One of my favorite places on earth is Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert. I return again and again to its starkness, its heat, its immenseness and its wildness. All of us have deserts in our lives. My personal, internal desert is depression. Throughout my life there have been times of immense, deep depression. These are times of extreme loneliness, of isolation. There are times of relief, the depression comes and goes, but there are times of immense darkness, when the depression seems to permeate every comer and cranny of my life.

This past year depression has been my constant companion. I can trace its beginning to a series of character attacks on me last June, followed by a physical attack on the street. The darkness seemed to deepen as I struggled with a decision to report a friend for sexual misconduct and all the flak that followed my doing so. Continuing police sweeps and the unending desperation of the homeless all around me deepened the oppressive darkness.

In years past, I would have dealt with this by fleeing...to a new place, a new job, a new medication. Or I would simply have let the depression completely immobilize me. But this past year, a year that has been so very dark at times, I have taken a different approach: I have entered into the depression, choosing simply to stand and wait. To listen.

When one first enters Joshua Tree, one is confronted with its starkness, its desolation. But as you sit quietly and wait, you discover all sorts of life around you - birds, animals, small plants. Joshua Tree, despite its apparent barrenness, actually teems with life.

For me, as I have waited, listened, and simply let myself live in the darkness, I have discovered that it too, for all its apparent bleak sterility, is a place where there is life going on all around me. As I move through the business of each day - making sandwiches, celebrating the Eucharist, visiting the sick and the jailed, walking the Polk, comforting and supporting one person after another - I experience the irresistible outgrowing of life. In even the darkest days, there is the sudden, unexpected encounter with the presence of God. There is the smile from one who, in pain, impoverished by his addiction, says "Thanks." There is the unexpected call from a friend just to remind me that we are "buds." In even the darkest of the darkest days, love sneaks up on you.

As I walk the streets here and in various cities I've visited, I find myself always noticing the shadows in the doorway, those shadows often feared and overlooked by most people. I discover again and again that those shadows have faces, eyes, hearts, and in those moments of contact I know my vocation and know again where I belong. In the midst of what sometimes seems constant misunderstanding, criticism and complaints, I see signs that I am doing the job I've been given to do. I learn over and over again the basic fact that, to be truly human, one must embody what he or she believes is the truth. For me, the fundamental truth of life is found in the great commandment of Jesus to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself.

All this does not mean that the darkness of depression is magically lifted. It means my life, sometimes against my own will, models what I believe and preach: that life is often difficult, often unfair, that suffering is a reality for most. But in those difficulties, that unfairness, that suffering, God meets us in ever new and unexpected ways. As life flourishes in the aridity of Joshua Tree, the God of love flourishes and is at work in all the darkness of our lives. In that sense, God works all things together for good for those who love God. Not by "fixing" everything, but by being inescapably Present.

YOUTH GROUPS

In the months of June and July, Ternenos will be hosting awareness groups for senior high students from Milwaukee Presbyterian Church, Mt. Scott Presbyterian Church (Portland) and St. Ignatius High School here in the City.

NEW INTERN

We welcome Louie Guptill, our new summer intern. Louie just graduated from Beaverton High School in Oregon and will be a freshman at Humbolt State University this fall majoring in environmental studies. Louie is a Roman Catholic with a strong background in social justice, as evidenced by the following reflection written by his father, Roy Guptill.

RUBBING SHOULDERS WITH THE TREASURES OF THE CHURCH

"For the poor who are oppressed
and the needy who groan...
I will grant them salvation for which they thirst."
Psalm 12

Each week I have the incredible privilege of visiting and rubbing shoulders with the most amazing people I have ever met. I can't believe they let me into their lives. These souls are the true heirs of heaven; they are the ones Jesus loved to talk about. The Wisdom Books and the Psalms refer to them frequently: the poor, the marginalized, the disadvantaged, the powerless. They have little in the eyes of the world, and so God is very close to them - there isn't much to get in His way.

Each weekday morning the MacDonald Center at our Downtown Chapel opens its doors to these treasures of the church (as St. Lawrence called them), offering a warm, dry chair and a cup of coffee. And, more importantly, lending an ear, eyes that will look these men and women in the face. As a volunteer at the Center, this is what I get to do. If needed, I can provide for some material needs as well...a blanket, some fresh socks, a toothbrush. But mostly what I'm there to offer is conversation.

I am graced by the presence of those I meet. I realize that after days, weeks on the street where absolutely no one will make eye contact with you, you might begin to doubt your very existence and get the feeling that you don't count for much. We volunteers at the Center are there to show that nothing could be further from the truth, that the men and women who come to the Center are the most precious parts of the Body of Christ, the jewels of the church.

Our faith teaches us that God creates all his works in Wisdom and loves everything He makes. No matter what the world says, these people we serve have inherent meaning and value that can never be lost. Next time you pass by someone on the street, one of these souls that thirst, beloved members of Christ's Body, why not build up that Body and give 'em your best Colgate smile. Maybe even get a little crazy and counter-cultural and say "Hello." Take time to rub shoulders with a saint.

"He raises the needy from the dust;
from the ash heap he lifts the poor,
to seat them with nobles, and make a
glorious throne their heritage."
I Samuel 2

WE ARE BEGGARS

We depend on the generosity of others in this work. We do not offer solutions, but simply the presence of Love within the darkest of nights for the poorest of the poor. We thank all who have given these past two months.

MIKAEL RAMBLINGS

Mikael is a longterm interim at Ternenos and a student at Dominican college in Marin. He offers the following thoughts this month:

One day as I was working with River we had an argument. River yelled at me and stormed off. I was shocked. "That wasn't very priestly," I thought. Then I began to laugh at myself and my stereotypical notions of what it is to be a "spiritual person". Deeply ingrained in our Western ideas is the picture of truly spiritual person being detached from - indeed "above" - the everyday world with its problems and sufferings. I'm not sure where these ideas got started, but they are far from reality...and from any authentic religious insight.