“Life is a Pilgrimage”!
Struggling towards Galilee!
“From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. .”John 1:16.
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W.H. Auden once said, “For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it. Until you have looked for it everywhere and found it nowhere that is not a desert.”
Each year I spend a week or two in the Mojave Desert on retreat, where I had the dramatic epiphany of my life after my years on the streets of Los Angeles. I truly understood the words of John when he spoke the words: of Jesus: “From his fullness, we have received grace upon grace,”
The desert is the homeland of my heart, I don’t find it barren, it is a perfect embodiment of infinite spaciousness. My spirit and my heart are cultivating a heart as spacious as the desert: wide open in every direction of the compass, Wide open to every creature that walks, flies, or crawls through it, wide open to every change in the weather: darkness and light, sun and rain, aridity and dew, heat, cold, and wind.
In the words of one of my favorite friends, Teresa of Avila the human soul is an “Interior Castle”, and I learned this infinite and noble spaciousness from the desert, both the desert of Mojave and the desert of San Francisco. The prophet Isaiah says it so well in describing the universal heart experience in finding God: “The desert and the dry land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.”
My friend Pam, commented yesterday, “You have had a difficult life with the church and the treatment of many people.” Difficult? No, through being a minister labeled as “intrinsically evil,” to a prostitute, and from there ordination in a queer denomination and then ordination (because I am difficult)ha! as a bishop, for “difficult priests”, in otherwords for decentralizing priests, like me struggling to find a new identity.
In the desert of Mojave, and the desert of San Francisco, I have found the grace of Jesus, in all of its fullness, and through compassionate counseling, simply listening to others, without judgment, and telling them how to live their lives; approaching all like an interfaith chaplain recognizing everyone’s beliefs or non-beliefs as valid. There are many paths to God!
My young, friend, fifteen-year-old, Saint Carlo Aciutis, tells us: Sadness is looking toward oneself, happiness is looking toward God!
And so my prayer for all of us today are the words of Cacchi Ricci:
“It takes a very strong individual
to sit with themselves,
calm their storms, and
heal all of their issues without trying
to bring someone else into that chaos.
Your journey into self-love is just that–
and you are doing it.”
I am still in the process of “decentralization”, but looking towards God, and finding happiness in the people I “hang out” and minister to on the streets and not bringing the chaos of my opinion of what they need to do in their lives! Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.
Post Office Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
paypal.com
415-305-2124
Fr. River Sims, D.Min., D.S.T.
Director
Prayer of St. Brendan!
“Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
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 CATHOLIC WORKER 
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