “cool solutions”. A cool solution is “something that you would be proud to share at a cocktail party”. Something you toss out over a Crantini that would make the other person adjust their perception of you. Great people, that’s is a bit tougher to nail down.

Thinkhouse has had the privilege of getting to know several outstanding individuals on a professional level as clients and some on a deeper more personal level. One of these folks is my friend Tim Huff. Tim has worked with high risk homeless youth in Toronto for over twenty years. He is the Executive Director of Light Patrol. He is gifted in remarkable ways to do what he does with the broken young people that populate the cities downtown core.

The other day Tim sent me this email.
He has graciously allowed us to share it here.

Dear friends,

I spent the afternoon at the hospital bedside of a seventeen year old homeless boy, just praying and being there talking to him (even if he could not hear me?) while the machines monitored the quickening pace of loss of brain activity. No family present. And this evening he has passed away. He took his own life, as his history and his world had worn him past what he could handle. As always, he took a piece of my soul that I can not get back and that will always leave me wounded – at least in this lifetime. But far more than that – he gifted me immeasurably with his presence, even into his final hours.

At the hands of death alone, I have said “good bye” to more than 40 teenagers in my 20 years among street-involved youth. All have deserved the best in life, all have been precious, fascinating young ones with extraordinary potential and countless dreams for life and love. And, having framed every bit of my own theology around the absolute that God is always both just and merciful…I believe all these ones, so damaged in this lifetime, so far removed from knowing sustaining love that reveals otherwise, are made new now in His care. I have to.

But it does not excuse a society that belittles, hurts and ignores those seen solely as a bother or nuisance or worst of all…someone else’s problem. A piece of all of us dies with ones such as this, whether we recognize it or not.

In his honour, and the good stead of what is a nonnegotiable when it comes to doing what is vital…I plead with you, that today you would cherish the young people in your arms-reach and have them know how special and priceless they are. In your home, at your camps, in your neighbourhood, in your school rooms, in your churches, on the streets…maybe just some nervous young person training at the till at a McDonald’s who needs you to be a bit patient and smile…anywhere. What you do and say on this day could change a young life forever. I believe it with all of my heart. Our sons and daughters, your sons and daughters, without question…God’s own.

Wearily and lovingly yours, Tim.

We think to be witness to so much darkness and to be present to such pain, and still be able to find a sliver of light, and share it, makes for an exceptional individual. It is hard to quantify what makes someone great. For us here at Thinkhouse they are like Tim, the kind of people we would strive to be.