Spirit On The Margins

I had the opportunity to go on a street retreat led by The Faithful Fools, here in the Twin Cities’ Phillip’s Neighborhood.  Faithful Fools web site     Phillip’s Neighborhood web site

It was my delight to encounter one of our City House volunteer spiritual companions, Jymie Anderson, on that retreat. Here were her observations on the day.  Thanks Jymie for your faithfulness!!

Faithful Fools Street Retreat on May 7^th

What holds us separate?

What keeps us separated? As we walk the streets…

What still connects us?

This was the mantra we took with us as we began our Faithful Fools street retreat on a Wednesday in May. For 5 hours, a dozen of us spread out through the Phillip’s Neighborhood and downtown Minneapolis where the homeless walk and eat and spend their time. It was warm and sunny. I began my walk north on Chicago Avenue observing my surroundings – shops I thought I might enter on my way back, works of art: 4 mosaic benches, a peace sculpture of Phoenix Rising created from melted down handguns and an Hispanic family. I handed my bus transfer to a young Hispanic-looking woman with two young children and walked into Branch III, a Catholic Charities service center for the homeless and poor. I was greeted and welcomed by Sonny, an African-American 60 year old, and introduced to Agnes, a Native American woman, and Victor. All had places they were living. Agnes and Sonny have cats. Agnes has children. Lunch was tasty beef and barley soup, a grilled sandwich, raw carrots, and a fresh fruit medley. After Sonny and Agnes left, Victor and I began to converse, a conversation that lasted for three hours as we visited House of Charity, another clean, colorful and friendly soup kitchen, sat on a bench in Elliot Park, wandered to Peace House on Franklin Avenue, then back to the mosaic benches and finally to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. We shook hands, gave each other a hug and I watched as Victor walked north on Chicago, just as I had done five hours earlier.

But now I had pieces of Victor’s life story. Victor, a Moroccan Jew, who moved as a child to Israel, and as an adult to Minneapolis.

When a friend asked for a metaphor, I didn’t have one yet. She asked for a color. I said, “Yellow.” I walked into my spiritual director’s room on Friday. There were several large yellow tulips with orange interior flames – prairie tulips. There was my metaphor. The day on the streets was like a large flung open yellow tulip, showing its delicate interior surrounded with flames of orange. The six petals, a six-pointed star, with charcoal arrows on three of them pointing away from its center. A Star of David containing the Trinity. The yellow of light and energy, penetrated with flames of orange, creativity and joy-filled.

Come walk the streets with me, come walk the streets with me,

Come walk the streets with me, that I might know your mind.

And I’ll bring you hope when hope is hard to find,

And I’ll bring a song of love and a rose in the wintertime.

Jymie

Viterbo University, a Catholic University in LaCrosse Wisconsin, with Franciscan roots, has a masters degree in Servant Leadership.  They have formed a cohort group that has been meeting in the Twin Cities.

Viterbo Univ Servant Leadership 

The pictures at the heading of this post are from a class yesterday, in which the Servant Leadership program course on prophetic leadership invited Faithful Fools and City House to present.  The Faithful Fools is a charitable and educational organization created in 1998 to be present with and to address the existence of poverty in the midst of material wealth. They do ministry in the Tenderloin District in San Francisco.  They are in the Twin Cities this week to conduct street retreats and put on some plays about the homeless. Faithful Fools web site

You will notice that people in the pictures are wearing funny court jester hats.  The Faithful Fools see themselves as playing the role of court jester in society.  Thus the hats.

It was an engaging two hours.  The Faithful Fools were articulate and passionate.  As a community, The Faithful Fools are very relational, organic, and trusting that God will bring them whatever they need.  They move in new directions based on who shows up to be a part of them, and they commit to meeting each others’ needs - and somehow that is always enough, even as they live among the poorest of the poor.  They are definite examples of prophetic leaders - so effective in telling the stories that make up their collective story.

The Viterbo University faculty and learners were very attentive, curious, and open. They were so hospitable. They asked about overcoming the fear of walking with the poor and what impact the work of the Faithful Fools has on both persons on the margins and on those taking street retreats. This is the only Servant Leadership masters degree anywhere in the country. I was struck by the vibrancy of their vision.

I talked about the challenges of following one’s call and the financial cost it can often entail.  I divulged that God has been making it clear in my prayer time lately that my path to an abundant life comes through impermenance and insecurity.  Both the Faithful Fools and Viterbo University’s Servant Leadership program understand what I mean by that and the countercultural nature of that commitment.

I received a call on Monday this past week.  It was Kay Jorgensen of the Faithful Fools from San Francisco. “Could I meet with them today, before they left Minneapolis to go back to California tonight?” I had heard about them from the Franciscan sisters at the Sabbath House in south Minneapolis. So, I jumped at the chance.

The Faithful Fools is a charitable and educational organization created in 1998 to be present with and to address the existence of poverty in the midst of material wealth. They do ministry in the Tenderloin District.

I am inspired by some of the language they use on their web site:

“We are called to a ministry of presence that acknowledges each human’s incredible worth. Aware of our judgments we seek to meet people where they are, through the arts, education, advocacy and accompaniment. We participate in shattering myths about those living in poverty, seeing the light courage, intelligence, strength and creativity of the people we encounter. We discover on the streets our common humanity through which celebration, community and healing occur.”

We speak of Faithful Fools Street Ministry as being a “practice”.  It is a practice of love and service.  It is at the heart of our presence with people and in a neighborhood that are labeled “bad” and “unsafe”; and of providing a space for the artists’ soul to discover its expression.    

Rachel Naomi Remen has written in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, a reflection that inspires us in our practice of service.  We share a portion of it with you.    

“Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred…Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of seeing life.  When you help you see life as weak.  When you fix, you see life as broken.  When you serve, you see life as whole.  From the perspective of service, we are all connected.  All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy…Service goes beyond expertise.  Service is another way of life.  Service is a relationship between equals…In helping, we may find a sense of satisfaction; in serving, we have an experience of gratitude… When we serve, we discover that life is holy…Service is closer to generosity than it is to duty…Over the long run, fixing and helping are draining but service is renewing.  When you serve, your work itself will sustain you, renew you, and bless you, often over many years.”

Faithful Fools web site

I was really inspired by this meeting I had with both Kay and the Faithful Fools outreach minister, Alex Darr.

This ministry leads street retreats in San Francisco and in other cities around the country. These retreats sound much like the inner city pilgrimages that we at City House began leading last fall. Meditation is an important part of their practice, like it is at City House.

But, I noticed a difference. They really push the envelope even further in being in solidarity with the poor. For example, they will come into a community they have never been in and live on the streets for several days so they can get an insider’s view before designing a street retreat in that locale. In their street retreats in San Francisco, they offer an option for people to go on seven day retreats, where those on retreats are invited to live on the streets for that full time. I thought City House was out on the edge, but this really challenged my own understanding of what is possible.

At any rate, I was really impressed. The Faithful Fools will be conducting street retreats in Minneapolis and St Paul Saturday, May 10. As part of that effort, they will be putting on a play on Wednesday, May 7, about one person’s experience of being on a street retreat. We will be supporting them and helping them in their effort. I am looking forward to it. We will keep you all posted.

A Palestinian boy in the Balata refugee camp outside Nablus in the West Bank.

Here are excerpts from Dr. Rowan Williams, in his Christmas message to the Anglican Communion.

“When God’s people have been faithful in keeping on moving onwards in faith rather than settling down in self-satisfaction, when they are true pilgrims, then God is content to be known as their God. He declares himself to be the God of pilgrims, of people who know that their lives are incomplete and that they are still journeying towards the fullness of God’s promises. Visiting refugee camps in the Middle East, as I did this October, brings home so powerfully what it is to be literally and absolutely homeless, not able to be confident in any resources, inner or outer…God is at home with the homeless. But it is also an image of God’s relationship with all those who are homeless or wandering in other ways.”

“He is the God who blesses the poor - not only those who are materially poor, but those who are without the ‘riches’ of self-satisfaction and complacency, those who know all too well how far they fall short of real and full humanity. And so we are to pass on that blessing to the poor of every sort, those who are without material resources and those who are ‘poor in spirit’ because they know their hunger and need. Let us ask ourselves honestly whose company we are ashamed to be seen in - and then ask where God would be. If he has embraced the failing and fragile world of human beings who know their needs, then we must be there with him.”

Episcopal Life On Line

Every year, near the longest night of the year, communities around the country hold memorial services for the those who have died homeless. 

Rev. Becky Hamann, Manager of Spiritual Services, at SAMMinistries in San Antonio Texas, is an e-mail friend of City House’s. She and her colleagues have organized one for December 21. Their call to remember is poignant.

SAMMinistries Memorial Service

Then there was this story in the November 12, 2006 edition of the New York Times.

A Chance To Be Mourned

“THE trouble began on the subway.

“At first he was just another homeless man taking refuge from the bitter New York winter. Then he collapsed. He was unconscious when paramedics pulled him out of the subway car. He died a few hours later at Brooklyn Hospital Center in Downtown Brooklyn of an inflamed pancreas and a weakened heart. It was two days before Christmas 2003. He was 48.”

“In life he was a stocky man with gentle eyes, a short beard and a wide smile. His name was Lewis Haggins Jr., though everyone called him Lou. As it turned out, he had a large circle of friends in the homeless community, along with family in New Jersey. But like many who teeter on the city’s edge, this man carried no ID. For weeks, his body lay unclaimed in the city morgue….”

THE UNCLAIMED Rikers Island inmates burying babies’ caskets at Potter’s Field on Hart Island.

The story goes on to describe the indignities that the homeless face all of their lives, none more so than upon their death. It was particulary true in this instance, where forces and circumstances made it almost impossible to memorialize this man in death.

Consider finding such a service in your community and participating.