A Journey on the Edge!
Reflections Given to High School Students!
My name is River, I am a priest, our non-profit is Temenos Catholic Worker, and my information is on the handout you have been given.
I started literally by moving into my apartment on Polk Street, and handing out food, becoming friends with the young adults on the street. At the time on Polk, they were young homeless prostitutes, and today it is older homeless people, using drugs; on the Haight, they are all young homeless youth, from broken homes, homes where they are not wanted, many born of homeless parents, others simply for the freedom of not being told what to do. They mainly smoke dro, acid, and LSD. In the summer we have what is called “summer punks,” they come from home or college, simply to be free and at the end of the summer return to their lives. They are out there for a million reasons.
My work is being on the streets and simply being a listener, without judgment, without expectations of my friends; I am their friend, whom they can come to when they are sick, depressed, or just simply to hang out.
Carl Rogers once said: “I don’t try to control the sunset, I watch with awe as it unfolds. ” He also said; “The good life is a process, not a state of being, it is a direction, not a destination.” For many, it is a good life. For others, it is the best life they can have.
On New Year’s Eve, I attended a party in Marin on the beach with a bond fire, and all the trimmings of what high school, college students love doing, many are my friends. Their problems, and their actions–smoking pot, drinking, etc, are no different than the guys on the street, they simply have places to live and families who care for them. They are simply adolescents, young adults on their journies.
Success isn’t measured by money or power or social rank, race, creed, color, religious background, but simply by inner peace, and never giving up through hell or high water.
What works for me, what is effective for me is to be a listening ear, a good friend, walking with each one on their journey, and seeing where it leads.
In each person–the gang banger, murderer, thief, and all I look in their eyes and can see the beauty, that is present, and see the broken body of Christ.
And if someone tells me how to live my life, and I have a hunch if I or someone else told you, you would tell them like I do, to “rub their di..k’s with sandpaper.”
I came here with nothing, and when I die will leave here with nothing, and in between, I beg and sometimes work to do the joy of this work. I journey on the edge.
My invitation to you is to see the beauty and goodness within yourselves and share that beauty, that goodness with others, and you will see the world change. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
415-305-2124
punkpriest1@gmail.com
snap chat: riodamien2
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Please feel free to contact me at any time.
Volunteers are welcome if they have vaccination and booster.;
Good Friday, 2022, Stations of the Cross through the Tenderloin, with participants being housed and unhoused youth, if you are interested, give me a call;
San Francisco LGBTQ Pride, June 22-23 We host the area where older, and people with disabilities sit, Good view of events. Pay: $20.00 an hour.
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Haight Street Christmas 2021
Haight Thanksgiving, 2021
TEMENOS CATHOLIC WORKER 