Growing up in the South, the dog days of August were very real. The weather was hot, humid, we stayed around the house most of the day until the sun set. We drank a lot of ice tea, ate a lot of watermelon, and barbecued. They were days of reflection, and of looking ahead to the coming year.
In reflecting this year during this time I think of our countries psyche and my own life. For me I have discovered within my life, and with what is happening in the greater world similarities.
I have discovered that my own desire to connect can sometimes become an inordinate attachment to receiving praise, love, and acceptance from others. I often struggle with sacrificing integrity and authenticity to orchestrate attachment to others. There is a phrase from the Henry Rollins album, “weight”, which says: “Loneliness will make you throw your sins away.”
Loneliness eats at our very souls, and I have found I will throw away everything to have a friend, and always it is in vain. The same in our country, we are so afraid we are going to lose the freedoms and rights we have gained, that we “throw our sins away,” losing our sense of respect for the dialogue of other people who differ from us.
Doing these dog days of August I am listening to the Spirit, and am being reminded not to fear, to respond in truth and love and to trust. And that is my prayer for others—do not fear, respond in truth and love, and trust each other. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
Weekly Meals:
It has become apparent that personally I will not be able to prepare weekly meals alone. We are asking for volunteers who will put in 4-5 hours a week to package and help serve the meals on the street. Thank you.
We now have two new interns, they are Cale King and Aaron Olaya, Juniors in High School from San Rafael, CA. Both are passionate and caring about people, and find working with us rewarding.
Aaron Cale
Death Penalty Protest:
September 5, Noon-1:00 p.m. we will begin our weekly Death Penalty Protest. The Death Penalty is in humane, and makes of all of us murderers. Come join us!
We Are Beggars!
Our finances are very low. We are in need of socks, we are in need of money for food, and so we beg, for your support. We continue to minister to 500 plus young people a month through our pastoral care, socks, food, and needle exchange. And so as you reflect during these dog days we pray you will remember us. Please give:
“All Work That Is Worth Doing is Done In Faith~” Albert Schiezer
“Down these Mean Streets a person must go who is not mean, tarnished or afraid (Blue Bloods)”.
“Imagine if we all walked into the world with the belief that each person was inherently worthy.
Imagine if our goal was to help each other recognize that we are worthy of being loved.
Imagine if we sought to LISTEN MORE THAN WE SPOKE.”
–Fred Rogers=
I wear around my neck a small piece of jewelry, all I have to do is punch it and the police and an ambulance suddenly appear; I go to a hospital and am treated. I can go to the store and pick up whatever I choose to eat; In the last two weeks I have sat with two young guys who overdosed; others are in tents, the doorways. Deep contrasts I see! Deep contrasts that are hidden! As I look at my own life I see the journey it has taken me to get here, a journey of pain, rejection, and deconstruction, and yet a journey of joy and healing.
I look back to my childhood in a small southern town, where I had great parents, but from the moment I was born, I was set up for religious trauma, which continues even now, in many ways in my life of faith-raising questions.
As far as I could remember I was taught that being queer, gay, was a deep sin; that such activities like masturbation, and cussing were sins. There was deep shame instilled. The environment was racist, with separate schools and separate parts of town people lived in. I was raised in the church, and at 12 at church camp found myself called to ministry, and even to this day that call is strong, leading my life and saving me from desperation.
Because of not being able to be myself truly I had many of the characteristics of low self-esteem, lack of maturity, lack of boundaries, and difficulty in interpreting relationships. My childhood and adolescence were harrowing and scary.
Through college, seminary, and years in the parish, I took anti-depressants. When my little brother was killed in an accident I broke down and told my District Superintendent I needed to see a therapist to look at my “sexual identity,” and was sent to “conversion therapy”, my god, the way I was treated, harrassed, beaten and finally kicked out on the streets. The Church followed suit, and I lost every relationship I have ever had, I was so alone and fearful. I ceased believing in God and turned to the streets in L.A., became a hustler, a whore.
This was the time I rebelled–against the system; against society, and authority figures; there were days for the first time in my life I had no money for food or a place to stay, so I lived on the streets, and when I made money motels. I was raped, beaten up, and a life of survivor, but it provided me my first chance to experiment with my sexuality.
There was much shame in my life, had always been, much guilt, my closest friends were my fellow street kids, I came to love them, to understand them, receiving the greatest gift of all their acceptance, and my gift for my coming ministry.
So within three years, I had begun my coming off the streets, got a job in Minneapolis as a counselor lying about where I had been, and gave several “johns” as references, saying I had provided in-home counseling, and so off the streets, and my coming out continued.
Like an addict, who just gets clean off drugs, I was mentally stuck in adolescence and so I started growing up, I am not sure I have ever grown up. But am still growing!
And so I came to San Francisco for a workshop, and fell in love with the City, but more importantly the kids on the street. I missed the streets, and I understood those kids. And so I came to San Francisco, found a job as a counselor, a place on Polk Street, and began by buying kids piazza, and as I have done all my years, simply listened, being a presence and a friend. I found a therapist and for ten years worked on my coming out, and finally found peace. Found peace in my ministry! Life is gray, full of gray areas, no black and white; my anger arises when conservatives come proclaiming their gospel; when people come in and make judgments on what the people on the street should do or believe.
Like the “Hound of Heaven,” God never let me go, and during these years God reminded me that I was called in my mother’s womb and knew exactly who I was.
These years have been tough and yet filled with joy. The established churches have never accepted me, because of the people I work with, for the Church seems to want to keep its distance. Other institutions very seldom work with the bottom ten percent like I do, and they too nervously work with me when they have to.
Again the church tries to shame me, tries to shame my queer kids, and all homeless people and I am no longer available for that shaming. Dorothy Day once said, “The system is dirty and rotten!” and she was right. Like her, I do not vote, and my protests are in listening, caring, and giving of food to the homeless!
As I am coming to my 30th year in ministry, I am still questioning God and myself, but I know without God I frankly would never have survived for in God I find my purpose. Rather than a place to hide, Calvary shines as a light on a cruel hill, a luminous revelation of God’s utter self-give, revealed in all its bloody transparency. In honest faithfulness Christ discloses God’s love as the perfect gift, calling us to share that love with everyone!
For me God is universal, God is a God of Absolute love, and most of the guys know I am a priest, they see me in the Haight and elsewhere celebrating the Eucharist, and many come because it too is all-inclusive.
I have a gathering at my place twice a month early Sunday morning for individuals working overnight, be they hookers or nurses, and we share, no matter their beliefs, and I celebrate the Eucharist as a sign of God’s inclusive love.
My ministry is one of presence, walking with each person where he or she is without judgment. No one knows the road of pain they are on, and so my ministry is that of simply listening and caring.
In my years only the therapists or others who could simply walk with me, without judgment with Roger’s approach of listening is where I found my path.
In these years I have been beaten, stabbed, shot at, and threatened; the gossip has been the most painful. Again there is much joy!
Religious Trauma has been and is a major part of my life. It has shaped my personality, but now on the whole I am at peace. Religious Trauma has brought me in service to others in the same boat.
The painting at the head of this article was drawn by a young man questioning his beliefs in light of being condemned for being gay, and he committed suicide. It is a painting that haunts me, a haunting presence of the cruelty of religious trauma. A painting of the cruelty of black-and-white religion, not of the presence of inclusive love!
I question all the time if there is a God, and I often wonder if my trust in the presence I feel a lot is fake, but ultimately God is what has gotten me through these years! Like Mother Teresa, I have my doubts, but like her, I continue on understanding, that “God has not called us to success; He has called us to be faithful.”
In listening to an interview on “Sixty Minutes” Sunday with Pope Francis, he summarized the major problem in our world–“indifference” people ignoring others and the pain around them, and the ever-present trauma. For me, I got off my duff as a result of faith, and summoned others regardless of belief to do the same!
Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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I affirm that I believe in God the Father, Almighty.
I believe and trust in Jesus Christ, his Son.
I believe in the Holy Spirit.
I believe and trust in the Three in One.
I respect with all of my heart where others are in their lives and meet them unconditionally.
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Dr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
Pentecost is Sunday, and we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit came to many people and all were one; the Holy Spirit, coming to guide people to practice the works of mercy–feeding the homeless, clothing the naked, providing mental health care, visiting the prisoner, and housing the homeless.
It is very doubtful if Jesus saw the institutional Church in his vision, but instead saw the Reign of God, and his crucifixion and resurrection were symbols of that Reign of God working in the present, a dream of an earth where all were treated fairly, and equally. That is still his dream.
This is Jesus, the one, whom like Peter, I am following into old age and death.
Yet Jesus came to the Jewish people, the Bible is a Jewish book, and we know today God was and is coming to people around the world in many different ways. There is One God, with many expressions!
In these weeks I am working on certification in Religious Trauma; and it has been very challenging, bringing me into the throes of depression and sadness over my own experience growing up and in early adulthood, and over my fear of the trauma I passed on to others.
In coming out, and through living and working the streets of L.A. and San Francisco, I experience the religious trauma of almost every person that I meet.
Looking back I can remember standing and greeting people after my son’s memorial service and a group of young women passed through, and with such mournful expressions, patting me on my back, saying: “River we are sorry for your loss, but more sorry that Zac was never saved, and will spend eternity in hell! So comforting! And so sad they did not realize the harm they were doing to me; and several months later I received a call late one night from Joshua (the religious name given to him by this same group when he was saved from his homosexuality and made straight!), crying, he had cut his testicles almost off when he sinned by “becoming a “homosexual” once again.” When I picked him up, bleeding, they still wanted me to wait until they could pray the sin out of him.
The reason I am touchy, when people bring their religious, or psychological views to me, and the reason I share little is simply that we both can say things that hurt, really hurt, without meaning to, for there are so many, and in truth no right or wrong answer, but I will talk about the person in front of us who is hungry, homeless, in pain; I will share how we can help; I will listen for hours if need be to their problems and issues.
Personally, I affirm that I believe in God the Father, Almighty.
I believe and trust in Jesus Christ, his Son.
I believe in the Holy Spirit.
I believe and trust in the Three in One.
I respect with all of my heart where others are in their lives and meet them unconditionally. Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Dr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
“When the time of Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.. . .Acts 2:1-11.
“Love Is Greater Than Hope!
This past week we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Dymphna, the patron saint of those with mental illness. In the stories of the saints, she tended –like a magnet-=to draw out the madness of the world around her. In the miracles that led to her sainthood she healed many with mental illness, hence the Patron Saint of Mental Illness. The prayer to St. Dymphna reads:
“O God, we humbly beseech You through Your servant, St. Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore You, to grant relief to those who suffer mental illness and nervous disorders. Amen.
As we come to Pentecost there are several paths to a desired outcome, we have hope in working with others and the world; if we can see no possible path to our desired outcome we have despair. And as long as there is a possible solution we have hope, but it remains possible to defeat if that path closes.
I see this all around us. People simply give up on helping people on the street, and with mental illness, because often the doorway to a solution is closed; I have lost hundreds of donors, and friends through the years, resulting in losing hope in my way of working with individuals who are homeless, drug addicted, mentally ill. They see little success in my work.
There is one reason that in thirty years I have not burned out– love- finding joy in working with my friends on the street who are homeless and mentally ill. When our primary purpose is to love, a different way of working with others comes into play. We find courage and confidence, not in our commitment to a good outcome, but in our commitment to love.
We feel rising within us, a sustained declaration: We live as beautifully, bravely, and kindly as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable.
These days I see little hope; last night a twenty-year-old was so high he hit me, not knowing it, high on drugs, and frankly mentally ill; a fifty-year-old is sleeping in the corner of the street, a guy I have known for nearly thirty years, who tried every program in town, without much success; I find little hope as I talked to young men who wander from job to job and places to live, using drugs to lift themselves. I love without expecting anything in return, any change to be made, but love each one as a child of God they are.
This is why Richard Rhor describes this kind of hope as, “the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. You come out much larger and that largeness becomes your hope.” Choctaw elder Steven Charleston places love at the center of our hope.
A creed I developed sums up my theology of ministry:
“Ministry on the street is the way I resist, doing what I can to proclaim the Gospel of Love to every human being without judgment or expectation. All are welcome!’
In the same way, Richard Rhor tells us the key to stopping our environmental destruction:
The key to stopping the environmental apocalypse is not science but love. For decades now we have been staring at the scientific reports. They have not sufficiently inspired us to change our apocalyptic reality. But where science has failed, faith can succeed. We must help humanity rediscover (Mother Earth), their loving parent, and the living world that sustains them. We must help them feel her love just as we show them how that love can be returned. And it can begin by gathering people around two simple questions: Where were you in nature when you experienced a vision of such beauty that it took your breath away? And how did that make you feel? If you can answer those two questions, you are on your way to meeting the Mother you may never have known before.”
In closing the words of Dorothy Day come to mind:
“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us”
Let the revolution begin! Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
“Jesus said to his disciples: . . .This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends..John 15:12
I became familiar with the simple mantra “All shall be well” long before I knew its origin. I was having a difficult time emotionally in college and my English professor, who was dying of cancer shared with me in support. It comes from the writings of Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century mystic and anchoress who wrote the first book written by a woman in English, The Revelations of Divine Love. In her book, she recounts what she saw and heard in a series of sixteen visions she received from Jesus.
I take comfort in knowing that the famous lines from Julian’s text – “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” – were not first said by Julian herself. They were said to her by God in her vision, precisely because she was struggling to see how, in the face of suffering and sin, all could be well. Julian of Norwich took these words from God, wrestled with them, and ultimately made them her own. She lived in a time of several wars, pandemics, and famine.
These words have comforted and strengthened me through my tough times, and anxieties through the years. These words have provided me with “The Art of Saying Goodbye.”
On May 14, many years ago I was confirmed and baptized in the Methodist Church, one of the happiest days of my life. It was a beautiful spring day, with flowers blossoming, with the sun shining. My family, extended family, and friends were there. We went to a high-end restaurant for my luncheon celebration.
The pastor confirming me was the Reverend David Richardson, newly ordained, and he gave me a liberal-looking background of faith, which saved me from the conservative ministers in the years to come.
Three months later at church camp my heart was “strangely warmed” and my call to ministry became the guiding point of my life.
Throughout my early life, and through seminary and serving churches I experienced a lot of shame. Shame over things I was “doing wrong”, like not wearing a suit in church as a kid, etc, and in the parish every move was watched, and if I slipped and said a cuss word I was shamed or was seen in the wrong place. And when I came out I was shamed by the church immensely. Again the words of Julian “All shall be well!” rang in my ears.
Through studying the Word, I found my understanding of being in the Church as each person who practices the commandment of Jesus to “love one another.” The Church is not a building but an individual. Embracing the Kingdom of God as being within one’s self, leads us to move out in love of our neighbor. Leads us out to be the collective church in service. For only in service to others is their purpose.
Through this process of deconstruction, I have learned that God is not one of shaming, but one of love, of building up rather than tearing down.
This process has been one of good mental health opening me to my true self, to being open to others, and to becoming more and more compassionate.
Through this process, I have learned the art of saying goodbye to institutions and people who do not welcome and try to shame me and others, knowing it is done in ignorance. Through the art of saying goodbye, I have discovered that “All will be well,” and my task is to move on, loving those to whom I am saying goodbye and continuing to practice the Word!
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
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A donation has been given to Temenos Catholic Worker in memory and honor of Zach, Stacy, and the Reverend Cecil Williams by my old Catholic Worker friend Jim Haber!
“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’ “
Today in the Haight I was talking with “Joe” an older black gentleman who lives and works out of his van creating and selling tie-dye goods. He was rather pensive and when asked if there was a problem said: “Each day as I look around in the Haight and Oakland, all I see is white supremacists, who simply think they are cool. They have no idea how much pain they cause me and my black brothers every day. I am not talking about you, but you do not have black skin, so you can never fully understand, in the same way the homeless are treated, and you understand that because you are one of them.”
And my friend is right, there is little caring for anyone beneath one’s social station, unhoused, they are out of sight and out of mind. People of color are discriminated very indirectly, for example, we have less than five percent of the population black in San Francisco, and I would dare to say that was unintentional discrimination. I hear comments from tourists and residents on Haight about my poor “black friend taking parking spots selling goods,” we need to get our heads out of the sand, and wake up!
Our Gospel above points out how those who have material items find it almost impossible to allow those without into their lives, to enter into their suffering, for in that great gulf there is a lot of fear, and uncaring from those who have so much to give.
Francis de Sales, a sixteenth-century, bishop of France, wrote:
“Love the poor and love poverty, for it is in such love that we become truly poor. As the Scripture says, we become like the things we love. If you love the poor you will share their poverty, and be poor like them. If you love the poor be often with them. Be glad to talk to them and be pleased to have them near you in church, on the street and elsewhere. Be poor in conversing with them and speak to them as their companions do, but be rich in assisting them by sharing some of your more abundant goods with them.”
He speaks the truth, we do become like the things we love!
We do become like the things we love! Our cars, our money, our clothes, and social media, consume our lives, to the avoidance of others.
St. Ignatius shares an image in which we can truly change those things that dominate our lives–we can change and become more like the image of God.
Ignatius tells us to imagine ourselves as a beautiful container of water dropping into a sponge versus water dripping onto a stone. When we are making progress in the spiritual life, he says that the Holy Spirit feels like a drop of water that gently soaks into a sponge whereas the evil spirit feels like water hitting a stone. I believe encountering the Divine, the drops of water saturate the sponge to the point that the sponge can no longer hold the water. The water begins oozing out of the sponge to the surfaces around it. This is how it is with us. Our relationship with Jesus is never about us, it is about understanding who he is in an influential interior way so that we can bring the gifts of this relationship out into the world. It is never about the love given to us, it is also about the love given to others. It is not only about the mercy and healing Jesus gives to us, it is about the sharing of this mercy and healing to others.
Today is a sad day, and yet a day of rejoicing! Today Glide Church is remembering the Reverend Cecil Williams, and I remember Cecil, my pastor in the first years here in San Francisco, always reminding me “You are OK, go serve God, forget about the rest!”
Today is the anniversary of my brother’s death, who died in a car accident. me driving and within two days of my son Zac’s death. Both of which sent me into the deep darkness of hell from which I rose to a new and transforming life.
I remember a local Baptist minister standing by my hospital bed, two hours after my brother’s death, saying, “I hope you led him to Jesus or he is in hell! (Comforting words) and years later standing in the doorway of Old First Presbyterian greeting the visitors after Zac’s memorial service a group of young Youth With a Mission staff holding my hand, hugging me, and saying: “We are sorry that he was not saved, and that he is in hell.”(Oh, more comforting words!). In both cases, I felt run over by a car myself!
Today I feel sorry for the minister and those young people! Sorry, they truly missed out on the way of the love of Christ, and not seeing the Cosmic Christ, the One who is but one expression of the all-loving Divine! I can imagine both Zac and Stacy laughing as they stand within the Great Cloud of Saints, knowing the love of the Divine cheering me on in ministry until the day I join them!
This gift of friendship with Jesus or the Divine however you perceive the Presence, is available to every one of us. He is inviting us, calling us into a relationship.
As we say yes to this relationship and begin following his way, we discover and embrace the promise of God that Jesus reveals to us–the promise found in giving all that we have and receiving in return! Dio Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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Zac, Stacy, and Cecil, in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt I thank you for the footprints you have left behind:
“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
“.. .But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. .”John 16:20-33!
The saint we celebrate on May 10, Damien de Veuster, had the same verve. An internet search yields two telling photos of Damien. In one, he is a young, broad-shouldered, farm-boy-turned-missionary. In the other, he is older and portly. Beneath a wide-brimmed hat, his face is swollen and disfigured by the leprosy that would go on to take his life. That strapping young man left his native Belgium and spent his life among the lepers of Hawaii. He lived and died, fearless.
Damien had already been several years in Hawaii, when the authorities, in an effort to contain the spread of the contagion, began to ship the lepers to the remote peninsula of Molokai. Each leper was ripped from his or her family and community. Each man, woman, and child suffered some stage of the disfiguring and debilitating illness with no hope of cure. In the remote and inaccessible Molokai, with only the bare necessities of life, the lepers’ sorrow soon gave way to despair. Refuse piled up. Dead bodies lay unburied. Drunkenness and debauchery were rife.
When the Hawaiian bishop asked his priests for a volunteer to live among these abandoned souls, Damian came forward first. On May 10, 1873, he landed on Molokai to serve the 800 residents. He began by addressing their basic needs –the essentials. He bandaged wounds. He buried the dead. He flexed his farm boy muscles in a thousand tasks: rebuilding huts, planting trees, digging gardens, building a system to carry water. He taught them songs and organized a school.
Early on, Damian chose to ignore all the words of caution about proper hygiene. He washed the bodies of the lepers, dipped his food in the same dish with them, placed communion on their tongues. Long before he contracted leprosy himself, he began his homilies with the words, “We lepers…”—such was his willingness to identify with those he served.
But Damien was keenly aware that no sheer force of will could keep a man among such misery. No human being can persevere in the face of wretchedness on principle alone. What anchored Damien’s existence was a living reality: Christ present here and now.
Damien found in the Eucharist his source and center. He built an adoration chapel and spent hours himself before the Blessed Sacrament. “Without the continuous presence of our Divine Master in my poor chapel,” he wrote, “I would not have been able to persevere in my resolve to share the lepers’ fate.”
He taught the lepers to pray with him before the Blessed Sacrament, to offer their sufferings in union with his Sacred Heart. And thus their deaths, united to that of Christ, began to speak of the Resurrection. “The cemetery and huts of the dying,” he confessed, “are my most beautiful books of meditation.” And so, in the end, when Damien discovered in his own flesh the telltale signs of the disease, he could rejoice: “There is no longer any doubt about it—I am a leper. Praised be the Good Lord!” Death came three years later. Though ravaged by the disease, Damien was at peace and died with a smile on his face.
Damien is my religious name, given me by the Order of Christian Workers, the first of the century, a name given because I work with the “lepers of our society,” and one which with use in California has become one my of legal middle names. I own it proudly!
Suffering is the crucible in which one’s trust in God is tested, and intensified. Fidelity under the presence of suffering is what keeps us in God.
Jesus described this experienced in the Gospel today, it happens again and again, symbolized by the woman in labor.
In two days I will remember a rainy night on May 12, many years ago, driving down a rural road from my church, the tires slipped, and the car landed in a ditch, crushing my young brother’s chest, killing him instantly, launching me into the worse suffering of my life; some years later when I suggested to my District Superintendent, I was questioning my sexuality, and he removed me from my parish within a day, and all of my clergy friends, several hundred, turned their backs on me in those moments, my suffering was intense, and in the grindstone of suffering my life has been shaped.
Many years later as I sat in one of the restaurants where “Toast” now is, a seminarian, an older woman, said in much fear, “You need to get off these streets now or you will be labeled as one of THEM.”
Damien was labeled one of “them”, he was accused of sleeping with the women (that is how he caught leprosy—never mind he bathed, bandaged, and held them in death), stealing money, and not truly believing in God; and finally he suffered immeasurably from the disease.
I find myself agitated with individuals who believe they understand what being “gay” or “homeless” is like, for only in experiencing that suffering can one understand, you can never go home and take off your clothes and forget about it, for you always remain “gay” or “homeless” when you experience both of them. I fight all the time not to over eat because there were days on the street I did not have food, and have a closet full of clothes because there were months and I mean months I had only those I was wearing, take two showers a day, for there were times I had every two weeks, the wounds remain.
The streets are my home, and I am considered as my homeless friends are considered a leper by many.
Yet, like Damien, what I have found, is:
“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” [3] Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
Poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) expressed this understanding most beautifully in his famous poem “Ithaca”:
Ithaca has now given you the beautiful voyage. Without her, you would never have taken the road. With the great wisdom you have gained on your voyage, with so much of your own experience now, you must finally know what Ithaca really means. [1]
National Mental Health Month!
During this “Mental Health Month” I am reflecting upon my journey. Raised in a small southern town we never heard the term “mental health”, depression, too was never talked about, and seeing a psychiatrist. “O my god”, you are crazy.
There were no therapists within 300 miles. When I was caught acting out sexually with a fellow adolescent at fifteen my pastor, a conservative man, brought my “sin” forth in a sermon, shaming me, and my mom took me to a shrink, of course, no one knew. And what did he do: gave me anti-depressants. All he said as he wrote the prescription was “masturbation is normal, just don’t get caught.”And so the shame continued and continued for many years to come.
And so began my “Odyssey”, where I sunk into “darkness”, and depression, and suffered with it for years. Being called to ministry I played the game of being “straight”, and my depression became worse, until I came “out”, and my “odyssey” continued onto the streets of L.A., with a good therapist, and finally here in San Francisco, where I had a caring shrink for 15 years, who through therapy and meds, opened my life up to new fields of joy! And the “odyssey’ continued!
Shame was always a large part of my life, largely from my religious upbringing, but the positive was I had encountered the living Christ and through experiencing his grace of freedom, knowing that he loved me no matter what, and called me to ministry was my salvation!
My former denomination within days after coming out removed me from my parish, tried to stick me into conversion therapy, and my many, many friends stopped speaking to me and turned their backs on me. Talk about shaming!
When I returned to ministry in a queer church what I found was they wanted to duplicate the straight church as far as they could, and thus began my process of decentralization. In so doing, they were inadvertently continuing the process of shaming. The biggest blessing I was given was being ordained a bishop (to get rid of me) and forming the Society of Franciscan Workers, Inc.
And thus my “odyssey” continued into “coming home”! Respecting others wherever they stand! I view the Church, and on Ascension Day we are reminded of Christ “ascending” to his Father symbolically to become the head of the church. A church of love and grace. He became the Cosmic Christ, embracing all without judgment. My faith is in the Universal Christ, the One who is a part of all expressions of God, and in non-expressions, the One who is found in loving our neighbor as ourselves.
I was “spiritually” homesick for years, it was a dulling grief. It was not depression, so much as an uncomfortable unknowing that I was coming to the end of one thing and the beginning of the next. It was fearful and yet joyful.
For me this journey of mental health has been returning home to where God dwells, I’m no longer interested in making it a quick visit so I can run back to the world of “what other people think” and ” what I can get done”.
Today I simply “listen” to others, without judgment; I have no judgment on anyone, seeing all as children of the Divine.
Leaving the first half of my life was scary. Most of us have the first half of life hustle down. The thing is, I am just never, never homesick for the first half of life. . because it has never really been my true home!
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
A recent survey has shown that 3 out of every 4 Americans believe physical health insurance should be the top priority! Mental Health should be frankly ignored.
One in ten youth need mental health services, 56% of queer youth who have sought mental health help are unable to receive it; one in five adults require mental health support; Sixty percent of our homeless are in dire need of mental health services.
Kaiser Permanente struggles with adding therapists, only to never have enough, the needs are limitless; they have to find other hospitals in the area for emergency mental health needs resulting from a lack of space.
The need for mental health services runs rampant throughout our nation–police have little training in dealing with mentally ill individuals, hence there is more violence; people latch on to the extreme edges of our society because of mental health problems, seeking to cope.
Therapy costs $250.00 an hour, there are some fifteen beds for the homeless mentally ill at San Franciso General.
Religious organization and their clergy frankly seem to ignore mental health–god help us if we ever hear a sermon in support of mental health in our City, State, and Nation, let alone putting any money forward! Few are lifted up!
This is National Mental Health Month–Jesus tells us to love one another–where is that love for others and every one of us? When in need of mental health services I have been frankly lucky to have Kaiser Permanente, but the vast majority of people do not have that privilege.
It is time for us to pull our heads from under the blanket–call your political leaders, advocate with mental health associations and the City for services for all–not for the lucky 10 percent.
I am haunted by many things these days, and the lack of mental health, the lack of education about mental health, and most of all the apathy concerning mental health! I am haunted!
Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You”
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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social–Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
The Stairway of Religious Trauma-Walking Up and Down!
“For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received and in which you also stand that Christ died for our sins in accordance to the Scriptures; that he was buried; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he seemed more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once.
“Jesus I often feel like I am lost in a swamp where there is no foothold, I float aimlessly, wounded and hungry. Nurse me with food of mercy even when I resist such nourishment. From the watering depths. I weep. Draw me out of the abyss, dry my wounds, and guide me to dry land” . . ., this is a prayer I often pray, when I find myself falling into the swamp of the trauma of religion through which I work, my own, and of my guys. There are days I am up on the stairs, others I am way down! No medication, or having tons of therapy as I have had, will fix that, it is living the questions!
In the last couple of days, there has been news from the United Methodist General Conference over the change in the laws concerning homosexuality, the laws which have split the denomination, and seeing them change is a hopeful sign. Still, the reality of my trauma, while coming from the United Methodist Church, and the trauma of my youth stems from the overall dogma of churches in general. The major denominations which have become open to queers, change their laws and appear to move on.
It is primarily because their leadership is straight. You give people rights, and everything is then okay, but the reality there are centuries of abuse and trauma left behind.
Like with all minority groups, unless you are a part of one, who has undergone discrimination, you truly do not understand. One can be an ally, and yet at night walk home and forget about where the other stands. One has to live it, to suffer it, to truly understand!
In the last couple of days, my trauma has been pricked, and I feel a lot of darkness, darkness over the “friends” and “family” I once had, and I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been raised as straight or in a way sexual identity was simply a part of life. Like an alcoholic, I was almost 30 before coming out, and so stuck in my adolescence and acted like a fifteen-year-old. I had to grow up. It has been only in the last few years that I am no longer afraid, of the mistakes I have made, ones I still cry over, but more than anything related to myself is the darkness over the hundreds of people who have come through my ministry in the last thirty years, on the street and off, that religious groups have abused. I have sat with many who have cut their wrists, are so depressed, and have lives torn apart, all over the interpretation of a religious group’s interpretation of the Bible, written two thousand years ago. I cry suffer, and go sleepless nights, remembering their pain, and where many wound up–on the streets, the morgue, living very lonely lives with really no understanding of themselves, hooked on drugs and alcohol.
Many throw the baby out with the bathwater when they throw the Church out of their lives they throw Jesus out as well, but my relationship with Christ teaches me his way of love, Jesus is a real presence in my life, and as Desmond Tutu tells us the heart of the teaching of Jesus, giving life is:
“We are each made for goodness and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.”
Reading comments regarding a new certificate in writing on a memoir, Stanford had developed, one stood out, “I am a good person, my life is boring, you have to live a dysfunctional life to be in this class.” And I wondered and (LMAO) what is this person hiding from, because all of us are wounded, we all live in houses that have broken ceilings, and we all suffer.
It matters not what God, if any, one believes in, we are called to live with love and compassion. All else falls by the wayside when we do that! Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
Simple living is admired by many. Many want to live more simply and serve their those who are the have nots! They never get around to it, seem to simply fade into the woodwork, for simple living, a life of simplicity and care we must unclutter our lives. I am always promising myself to declutter my room, and what do I do? Someone left a full mirror to give a way, and it now sits in the room, there was some cotton as well, and I picked up to stalks, remembering my childhood. Living simply is tough. But I try.
Simplicity will lead us to a tranquility in our lives, a way of living and thinking about others that is non-judgmental, and caring; Simplicity allows us to let go, and focus on God.
At least some of the “good news” that Jesus brought had to do with this kind of liberation. The New Testament is filled with reassurances that that that this world is a safe place for us to be. Time and again, Jesus reminds us that God loves us and will provide what we need. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear,” ….”For life is more than food and the body more than clothing” (Luke 12:22-23).
This is scarcely a new idea to Christians or other world -wide faiths. Jesus taught that we should avoid distracting encumbrances; the disciples are sent out without as much as a back pack. To embrace simplicity calls for a radical trust that does not come easily; To embrace simplicity allows us to embrace others.
Jesus does not promise that we will find this a comfortable way to live, but he does assure us that even when human life seems to be a terrible struggle, we are not alone. He says: “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock,for your Father is pleased to give you the Reign of God” (Luke 12:32).
When Francis said after kissing the leper, “I have left the world,” he was saying he was giving up the usual payoffs, constraints, and rewards of business as usual and was choosing to live in the largest kingdom of all. To pray and actually mean “thy kingdom come,”, we must also say “my kingdoms go.”
When we agree simply, we put ourselves outside of others’ ability to buys us off, reward us falsely, or control us by money, status, punishment, and loss or gain. It is not easy, we suffer, and we struggle, but this is the most radical level of freedom.
When we agree to live simply, we can understand what Francis meant when he said: “A man had not given up everything for God as long as he held on to the moneybag of his own opinions.” We find this purse is far more dangerous than money in a purse, and we seldom let it go.
When we agree to live simply, we do not consider people who are homeless, “dirty, drug using, lazy people,” but as our brothers and sisters choosing to walk along with them; if we lived simply I doubt that we would see as many tents on the streets, and people without health care. Caring and providing for others begins with us.
When we live simply we don’t consider people outsiders who are immigrants, refugees, or unhoused as a threat or as competition. We have chosen their marginal state for ourselves—freely and consciously becoming “visitors and pilgrims” in this world, as Francis puts it quoting I Peter 2:11. A simple lifestyle is simply an act of solidarity with the way most people live today, and have lived since the beginning of humanity.
When we live simply, people cease to be possessions and objects for our consumption or use. Our lust for relationships or for others to serve us, our need for admiration, our desire to use people or thing as commodities for our personal pleasure, and any need of control and manipulation, slowly—yes, very slowly—falls away . Only then are we truly free to love! Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
We are Story Catchers, walking with anyone who simply wants to have a listener! Simply listening, and providing food, socks, and other support when requested. We catch their stories, we allow them to work their own stories out, and respect where they are!
TEMENOS CATHOLIC WORKER 