Spirit On The Margins

 

City House Cup brochure spring 10

Dear friends of City House,

Happy New Year!! I hope and trust that you all had a blessed holiday period.

 We believe that Spirit stirs hearts, and that City House’s “Will You Drink From This Cup?” offering is a perfect match for what hungers inside some of you, or others that you might know. We invite you to experience connection with the poor as a spiritual practice.

 Attend to that hunger. Check out this offering at our orientation on Thursday, February 4^th, from 7:00p.m. – 9:00p.m. at Loyola Spirituality Center.

 Review the attached electronic brochure to see if it in fact stirs something in you. (underlined in blue beneath the picture – be sure to read all 4 pages to get details)

 RSVP if you would like to attend the orientation or to register!! tomallen@city-house.org 763-227-0686.

Peace to you in this New Year!!

Tom Allen and Jean Grover, City House

As part of the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program, we lead a session entitled the Culture of Poverty. It is designed to help mainstream learners better understand the values and behaviors they encounter among persons who find themselves on the margins of society.

That session is co-led by one or more participants from our core program, where we are providing spiritual companionships to persons who find themselves on the margins of society.  This time, we were very capably led by Pedro and Eric in this discussion. They did an outstanding job. I was lucky enough to have my picture taken with my good friends.

At the half way point of City House’s “Will You Drink From This Cup?” we lead our learners on an inner city pilgrimage for a day. This time, like many others, we visited Reentry Metro, a halfway house for women coming out of prison, and Dorothy Day, a drop in homeless shelter in downtown St. Paul.

As in the past, this turns out to be one of the most powerful experiences of the entire program.  As one of our learners said when we were done, “On a scale of 1 – 10, I give this experience a “12″.

City House Cup Program Spring ‘09 Brochure

City House is delighted to once again offer this program that invites you to experience connection with the poor as spiritual practice.

Please feel free to attend our information / orientation session on Thursday, January 22, from 7:00p.m. – 9:00p.m. at Loyola Spirituality Center.

This is the full brochure. Make sure to click through all 4 pages of this PDF file to get all of the information.

Thanks!!

Dear friends,

Based on the huge success of this offering in the spring, we are pleased to offer the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program for the fall of 08.

The details of the program can be found here (click below) including testimonials from the spring program – 4 pages in all.  We hope and pray this program will speak to the desires of the heart for you and many others for years to come.

city-house-cup-program-brochure-fall-08

 

 

 

We held our last session of the “Will You Drink From This Cup?”  pilot program this past week. For those of you that don’t know the history, it is a 12 week spiritual enrichment program for mainstream learners.  It is for those who want to deepen their relationship with God, with the poor, and in a supportive environment of fellow learners.  The expectation is that learners be in at least one relationship with someone who finds themselves on the margins of society, and to pray for a half hour a day, with reflection on selected saints and writers.

During this last session, each person commented on the following question: What about this program surprised you, delighted you, disappointed you, changed you, challenged you?  Here were some of the responses:

“Our own brokenness is our door to the world.”

“I was surprised by how experiential tihs program was.”

“I liked being with people that also look for other things to make their lives richer.”

“I appreciated the intentionality of the group and doing it together.”

“I also learned from the things that did not go smoothly and where there were difficulties.”

“When I was visiting with my friend on the margins, I felt this enormous rush of love that melded me to her. I didn’t ask for it, it was a gift.”

“Now, as I drive by someone begging on the corner, I know that they have a very rich story.”

“Now when I walk down the street in an area that would have scared me before, I want instead to know the story of the people around me. I have less fear now and more curiosity.”

“I let go of another layer of fear in my life.”

“We care about the poor, but we don’t know them.”

“The poor have great hearts.  When we take away their circumstances, they are no different than any of us.”

For me, this experience finally created a sense of community at City House that I have craved for the last 6 years. What a blessing it has been. I am grateful.

 

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.

 

Learners from the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program and participants of the Reentry Metro program

Another astounding story we heard on our inner city pilgrimage for the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program was from a woman we will call Martha. She lives at Reentry Metro, a half way house for women going into or coming out of prison.

RS Eden Reentry Metro

On the day of our pilgrimage, Martha was fearful. She had been convicted in federal court and was awaiting her sentencing 3 days later, for up to 2 1/2 years in federal prison. She had been convicted of an armed bank robbery. It was hard to imagine this beautiful and sensitive woman sitting in front of us as an armed bank robber. In fact, it was clear that another participant in the room from Reentry Metro saw her as an older and compassionate mentor. Yet, here she was.

As the story unfolded, she explained that her problems all started with undiagnosed mental illness. She suffered from depression and was finally so tired of living with her condition that she decided to commit cop suicide. That is, she robbed a bank with the intent of the police shooting her as a way to kill herself.  She used a bee bee gun to do the robbery and then climbed into her car, waiting for the police to shoot her.

Suicide by cop Wikipedia

Fortunately for her, the police did not shoot her. She was finally diagnosed properly, and she is doing much better now because of having the proper medications. Her biggest fear was regressing in her mental illness as a result of being in prison.

We left there promising to pray for her and believing that a great injustice would be done to sentence a woman like this to prison. To our delight, we heard later that the judge showed leniency and sentenced her to a different half way house, instead of the 2 1/2 year prison sentence that was possible. What a blessing.

 

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.

We held the orientation session for the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program last Tuesday night. What a powerful group of people that was assembled. Learners were passionate about forming friendships with persons on the margins of society, and allowing God to form and shape them in those relationships.

Those of us in the middle class want to be respectful of persons who find themselves on the margins.  We think that we shouldn’t refer to “the poor” as “poor,” when they are in our presence, as if that would be insulting to them.

I have had the experience of speaking to middle class groups and having a person who finds themselves in poverty with me. I will refer to our work with “the poor” in front of them. I ask them afterwards if that is respectful, and they always say, “Yes, that is what I am. I am poor.” 

At this orientation session, learners were concerned about this subject. As one of our faculty members said, “They already know they are poor.” Then we all laughed at our quirky little insecurities.