Cainan: Faith, Perspective (Lobsters) & Seeing Everyone as Babies

Name: Cainan

Age: 43 Location: Denver, CO - 16th Street (Downtown)

Time: 8:53 PM

Date: Monday, June 15, 2026 Camera: Canon 6D Mark II

Mega-Pixels: 26.2

Senor Type: Full Frame

Released: 2017 Lense: Canon EF 24-105 MM 1.4 L IS USM

I met Cainan on a Sunday night in downtown Denver. (He corrected my pronunciation of his name, but I fear I may still be misspelling it.... please forgive me, Sir).

Or perhaps more accurately, he met me. I am unsure of how long he had been watching me.

I was sitting near an alley off 16th Street in Downtown Denver, my camera resting firmly on the ground with my view screen extended out and angled up to my face, as I was crouched and poised for maximum artistic value - and personal embarrassment - as I chased a photograph that wasn't cooperating. People moved in and out of the frame faster than I could compose it. The light was changing. The shot kept failing. At least, I thought so. I was never satisfied with the result. I was becoming irritated.

A curious group of older people casually stopped right in the entrance of the alley, and lingered. They became aware of me, twenty feet across from them, and they still decided to linger haphazardly while I was waiting, occasionally making eye contact with me and gesturing my direction. I'm sure I looked strange to them, knelt down on the pavement across the street, with my big camera on the ground pointed at a weird direction.

Cainan wandered over to my right, and started talking. He was clean, and well dressed, and well mannered. He reluctantly complimented me on my "artistic vision". I figured, the older group wasn't keen on moving anytime soon, so I stood up and clicked my camera off and engaged with him. It would be the begging of a brief moment of tender mercy.

That is one of the peculiar gifts photography offers. The camera gives strangers permission to become something other than strangers. In the last seventeen years that I have been taking photographs in public, I would wager, in some form or the other, that I have been approached several hundreds of times.

To give full weight and context to this experience, I need to be brutally honest with you about a facet of my charcter. I don't like being approached in public by strangers. Any strangers. My nervous system views the potential risk of an unknown person as too high, with too little possible benefit to take that risk. Over the years, I have learned to be more amicable and polite about saying "No, thank you." And turning possible interactions away. Even, on occasion, having to become abrupt and sternly distancing myself from someone.

Theirs another componet, too. Even older than my social anxiety or my Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. From a very early age, I have felt uncomfortable with film and photographs that were taken at a time of crucial need, the subject being someone vulnerable. Starving babies that would die hours later. Victims of war, genocide, and starvation. I am not making a moral or a character judghement, but I simply never want to feel exploitative. I felt this way over a decade before I ever picked up my first camera, and years before I ever picked up a pen to write.

And yet... here we were. Here. We. Were.

"Damn." I muttered, quietly.

As we began discussing art, I had an idea. At first, I only intended to make a portrait. A photograph. A name. Maybe a brief conversation. Polite. Non-invested. A slight detour of placation, and I would resume my attempts to capture this alley the way I had in my mind, devoid of a large group of older people starring at me as they occupy the lowest focal point of my architectural and lighting shot.

I never did return to try and finish this shot, my lighting window had vanished. In retrospect, a worthy sacrifice for a rare experience with another human.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't bring most of my gear with me on this trip. Including a decent audio recorder. Thats okay, it was a quick two-day work trip in Denver, Steamboat Springs, on down past Colorado Springs to Pueblo, and back. I truly intended to just "play" with my camera gear in a realtively new city and stress test the hardware and settings. No big deal. I've done it a hundred times before.

Instead, I found myself standing on a sidewalk listening to a man describe faith, perspective, loss, and humanity with a wisdom that many people spend entire lifetimes pursuing.

After about ten minutes, I had asked Cainan if I could take a few photos of him, and record our conversation. He became noticeably uncomfortable, and after discussing some boundaries and intentions, he gave me his consent, multiple times through out the next half hour.

I had to suffice with the Voice Memos App on my iPhone - the audio file is... of poor quality. But it is sufficent. And now, precious.

Cainan has been homeless for fifteen years. His belongings had been stolen three times that month alone. He told me he had discovered three dead bodies on the street just in the recent weeks.

Yet he spoke with a calmness that felt strangely out of place in the middle of downtown Denver. And Cainan never once asked me for a thing. Not even a cigarette.

After a while, perhaps twenty minutes or so, I asked Cainan if I could ask him a few generalized questions, and that I wouldn't only take five minutes, maybe ten at the most. He chuckled, and told me he would need at least twenty more minutes. We ended up sending over an hour together.

I first asked him "What brings you out here tonight?" He recoiled a bit, and said "that is privileged". I acknowledged that, and affirmed to him that he doesnt have to answer any question, and we both agreed to skip over it. "This is going handsomly well..." I thought to myself.

I decided to press on.

"What is something that you are excited about, Cainan?"

"I am looking forward to the Lord comming back. Oh, and also, I am looking forward to watching him, you know... do better things with peoples lives... who have nothing, and are, you know suffering. Because I know he's so capable of it, and watching him in action sometimes, makes my day - even in the smallest, or you know, big way."

And just like that, here I am in the middle of the street talking to a stranger about faith, about miracles, and the Lord doing good work in other peoples lives... who would have thought? Not. Me.

Cainan didn't seem to be speaking in the abstract sense. Not as a slogan or a political position. Faith as a daily practice of continuing forward when life gives you every reason to stop. From a man who was clearly vulnerbale and disadantaged, in the practical, societial context, at least. But certainly not in the humanity context.

At one point he shared the old story about footprints in the sand.

The man who looks back at the hardest parts of his life and sees only one set of footprints.

Cainan began illustrating the story with his hands and body movements.

"Lord," he asks, "why did you leave me?"

And the answer comes:

"I didn't leave you. I was carrying you."

It is a familiar story. But familiar stories sometimes become familiar because they contain something true. As we talked, another story emerged.

Cainan laughed and described the lobster aboard the Titanic.

For every passenger, the sinking of the ship was a tragedy.

For the lobster waiting to be cooked, it was salvation:

• Perspective.

• The same event.

• Two entirely different realities.

  
  

The longer we spoke, the more I realized Cainan viewed much of life through that lens. Not as optimism. Not denial. But perspective.

Then he said something I have not stopped thinking about:

When he encounters people, regardless of who they are or how they live, he sees them as the babies they once were.

• The addict on the sidewalk.

• The wealthy executive.

• The angry stranger.

• The privileged person who has never known hardship.

• The man crouched down looking silly chasing an image of an alley in his camera's articulating screen.

• All of them.

Somebody's baby.

Somebody who once took their first steps while a family celebrated. Somebody who once made another human being smile simply by existing. Somebody that somebody else loves.

It is difficult to hate people when you look at them that way. Not impossible. But difficult. But Cainan didn't seem particularly interested - or perhaps even capable of - hating anyone, anyways. I sure have... and can. For a moment, I fear, I must have adjusted the focus of my internal lens away from Cainan and turned it inwards as I reflected on this very simple concept.

As a combat veteran, parts of our conversation drifted toward trauma, hardship, and rebuilding. We spoke about loss. About starting over. About how some people break when life takes everything away.

Cainan acknowledged the tattoo on my wrist, with a stone cross headstone, several dog tags wrapped around it, with green grass and four red roses growing up from its base, and a heavy chain wrapped around my wrist, broken on the underside.

I chose to recripciate his vulnerability, and explain to him what it meant. Much like the story of the Lobster on the Titanic, about how their is always a dichetomy in life. Death, and life, occur simultatniously. The cross and the dog tags (in black and grey) represent the sacrifices that have been made, and the grass and flowers (in color) represent my four children: my youngest three are my biological children, and my oldest I have recently adopted. The chain (also in black and grey) represented my breaking generational cycles, and my oath to myself to continue to do so.

Cainan genuinely seemed a bit shocked about that, and he told me that, if what I said is in fact true, then that is very heroic and courageous.

And here I was beleiving this man was heoric and curageous for teaching me that its sometimes safe to engage with strangers, in public, intimately and converse. That not everyone I do not know is an automatic threat. Or just wants something from me.

Cainan aknowledged that he is no stranger to sin, himself. But that what carries him through sin, and through those dark, difficult, sometimes even painful times, is his faith in the Lord.

Cainan has lost everything more than once. He told me that his stuff had been stolen a few times just in recent weeks (the first of many times he would reference this). Yet somehow, he still carries compassion. And seems to be remarkably resistant to the decay of hate.

Not because his life has been easy. Because, after spending fifteen years homeless, currently living under a bridge, it clearly hasn't.

Not because people have always treated him well. Because, based on his body language and words, they clearly have not.

But because he believes every person remains worthy of compassion regardless of their circumstances.

I continued to ask questions:

"What would be something that you are currently challenged by?" It seemed logical for him to point out that he is living under a bridge. No. is response was truly remarkable... and remarkably familiar to me.

He spoke to me about overstimulation and the weight of modern life. About too much noise. Too much information. Too many people walking by, adding their own droplets of paint to a canvas that already struggles to remain intact.

He described it better than I could.

Like watercolor.

At some point, too much water ruins the image, and degrades the value of the piece.

I felt like Cainan may be expressing his discomfort with me, perhaps watering down his own image.

"Let me ask you a different question, Cainan, Okay? Is this a positive experience for you, or do you feel like I am..." He cut me off quickly "So, so thats a good question. Between us, you know, you already ask me, okay, this is okay."

"Okay, okay." I reassured him. "I'll allow it, this is okay. I experience some PTSD, uh, you know?"

"I don't want to be, you know.... exploitative..."

"No, no, no, its okay." He reassured me. "But you know, you asked me... about some problems, that I have, you know. And this is (the dilution) a big one of them, a problem for me. But I'll allow it, this, you know?." "Okay. Thank you Cainan."

"It's a positive experience you know, it's just... evoking thoughts that are kind of PTSD like, and, you know..." "Okay, we can move on, if you'd like?" Cainan nodded. "Let me ask you something, hopefully a little more upbeat okay? What would be something that you would like other people to know about you, Cainan?"

"The thing I love the most is the Lord, and all of his Grace." He was illustrating his message by geasturing up to the sky with his hands, the largest and the most movements he's yet made with his body in our engagement. "I think that, you know, people are good at heart. Despite it all... I think people are generally good, um, yeah, good you know? Theirs a lot of people who can do good with others, and I am learning that sometimes the good, can drown out the noise." A minute or so ago, another young gentleman turned on some soulful reggage music on a speaker a few feet to our left, and the volumne was overpowering. For a minute, we both bonded over our mutual difficulty with so much input, and loud noises. Cainan genuinely seemed upset and agitated by the invasive stimuli - something I suspect he has had to endure countless times.

Unfortunately, it also made my already very poor audio recording quality, even harder to decipher.

I can't accurately recite what the rest of our dialogue was after this point (for a while), but Cainan and I broached topics of the war, Psychological operations, respect for culture, his upbringing in Los Angeles, societies dichotomies and biases, and the difficulties of finding food and warmth when you are homeless. Despite, Cainan still continued to heavily expound on compassion and his view of people and the importance for him to view other people with empathy and grace, like The Lord views him.

"Theirs a lot of compassion, in character, even if their not me..." Cainan continued, but then fell off.

Cainan resumed his animated body language after a period of containment and stoicism - which I suspect was a physiological response to the invasive and loud music.

"I see people as they were, when they were born, as babies. I have found three dead bodies on the sidewalk recently, but I brought back a few too, but their babies, you know? I'm like that was someone's baby. This person, who doesn't know that they are privileged, that is someone's baby too. But they're losing out on a whole segment of life, because of their privilege. But I still have compassion for them you know, their babies. At some point in time, they were making some persons day, When their family was sitting on a couch, and.. the baby was taking their first steps, to the other side of the room. And I still see that, in people. And I think that's worth saving."

"Wow, Cainan. You know, I struggle greatly with viewing the world and other people with compassion, empathy, and unerstanding. I, uh... I am certainly doing a lot better about that now, than in my past, but... I think... that is very courageous and heroic, of you.. I have rebuilt my life, but I haven't gone this far..." I gestured to is belongings in black bags on the floor in-front of the bench "But you know, I have had to rebuild my life, lost two marriages, but I have never lost my home... and you know..." "Not me. You can take everything from me. Everything. I'll be fine. They've robbed my stuff three times just this month! I'll be fine, I am grateful. I have survived." I was beginning to feel like I needed to let Cainan be alone, and recenter himself. I get it. Maybe... I needed to be alone to recenter myself.

"Caian, would you like a water, or a drink or something?" I confessed to him that I don't really feel comfortable giving people money, but that I was happy to buy him something to make him more comfortable. He genuinely didn't even seem to acknowledge my admission about money.

"I like soda-pop, actually. Yeah, any kind of cola, you know? I love soda-pop." I smiled, he was lighting up. "Okay. Hey you would probably know better than me" I looked around the environment, I didn't see anything obvious that looked like a convenience store "Is their a place close by where I could buy you a Pepsi or something?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah there is, uh right down the street" he gestured back to where I had entered the area from a a few hours before "Theirs a bodega down there".

"Okay man, no problem." "Hey, could I wait here for you?" He indicated he didn't want to leave his stuff there.

"Yeah Cainan, of course, I'll go find you some cola, and I'll be back in a few minutes. Hey, I don't know if you smoke or not, but would you..." "Yeah! I'd take a cigarette if you have one?" Cainan actually kind of lost his composure and smiled like a school-boy caught robbing from the cookie jar but wasn't at all ashamed as I handed him one. I also slipped in my business card, which he looked at and stuffed into his pocket quickly so he could grab the cigarette.

"Alright Cainan, I'll be back soon, okay?"

Humbled, and perhaps a bit shell-shocked, I scurried down the street and turned off my Voice Memo App on my iPhone, put the cap back on my camera lens and switched the power off. And to be honest, I just stood still for a minute and took a breath.

"Wow!"

I meandered a bit and didn't see anything promising, except for a small Taco Bell sign a few hundred feet away.

I returned to Cainan, he had his back towards me, and I walked around him broadly so he could see me and I sat a bag of Tacos down and his Pepsi, and his eyes lit up, and his mannerisms came alive. I cant know for sure, but part of me thinks he expected me to never return. I didn't want to stay, I wanted him to be alone and safe and just eat some food and not feel like he's in a petrie dish. A sense that... I suspect has more to do with my own feelings and view of the outside world's lens they view me through, than how Cainan does.

The camera was off, the audio recording was off, and he was sitting down with his Pepsi, and a bag of Tacos, and I was crouched down opposite of him, with a stone table between us, and I asked him if I could shake his hand. He agreed, and as we shook hands, firmly, for much longer than I expected. I thanked him for sharing some of his time and his experiences and beliefs with me.

I did my best to hold back a few small tears, as I explained that I have never done this before, and I have always kept people away, especially strangers, and that I am really grateful that this time, I didn't push him away. I thanked him for making me feel safe and seen and valued, and for trusting me to share what he has with me tonight.

My eyes weren't the only ones a bit moistened, as Cainan continued to shake my hand firmly and said he was glad he could enlighten me, and and then he quickly changed focus to the food, and thanked me profusely and explained this will be his dinner for tonight.

Cainan began unwrapping his food as he explained to me that he was just baptized a few weeks ago in the river near by. Something that makes him feel a great deal of pride, and he believes helps me see people like babies, with compassion.

Now, I suppose, their really wasnt much point in trying to obfsucate the tears in my eyes. I told him that is wonderful, and beautiful. I expressed that I truly was happy for him and that I also wanted to let him be in peace so he can eat his dinner and feel safe, ad we thanked each other again, as I stood up and walked away wiping tears from my eyes. I sat down at the nearest bench that was around the corner, out of his eye sight.

Photography freezes a moment.

Conversation reveals a person.

A person who was once a baby.

Most people who passed Cainan that day saw a homeless man sitting downtown.

But that day, I met a philosopher. Maybe, I met an Angel.

And for a brief moment on a Denver sidewalk, our paths crossed. That conversation is now part of my journey to becoming more human.

Thank you, Cainan - for showing me compassion, and seeing me as the baby I once was.