This past June 30th and July 1st, I was given the tremendous honor of being asked to speak in Aspen Colorado to commemorate Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s visit and lecture there in 1949. It was also Albert Schweitzer’s 150th birthday. For those of you not familiar with the great Dr. Schweitzer, he was one of us. His life of service as a physician in a remote clinic in what is now the nation of Gabon embodied his love for those without access to healthcare. With skill and dedication, he created a hospital in the tiny town of Lamberene, initially using an abandoned shed with no electricity or other resources. Earlier in his life, he was a renowned scholar and musician but chose to become a physician in order to more directly serve those in greatest need. Due to his German citizenship, he was captured during WWI, but his patients forced the French to release him to continue his work. In Africa, he had a mystical realization while watching hippos swimming into a river that led him to his philosophy of “Reverence for Life.” His living example and his writings and lectures became an inspiration to the world. Not long after his visit to Aspen (his only visit to the US), he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Schweitzer was an inspiration to both me and my father, so I eagerly agreed to speak at the event. The more I read not just about Dr. Schweitzer's medical work, but his profound philosophy, the more I recognized the same core values we hold in street medicine. I have experienced, and heard many of you describe, a mystical experience when we see ourselves in the eyes of our sisters and brothers on the streets. My talk attempted to weave our reverence for the reality of those we serve together with Dr. Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life. Indeed, the two are essentially the same.

Speaking about street medicine in Aspen was an interesting challenge. There are over 150 billionaires with homes there. Aspen is about as far as one can imagine from the alleys and streets and riverbanks and bridges under which we work. But there are those who honor the legacy of Dr. Schweitzer that led to the Aspen Institute and hold a deep reverence for the fragile beauty of those mountains. And there are those who cannot afford homes and live outside in their brutal cold. Aspen's services are small but impressive. Two outreach workers extend the services of a marvelous shelter/recovery center. I found a kinship with the home grown Aspenites as they struggled to maintain the idealism that launched their town from a small, abandoned silver mine to (at least in part) a center for reflection on the big social issues and new ideas. President Obama was speaking with a number of other luminaries while I was there – different meeting. But I felt the message of our reverence for those society has excluded was well-received and resonated with the earlier message by Dr. Schweitzer. Hopefully there will be more of the Schweitzer lectures in which examples of direct service are highlighted. I hope I honored you all and especially our sisters and brothers on the streets.