Spirit On The Margins

Jim Dodge, City House’s Founder

These are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Jim Dodge, City House’s founder.

A few months ago I received an email from a clergy colleague asking if I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I replied back that no, I will still living in the darkness with no light at the end in sight.

My friend had heard that I had been dealing for a long time with a pressure related wound that just would not heal.  And even as I come before you today a part of that wound is still not healed after almost two years since it first started. 

Forty years ago I was serving in the Army in Vietnam.  Like many others I was exposed to the chemical called Agent Orange.  A few years after that exposure I was diagnosed with cancer, the treatment for which caused nerve damage, which then weakened the muscles in my legs.  That weakness became so significant over time that I have had to rely exclusively on a wheelchair for my mobility. 

One of the consequences of continual sitting is that one is prone to develop pressure wounds.  Without adequate feeling for a warning, these things happen.  As much as one tries to be careful with shifting weight and checking skin color, pressure ulcers occur and that’s just the way life is for those who use wheel chairs. 

The one that I am currently dealing with is in the sacrum area of my body, just above the tailbone.  After the surgeon finished the initial operation of removing the unhealthy tissue, I had an opening about 6 inches long, 4 inches wide and 1 inch deep.  I was absolutely devastated and sank into a darkness that shut down my life.  I was told that I had to lie in bed on my stomach or side.  I had to be in positions where no pressure was put on the wound.  My whole life came to a screeching halt as I found myself homebound with all my plans and activities cancelled. 

At first I was in denial about the extensiveness of this whole thing.  Give me a couple of months, I told myself, and I’ll be OK.  But healing didn’t happen by the timelines I set for myself. I would spiral down even more and often found myself in a deep abyss weeping uncontrollably. 

In the course of all of this I found myself arguing with God.  I would demand some action.  Do something.  Fix this.  You who raised Christ from the dead could certainly heal a wound.  I would remind God that people were praying for me.  Do you hear them, God?  Are you deaf? 

On and on this one-sided conversation would go.  When I finally calmed down enough to listen, I heard a quiet voice within me say, “Trust me, Jim.”   “Well, God”, I said, “ if that is indeed you speaking to me, could you give me some more details, like how long this will be, and could I see some evidence of some healing.”  All I heard back was “trust me”. 

Meanwhile the wound was not healing.  I needed more surgery.  The great medical device called a wound VAC was not closing it like everyone thought it would. I went through 40 treatments at the hyperbaric chamber hoping to get a better blood supply to the wound.  I changed doctors.  A skin graft was done.  Days became weeks that became months.  Will this ever end?  My faith and trust in God seemed strong one day and weak the next.  I was on an emotional roller coaster.  As much as I wanted to stay the course trusting God, I often found myself in the darkness. 

And so I continued to wait in the darkness believing that hope does not hurry and that the deepest truths are revealed in waiting.  Each day I would seek to surrender more and more to the grace and love of God.

I wanted to believe that everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.

I tried to see each day as a gift and enjoy that day and not get caught up thinking about that future day when all would be well.   An unlikely friend helped me see that.  My friend’s name is Elwood.  He grew up in the projects of Chicago.  His whole family was drug addicts.  He came to Minneapolis, but continued drinking and using, engaged in criminal activity and was jailed. He was living in the darkness of addiction and crime.  After being released from prison he stumbled drunk into the Salvation Army in downtown Minneapolis.  There, when his life was at the bottom, he surrendered everything to God.  He started going to AA, got a minimum wage job and was determined that he was not going to slip back to his old life.  

I met him at his job site where I led a spirituality group.  He came week after week holding on to the hope that God would somehow take care of him.  He’s been sober 6 years now and proudly wears his medallion around his neck.  I meet with him periodically and see a man who is still living on the edge financially and whose life is still pretty fragile, but is always positive.  “How do you do it, Elwood?” I ask.  “I just trust God, Jim,” he replies.  And I’m humbled that this high school drop out living in poverty seems to have a deeper faith than this seminary trained pastor living a comfortable middle class life.

Elwood Williams’ Story

Over time my wound started healing bit by bit.  The doctor gave me permission to be up more and more.   The darkness had lifted a bit, but the cloud of uncertainty of when this will finally be over is still there.  

I’m coming to believe that no matter what my physical state might be, on the inside, within the depths of my soul, God is at work renewing me.  I’m coming to believe that I, like the Apostle Paul, am one of those who is weak, who is poor in spirit, aware of my own emptiness.  And, in admitting such a state of my life, I allow God to fill me with His love and grace and then paradoxically become one of the strong ones.  Paul, dealing with his own thorn in the flesh, realized that God’s grace was indeed sufficient for him.  And in his weakness became strong.   

 We held our annual City House celebration for all of our constituents on Thursday night.  It was an opportunity to celebrate what our City House community has done together this past year and what God is doing through us - with our volunteers, program participants, social service agency partners, “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program learners and participants, board members, donors, and friends.

We started out by remembering that our theme for last year’s celebration was “The Most Dangerous Prayer Of All? Yes” based on a poem, “Dangerous Prayers”, by Regina Sara Ryan. The essence of the poem invites us to live dangerously by inviting God to do whatever it is that God wants to do in our lives. It was a year ago, that we acknowledged at City House our need for a year of discernment - a year in which we prayed and listened openly and honestly about where God would have us go.

As a consequence, we ended up saying “yes” to some significant commitments that have taken us in new directions. City House test piloted an outcomes measurement system with the support of the Otto Bremer Foundation, that will now allow us to observe what God is up to in our core volunteer program of providing spiritual companionship for and with the poor.

We conducted our first inner city pilgrimmage in partnership with Christos Center for Spiritual Formation. That retreat opened our eyes to the possiblity of a mission expansion - that we had as much to offer the mainstream world as we did the persons who find themselves on the margins of society. It led us to moving from a mission of “tending to the spiritual lives of the poor, inspring hope” to a mission of  ”connecting the mainstream and margins for mutual spiritual growth and transformation.”

That shift in mission in turn led us to the development of the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” pilot program, just completed - where mainstream learners entered into relationships with “friends” on the margins of society so that both parties might grow spiritually.

We followed this celebration of the year in review in which we said “yes”, by reflecting on our shared poverty of spirit, whether mainstream or societally marginalized. We read and reflected on the Macrina Wiederkehr poem, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit”, as a way to best express that sentiment. Marcina Wiederkehr web site

Small groups then reflected on and shared personal stories around the following questions:

Question:  Describe a time in your life when you were full of a false idea(s), and then came to discover the truth. What happened?

Question:  Describe a time in your life when you felt small, powerless, and needy. How, if at all, did that time open your heart?  How, if at all, did it become a time of blessing?

Question:  Describe a time in your life when you were forced to let go of your plans and your timing and had to wait on God.  What happened?

Question:  Describe a time in your life when you finally realized that you needed to rely on God and you felt good about it.  What happened?

“Will You Drink This Cup?” program learner, Angelie Ryah- Dahn then shared her story about her friendship with a woman from Central Avenue Apartments.  Then, one of the participants from Reentry Metro, VJ, shared her story about being a friend to one of the program learners. She was unable to be present for the celebration, and so, her thoughts were read to us from something she had written up.

“I was very grateful to be accepted as I am.  The caring spirit and kindful heart of her friendship to understand me was a blessing. What was a touching experience was when we both connected and were able to grow with each other.  During our meetings in small steps we supported each other in healing through our brokenness.”

“Everytime you shed a tear, you are healing your own soul.  In every tear drop, there is a rainbow, whch is a promise from God.  I am committed to share my life with anyone who wants to talk about it.  The bad and good.  I do this in honor and memory of my brother Jr. Thank you City House!! (Thank you VJ!!!)”

Finally, we asked program participants to come forward and personally bless each of our volunteer spiritual companions for their gift of listening on the margins of society. Jim Dodge, our founder, closed with prayer. Once again, the sense of community among this diverse group of people was palpable. I am grateful to be a part of it. 

Our topic at our last “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program was pain and suffering. Our guest presenters were Trindad and Terry Shaughnessy. Terry is a City House spiritual companion volunteer and has developed a long term relationship with Trinidad, an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, that found himself homeless in the streets of St Paul.  (See City House newsletter article written by Terry, “Reflections on a day with homelessness” about his day on the streets of St Paul with Trinidad.) 

Reflections on a day

The use of childern as soldiers is a human rights violation in various parts of the world. Apparently, that is also true in the history of the nation of Trinidad.

trinidad-child-soldiers

Trinidad (the person presenting at our session) talked about becoming a soldier at age 12.  His parents were murdered when he was 17. For his entire adult life, he has had flashbacks of his earlier life as a child soldier.  At one point, the flashbacks were so severe that he could not sleep for 30 days.  Eventually, the father of a friend brought him to the United States.

He wound up sleeping on the floor of the Dorothy Day homeless shelter in St Paul for 7 months.  “I would sleep for only 2 hours a night, while I was there. I would get up and clean up the park and the streets as a way to deal with my anger and pain about where I was in life.”

“When I was young, hatred kept me alive, but not now.  Now I am a soldier of kindness, happiness, and humor.  I am a survivor. I learned that I could survive any situation.”  Today, Trinidad is known on the streets of St Paul as an ambassador that people trust.  His trademark is humor and he likes to use it to defuse even the most difficult situations and the meanest people he encounters.  ”You dropped something mam,” he says to one of the learners in our class, as he points at the floor. As the woman looks down he says, ”your smile.”  I’ve heard him use this one so often, it has lost its charm on me.  But, it seems to work on this woman.

Terry, our City House volunteer, talked about what he has learned from Trinidad.  Trinidad has taught him about the importance of the use of humor and how to put people at ease. When asked by a learner about the biggest obstacle he had to overcome in his relationship with Trinidad, he says, “fear.”

Terry and Trinidad make it clear to each other in front us that they have a deep appreciation and even love for each other. They both acknowledged the size of the other’s heart.

What a blessed evening.

At our City House education session last week, Janice Andersen, the Director of Christian Life at the Basilica of St. Mary’s in Minneapolis was our speaker.  One of her responsibilities is leading the St Vincent DePaul program that serves the poor. It is in that context that City House partners and provides volunteer spiritual companionship for persons who find themselves poor. We asked Janice to tell her own story about how she came to work with the poor and how her own spirituality had been shaped by that work.

Basilica St Mary’s Minneapolis

Janice was articulate, passionate, and vulnerable. She acknowledged, to my surprise, that she herself is someone who is in chemical dependency recovery.  “I could just as easily be one of those persons we serve here at the Basilica in our drop in homeless shelter,” she explained.  “My connection to the poor grounds me and reminds me of the vulnerability and hope of life. They remind me that the more I can accept myself the more I can accept others. They teach me that my tendency towards independence is a defeat and a loss - that my independence leads me to pride.” 

I have always known Janice to be a person of spiritual depth and so passionate about her work. At the end of her presentation, I felt more human, and inspired by her sense of purpose. Thank you Janice for who you are and for all that you do.

Last weekend the learners from the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program went on a one day inner city pilgrimage. We heard this amazing story from a guest by the name of Wayne at the Dorothy Day Center in downtown St. Paul. 

Wayne was trained as a mechanical engineer and employed by a well known engineering firm. He flew all over the country in his consulting engineering role. When his mother had a stroke, he chose to care for her. Her condition worsened as she moved into her 80s, and he finally quit his job to care for her full time.

In 2001, after he and his mother had used up all of their assets, she went into a nursing home, and for the first time in his life, Wayne became homeless. That’s when he became a guest of the Dorothy Day Center, a drop in homeless shelter.  Just recently, he finally got his life back together and has his own apartment.

“Will You Drink This Cup?” program learners at Dorothy Day 

He is one of the most articulate and well educated persons I have ever met in the sites which City House serves. He is known around Dorothy Day for mentoring younger guys and volunteering to do all kinds of odd jobs.

It was striking to hear him say, “Many of us are only a paycheck away from being homeless.”  It is the first time that I felt my own fear of being homeless disappear. I could see that Wayne, someone like me, had survived it and had even grown through the experience.

Tears of sorrow running from a statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus 

One of the sites at which we serve as spiritual companions is Harriet Tubman Family Alliance. This program includes residential facilities for women that have been victimized by domestic abuse. This story was told by one of our volunteers.

“I arrived at the domestic abuse shelter open to whomever might attend the spirituality group.  Well after ten mintues no one showed up, which happens.  So I decided to be available to anyone hanging out in the community space.”

“I started talking to a small child and she was willing to talk to me too.  Her mother said, ‘My daughter really likes you, you’re fun.  What are you here for?’  Realizing this was an opening, I said, ‘I am a volunteer who leads a spirituality group but nobody came so I decided to just hang out.’  The woman asked ‘Could I still attend the group?’– ‘Oh sure — we still have time.’  She invited three others and we had a group of five.” “The group was very connected, open and deep.  Two of the women really had issues that they needed to share about and needed our open and listening hearts.  Another woman was very spirited and had a lot to say about her strength and hope that comes only from her faith in God.”

“We were praying at the end and the women asked if there was anything about which I needed prayer.  So I told them my father just had another stroke and that I was going to leave tomorrow to visit him in Florida.  I opened up more and said this visit was going to be hard. While my intentions are to be there for my father, he is usually quite critical of me.  These women said the most precious prayer for me after they heard my concern and it brought tears to my eyes.  They were ministering to me.”

Once again, we find ourselves being amazingly blessed by those we come to serve.  The experience is mutual when we all show up to the presence of God in each other.

Based on true events and filmed in Rwanda with genocide survivors as cast and crew, Beyond The Gates (a movie) tells their shared story of humanity in the most inhumane circumstances.

In April 1994, a secondary school in Kigali, Rwanda called the Ecole Technique Officielle (ETO) being used as a UN army base, became a refugee camp.  Belgian UN troops, school children, NGO workers and over 2,500 Tutsi citizens and their sympathizers took refuge against a raging genocide while the Hutu militia, clad with machetes, clamored outside the school gates.

Five days later, the UN troops withdrew from the school, taking the whites with them.  Within hours, almost all of the Rwandans were dead.

Beyond The Gates is about the choices we make when we are free to choose.  In the tragic circumstances of the Ecole Technique Officielle, would you have left with the UN troops on the fifth day or would you have stayed?

This is a powerful movie. One of the main characters, when faced with the choice of fleeing to safety or staying for an almost certain death, turns to another character and says, “You asked me where God is in the midst of all this suffering.  The answer is right here. I can’t ever remember feeling God’s love so profoundly. My heart and soul are here. I feel like if I left, I would never find them again.”

His decision and actions are so Christ like - very inspirational.

Beyond The Gates, the movie

 Another great quote from,  If This Is the Way the World Works, by William O. Avery and Beth Ann Gaede. 

“In his preaching and teaching, Jesus followed in the prophetic tradition, constantly connecting with those whom others considered unworthy of his attention - children and women; the lame, deaf, and blind; Gentiles and other despised people; and finally, as Jesus himself hung dying, the criminal (Luke 23:43) While Jesus served those in need, he himself had needs and depended on others for support.”

“Jesus was not a solo act; he was interrelated with others as one who both served and received service, enjoying relationships of mutuality even with people his culture considered ‘the least’.” - Pages 71 - 72.

City House’s point exactly. If it was good enough for Christ, it can surely be nothing but life giving for us.

 My wife, 2 sons, and their “significant others” had the honor of serving a holiday dinner at Central Avenue Apartments, a City House site where I volunteer. It is an affordable housing apartment building for persons that have found themselves homeless and are in recovery.

Central Avenue Apartments

We’ve all had experiences where we bring disparate parts of our lives into conversation with each other.  This was one of those for me.  My family has been very supportive of my work, but they have seldom had the opportunity to be in direct contact with friends I’ve made. I care deeply about my family as well as my friends at Central Avenue Apartments, so it was great to bring the two communities together.

To pull off a meal for 30 - 40 people we needed the help of residents to set up tables, clean up afterwards, and for use of ovens to warm food. There was a real sense of connectedness and belonging as we all worked together to prepare and serve the meal. We had underestimated how long it would take to warm the ham. Everyone worked together to problem solve.  Numerous residents volunteered solutions.

I get anxious about big gatherings like this that involve lots of logisitics - not my best skill set.  As usual, I was feeling overly responsible and conscientious to make the whole thing come together.  Fortunately, Jenn, my son’s significant other, and Yolanda, one of the Central Avenue Apartment residents, provided logistical leadership in the right moment so I could let go of some of my anxieties. Lots of people jumped into help in big and small ways.

Because dinner preparation ran long, my family members and residents got the opportunity to sit and talk.  This is an apartment building for adults. Children are only allowed as guests. So, it was really cool to have one resident bring his daughter and another resident and his wife bring their grandchild. It felt much more like a holiday celebration with children present and everyone interacting as families.

At the end of the meal, I was touched by the gratitude expressed to us by some of the residents. It clearly meant something to them. My family members talked afterwards about how much fun the whole experience had been, reconfirming the signs of spirit present among us as we celebrated together. It was one of the highlights of my holiday. I am grateful.

A friend of mine just sent me this quote.

“There’s no one so rich that they have nothing to receive and no one so poor that they have nothing to give.

Mother Marina Elisa Prado, a Carmelite in Guatemala.

Blessings on all of you and your families.