- Where Jacob wrestled with God and survived -
TEMENOS CATHOLIC WORKER
Fr. River Sims
1550 California Street, No. 6-320
San Francisco, CA 94109
415-305-2124 punkpriest@yahoo.com
JOURNAL OF AN ALIEN STREET PRIEST
July/August 2000.
Movies provide a wonderful escape for me. Sometimes I joke that they are my "therapy." They are also and this is not a joke a way God sometimes speaks to me. "My Own Private Idaho," starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, is a movie that became a defining point in my life, a movie that was an epiphany, revealing something about God to me. The film is about two male hustlers and their circle of friends in Portland, Oregon a city where I have friends and sometimes find escape from the pressures of ministry. Phoenix plays Mike, a young man who is an incest survivor and whose mother abandoned him. Reeves plays Scott, the privileged, rebellious son of a former mayor. Both these young men are alienated from society and searching for love, meaning, a place to belong and someone to care for them for who they are.
At the time I first saw this movie, I was in the midst of my own journey in prostitution. I too was alienated from society as I had known it, alienated from all that I called "home," from the church, and from all those who'd been part of my life for many years. Like the two main characters in the film, I had been rejected by society, had rejected it in return, and was scrambling for survival in a world outside the norms of society.
As I watched "My Own Private Idaho" for the first time, I saw my own journey, a journey that was aimless, a journey that was stumbling in the darkness toward madness, a journey in which there was no longer a Center. In the 105 minutes of the film, I came face to face with the reality of what sort of journey I was actually on and with the fact that the only way to make any sense out of that journey was to find the Center, to find an Anchor.
In the film, Mike continues his chaotic wandering, while Scott, with the death of his father, returns to a life of privilege and wealth, quickly forgetting all those he'd lived among during his time of hustling. Neither character found an Anchor in his life. While watching their stories, I saw my own demons clearly portrayed and I was called back to the One who, as I often put it, quoting the gospels, "goes before me into Galilee," the One who called me in my mother's womb, the One who is the only true Anchor there is or can be.
I often comment -- as I take off for a few days in Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles or Joshua Tree that I just need to "get away from the madness." The madness of which I speak is the "occupational hazard" of working among people who have such a need for attention, for love, that they can drain you of all energy, drain you dry, people in such pain that they grasp out desperately to cheap sex (or commercial sex) and drugs for meaning...or at least for distraction. Their lives take on the shape of madness in that it is true madness to live without an Anchor, without a grounding in the loving Source of Being.
I believe that our calling as people of faith is to be a presence of Christ in the midst of the madness of our world, and in the midst of our own madness, too. This is the incarnational presence of Jesus of Nazareth, who gave himself in all of his fullness to the madness of humanity, and is so doing gives us grace upon grace. It is our call to make ourselves vulnerable, to suffer with others and to be a channel of that incarnational grace.
WEEKLY PEACE ACTION
As we did last month, we are offering four weekly suggestions that you might consider in your own journey for social justice and peace.
Week 1: Read the Book of James in the New Testament, an eloquent treatise on ministry to the homeless.
Week 2: Reflect fifteen minutes a day on Matthew 25:36-48.
Week 3: Fast from one meal a week and donate the cost of that meal to an organization that serves the homeless.
Week 4: Buy a homeless person a cup of coffee or visit with someone in a nursing home for an hour.
A REFLECTION FROM INTERN SEAN FENTON
Sean Fenton, 19, officially began work with Temenos in July and will be filling Fr. River's big, smelly shoes whenever needed. This past month Sean has enjoyed getting into traffic jams, cooking chickens, and running all over the city in a comical quest for a marriage license.
I decided several months ago that I wanted to spend this summer working with Temenos, knowing that I would be putting myself into a world of, as River puts it, "madness." It's not as if this world had been completely invisible or unknown to me in the past. Such "madness" had not, up til now, been completely alien to me. But this particular realm of madness, pain, poverty and despair had always been labeled (blatantly or subtly) as an untouchable Other a place of people who are somehow fundamentally different from me, people who should be feared and despised.
Now, I'd like to be able to say that I never really bought into these beliefs and that I've always been a compassionate and non-judgmental human being in every manner imaginable, but this, of course, would be untrue. Ideas of racial classification, sexual norms, economic inequalities, and appropriate social structures are ones that pervade our thinking as a society so deeply and so insidiously that they are impossible to escape entirely.
In the spring of this year, I came with a small group of Stanford students to the city to explore issues related to HIV/AIDS. Part of our journey incorporated learning from and doing outreach with Fr. River Sims. It was during that week that I began to realize, recognize, and deeply question mainstream society's subtle or not-so-subtle attitudes toward the homeless, the sick, and the cast-out. And it was during that week that I began a new journey to overturn assumptions, evaluate my own outlook and try to approach others with a higher degree of humanity and personalism. Kind of a large undertaking, but it' s been more than fulfilling so far. I'll keep y'all updated on how it's going...just as long as you promise to take this journey with me.
EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATIONS
We continue to bear witness to hope through the celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday evening in Hemlock Alley at 6:15 p.m. Our worship together is a powerful affirmation of the resurrection in the epicenter of the madness.
WE ARE BEGGARS
As we say so often, we are totally dependant upon your generosity for the survival of this work. June and July have been lean months, but during that time we have been able to provide some 2500 meals, several thousand clean needles and harm reduction items, 1000 pairs of socks, 150 changes of clothing and 25 pairs of shoes. We've conducted one funeral and one wedding, made 40 hospital calls and 20 jail visits. Plus, your support and prayers make it possible for us to continue our efforts to be a presence of grace in a hard and cruel place.
We give thanks to the following for their support: Judith & Michael Klamut, Fr. Geoff Simpson, Mary Cassidy Keil, Chris Seltzer, Fr. Stephen Bartlett-Ré, Carmen Valenzea, Daniel Johnson, John Walsh, Dr. Richard Nathan, First Congregational Church, The Rev. David Travins, The American Catholic Church of New England, The Central Orthodox Synod, St. Anthony's Foundation, Roy and Linda Moss (especially Linda!), The Order of Christian Workers, Larry Holben, The Tom Waddell Clinic, Mary Monihan and Dr. Steven Tierney.
Recently the Rainbow Fellowship of First Congregational Church (San Francisco) participated in our regular Sunday evening Eucharist. All who joined us were touched by our parishioners. One person in particular, Clifton Luke, was so struck by the need for socks that he has spearheaded a drive at work and at church for socks for the parishioners of Temenos. We want to give him a special thank you, and thanks as well to First Congregational's Rainbow Fellowship.
A REFLECTION FROM FR. STEPHEN BARTLETT-RÉ
Fr. Stephen Bartlett-Ré is a priest of the Evangelical Anglican Church in America who volunteers with Fr. River Sunday evenings for Eucharist and street ministry. He also continues his longstanding volunteer chaplaincy work at Laguna Honda Hospital.
A recent reading from the Anglican lectionary was the "Judgment of the Nations" parable (Matthew 25:31-46). It is a popular reading, especially for those interested in judging, in dividing people into the righteous versus the accursed...thereby falling into self-righteousness themselves.
And missing the context: what the righteous in Jesus' parable did, any one of us can do, just as we are all quite capable of doing what the accursed did. The point of the parable, the real difference between the two groups of people portrayed, is their focus. The righteous are centered enough in their being to focus on the other person, whereas for whatever reason the accursed are focused only on themselves. So simple... and so damning. Not by others pointing fingers, but by ourselves in our own unhappiness.
For here lies the true difference between the righteous and the accursed: the former are joyous in their content; the latter are miserable in their discontent. And all the separates them is the ability to see that someone needs a cup of water.
This is what I realize time after time when I go out on the street with River to find our friends, our sisters and brothers in need. We have only what we can carry and what we can push in a "granny" shopping cart. That and ourselves. But it is enough to meet Christ face to face, to see his pain and feel his love. Each Sunday evening I came away fulfilled, not because I have done anything so grand, but because I have experienced Christ's joy in the small things I can do in my daily life.
God is constantly offering us these opportunities for joy. We have only to reach out for them and then we find the cup of water in our hands to offer a fellow traveler in God's love.