Annelies' photos from the walk

If you'd like to check out AZ's Snapfish photos from the Out Of The Darkness Walk, just click here.

thanks, and we made it . . .

We made it through to the end . . . each one of us. No blisters (well, maybe), and plenty of soreness. Lots of great conversations. Many, many steps. Lots of waterbottles. Laughs. A few tears.

It was a total of about 8 hours of walking. We were joined by 1,200 other walkers from all over the country. We covered most of the Presidio, Marina, North Beach, Chinatown and the Embarcadero waterfront. It was 65 degrees outside and crystal, crystal clear. A rare thing on a July night in San Francisco.

What I wasn't prepared for, what took me by surprise, was how everyone else around us was there because they had lost someone to suicide: a brother, a dad, a daughter, a friend, an uncle. All around us, people were aching to tell their stories of loss. For some, it had been 13 years. For others, less than six months.

Our team walked with a brave single mom from Tracey, CA who lost her brother to suicide back in November. She was alone on the walk, and struggling to keep pace. We informally adopted her and listened to her pour out her story and her brother's. Eight hours of conversaton, of healing, of telling our stories. It was really amazing.

Each of us took turns carrying a picture of Todd with us. We passed it to each other through the night to remember why we were there.

I'll be sharing some more thoughts, insights and stories in this week coming up to Todd's birthday: July 30th. Thank you again for your generous support and prayer. We comptetely hit our fundraising goal, and some hand-written checks are still coming in. Thank you.

if you feel like calling . . .

I won't be picking up my cell phone much tonight, but I will have it with me. Text messages with encouraging words or prayers would be great! 415.724.8989

if you feel like praying . . .

Connie Kennemer, Todd's mom, asked me how she could pray for us during the walk . . . here it goes:

1) for our physical bodies (especially the feet!) during the event, for protection, freedom from pain, and lots of endurance

2) for the conversations we'll be having with fellow-walkers: people who have lost loved ones, friends, spouses, children, etc. I feel like we've got seven hours to be the healing presence of Jesus to some people who have endured tremendous loss.

3) for our sleep before and after the event: this hasn't been the greatest week of sleep for me (Darren) and I'm worried that I'm already going into the all-night event tired. pray that I sleep well tonight, that I get a nap in tomorrow, and that our recovery afterwards (especially with the kids) goes smoothly.

4) for the rest of our team, Annelies-who has been training very hard to do this walk, and for Keoke-who just joined us and needs to get the rest of his funds raised. for endurance, joy, peace, and good sleep as well.

5) pray for our kids while we're out all night -- they're in great hands with a good friend who watched them while we were in Africa, so this is no big deal, but still . . .

thanks again. we know you're with us in spirit.

the why questions . . .

1) why are we doing this?
Because we wanted to honor Todd's memory and work to make sure suicide happens less. Also, we loved that it was a walk because Todd grew up participating in fundraising walks for Multiple Sclerosis, so he knows the routine. I sortof think he'd have a good laugh that some of his friends are now out on the fundraising walk circuit. Anyway . . .

2) why is it overnight?
I'm sort of guessing it's metaphoric . . . walking "out of the darkness" into the light of dawn . . . bringing talking about suicide out into the light to give it the attention it deserves . . . that kind of stuff.

3) why is your team called the "Todd Kennemer Hootenanny"
That's the way Todd would have liked it: ever-serious but never-stoic, Todd liked a good laugh and enjoyed keeping things lite. Wikipedia defines a hootenanny as "a gathering at which folksingers entertain, often with the audience joining in; there is much music and dancing and food." That pretty much sums up some of how Todd lived his life, and we want to honor that.

4) why 20 miles? (and who the heck thought of that?)
I have no idea, except that you have to walk a long time to walk from dusk to dawn . . . and that they had to make it a serious test of endurance, even a painful struggle, to maybe get a taste of what life with depressive, suicidal thoughts might feel like.

5) why "signs of grace"?
Todd left his mark in our neighborhood in more ways than one . . . his last move before moving away was to spray-paint various places on the sidewalk with his stencil-made tag: "grace." To read more about it, see my thoughts at his memorial below. I half hope we'll be walking over one of Todd's tags tomorrow night . . . wouldn't that be something.

The Overnight Welcome Video

The good folks running the Overnight Walk we're doing sent an e-mail to walkers with a link to a very encouraging and inspiring video yesterday. If you'd like to check it out, click here. There's also a link to it down below on the right.

My Words At Todd's Memorial

so here's what I read when I spoke about Todd at his memorial back in December . . . if you want to watch the whole service, there is a link off to the right of this page . . . a big thanks, to the many of you who have donated so generously to raise awareness and save lives.

The very first day Todd showed up to begin his internship with us in San Francisco, I knew we were in for it. I can still remember Todd and his dad walking down the sidewalk towards me. Todd was in his trademark sleeveless wild-stallion t-shirt and ripped up jeans, thick, pink-pearled plugs in his earlobes, tattooed wrists and a subtle nose piercing. He smiled his big toothy grin at me and flashed his double-handed “rock n’ roll” sign my way.

Rex, his father, grinned at me as well – as if to say, “He’s all yours now, buddy!”

In the beginning, I’ll confess, I wasn’t sure how it was all going to work out. How was this short-statured, finger-nail painted, berret-wearing former Starbuck’s employee going to be able to minister to the leather-clad, prison-branded gutter punks of Golden Gate Park? I pictured Todd, in all his indy-rock glory, being swallowed up whole by the likes of Ulysses, a Goliath of San Francisco’s homeless scene who had all the fun-loving sensitivity of a semi-truck.

But, amazingly, all of my worst imaginings proved unfounded. Within a month, Ulysess and I had adopted Todd as an honorary member of “The Big Guy’s Club” – a sort of fraternal figment of our imaginations for men over 6 feet tall weighing over 200 pounds. Todd actually became a bit of a mascot for the Big Guys’ Club—proving that one could accommodate for diminutive size by being verbally skilled, quick-witted, generally kind, and by demolishing people at a game of cribbage.

This was the Todd that arrived at our doorstep in the fall of 2001: brilliantly creative, shocking in appearance, delightfully care-free, and inexplicably capable of loving those whom the world loved least. He came to us as a Saint Francis of sorts: having freshly stripped himself of all the well-intended trappings of life at home with mom and dad. Eager to learn a new way of living that was less consumptive, closer to the earth, inviting towards strangers, and satisfying to the soul, Todd showed up with an eye to change the world.

Well, he may not have changed the whole world—but the long-reaching impact he had on us, on the InnerCHANGE community, and among the homeless of our City continues to affect our lives today.

Todd moved in to not only minister with me and my wife Pam, but to live with us in our home as well. And as many of you have experienced, when Todd moved in, he moved into a deep place in our hearts. We will never be the same because of his presence with us during one short year.

More importantly, we watched as this young man, selflessly poured out his life among our friends on the street. When a young man named “Fish” came to live in the house with us, we watched Todd lovingly share his time and possessions with him. Fish would occasionally have terrible brain seizures that sent him into screaming fits late into the night. And there was Todd, standing at Fish’s door – keeping watch over him, bringing him water, or some food, or a pillow.

When homeless youth came to our house to eat dinner on Thursday nights, they would often use Todd’s shower to clean off for the first time in weeks. And there was Todd, week after week, standing in the kitchen with electric hair clippers, offering a haircut to his homeless friends. As weeks went by he mastered the mohawks, perfected the mullet cuts, and even got into some coloring here and there – all this from a guy whose own hair often looked like it had been trimmed with a lawnmower.

During his year with us in San Francisco, we watched Todd unveil a strikingly beautiful heart of compassion. Though he was strapped for cash, one day he bought a pair of shoes for a homeless girl he found walking barefoot in the rain. When a young man named Aaron got out of jail and came to live with us, Todd quickly nicknamed him “schnitzel” and stayed up late talking about the Chronicles of Narnia with him. And Todd was heartbroken about a particularly immobilized street-person named Roland, trying desperately—week after week—to get him to come to the weekly dinners at our house.

The list goes on: he helped an aspiring street musician record some of his original music. He drove a homeless teen and his dog down to Orange County at Christmas so he could see his mother for the first time in several years. He borrowed our van so he could drive a young drug addict to rehab and make sure he got settled into the program okay.

Todd demonstrated a willingness to follow Jesus into the worst of circumstances. And there, he would shine his light of love in spite of the darkness. That is, perhaps the greatest mystery that surrounds the tragedy of Todd’s death . . . that an amazing person, who could so purely love his friends, whether poor or rich, could fail to recognize just how truly amazing he was . . . that he could fail to see how much his love for other people was making a difference.

Todd, your love for the world was as shocking and inspiring as you were yourself. You set people at ease and welcomed them into friendship. You laughed long and loud, and invited us all into that laughter. You ached for a different way of life, and prodded us all to join you in it. You had a view of what the world could be that was infused with justice and hope and peace. Your heartbeat was the very heartbeat of the divine conspiracy. And we will miss that heartbeat, my friend.

Those of us from your San Francisco chapter selfishly like to believe that we witnessed the high-water mark of your adult years—and we are delighted to think we were participants in what might have been best year of your adult life. You were saturated with the goodness of God, and it oozed out to the rest of us in an unshakeable way. It was hard to see you go three years ago, and is even harder that you’re gone now. We will miss you, dearly.

Todd did one thing before he left our neighborhood in San Francisco for Seattle . . . one final act of creative vandalism that left me feeling simultaneously annoyed and wishing I had thought of it first. He created a simple stencil, snuck out into the night with a can of black spray-paint, and proceeded to graffiti in several spots all over our neighborhood. Todd’s black stencil-tag ended up in a dozen places where I would be sure to see it long after he had moved away: on the sidewalk out in front of our house, on the route to our favorite coffee shop, on a corner heavily trafficked by local drug dealers.

And the word Todd spray-painted all over our neighborhood, it’s faded reminder still visible to this day, was grace. Grace on the way to the coffee-shop. Grace on a sidewalk claimed by enemy gangs. Grace in a random place for no reason at all. That was Todd’s permanent mark left on our neighborhood . . . a farewell gift that whispers even louder today than it did three years ago, or even three weeks ago.

Not knowing where you were headed, Todd, perhaps you left these grace-signs like Hanzel & Grettle’s trail of bread-crumbs, so you could find your way back home. But in the meantime, these graces are a visible reminder of the grace you scattered around you everywhere you went: a bread-crumb trail of grace in Tucson, then San Diego, then Chicago, and San Francisco, and Seattle. And that’s what you did, Todd. You spray-painted “grace” indelibly on our hearts, and in the hearts of the many whom you loved so well while you were on this earth.

And we are forever grateful.



Darren Prince,
December 5, 2005

keoke's in . . .

we've just added a fourth walker to our team and another $1000 goal for the event! please hold off on giving to me, Pam or Annelies so that we can get Keoke registered and have your donations go his way! more later . . .

adding keoke? please write me!

thank you to all who've given this week -- we are just a few bucks away from our goal. in fact, I'm completely there, and Pam is super close.

so here's the deal . . . our friend Keoke really wants to do this walk in honor of Todd, but isn't quite sure he can drum up the money. if you've been wanting to give to our cause and wouldn't mind supporting him rather than us, please e-mail me and let me know you'd be willing! I think he can still register, but you won't currently find him on our team on the website, so hold off on making donations and just contact me directly. if we think we've got enough to cover another $1000 for him to join us, we'd love to add him to the team.

let's put it this way -- we've already got another $425 committed for him to join us, so we're almost halfway there already!

the e-mail link is right above my picture on the blog. thanks again everyone!

new shoes?

We are still pounding the pavement, getting ourselves in shape for this thing. I spent 3 hours out in the park with our team hanging out with homeless people yesterday -- and then walked home from Haight Street. Gotta guess that's at least six miles of walking. My muscles are nice and loose, but I'm not hurting much.

I've got a shoe dilemma though. I could stand to use a new pair of walking shoes because my current ones are well worn and don't quite let my feet breathe anymore. Problem is, do I have time to break a new pair of shoes in before walking 20 miles in them? Is it going to be blisters either way? Hmmmm . . .

The more we talk about it, the more 20 miles doesn't sound like a stretch -- it's staying up all night and coming home to a 3 year old and an 1.5 year old that concerns me. Gratefully, our good friend Jenniffer is taking care of the kiddos both overnight AND through the next day while we recover. (Both sets of grandparents have checked in with us on that one, can you believe it!) Makes me want to get a hotel room and a massage when this thing is over!

I saw Annelies tonight and we compared notes. Her suggestion is to walk the first 10 miles, take a 30 minute break and then walk the last ten. Not a bad plan. What happens if we finish early? Go sleep in the car or something -- until the closing ceremony that starts at 6:30. Seeing Annelies and realizing the walk is only a few days away made me nervous . . . this is really going to be a challenge.

Monday Training

I wake up at 6:45 a.m. and get out the door to walk to and around Golden Gate Park with Peanut. The sun here in San Francisco at this early in the morning is a rare thing. Already the sidewalks are heating up in the sunshine. What a brilliant morning.

Walking isn't always my favorite form of exercise, but we do lots of it here in the City. Everytime we have guests come visit us they comment on how much their feet hurt because of all the walking. I've come to take the walk to the coffee shop, the grocery store, or the playground in stride . . . but I guess for some people it's unusual to get around that way.

This morning Peanut and I are quiet and deliberate on our morning walk through the park. I pass the area of the park where many of our homeless friends will gather later in the morning. Todd and Pam and I used to hang out here all the time with gutter-punks and left-over hippies. This is the spot where we would invite people back to our house for Thursday night dinners. There is the place where we huddled in the tunnel during the rain.

Training for a 20 mile walk to benefit suicide prevention couldn't happen in a better place. These are where some of my greatest memories of Todd still linger in the shade of the trees. And most of my most life-changing walks have happened in this giant urban playground called Golden Gate Park. I secretly hope that our overnight walk takes us somewhere through here, just so I can savor the moment and remember Todd in this place once again.

Funding Update 7/15/06

So here's the latest as of late Saturday night . . . a week before the walk:

Each of us is aiming to raise $1,000 . . .
Darren has raised $758
Pam has raised $692
Annelies has raised $1170

Thanks to everyone who has given so far! Please keep the donations coming!

ps -- we gotta get our friend Keoke into this -- anybody want to help him raise $1K in a week?

A Letter From Todd's Parents

Here's what Todd's parents wrote to help us raise funds . . . thanks Rex & Connie!

Yeah, "The Todd Kennemer Hootenanny"! That’s what Todd’s San Francisco friends are calling their walk in the dark!

The Out of the Darkness Overnight is a 20-mile walk through the night (July 22-23 in S.F.). It’s a journey of hope — to heal the losses of the past and help prevent suicide from taking more lives. (One life is lost to suicide every 18 minutes, in the U.S. alone!) Net proceeds will benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, to fund research, education, survivor and awareness programs — both to prevent suicide and to assist those affected by
suicide.

We honestly cannot even describe to you how deeply personal this has become to our family. But this you may know personally: With his life, Todd took a part of every heart that ever opened to him. None of us will be the same again. That’s why we must bind our hearts together: To Heal. To Help. To Hope.

Please join us in rallying behind "our" team, The Todd Kennemer Hootenanny. Todd’s friends have each committed to raising $1000 for the cause (No one else even gets to come along!). Break that down and you have T-minus (14) days to raise, well… A BUNCH OF BUCKS.

Most of us can’t walk 20 miles, and most of the walkers can’t give $1000. Sounds like the perfect partnership: Darren, Pam, and Annalies, please be our LEGS, and we’ll be your BUCKS!”

Friend, if it’s on your heart to give, please give online at www.theovernight.org Choose “Support a Participant”. Choose the event (S.F.) and the team (The Todd Kennemer Hootenanny). Then give to your heart’s content. And please do it sooner than July 22.

Also, pray for these gutsy, passionate friends of Todd and their 20 mile walk Out of the Darkness.

For more info, contact Rex or Connie,
Contact “TheOvernight.org” online or at 888-644-4805
Or e-mail the team directly.

Thanks to each one of you for the part you play.

Rex & Connie

Why AZ Is Walking

Here's what Annelies writes on her own blog about the Overnight:

ashes to ashes & dust to dust...
we are fragile creatures, we humans. to recognize our own mortality & our own death paves the way for recognizing and commissioning how to truly live.

a week before thanksgiving last year, my friend todd killed himself. we met at the living room coffeehouse drop-in center for homeless street kids many years ago. he imitated Christ's example of loving the least of these and had a great ability to draw out the best in those around him. shock and outrage and confusion and deep sadness punctuated those days surrounding his death. they were catalysts for various poems that fought their way out of me, written on todd's behalf.

i have been stung by the familiar silhouette that looks like it could be the departed, walking in the flesh, absurd hope rising up in my bloodstream, only to crash back into reality once they look me straight in the face and it's not him. if you love someone, you will know loss of them. but that doesn't diminish your love- it can give you the propensity to love more and more greatly, exponentially increasing by sharing the love previously reserved for one person, now with many. almost like the ultimate honor to the deceased is to share that love with countless others that need to hear it, feel it, walk in it and breathe the everlasting life in it.

i am training to walk 20 miles to raise money for suicide prevention because of a still recent death that impacted my life late last year. we will walk from 7 p.m. until 4:30 a.m. in july to bring "shameful" issues like depression, mental illness and suicide out of the darkness and into the light. depression affects 20 million people in the United States and yet is one of the most treatable mood disorders. in working with the homeless for now almost seven years i have seen and loved many people afflicted with depression, contemplating suicide. for me, this walk is a chance to do something about helping others struggling and to honor todd's inimitable spirit & friendship.

thank you for considering donating to this cause that affects so many of us & the ones we love who may be feeling this way but not vocalizing it aloud. may we seek to love each other more fully and acutely.

best,
annelies

The Quest

Our quest is to walk 20 miles through the night and reach dawn in one piece.

Our quest is to raise money, no, raise awareness about suicide and why it happens.

Our quest is to support a cause that doesn't get enough attention.

Our quest is to remember and honor Todd, Liz, and others we've known who have taken their own lives.

Our quest is to strive together, push each other, encourage each other through a night long challenge.

Our quest is to find a place for Todd's community of family and friends to remember him and give back.

Our quest is to say there has to be a better way . . .