The Canaanite's Call

A Bread & Roses Revival

2009-06-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

Meta and I will be returning to Bread & Roses on August 1st, 2009. For the full scoop on Bread & Roses, please visit our new website http://breadandrosesolympia.org

Homosexuality and Christian Tradition

2008-01-27T13:01:00.002-08:00

When I first published On God and Gays (my own freshman level attempt at jumping into a rather contentious debate) in the Canaanite's Call newspaper, I got a pretty severe reaction from a friend and priest in a local Orthodox church.

Among his arguments was that I had abandoned Church Tradition in favor of the "gay political agenda". I'm not sure I've abandoned Tradition, though I most certainly do not agree with the historic sexual teachings of the catholic communions.

In fact, as I took the time to explore the historic teachings on sexuality, I noticed that rather than having new input to chew on over the issue, I found myself simply confused. What is this crazy stuff? I wondered to myself. I felt like I was trying to read a 13th century alchemist's notes written in Greek.

Luckily for me, Fr. Tobias Haller, BSG has a much stronger grasp on the historic teachings of the Church, and on why the Church's teachings make no sense. His eight part series (with more essays to follow), called "The Sex Articles", does a great deal to shed light on what the historic teachings are, and how the historic teachings derive from a misapplication of the work of scholars such as St Thomas Aquinas.

Fr. Haller's essays are an important complement to scriptural study of the issue. Please have a look at his site.

Kingdom Calling

2007-10-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

There's a new movement afoot among evangelical Christians. Anti-gay? Not really. Pro-war? Certainly not. Brimstone and hellfire? Seem to have moved beyond that...

From Revolution in Jesusland:

Right after the 2004 elections, a cynical map made the rounds of progressives’ inboxes everywhere, separating “Jesusland” from the “United States of Canada.” Several other self-righteous riffs followed.

The image was a hit because it expressed a sinking feeling in the hearts of many progressives that America had been taken over by an incomprehensible cult of ignorance, intolerance and hate—a cult they knew as “evangelical” or “born again” Christianity.

Most secular progressives are comfortable with mainline liberal Christianity. But when it comes to evangelicals, many can only think of anti-gay ballot initiatives, clinic bombers, street preachers with megaphones and corrupt televangelists. And they tend to be confused and disturbed by a movement that reads the Bible “literally” as the “inerrant word of God.”

This blog is a plea to the progressive movement, to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms. Here you’ll find interviews, commentary, analysis and other dispatches from all over “Jesusland.” This tour will explore everything from the workings of the local church, to the evangelicals’ vibrant, decentralized national leadership training infrastructure to theological questions such as, “How in the world DO they read the Bible literally?” and “Do they really think I’m going to hell?”

There are two really big reasons to come along on this tour:

First, progressives will never achieve their goals as long as they are hostile toward and ignorant about the faith of 100 million of their own people who are born again Christians.

Second (and we know how difficult this is to believe) there is an incredibly large and beautiful social movement exploding among evangelicals right now that stands for nearly all of the same causes and goals that secular progressives do. Those goals include: eliminating poverty, saving the environment, promoting justice and equality along racial, gender and class lines and for immigrants—and even separation of church and state.

This brilliant new movement is multi-faceted, including the New Monastics, co-operative enthusiasts, Christian anarchists, and Creation-care evangelicals (environmentalists).

If you are feeling depressed about the state of politics today, spend a little time researching this movement... it can offer a bummed-out progressive a great deal of hope.

DIY Advocacy

2007-09-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

Why call a [crazed-burnt out-overworked-underpaid- overcaffeinated-underslept] social worker when you can *do it yourself* ?

For the last several years, first at Bread & Roses and then at Family Support, I've worked here and there on developing an effective, easy to follow manual for homeless advocacy. This manual has reached the point that it is worth making available to the public... so I've posted it online!

Check it out and download it for yourself at: homelessadvocacy.wikispaces.com

Update

2007-08-31T01:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a long time. Heck, I haven't written anything at all in a long time. It's been several months now since I left Bread & Roses.

The new job is going well. I'm a half-time homeless outreach worker now, and I enjoy having work to do that I am familiar with and good at. The administration and the other staff at FSC rock.

The new home is way too quiet. We each - Meta, Selena, and myself - strain against the stillness a bit. An old friend from Bread & Roses is homeless again, and Selena mentioned to me that she was sorely tempted to bring him home.

Sometimes, when I get home from work, having given out several sleeping bags and tarps to families with little children, I look around at the scattered books, the fruit bowl on the dining table, my boots in the corner, and the couch in my living room and wonder to myself, "What in the heavens am I doing here?" I can't shake the feeling that this house has no purpose or redeeming value.

Dorothy Day once took six months away from the Catholic Worker, to make up her mind about her vocation. She did, of course, come back to her home in the Worker. But I wonder, in that six months, if she felt anything like this? Stranded away from home, without a sense of purpose, without a center? Did she feel tired and aimless in the evenings? Did she miss some particular guest whose antics put a little grin on her lips near the end of a chaotic and turbulent day? Did she miss the chaos?

I've taken to reading a lot in our year away. I read the whole Harry Potter series in about a week, along with my normal fare of philosophers and theologians. I've also been reading quite a number of beginner's gardening books. We hope to grow a great deal of our own food at the new house when we move again next May.

Our cats do seem to like it here. We live on the edge of a great big wilderness park, a watershed that breeds multitudes of spiders and moths the size of small birds. The older cat, Benny, is always bringing us "gifts" that he caught out in the woods.

In spite of the quiet order at home, I've managed to keep pretty busy. My church is hosting the local tent city right now, and I've been involved there a bit. Meta's mayoral campaign is going gangbusters, and we're frequently off to house-party fund raisers, progressive interest's picnics, and such. I've been putting in extra hours at work for our end of year report for the funders, and also working on my mother's house occasionally.

I will try to keep up with the blog. I'm reading the Brothers Karamozov right now, and recently finished a couple books from the French Personalists, and I think I've got a few things to say about the reading. I'll catch up next time...

Blog Review

2007-07-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

(Note: I recognize that it is ridiculous to offer a blog review on this unnoticed site. Kinda like pasting up large posters advertising fancy cars in a back alley of an unknown town. But I've just run across a fantastic blog that I've absolutely got to plug. If anyone out there is reading this, please visit Betwixt and Between.)

It is a common complaint of mine that the ideas of academically minded people are both inaccessible and out of touch with reality. It often seems that these men (for some reason they are invariably men) wish to propose absurd abstractions in defense of indefensible ideas, and cover over inadequacy with a lot of very big words.

In college, I nearly gave up studying philosophy and political economy for this very reason. I watched helplessly as fellow students blathered cheap Marxian ideology, prettied up with intelligent sounding words like "teleological" -words which they no doubt couldn't define- as an excuse for not engaging in basic attempts to improve the world around them.

Likewise, it is hurtful and entirely too common to see high minded men (again, the tendency seems to follow gender lines) using complex theological words as a means to exclude and dominate others. Complex sophistry is deployed for the sake of condemning gays, people who use contraception, women called to ordained ministry, and priests who offer open Communion.

If you read some of the arguments floating around in the blogosphere, and find that you come away feeling very confused, take heart: Your confusion is not the result of your inadequacy, but rather the inadequacy of the author. I like to call the experience "getting vocabularied".

It is for this reason that I was surprised and delighted to find Christopher's blog, Betwixt and Between. Not that Christopher's writing is simple; it is just the opposite. In many posts, the language he deploys is full of tightly packed theological words that can be a little inaccessible or difficult to follow for the common lay person. But they are not without practical meaning. Christopher has a strong ability to relate complex theology to lived reality, to make ideas relevant to everyday experience. He seems to understand that sound doctrine shapes real practices, and also that real human experience must contribute to the development of doctrine. He effectively avoids theological legalism while maintaining the value and intention behind sound doctrine (see especially his post CWOB: Communion Without Baptism). He is remarkably progressive, yet avoids the serious pitfalls of progressive faith. Lay people may struggle just a little with Christopher's writing in some posts, but the struggle is well worth the effort.

And if some of Christopher's posts are intensively intellectual, though relevant, others are profoundly tender, intimate, and deeply personal. Christopher can shift quickly from a story line to driving home a world of emotions and thoughts in a single sentence, "Our nation eats 'em up and spits 'em out."

Christopher takes on the most heated, contentious issues in the Anglican Communion, issues that affect him personally as a partnered gay man, with astounding generosity and compassion. He writes, "And I think he is correct in that we tend to fumble change. We Episcopalians tend not to think about providing pastoral care for those struggling with changes we’re making and provide spaces. We ram through something without the thought of care that relationships would suggest so that all can find a place in our comprehensiveness... we don’t think about ways to maintain relationships across differences, about nurturing conversation, finding ways to pray together in brokenness."

He also seems to have, in an Anglican world where discussion on issues of sexuality have become increasingly bitter and vicious, clearly defined and powerful Christian priorities and values: If a same-sex partnered Episcopalian and a Continuing Anglican with apprehensions about such partnership can share a glass of Maker’s Mark over theological discussion and prayer, there’s hope for us all. If he's not a REAL Anglican, than neither am I. We'll sit down together while everyone else is standing up to justify their bona fides; we'll enjoy a glass together while everyone else decides whose REAL and whose an impostor, fake, counterfeit, Marxist, etc.; and we'll love one another in our shabbiness and wounds." (From this post.)

I find great hope in Christopher's writing. We live in a deeply polarized world, a world increasingly prone to ad-hominem attacks, dishonest logic, contentiousness, and bitterness. A world in which the human person is increasingly lost amidst the conflict of impersonal ideas. A world that hates the enemy and crucifies the vulnerable in the name of doctrine, or policy, or ideology. Yet in this world, there are brilliant moments and brilliant people. People like Christopher.

Response to "What is Anglicanism?"

2007-07-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

There is a little buzz on the Anglican web about Archbishop Orombi's recent article, "What is Anglicanism?" Please read the entire article here.

(The following was cross posted as a comment at The Episcopal Cafe.)

This is an undeniably beautiful piece from the Archbishop of Uganda. His story of the growth of Christianity in Uganda is moving, the transformation of the people powerful. I think there is a great deal here to challenge us Western Anglicans to be more faithful.

However, I took note of a few particular thoughts in ++Orombi's letter. Orombi's understanding of homosexuality seems to be highlighted in this passage:

Less than a year later, on June 3, 1886, the king of Buganda ordered the killing of twenty-six of his court pages because they refused his homosexual advances and would not recant their belief in King Jesus. They cut and carried the reeds that were then wrapped around them and set on fire in an execution pit. As the flames engulfed them, these young martyrs sang songs of praise.

One is reminded here of the violent sins of Sodom & Gomorrah, of the use of rape as a tool of domination in war, and of the ugly excesses of ancient Rome. This view is entirely different, and evokes entirely different feelings, than the Western stereotypes of the "promiscuous gay". Seen through this lens, homosexuality represents Empire (colonialism?), men driven mad by worldly power, the anti-christ itself.

If this is one's understanding of homosexuality, it is not at all difficult to see how one would believe homosexuality to be absolutely at odds with Scripture.

I would argue that the issue at hand is NOT the authority of scripture (which I think we just might have some common ground on, no?), but rather the issue is the nature of homosexuality itself.

++Orombi clearly has had little exposure to the kind of gentle, committed relationships that so many gays engage in, has not had the opportunity to see them raise children, has not witnessed the persecution they experience as a result of the love they feel. I think we as a Communion could have had an entirely different kind of discussion if he had. Please pray for Archbishop Orombi, for the Ugandan Church, and for the Anglican Communion. May we all some day soon be reconciled.

In the mean time, I am awed at the Ugandan experience of God’s Word, and I continue to be proud to share a common faith with our Ugandan brothers and sisters.

Update on the Home Front

2007-06-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

Life is dramatically different since we left Bread & Roses.

Selena, Meta, and I moved out and rented a little house together on the south end of Olympia. Our back porch borders on Watershed Park, a large tract of land set aside for wilderness. I bicycle to work and am spending the bulk of my time reading (currently Daniel Berrigan's commentary on Jeremiah) and listening to the animal sounds from the park. We're on a one year lease - and have agreed to take a break from hospitality for that year to feed our burned-out souls.

Selena is working part time for Partners in Prevention. I'm working part time as a homeless outreach worker with the Family Support Center, and am writing a book of reflections on hospitality and vocation in the Catholic Worker. And, as many of you have heard, Meta is running for Mayor of Olympia!

We promised each other that we wouldn't talk about our common vocation as a household or make any plans for the future of our household until November - enough time to give us a chance to breathe a little. Still, ideas bounce around a bit as we chat with each other, and Meta went so far as to mention her dream of a "politician's-permacultural-house-of-hospitality". I practically started drooling at the thought of hosting Olympia's politicos for dinner... side by side with members of the street community. But see, now I'm breaking our rule. I should get back to reading and let next year worry for itself. ;)

Leaving Bread & Roses

2007-04-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

When I worked as a professional E.M.T., I attended a number of trainings on how to deal with something called a "mass casualty incident". A mass casualty incident is an incident which, by its definition, overwhelms the resources at hand.

If there is one thing I have learned in my time at Bread & Roses, it is that poverty is a daily mass casualty incident.

Meta and I are leaving Bread & Roses after serving for four years as full-time, live-in volunteers. Selena leaves with us after offering six years of service. We will be moved out by May 31st. Four years (or six!) is a long time to be a full time volunteer, and it is time for us to move on.

Meta will be focusing on her campaign for Mayor. I'm working on a book. We both will be looking for part-time jobs in social services to support ourselves. Selena moves on to do some very exciting work with Partners in Prevention. The three of us will be renting a pretty little house together on the south end of Olympia, and will be taking the next year to rest, recuperate, and reflect. And then we're going to try something new and exciting! (You're just gonna have to wait until then to find out the details, though... it'll be like a good birthday surprise:) We will continue to be active in the community as volunteers and activists.

As I leave Bread & Roses, there is one last thing I would like to say on behalf of the B&R community: Get involved. Get active. Volunteer. We all have the ability to make a difference in our community, and if we have the ability it is incumbent on us to use it. The homeless need you.

Additional comment:

Since most of you no doubt read the Olympian, I would like to offer some corrections to their horrendously innaccurate and destructive article published on the front page this morning.

First, we at Bread & Roses do not "live for free" AND make a "$600 stipend". We receive free room and board and a $200 stipend. After adding up our living expenses we figured our TOTAL income per person (including room and board) to be about the equivalent of $600 per month. So I promise you, no one is getting rich at Bread & Roses (though I'll tell you that if we did actually get a $600 stipend I would have gladly taken it and bought health insurance).

Secondly, no-one at the Guesthouse is "losing" their "housing". The Bread & Roses Women's Guesthouse is a transitional shelter with up to four women to a room. The average stay at the Guesthouse is about 3 months. We are doubling our efforts to help the women find housing, and we will see to it that they each have their own home within one month. Moving from a shelter bed in a shared room to having an actual home of one's own could hardly be called "losing housing".

The Olympian should be more careful with their words.

In Gethsemane

2007-04-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

His face, swollen and bruised, contorted as his cries echoed down the street.

“Will SOMEONE help me? What do I have to do to get someone to help me?! Do I have to beat my head against a wall to get someone to help me?”

WHAM! He slammed his face against the wall another time. Everyone jumped a little.

He had been homeless for twenty years, struggling the entire time with under-treated schizophrenia. He used to break windows when he got upset, but as he has grown older he has become more compassionate, more reluctant to harm others. Now he only hurts himself.

Everyone seems to earnestly want to help this young man; everyone wrings their hands when confronted with his struggle.

Yet his cries have a familiar ring… “Will you not watch with me this one hour?”

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus went to a garden to pray. He begged his friends - Peter, James, and John - to come with him, to stay close by as he agonized over his fate. His anxiety was so intense that it was said he “sweated blood”. Christ’s companions were earnest in their love for him. Yet they fell asleep as he contemplated his doom. For, as the scriptures say, “their eyes were heavy.”

Even among all the disciples, Peter was the most sincere. “Though all become deserters, I will never desert you.” Indeed, he had given up his whole life, his career as a fisherman and his family, to follow Christ. Yet he also slept, because he did not fully comprehend the weight of the moment.

Neither do we. Today the homeless sit outside like Lazarus at the gate, waiting to be invited in. As they wait, they are afflicted with illnesses ranging from pneumonia to staff infections. They are called names and are spat upon by passing pedestrians. They are exposed to the weather, and as they attempt to shield themselves from the elements they are persecuted for illegal camping. They are turned away from overburdened services, and are told that they alone are responsible for their plight.

The government will not provide a solution. I heard as much at a recent Human Services Review Council meeting, which is made up of representatives of local governments. Fuel prices are going up, making it difficult for officials to maintain even the most basic infrastructure. And if local governments balk, the federal government does so even more. The Housing Authority recently received notice of deep budget cuts, and has had to significantly scale back its housing voucher program. The wait list for a voucher stretched out six years even before the cuts were announced.

Yet even if the government can do so little, hope is not lost for the homeless. There is another answer.

Are we not asked to “share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house”? (Isaiah 58:7) For every person experiencing homelessness in our community, there are two hundred unoccupied living room couches. If we want for shelter and housing we have our very own homes to offer. If we are frightened of being overwhelmed and want for support, we have seminaries and universities packed full of idealistic men and women who want nothing more than to make a difference.

Yet we sleep. And as we, the slumbering masses, wait for the government to act, Christ cries in Gethsemane.

Many of us want the Church to do more. Yet we forget what the Church is. We think of the church building, the clergy and staff, and we see ourselves as mere volunteers in the church programs. But we are the Church - the hands and feet, eyes, ears, and mouth of the universal living Church. And if we are the Church, then our homes are where the Church truly resides. Our only obstacle to serving Christ is the weight of our own eyes.

I went to the hospital last night with a young, pregnant homeless woman. She told me she had lived in scores of foster homes – starting at the age of five – prior to becoming homeless. When her baby is born, it will be one more among the six hundred fifty four children experiencing homelessness in our community. A few of these children live in shelters, many sleep in cars, many more live in the Capitol Forest. They are unseen; the details of their difficult lives are largely unknown to the rest of us. They are waiting for us to wake up.

Please listen now. Listen close. Lend your ear to that little voice welling up from inside you. It may be faint, but if you listen carefully you will hear it. It is saying, “Wake up, Peter. Wake up, because I am with you. Wake up, because I have chosen you. Wake up, because I will make you the rock upon which I will build a new world… a world founded on Love. Wake up.”

Wake up, because Christ is among us. He is waiting for you.

House of Bishops on Primates' Meeting

2007-03-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

These words brought a lump to my throat and a deep pride in the Church to my heart. -Phil

A Communication to The Episcopal Church from the March 2007 Meeting of the House of Bishops

We, the Bishops of The Episcopal Church, meeting at Camp Allen, Navasota, Texas, for our regular Spring Meeting, March 16-21, 2007, have received the Communiqué of February 19, 2007 from the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We have met together for prayer, reflection, conversation, and listening during these days and have had the Communiqué much on our minds and hearts, just as we know many in our Church and in other parts of the world have had us on their minds and hearts as we have taken counsel together. We are grateful for the prayers that have surrounded us.

We affirm once again the deep longing of our hearts for The Episcopal Church to continue as a part of the Anglican Communion. We have gone so far as to articulate our self-understanding and unceasing desire for relationships with other Anglicans by memorializing the principle in the Preamble of our Constitution. What is important to us is that The Episcopal Church is a constituent member of a family of Churches, all of whom share a common mother in the Church of England. That membership gives us the great privilege and unique opportunity of sharing in the family's work of alleviating human suffering in all parts of the world. For those of us who are members of The Episcopal Church, we are aware as never before that our Anglican Communion partners are vital to our very integrity as Christians and our wholeness. The witness of their faith, their generosity, their bravery, and their devotion teach us essential elements of gospel-based living that contribute to our conversion.

We would therefore meet any decision to exclude us from gatherings of all Anglican Churches with great sorrow, but our commitment to our membership in the Anglican Communion as a way to participate in the alleviation of suffering and restoration of God's creation would remain constant. We have no intention of choosing to withdraw from our commitments, our relationships, or our own recognition of our full communion with the See of Canterbury or any of the other constituent members of the Anglican Communion. Indeed, we will seek to live fully into, and deepen, our relationships with our brothers and sisters in the Communion through companion relationships, the networks of Anglican women, the Anglican Indigenous Network, the Francophone Network, our support for the Anglican Diocese of Cuba, our existing covenant commitments with other provinces and dioceses, including Liberia, Mexico, Central America, Brazil, and the Philippines, our work as The Episcopal Church in many countries around the world, especially in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Taiwan, and countless informal relationships for mission around the world.

Since our General Convention of 2003, we have responded in good faith to the requests we have received from our Anglican partners. We accepted the invitation of the Lambeth Commission to send individuals characteristic of the theological breadth of our Church to meet with it. We happily did so. Our Executive Council voluntarily acceded to the request of the Primates for our delegates not to attend the 2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham. We took our place as listeners rather than participants as an expression of our love and respect for the sensibilities of our brothers and sisters in the Communion even when we believed we had been misunderstood. We accepted the invitation of the Primates to explain ourselves in a presentation to the same meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. We did so with joy.

At the meeting of our House of Bishops at Camp Allen, Texas in March, 2004 we adopted a proposal called Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight as a means for meeting the pastoral needs of those within our Church who disagreed with actions of the General Convention. Our plan received a favorable response in the Windsor Report. It was not accepted by the Primates. At our meeting in March 2005, we adopted a Covenant Statement as an interim response to the Windsor Report in an attempt to assure the rest of the Communion that we were taking them seriously and, at some significant cost, refused to consecrate any additional bishops whatsoever as a way that we could be true to our own convictions without running the risk of consecrating some that would offend our brothers and sisters. Our response was not accepted by the Primates. Our General Convention in 2006 struggled mightily and at great cost to many, not the least of whom are our gay and lesbian members, to respond favorably to the requests made of us in the Windsor Report and the Primates' Dromantine Communiqué of 2005. We received a favorable response from the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates, which found that our effort had substantially met the concerns of the Windsor Report with the need to clarify our position on the blessing of same sex relationships. Still, our efforts were not accepted by the Primates in the Dar es Salaam Communiqué.

Other Anglican bishops, indeed including some Primates, have violated our provincial boundaries and caused great suffering and contributed immeasurably to our difficulties in solving our problems and in attempting to communicate for ourselves with our Anglican brothers and sisters. We have been repeatedly assured that boundary violations are inappropriate under the most ancient authorities and should cease. The Lambeth Conferences of 1988 and 1998 did so. The Windsor Report did so. The Dromantine Communiqué did so. None of these assurances has been heeded. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué affirms the principle that boundary violations are impermissible, but then sets conditions for ending those violations, conditions that are simply impossible for us to meet without calling a special meeting of our General Convention.

It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships. We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God's truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.

With great hope that we will continue to be welcome in the councils of the family of Churches we know as the Anglican Communion, we believe that to participate in the Primates' Pastoral scheme would be injurious to The Episcopal Church for many reasons.

First, it violates our church law in that it would call for a delegation of primatial authority not permissible under our Canons and a compromise of our autonomy as a Church not permissible under our Constitution.

Second, it fundamentally changes the character of the Windsor process and the covenant design process in which we thought all the Anglican Churches were participating together.

Third, it violates our founding principles as The Episcopal Church following our own liberation from colonialism and the beginning of a life independent of the Church of England.

Fourth, it is a very serious departure from our English Reformation heritage. It abandons the generous orthodoxy of our Prayer Book tradition. It sacrifices the emancipation of the laity for the exclusive leadership of high-ranking Bishops. And, for the first time since our separation from the papacy in the 16th century, it replaces the local governance of the Church by its own people with the decisions of a distant and unaccountable group of prelates.

Most important of all it is spiritually unsound. The pastoral scheme encourages one of the worst tendencies of our Western culture, which is to break relationships when we find them difficult instead of doing the hard work necessary to repair them and be instruments of reconciliation. The real cultural phenomenon that threatens the spiritual life of our people, including marriage and family life, is the ease with which we choose to break our relationships and the vows that established them rather than seek the transformative power of the Gospel in them. We cannot accept what would be injurious to this Church and could well lead to its permanent division.

At the same time, we understand that the present situation requires intentional care for those within our Church who find themselves in conscientious disagreement with the actions of our General Convention. We pledge ourselves to continue to work with them toward a workable arrangement. In truth, the number of those who seek to divide our Church is small, and our Church is marked by encouraging signs of life and hope. The fact that we have among ourselves, and indeed encourage, a diversity of opinion on issues of sexuality should in no way be misunderstood to mean that we are divided, except among a very few, in our love for The Episcopal Church, the integrity of its identity, and the continuance of its life and ministry.

In anticipation of the traditional renewal of ordination vows in Holy Week we solemnly declare that "we do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation; and we do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church." (Book of Common Prayer, page 513)

With this affirmation both of our identity as a Church and our affection and commitment to the Anglican Communion, we find new hope that we can turn our attention to the essence of Christ's own mission in the world, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:18-19). It is to that mission that we now determinedly turn.

Adopted March 20, 2007
The House of Bishops
The Episcopal Church
Spring Meeting 2007
Camp Allen Conference Center
Navasota, Texas

Remembering Rachel Corrie

2007-03-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

Initially published as "A Few Words from the Editor" in the Canaanite's Call, Vol 1 Issue 5. This issue was specially published for the anniversary of Rachel's death, and contains writing by both Rachel Corrie as well as Will Hewitt.

March 16, 2007

The prophetic voice never comes from an expected source.

I first met Rachel Corrie on Red Square, in front of the Community Activities Building at The Evergreen State College. She was handing out bold printed flyers decrying cuts to the Labor Center’s budget.

A red corduroy jacket hung from her slight frame, and a lock of blonde hair fell to the side of her face from under a wool cap, cocked slightly to the side.

Ugh… more political literature, I thought to myself. Evergreen is a hot-spot for student activism, and one can barely make it from class to lunch without being propagandized. Rachel took a couple minutes to educate me about the issue, and asked if I wanted to help. “Sure”, I said, “Put me on your email list.”

A few months later Rachel came to my home to meet with Will Hewitt and a couple other friends. They sat in the basement watching BBC videos on Palestine, studying Arabic, and making plans for a trip to the Gaza Strip.

I knew little about Palestine, but after watching a couple videos with them I began to realize the risk they were taking. I made them promise to stay safe, and when I started doubting I made them reiterate their promise. Rachel smiled gently at me and tried to comfort me with the information that hundreds of international activists had made the trip and that none had been killed.

Since Rachel’s death, she has been alternately accused of naivety and stupidity, as well as of being a malicious supporter of terrorists. Yet the reader will find in both Will Hewitt’s account of their work as well as in Rachel’s own writing, each found in this issue of the paper, that Rachel was someone much greater than her detractors wish to portray and even greater than her supporters can articulate.

On March 16^th, 2003, while working to protect the home of a local pharmacist she had befriended, Rachel entered the ranks of martyrs for justice. To the Palestinians, she was a hero from a foreign land and a bringer of hope for a nation occupied, oppressed, and cut off from the world. For those in our society who can recognize the Divine yearning for justice here on Earth, Rachel was a prophet whose voice traveled to us from the wilderness of a violent world.

This issue of the Canaanite’s Call is dedicated to Rachel Corrie, the mental health worker, Evergreen student, union activist, prophet and martyr whose death and whose writing have made me cry far too many times. Rachel awoke in me the awareness of concrete suffering - real human suffering that is so much more pressing than an abstract political issue. And Rachel’s example lit the path to salvation for us all; redemption for the privileged comes by joining in solidarity with those who lack privilege… sometimes at a great cost.

This issue of the paper is also dedicated to Will, a good friend of seven years whose eccentric life, commitment to social justice, profound wisdom, deep compassion, and strange sense of humor have transformed my life. I owe my worldview and my life at Bread & Roses to Will.

May God bless and keep them both.

Path to the Promised Land: Tent City Seeks Justice

2007-02-26T15:42:00.000-08:00

A young man squints against the camera flash. His long dark hair falls on shoulders hunched beneath an orange jail suit. He looks uneasy…. His uneasiness is not that of an embarrassing moment or an uncomfortable situation; it is the deep uncertainty that comes when the world falls out from under you. He flinches against the mug shot.

The next day his face appears on the front page of the local newspaper under the headline: “Rape suspect lived in Watershed. Man appears to have stayed in underground hole.” In the following days, the newspaper prints sensational photos of his underground “bunker”, photos of his belongings strewn about by the police, and short clips – taken out of context – from his private journal.

The article directly above his reads, “Olympia Council tells Tent City to disperse.”

A young woman pulls a trash bag, heavy with the weight of two days’ garbage, out of a can and ties the ends. She moves quickly, collecting heaping ashtrays and wiping surfaces in a single motion.

Kandace, 19 years old, is a resident of Camp Quixote, Olympia’s new tent city founded by the Poor People’s Union (PPU). Kandace joined the Union two weeks before Camp Quixote was founded.

“It’s about brainstorming solutions together for poor people to survive in today’s economically challenged world,” she says of the Union, “…about helping people who don’t have other options to have an option. Including myself.”

David Lukas Lynch, age 23, was accused of raping an 11 year old girl.

The rape occurred on February 5^th. The attacker entered the girl’s home and raped her at knife point while her family slept.

Police found David the next day, huddled in a church parking lot. They asked him if he hurt anyone the night before, and he said, “Yes, I think so.” They arrested him and searched his camp, finding a hunting knife and a journal in which David mentioned his desire to quit “child hunting”.

The Olympian reported later that David was behaving “irrationally” and was so “out of control” that he had to be placed in four point restraints and put on suicide watch. The judge presiding over his case ordered a mental health evaluation to determine if he was capable of standing trial.

Kandace grew up in foster care and was left to survive on her own at 18, when she aged out of the program. After bouncing between shelters, camps, and friends’ couches, Kandace discovered the PPU and the plans for a new tent city, which she described as “a doorway to something new, a way to be productive.”

Camp Quixote was erected by the PPU on February 1^st. The encampment served as a means for the homeless to establish their right to exist. Having already been squeezed out of the parks, the homeless were frustrated when the City passed an ordinance banning panhandling and sidewalk sitting last November. Camp Quixote was built the day the new ordinance went into effect.

Asked about her opinion of the ordinance, Kandace commented that “the safest place for [homeless women] to be is on the sidewalks where there is light and people around.”

The encampment was initially sited on a vacant City-owned lot at the corner of State and Columbia streets, in the heart of downtown Olympia. Its location made it highly visible. Cars driving by frequently honked their horns in a show of support for the camp residents. Local businesses donated food, and Evergreen students thronged to the site in a show of mass solidarity.

Camp residents checked in regularly with neighboring businesses to make sure they had no complaints. They set up security patrols, and organized volunteers to pick up trash in the neighborhood.

When an elderly, senile woman who had been thrown out of the Salvation Army showed up at the camp, residents took her under wing and made sure she had a good tent and food to eat.

David Lynch’s underground camp was impressive. About the size of a fifth-wheel trailer and built with plywood, it even sported a window, and was well hidden from public view.

Sensing a hot story, the Olympian published lavish photos of the camp, calling it an “underground lair” in one “breaking news” update on their website. Readers commented on the Olympian’s website:

“Put him back in the bunker and cover up the hole. Its a good place for someone who rapes an 11 year old.”

“This guy is transient because he is lazy. He is a predator because he is wired wrong.”

“I hope [he] gets repeatedly raped in prison until he has to wear diapers for the rest of his miserable life.”

“Put him in with the rest of the houseless in prison.”

When contacted for a sensational tidbit by the daily Olympian, David’s ex-girlfriend replied, “I want people to understand that he is a brilliant man and a complex thinker and a poet… [David] doesn't have a bad heart."

The City of Olympia was unimpressed with the accomplishments of Camp Quixote. Angry about City property being taken over by the homeless, City Manager Steve Hall told the Olympian that “It seems like a terrible way to start a conversation… it seems like a poke in the eye.”

Neither the City Manager nor the Olympian noted the fact that 120 people, mostly members of the PPU, showed up at a November public hearing to express their opposition to the proposed sidewalk ordinance.

After one week at the downtown location, Camp Quixote residents were served with eviction notices from the City.

On Thursday, February 8^th, the Board of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation, sensing the urgency of Camp Quixote’s situation, voted to offer the camp sanctuary on church grounds. Camp Quixote accepted the offer, and the Rev. Art Vaeni contacted the Olympia City Manager to inform him that the camp would be moving to church property the following day.

But the City of Olympia apparently wasn’t satisfied to see the camp move of its own accord. Several dozen armed police officers surrounded and barricaded Camp Quixote in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, February 9^th. They threatened that, if the camp was not moved immediately, the residents would be arrested and their belongings seized.

Camp Quixote residents rushed about in the rain to gather their belongings and load them into vehicles supplied by local volunteers, including a truck belonging to T.J. Johnson. T.J. is the only City Council member who has spoken in favor of the encampment.

The tent city is alive and well today, standing on property belonging to the Unitarian Universalist church. The church has offered to let Camp Quixote stay for 90 days. It is likely that another church will step up and offer to host when this 90 day period expires.

But the City of Olympia remains opposed to the existence of the tent city, setting itself at odds with local faith communities, and the Unitarian church faces fines if it fails to comply with the expensive and complicated process of applying for a special use permit.

On the morning of February 21^st, the following headline appeared in the Olympian: “DNA tests clear rape suspect.”

David Lynch is innocent. He did not commit the crime. Yet he was declared guilty in the court of public opinion. He was sentenced to several weeks locked in the Olympian stocks and pillory, with his life and home splayed out for the world to see and scorn.

Christ once said, “What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” If David’s story has one lesson to share, it is that we as a society have failed to end the practice of crucifying our Lord.

The problem isn’t that the cops made a mistake, nor is it that the media was out of line. They made the same assumptions that any reasonable person would make. They found a young, disheveled, confused, mentally ill man who lived in a hole very near to the victim’s home. He possessed hunting knives. He mentioned “child hunting” in his journal. He was homeless. Almost anyone would have found him to be suspicious.

The problem that must be faced, however, is that there was no concrete evidence of David’s guilt. In fact, the little girl who was attacked described her attacker as brown skinned, with short dark hair, a pointed goatee and mustache, and wearing glasses. David is pale, with long shoulder length hair and a clean shaven face. He did not fit the victim’s description of the attacker. David was merely mentally ill and in the wrong neighborhood.

So the problem was not that anyone was out of line… The problem is that sometimes being reasonable can have dramatic and harmful consequences. It was normal, reasonable people whose assumptions led them to burn young women to death for the practice of “witchcraft”. It was normal, reasonable people who endorsed and participated in the Jim Crow system. It was normal, reasonable people who crucified Jesus. And today it is normal, reasonable people who believe that the mentally ill and the homeless are a danger to society.

The truth is that reasonable people are a far greater threat to the homeless than the homeless are to society. And because of this, the homeless are vulnerable when they camp alone. They are not safe from us.

This is why Olympia needs a tent city. So that the homeless can be safe. But there is also a greater need that can be met by Camp Quixote… our very desperate need to find the way to a better life.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” The homeless do not have many of the worldly comforts that the rest of us enjoy. But God’s Kingdom isn’t about worldly comforts. It is about what we do and who we are. The residents at Camp Quixote take care of one another. The same cannot be said of the rest of our society. All too often we are driven to complacency by our comforts… while our neighbors suffer. All too often we step over the needs of others as we strive to achieve the “American Dream”. All too often we allow our thirst for power and for security to send us into war.

Maybe if we start paying attention to the poor, if we start noticing the way they share their most basic resources like food and blankets, maybe we just might discover what it means to be “blessed”, or holy. And maybe we’ll think twice before we persecute the next David Lynch.

Living in God's House

2007-02-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Andrew McLeod and published in Vol 1 No 4 of the Canaanite's Call

The Church of the Sojourners is more a community than it is anything that fits most people’s idea of a church. They are 35 people sharing four large houses in the Mission District of San Francisco. It is certainly a congregation, but the level of commitment to each other and to God is far beyond that found among any group of people who each go to church together on the Sundays when it is convenient.

The Sojourners don’t go to church. They live at church.

This is not to say that they don’t do the things that are ordinarily brought to mind with the word “church.” They do have a “gathered worship” service on Sunday evenings, crammed into their largest living room. But even here, they take the extraordinary step of incorporating a shared dinner into the service, and take time to affirm how they see the Holy Spirit moving in each others’ lives.

This is only one of many weekly rituals which occur on almost every day of the week. Other beats in their weekly rhythm include a Bible study and a three-hour “Sabbath silence” on Sunday mornings; Saturday is the only day without a regular event. Church members coordinate vacations, and expect each other to generally show up for meals. Each household functions as a family within their larger family, often starting and finishing each day in prayer together.

This monastic devotion might seem like an atmosphere that would attract puritan fanatics, but the Sojourners listen to U2 while washing dishes and sprinkle their sermons with phrases like “pain in the ass.” Their book collection includes Harry Potter and their dinner conversation includes casual reference to an expected visit from the Tooth Fairy (albeit one in which it was clear to all that this was not a real fairy, but perhaps a housemate dressed up in a tutu). These are clearly just a bunch of regular folks who all are really enthusiastic about Jesus Christ.

They seek to live according to the example in the book of Acts, which describes how the first Christians lived together. “There was no poverty among them, because people who owned land and houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need.” (Acts 4:34-35)

The Sojourners are committed to each other, sharing resources with each other, and providing hospitality to others. While they are not a full-blown commune—each member has his or her own possessions and spending money—they do share cars, and any income earned above a certain level.

Within this group is an inner circle of “covenanted members,” who are those most committed to the community, and who collectively provide its leadership. The depths of this commitment seem to rival that of marriage, and their single members sometimes claim domestic partner status for each other under the liberal laws of San Francisco. Members are free to go, and are encouraged to have personal savings that could be used in the event of a departure. But most stick around. One member wanted to attend the seminary, and submitted this major life decision to the group’s consensus through a process that took months.

The church recently co-hosted a “School for Conversion” with the New Monasticism Project. This movement is a decentralized effort to live by the example of Jesus, and its identity is formed around a dozen “marks.” These are not rigid rules which all must obey—rather, they are some general principles that are generally agreed to be indicative of their collective efforts.

One of the high points of the weekend was the testimony of one of the church’s newer members, who had arrived by way of a long and torturous path. It was a familiar, almost routine story of coming to Christ, complete with years of addiction and failed relationships. However, it lacked a key ingredient of the stereotypical tale of salvation: There was no happily-ever-after moment in which he just gave in to God and got everything miraculously fixed. There was certainly no altar call.

What made the story so compelling to me was that it centered around the humble admission that he had repeatedly failed to turn his life around, and would have probably continued to fail had he not encountered a community of people who were willing to love him even when he betrayed their trust, who invited him to join them after he had lied and stolen. In all likelihood, his story is not over. The struggle still continues, as decades of habit cannot easily be set aside. But hopefully by finding community that shows him love in spite of his flaws, he can loosen the grips of those flaws.

Given the normal evangelical style of working up to a climactic sales-pitch built around a “salvation moment,” (and the loaded name of the event) one might expect that this weekend was geared toward that favorite Christian pastime of saving souls. However, both the preparatory materials and the event itself made clear that the conversion is an ongoing process for all involved. The atmosphere was one of general exploration, and openness to others’ states of faith.

This openness was reflected in the diversity among the Sojourners and the new monastic movement in general (as well as the school attendees): In addition to a large number of evangelicals and Mennonites, there were Catholics and Anglicans and mainline Protestants.
Here were people that supposedly can’t make it through a Sunday morning together, living together in intense round-the-clock fellowship, in a community that has lasted for more than two decades. Doctrinal disagreements do come up, but the focus is kept on the practices. Of course, this leaves certain questions unanswered—for example, who will do the dishes if part of the community gets raptured? But there are more pressing issues to address, like how can they best provide hospitality and love to neighbors in need.

The weekend underlined my uncertainty about what I believe, but also reaffirmed my sense that these people are onto something. If nothing else, Jesus had some really great ideas that—if carried out on a large scale—would make for a much more peaceful and pleasant world. I left with more questions than I had when I arrived, but I do know that the Church of the Sojourners and New Monasticism Project are doing essential work in the ongoing effort to reinvent the Church for the 21st Century.

Love, Love, Love (into Action, Action, Action)

2007-02-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Rachel Winter of the Lane County Catholic Worker: Eugene, OR

Halfway through January, Jesse, Caitie and I rented a car and drove up to Olympia, Washington for “Christianity and Anarchism: Intersecting Perspectives”, convened by the Jesus Radicals and Olympia’s Bread & Roses Catholic Worker. Attendance numbered at fifty or so; we met with teachers, students, peace workers, farmers and people from several Catholic Worker communities.

We spent the day talking – talking homelessness and hospitality; hunger, sustainability and the food industry; immigrants’ and workers’ rights; grassroots organization; consumerism; the history of anarchism in the Christian tradition; the oppression of the Hebrews and Egyptians in the book of Exodus. The topics were broad, yet vital, focusing on the choices that everyday people have made to bring justice, health, and stability to others.

You might well ask what makes these Christian issues, or anarchist issues, and why it’s important for us to explore the ground that’s common to these two sets of commitments. What I observed during our conversations in Olympia was this: first, that Christians and anarchists alike believe in a new world coming, and try to hasten the emergence of that world by living according to its principles; second, that both schools use the grassroots model of transformation. The anarchist organizes from the ground up; Christian transformation happens from the inside out, from the heart that bursts into the world.

Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, envisioned “a world where it is easier for people to be good”; for a Christian, that world begins to arrive when the love of Jesus is awakened in everyday people. Jesus subverted the powers of his day; the social mores that isolated the weak, by keeping company with them; the ambitions of a rich young ruler, by calling him to abandon his wealth; the hypocrisy of the religious teachers, by harvesting grain to feed hungry people on the Sabbath day; the violent act of crucifixion, by submitting to it in love and humility. In the Gospel story we see this pattern: Jesus acts in love, and love disquiets the domination (both material and spiritual) imposed by the powers of the day.

As Catholic Workers we believe in building an alternative order, one which – in love and humility – subverts the aggression and human isolation of the standing powers, be they social mores that separate the rich from the poor; or the cultural acquisitiveness that keeps us shopping for security, identity, diversion; or professional boundaries that keep us from caring about each other; or a government that over-funds the military and under-funds schools and social services; or our fascination with rights and privileges and status that blinds us to ourselves and to each other. But the new order begins with us; each of us has the seed of transformation within us, and we all need to be more loving.

As a community volunteering a safe, stable, vibrant home for women and children in need, we all are living out the call of Jesus: to love each other, to let go of our wealth, to be humbled and healed and made more loving in the process.

Our time in Olympia helped me to see it; the kingdom of God is already here. We’ve given birth to it, in our labors together.

Broken Fences

2007-02-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

Submitted by David Bellefuille-Rice and published in Vol 1 No 3 of the Canaanite's Call.

My wife, two young children, and I live in a poorer neighborhood of a small, prosperous city. Our often pleasant neighborhood shelters and interesting mix. Many neighbors, apparently stable economically and socially, live so quietly (too quietly) that we rarely see them. Others, recent immigrants or students or young workers, seem on the way to such stability. Still others, for whatever reason, must struggle to keep from sliding “lower”, into jail, mental institutions, or sleeping in their cars.

Perhaps feelings run hotter in neighborhoods like ours. Maybe the socializing forces grow weak here, too weak to keep occasional junk cars out of front yards or to completely hide abuse, drunkenness, and blaring music that stayed hidden in the wealthier neighborhood where I grew up. I know people are as good here as they were on my childhood street, but knowing this doesn’t calm me much when trouble hits. When neighbors spill their trash into my front yard and their obscenities into my open window, I hate it. Any love I bear for them then is strictly deliberate, done with teeth clenched.

Specifics: Our landlords/partners bought our lot, long vacant and overgrown, two years ago. It was a flood of grace. Together, we had moved to the lot our brave old house, given away by its owners to make way for a parking lot. Our immediate neighbor, an old woman still shaky from her husband’s death years before, received us kindly as we labored for months to make our new home habitable.

Living with our neighbor were the costars of this tale – her grandson John, John’s wife Mary, and their two small children. John and Mary based their firewood cutting business in the yard and slept in a small trailer parked on our mutual property line. They later started sleeping in a different, unheated trailer on their land outside town, but our neighbor’s house and yard remained their workyard and daytime home.

Long before our coming, John and Mary had spread woodcutting equipment and old car parts across what would become our lot. Our arrival forced them to move it all, but they did so cheerfully enough. John later offered to haul lumber for me in his truck when he saw me trying to carry some on by bicycle.

John and Mary did continue their habits of yelling streams of obscenities at each other and their children, keeping barking dogs, and racing old truck motors and chainsaws at early hours. We cringed through days of this but worked to admire their industriousness. We sometimes prayed in fear even as we said hello over the hedge. My wife marveled at how one four-letter word beginning with an “F” could be used so often, expressing both anger and joy.

War began 18 months ago when one of John and Mary’s unconfined dogs, unprovoked, bit my six-year-old daughter. Another neighbor happened to see this and immediately called the pound, which took the dog. The dog catcher said the dog had bitten several other children and would be killed. Seeing this as necessary but still feeling awkward about it, we went later that day to Mary, saying we were sorry she had to lose her dog.

Mary shocked us. Bitterly, she blamed our daughter for getting bitten. We contradicted her. She complained that the neighbors should settle grievances personally instead of calling the cops. John and Mary began ignoring all but our most determined greetings when we happened to see them.

John and Mary saved that dog. They struck a deal with the pound and the court, agreeing to keep the dog confined on their property outside town. Reflecting, I decided Mary had a good point about neighbors settling grievances face to face and resolved to do that in the future. In this spirit, I challenged John one day when I found the dog back in town and running loose. We saw little of the dog for months after that. Our relations improved slightly.

Then relations nosedived. John and Mary had left some firewood trailers on our side of the mutual property line. John said that he’d move them when we need him to, and we gave him six months. During that six months, we learned from our neighbor, John’s grandmother, that our mutual boundary line was several feet closer to her house than we all had thought. John would have to move his trailers even farther into his already crowded work area. We fretted.

Well, after the six month deadline, John and Mary had moved nothing and demanded we survey the property line. John’s grandmother couldn’t cope. We began to work with her grown children, reasonable people, including John’s father. We got along fine with them, agreeing on the exact boundary location and getting their permission to move the trailers ourselves four feet to their side of the line. We picked them up and moved them.

John and Mary, discovering this, appeared at our door shouting and making veiled threats. I shouted back, my heart pounding. Afterwards, I called John’s aunt, who said she would calm them down. Weeks passed.

Yesterday, the latest chapter opened when I spotted that same biting dog roaming unattended near our unfenced yard. My wife had said she had seen the dog a few times before, but fleeing confrontation and fearing John, I had ignored her. Having seen the dog with my own eyes, though, I felt I had to act.

This past evening, knowing that John and Mary sat inside our neighbor’s house, I stood alone in my dark yard for half an hour, rehearsing over and over what to go and say to them. I coached myself to speak plainly but without arguments or threats. Fear and contempt burrowed into me. I prayed, just a bit, and tried to steel myself to go knock on that door.

Abruptly, I realized that John and Mary had left the house and were getting into their car to leave for the night. Another day’s wait would prolong this agony. I made myself approach. I said I needed them to live by their agreement and keep the dog away.

Instantly shouting, they said they were tired of my butting into their lives. If I spoke up again, John said he would beat me up. If John didn’t beat me up, Mary said she would. Remembering something I’d heard about nonviolence, I said they could go ahead and do that but I still needed them to live up to their agreement.

John stormed out of their car, stomped over to me, and spit words in my face. “I told you to get that property line surveyed, boy!” I made no move to fight, defend against a blow, or run. After a long moment, he returned to the car.

Then I drew my line in the sand. A mistake? I still don’t know. If I saw the dog again, I said I would call the pound. Mary said the pound supervisor doesn’t like me and would ignore me. They drove off. I went home shaking, but I also felt a strange euphoria, and I stayed that way well into this night.

Mary and John must have returned later for some reason. About midnight, I heard Mary yelling from a departing car, “You treat me like a piece of crap!” At first I thought she was yelling at me, but soon I realized she had more than one person to rage at in this world.

I have prayed, with some calm resulting but no answers. I have resolved to pray blessings for John and Mary regularly. In the morning, I will call our county’s dispute resolution center for advice. I hop to avoid getting a broken jaw.

Since the confrontation, I’ve felt intensely alive, which reminds me of what some have said about men’s feeling most alive while at war. I thought I had handled things very well until I began questioning my threat to call the pound. My hate for John and Mary had eased, as if what I had really hated was my own sense of helplessness. Fear had boiled over and drained away, mostly, leaving a small stock of courage.

I feel prepared to act again if needed. Will that readiness, freedom from hate, and courage remain, though, when this battle blows over and, without warning, a new threat looms? Probably not. Faced with conflict, I aspire to act without violence; I also aspire to win. Most of all, I want to be left alone.

People in Palestine, parts of some inner cities, abusive families, and too many other battle zones live with brutal histories stretching back generations. Our small experience, that has hit us so hard, pales before it. What violence those histories must do to their hearts! Closed minds and bitter revenge in such places seem tragically logical. Standing there for universal compassion and justice, without violence, must take huge courage and incomprehensible grace.

As for the future of my neighborly conflict, there is no telling.

David Bellefuille-Rice is a member of St. Michael's Parish and is now a trained mediator for the Dispute Resolution Center. This article was written about twenty years ago.

Dignity Costs No Money

2007-02-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

(Posted on Olyblog on Feb 7^th)

The City continued its justifications for turning its back on the poor at the Council meeting last night. Mayor Foutch talked at length about the growth in services in the last twenty years. Laura Ware talked about the City's offer to allocate $200,000 to services this year. The City Manager talked about his notion that homelessness is a regional and national issue, and that the tent city had picked the wrong target.

Let's get a few things straight:

1. Tent city residents are not asking for money for new services. In fact, the City is clearly not connecting the dots between the $200,000 it has offered for services and the fact that Tent City residents ARE asking for a service review committee to ensure that service agencies treat their clients with basic dignity and respect.

2. Tent city residents are not asking the city to fund new housing projects. They ARE asking for the opportunity to be self-reliant as a community... an opportunity that will not be found in government funded housing projects.

3. Tent city residents are not asking the city to lobby the Federal or State governments for relief. They ARE demanding to be included in our community, to be visible, and to have the right to exist.

Laura Ware particularly failed to understand the nature of the conflict in our city. She claimed that the opposition to the new sidewalk law and the request for a permanent location are two separate issues.

Yet they truly are one and the same. Tent city residents are demanding the opportunity to exist in peace, to have at least a few spare moments in the day when their lives are not subject to the whims and prejudices of the social service system and the police. Until recently, the sidewalks served as THE ONLY place where that was possible. Now that this opportunity has been taken away, the tent city residents are taking direct action to uphold their basic right to dignity.

Residents of the tent city will likely be arrested today for refusing to disperse. Please come downtown to offer them your support and your witness.

Open Letter to Olympia City Council and Staff

2007-02-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Mayor, Council, and City Staff:

I do not often write to the City on issues of concern to me. I know that you all are very busy people, and besides that I’ve got enough opinions to fill a library. I must, however, take a moment to share my concern and disappointment regarding your reactions to the new tent city, “Camp Quixote”.

Several months ago the homeless people of Olympia began gathering together for community discussions. They talked about their concerns and fears regarding the decreasing availability of public space for their use and the increasing hostility they were experiencing from the daily Olympian, the police, the City, and the general public. They were particularly concerned about the proposed sidewalk ordinance and the impact it would have on their community.

In the course of their discussions, the homeless community resolved to undertake a campaign of nonviolent direct action in the tradition of the various civil rights movements of the last 50 years. This was a very serious decision and was not entered into lightly. Please allow me to explain.

Classism is as real, as pervasive, and as hurtful as racism and homophobia. For ages, the homeless have endured such pejoratives as “bum”, “transient”, and “vagrant”. They have been beset from all directions with the opinions that they are lazy, criminal, violent, dangerous, irresponsible, and incapable.

The homeless have been outlawed in almost every city in the nation, by means of “quality of life” laws banning sleeping, sitting, loitering, urinating, panhandling, and carrying blankets. The supporters of the homeless have been attacked with laws criminalizing the public feeding of the homeless. The homeless have been exploited by payday loan companies and day labor outfits that charge for transportation, safety equipment, and check cashing so that the pay often falls below minimum wage.

Our social service system also contributes to this persecution. The homeless often find that when they do as they are encouraged and go in for services, they are maltreated by hostile, belligerent, and condescending social workers. Service administrators encourage the maltreatment of the homeless through stereotype driven policies that create barriers to services. The disabled must work full time at proving that they are incapable of doing so. Working families are forced to attend humiliating classes for “job preparation” in which they are instructed on how to dress for job interviews. Access to higher education, which is the most effective ticket out of poverty, is barred to the poor by the same welfare program (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) that claims to move people from dependence to independence. The mental health system often punishes or refuses to serve people due to behavioral problems related to their untreated or under-treated mental illnesses.

Hate crimes against the homeless are not uncommon. The National Coalition for the Homeless documented 84 violent hate crimes against the homeless in 2005 alone. The homeless have been stabbed, beaten, set on fire, raped, poisoned, and run over with automobiles. Several years ago, while working as an EMT, I responded to a call for a homeless man who was viciously and repeatedly stabbed by a pack of teenagers, right here in Olympia.

It is not difficult to observe the mentality that drives the persecution of the homeless. Commentators on the Olympian’s website, encouraged by the newspaper’s slanderous editorials, have made such statements as the following:

These people are a disease.

These bums do not fit any characteristic of "civilized”.

More than half the time, these people sit in front of you & have their pity party hoping you'll believe their performance worthy of an Academy Award. They lie, they cheat & they steal and want you to feel sorry for them while they're doing it.

Poor People's Union... AKA: PPU... PPEEEEEE UUUUUUU sums it up pretty well I'm sure!

Start arresting the turd balls!!!

Drug addicts, alcoholics and general scum of the earth breaking more laws to suit themselves regardless of what the majoirty of society votes for. Hey loosers.....get a job, be responsible for your actions, have some self respect, pay for your own way in life and then maybe you won't have so much to complain about.

I passed at least half a dozen of these "waste of human life" begging me for my hard earned money… These worthless souls have chosen to be lazy and a drain on society. I could care less if they freeze to death.

WE DON'T WANT THE HOMELESS/PANHANDLERS IN OLYMPIA. WE WANT OUR TOWN BACK. Take your little pity party & move on.

The solution is simple. The City Council should buy them all bus tickets to Hanford where they can all become radioactive. When they try to come back to Olympia they can all be denied entry because the city is, as everyone knows, a nuclear free zone!

Just give downtown to the sodomites and bums. Oh, wait a minute. They've had it for years.

I wouldn't allow those dirty pigs near my dogs.

There is only one way to deal with these people, run them out of town, period!

If you wonder why the homeless community has resorted to such a drastic measure as direct action, please observe that the passage of the sidewalk ordinance is understood by the street community in the context of everything I have written here. It was the proverbial straw on the camel’s back.

The City Manager was quoted in the Olympian as saying, "It seems like a terrible way to start a conversation with the city about more help with the homeless… It seems like a poke in the eye."

You must understand, however, that this is not the beginning of the conversation. The homeless poured their hearts out to you at the public hearing last fall. But you did not hear them.

You might point to the new Drexel House, and to your offer of $200,000 towards services, and say that you have done so much for the homeless already. Yet you must understand that they are not asking for money, but rather for dignity. And it is likely that they will not find it in the services that this money will fund.

The Poor People’s Union has indeed followed all of the appropriate steps for a non-violent campaign. They attempted dialogue. They discerned, contemplated, planned and prepared. And now, as they have been squeezed out of the parks and libraries, and even off the sidewalks, they are taking direct action to meet their needs.

The pages of history are filled with such stories of the struggles for liberation. We find in the death of Socrates, the Exodus from Egypt, the persecution of Christ and His followers, the labor movement, Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement, the women’s liberation movement, the black civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement the same narrative repeated over and over again. It is the narrative of a people, robbed of their dignity and treated as sub-human, who show the courage to take a stand in service of a vision of a world built on fellowship and love.

People in positions of power play an important role in this narrative. We have, on the one hand, Pharaoh, Herod, and Bull Connor. On the other hand are Jethro, Joseph of Arimathea, and Lyndon Johnson.

It is my understanding that you have resolved not to negotiate with the Poor People’s Union. Please reconsider. Please ask yourself: “Which role will I choose to play in the story of liberation?”

I know you can do the right thing.

The Poor People’s Union has three very basic requests:

1. A safe and permanent site to live while in transition following the model set by Dignity Village in Portland.

2. A “service review board” comprised of service recipients to ensure that people are receiving services that respect their dignity and humanity.

3. Representation at the city level regarding matters that affect poor and houseless members of the community. (Please note that this is different from your willingness to listen to advocates. The street community wants you to be willing to enter into dialogue directly with them.)

Please honor their requests.

Tent City springs up in downtown Olympia

2007-02-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

Please show them your support! Take food, socks, tents, blankets, etc to the empty lot on State and Columbia.

SOUTH AFRICA: Ndungane calls for 'united front' as Primates Meeting approaches

2007-02-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

From the Episcopal News Service:

The Anglican Archbishop of Southern Africa, the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, has responded to a recent threat made by some African Primates who say that they will not attend the forthcoming Primates Meeting in Tanzania in February because of the presence of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of the Anglican Church of Uganda said in a December pastoral letter to his church that he and other Global South Primates had informed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, that they "cannot sit together with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at the upcoming Primates Meeting in February," citing her position on the Bible's teachings about "faith and morality."

In a January 11 statement, Ndungane decried the reports of a boycott "because of the presence of a woman, who has been legitimately elected by the church in her country," saying it "is like fiddling while Rome burns."

Most importantly, he added, "it goes against God's fundamental call for unity and reconciliation."

"I hope it is not the case that Bishop Jefferts Schori's presence is objectionable to some because she is a woman," he said. "Women have always been the backbone of Africa and, as an African, I am honored to welcome her to our great continent."

Jefferts Schori will be the first woman ever to sit among the leaders, or Primates, of the Anglican Communion when they next convene in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, but in his pastoral letter Orombi insisted that his "problem" with the Episcopal Church is "not that they have enthroned a woman as their Presiding Bishop."

In his statement, Ndungane noted that "Africa is on fire with conflict in places like Darfur and Somalia" and cited the "life and death struggle against HIV and AIDS, malaria, famine and unimaginable poverty, all of which are creating a continent of orphans."

"There is also climate change which threatens to bring untold devastation to our continent," he added. "What we need is a united front to bring the needs of the people of Africa to center stage at every international forum."

Archbishop Tutu likens gays' treatment to apartheid

2007-02-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

From the Episcopal News Service:

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has warned African churches against paying too much attention to the issue of homosexuality while ignoring real problems facing the continent.
"I am deeply, deeply distressed that in the face of the most horrendous problems -- we've got poverty, we've got conflict and war, we've got HIV/AIDS -- and what do we concentrate on? We concentrate on what you are doing in bed," Tutu told journalists in Nairobi during the World Social Forum.

During the January 20-25 WSF, homosexuals and their supporters took many Kenyans by surprise when they marched through Nairobi's streets clad in black T-shirts inscribed: "We are here, we are queer and we are proud."

Tutu likened discrimination against homosexuals to that faced by black people under South Africa's racist apartheid policies.

"To penalise someone because of their sexual orientation is like what used to happen to us; to be penalised for something which we could do nothing [about] -- our ethnicity, our race," said Tutu. "I would find it quite unacceptable to condemn, persecute a minority that has already been persecuted."

There are no words that could adequately express my admiration for this man.

Why I am an Anarchist.

2007-01-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

Christian anarchism is, in my view, deeply rooted in the kind of pacifism taught in the Sermon on the Mount. The need to dominate, to control, and to force is inherent to human nature, and yet it is also at odds with the Gospels which instruct us to be poor, gentle, and humble.

This may seem different from what many people hear about the Christian religion. We are all familiar with the present day religious celebrities, with the hateful rhetoric on homosexuality and on abortion, with "End of Days" or "Left Behind" talk, and with the call to arms against our Muslim brothers and sisters. These things are profoundly at odds with the Gospel message.

The Gospel preaches the "Kingdom of God", a potential world, in which all people submit to God's law: "That you love one another as I have loved you." (John 15) The Kingdom is a world in which every person makes of themselves a servant unto every other person. This commitment cannot be forced; it must be entered into voluntarily. And so I am an anarchist precisely because I am a Christian.

"All the believers were of one heart and mind, and they felt that what they owned was not their own; they shared everything they had... There was no poverty among them, because people who owned land or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need." -Acts 4:32-35

Anarchy for the Common Person

2006-12-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

I got off the bus and hitchhiked from Yelm out to the Bald Hills the other day to pick up the car I had left at my parents’ house (I usually drive a '71 Ford Country Squire that I inherited from my grandmother and donated to Bread & Roses). It had been far too long since I’ve hitchhiked anywhere, or really since I’ve done anything to remind myself of my utter dependence on my community.

I only waited for about two minutes before a fellow driving a big pickup truck stopped to offer a ride. He was only going about four miles up the road, but he went out of his way to drive me the whole fifteen miles to the Bald Hills.

We talked a bit on the way about the big windstorm that had come through and knocked out the power across western Washington, about how the developers had really done Yelm in, and about Bread & Roses. The driver worked for Intercity Transit as a bus driver, and knew a lot of the folks we serve. He said, “It’s a good thing that you people are doing, helping all the homeless folks rather than waiting for the government to do it.”

It is good to hear people like him talk like anarchists.

"Holy Eucharist" -Catholic Worker Style

2006-12-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

People often come by the Bread & Roses house with food donations. As they drop their beautiful gifts into my hands, they frequently thank me for my “hard work feeding all the hungry people.”

Aside from the fact that the thanking ought to go the other direction (I live on the same charity as our guests), I regularly find myself inviting the donors to stay and eat. The invitation is awkward, with an exchange of funny looks and the unspoken question, “But why am I invited if I don’t need food?”

No one starves in Olympia. If someone does, they probably need some kind of help other than food (like someone to guide them to the local soup kitchen), because there is an extraordinary amount of food here. This is one of the reasons why Bread & Roses no longer operates a soup kitchen.

Yet we still need gifts of food at our home, but not to feed our bellies. We need food because we do something special here at B&R: we eat together. Worker and guest, donor and recipient join together at the table in a spirit of fellowship, violating the social and economic norms that separate the rich from the poor.

It has often been noted that the poor in America live better than the middle class in developing countries. Yet Mahatma Gandhi and Blessed Theresa of Calcutta, looking westward, both found that we have our own unique kind of poverty, a kind of poverty that may even be more horrible than that found in India. The name of our poverty is “loneliness”.

Poverty itself is primarily a social phenomenon in western society. I have very little, yet few would identify me as a “poor person”. Why? What separates me from the huddled masses?

I have a good education, they say. But so do many of the homeless. Well, maybe it’s that I haven’t always been poor, I was once middle class. But the same is true of many of the guests in our women’s shelter. Could it be that I chose my poverty, as opposed to the many who did not? It is certainly true that I chose to be poor, but if this is what separates me from the poor then why are they reviled and I am not? Monks and nuns are praised and respected for choosing poverty, but the word “choice” is hurled at the poor as an insult.

The poor are defined more truly by their relationship to the rest of society than by their economic status. And the relationship that defines the poor and the homeless is one of alienation, isolation, and marginalization. I am not poor because I am not alienated from society. But many are.

As a community member at Bread & Roses, I see a lot of the people who are hit with the stereotype of the homeless “transient”. They are the end-stage drug addicts, the schizophrenics who frighten many people, the folks with the fine tuned survival skills that drive them to root through trash and to hold cardboard signs at street corners.

There are a lot of people, in fact I think this is true of most people, who do not see beyond the surface... beyond what can be noticed about a person with a momentary glance. They see someone dumpster diving. They see someone in poor health holding a sign asking for money. They see someone yelling obscenities at no one in particular or muttering paranoid delusions to themselves.

And, since they do not create the opportunities for themselves to get to know the homeless, they might never discover that the fellow in the dumpster has a college education, or that the person panhandling on the corner loves Dizzy Gillespie, or that the shirtless person muttering obscenities isn’t wearing a shirt because he gave it to someone who needed it more than he.

We have invited a whole lot of the homeless to come and stay with us, not just in our shelters, but actually in our home. Many of them have moved on to their own apartments or to adult family homes. Many of them went back on the spiral and are on the streets, in jail, or at Western State. Many of them cycle back and forth, making a little more progress each time they stay with us.

For people who are really ill, the process of healing takes a very long time. And this time can be very difficult. But they are our responsibility, because they are with us for better or for worse. We can have them in our community as a drain on our jails, hospitals, and public resources, rejected by society and left to live out their illnesses alone, or we can have them in our community as neighbors that we support and nurture back to health. Either way the poor are with us, and their lives affect ours. The choice of how to deal with that fact is ours to make.

We often think it easier to dismiss them as pariahs… as such the homeless become less visible, less necessarily a part of our lives. But this comes with its own cost, which we are seeing both in our decaying downtown as well as in our overcrowded jails. If we take them as neighbors, our lives suddenly seem to become much more difficult. It can take months to work through the system far enough to acquire medications for a mentally ill person, and I have spent countless nights staying up entirely too late dealing with the paranoid tantrums of a person in need of medications. Likewise I have spent too much time holding the hands of someone withdrawing from drug addiction.

But I am also aware that I am only one person, that there are some 40,000 people in Olympia, and that only some 700 are homeless. If it wasn’t just one household (Bread & Roses), but one hundred households, we could make a significant change in our community. In reality, the personal resources of 1.75% of the population of Olympia could house ALL of the homeless in Olympia, with little strain on our public resources.

This requires our personal commitment, which is far more difficult than just paying taxes and cutting the occasional check to Bread & Roses. But the truth is that a personal commitment carries a value that no amount of money can account for. The homeless are, for the most part, aware of the amount of money that is spent on them. They are aware that this amount of money could probably build them each their own personal Taj Mahal. This money is insufficient, because most of the homeless are also aware that most people would prefer to throw money at them (via services or via prisons) than to sit down for a cup of coffee with them.

While services are vital, it takes something far greater than social services to end homelessness. It takes a willingness to risk on our part. The homeless will be with us so long as we are willing to exclude them from our lives. But if we take a risk, make ourselves vulnerable, we just might make an impact.

This is why we eat together at Bread & Roses. There is something special about table fellowship. We find it ritualized in the Holy Eucharist, when Christians gather to take Communion together. Shared food brings us closer together. It makes us one community, one Body, and it heals the wounds inflicted by the class system.

So please continue to bring us your gifts of food. The small gifts you bring are used to mend souls and to restore personalities. But please know also that you have a much bigger gift to offer than food: yourself.

We have a weekly open potluck dinner at the Bread & Roses house. It is on Friday nights at 6:00 PM. (Our address is 1320 8th Ave SE near downtown Olympia.) Please join us for dinner!

Time to Dig Trenches

2006-11-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

The sidewalk ordinance passed. Albeit with some alterations...

Beginning in February, it will be illegal to sit, lie down, or panhandle within 6 feet of the edge of a building downtown. This law, however, will only be in effect between 7 AM and 10 PM, allowing the homeless to seek shelter under the awnings at night. People will also be allowed to obtain permits for busking within the 6 foot zone.

So the law isn't as bad as it could have been. It doesn't ban necessary survival functions for the homeless. But that doesn't make it good.

My good friend and fellow Bread & Roses community member, Rob, offered this explaination of what makes the new law bad:

The city is STILL taking the sidewalk away, and telling homeless people that they can rent parts of it if they can play an instrument, and that they can use it after all the normal people are tucked away in their beds. That's telling someone they can't be a part of the community if they don't have something to offer. That's wrong.

The law is still segregationist. It still limits the poor, who as a class are defined by social marginalization, from participation in community.

We need to stop this law from going into effect. There are a number of organizers who are now looking into the possibility of dragging the new law through the referendum process. We'll be looking at opportunities for litigation.

Mostly, though, we've got to work even harder at empowering and enfranchising the homeless.

For more information on anti-homeless laws around the nation, visit the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The Problem with Social Services

2006-11-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

In July of 2001, I started volunteering regularly at the Bread & Roses soup kitchen. I loved the pace of work in the kitchen. The mass quantities of food and dishes required us to work briskly, but there were always good conversations and smiles as we worked. Most of the faith communities in the area took rotations for meals, so that on Monday there might be a Buddhist group cooking, and on Tuesday a Catholic team. The guests always helped with the dishes.

The staff of Bread & Roses lived together at the house on 8^th Ave. The staff was made up of a handful of young people who offered one year commitments through Brethren Volunteer Services, Selena, a middle aged woman who had left the Carmelite order for the Catholic Worker, and a handful of people who had moved from homelessness to volunteer positions with Bread & Roses.

The “administrator” for Bread & Roses was one of the latter, an impassioned man named Gordy Ebner. Gordy was an odd looking fellow with a long face and thin grey hair pulled back in a pony tail that reached the middle of his back. He wore a long beard and his hooked nose supported a pair of wire framed spectacles. Gordy could be picked out of a crowd by the ridiculous “M.C. Hammer” pants he wore, usually decorated by florescent green geckos or tie-die. Gordy could speak eloquently about our obligations to fight poverty and injustice. He had a powerful charisma that was, no doubt, what landed him in the position of Bread & Roses’ leader. Many of the guests followed Gordy like ducklings lining up behind their mother.

Unfortunately, Gordy was also terribly irresponsible as an administrator. He was abrasive toward those who disagreed with him. He mismanaged Bread & Roses’ funds horribly. His burning desire to help all of the poor exceeded his judgment, and he committed Bread & Roses to projects it was incapable of operating. Many of the guests that he brought on staff were active, violent addicts.

The atmosphere at the soup kitchen reflected Gordy’s influence. It had a definite charm about it, and there was a strong sense of community. Everyone knew each other. It was also deeply marked by illness and depravity. Drug dealing was rampant. Fights were frequent. Ambulances had to be called regularly, and the cops circled the block like vultures scoping out their prey. The cops even wandered through the kitchen, uninvited, from time to time. They wouldn’t speak with anyone, not even the staff who approached them, but just walked around, staring people down.

The atmosphere at the soup kitchen was the inevitable result of providing a very large scale service in a non-authoritarian atmosphere. The large scale of the work required a kind of factory style, impersonal feeding system. Guests formed a line one hundred people deep for a plate of food served across a counter. There was usually only two staff on duty to keep the peace. The volunteers and staff were good hearted, kind people who genuinely cared about the people they were serving.

Unfortunately, caring isn’t enough. The care one feels for another must be communicated for it to make an impact, and it stretches from difficult to impossible to shower authentic compassion on one hundred people at once. The hardships of street life and the hurts of the guests overwhelmed the abilities of the staff, so that the culture of the soup kitchen community became ill.

Many social service agencies would respond to this illness with a set of hard-nosed rules in an attempt to maintain the law and order necessary for effective provision of services. The staff of Bread & Roses, however, had too much heart to degrade the guests with such authoritarian measures. I don’t think it was well understood yet, though, that the factory style, large scale system of the kitchen had undermined the personalist approach of Bread & Roses and degraded the guests in just the way that the staff were attempting to avoid.

It’s too bad, really. It is hard to describe how ambivalent I felt about the old kitchen. On the one hand, the acceptance and openness of the staff to anyone in need was the closest thing to real social justice I had ever seen. I also loved the guests, and delighted in the joys of their community. But the attempt by Bread & Roses to serve beyond its own capacity was taking a toll.

Many of the social services across the country are operated in this way. The overwhelming need for food, shelter, clothing, and health care pushes the people who care to attempt almost heroic feats of charity, to shoulder an unrealistic burden that ought to be spread out across a broader portion of the population. The failure of these heroic attempts to make any real change has become a target of those who hate the poor. The culture at our soup kitchen was the kind of thing that conservatives could point at as the licentiousness caused by liberal, bleeding heart, do-gooderism. And the business community of Olympia did just that.

First Day at Bread & Roses

2006-11-24T13:27:00.000-08:00

I had an urge one day in mid-July of 2001 to walk down to the local soup kitchen and offer a hand. It was hot outside, not quite sweltering, but the midsummer Puget Sound kind of hot that brings out the life in things. I invited a roommate, Jesse, to walk downtown with me, and strolled out the door.

I had never been inside of Bread & Roses. I ran a few 9-1-1 calls there when I was working for the ambulance company, but we always did our work there on the sidewalk outside. It struck me as a run-down kind of place, with lifeless grey concrete walls and big tinted windows. There were no signs on the outside, nothing to identify the purpose of the building but the milling crowds of the poor smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk.

When Jesse and I first stepped through the door, we were confronted with a writhing sea of people. A little girl squealed as her brother chased her down an aisle. A tall, thin black man wearing a beret, a corduroy vest, and a badge emblazoned “sheriff” stood squarely off against the flatware tray, yelling obscenities and threats at the silverware. A line of hungry people stood behind him rolling their eyes and urging him to move along.

There were about 25 or 30 tables in the room, with four or five seats per table. Beyond the dining room, at the back of the building, a long counter cut the room. There were heaping trays of food along the counter, and a number of little old church women wearing white aprons and food handler’s gloves stood behind it armed with serving spoons and cutting knives.

I walked to the back to help serve the food. The line moved quickly and it was very busy for about 20 minutes, and then things began to slow down. A kindly looking middle aged fellow with glasses and a knitted wool sweater approached me, and introduced himself. His name was Phil Tenkhoff. He encouraged me to take a plate of food and to go sit and eat among the guests. I was surprised and delighted at this suggestion and I took him up on it.

I have always been shy around people I don’t know, particularly in crowds. In the last couple years I have gotten much better at being outgoing, but I still often find my tongue to be confounded when I’m in unusual settings. I sat silently, uncomfortably, and ate my food, then scurried back to the kitchen to help wash dishes and escape my discomfort.

I set up in front of a dual utility sink where the dishes were being washed and rinsed by a Hispanic man in his 30’s, and he made room for me to offer a hand. He sang a bit in Spanish as we worked, and then began trying to tell me some jokes. He spoke no English, however, and I spoke no Spanish, but I could tell that the jokes were good, dirty ones gauging from his hand gestures.

As the cleaning was wrapping up and Jesse and I were wiping down tables, a wise, stern looking middle aged woman with salt and pepper hair wearing an apron walked up to us. She tilted her head back a little and sized us up through the bottoms of her spectacles.

“Do you need your paperwork signed?” She asked.

“Paperwork?”

“Yes. You’re doing community service, right?”

I was dumbfounded for a moment. “Well, I suppose we are… is there some kind of paperwork we need to do to volunteer here?”

A light turned on in her eyes, and she grinned for a moment. “Oh, well, you’re just doing this out of the goodness of your hearts! God bless you! I thought you must have had court orders.”

I blushed a little when I realized that most people my age don’t volunteer much in soup kitchens… unless ordered by a court to atone for a crime. The funny thing is that a couple of years later, when I was coordinating the Bread & Roses Advocacy Center, I was court ordered to do community service for an act of civil disobedience. This woman, Selena, ended up getting to sign my papers after all.

In Memoriam - Brooks

2006-11-22T19:28:00.000-08:00

Another of our guests at Bread & Roses died this week. His name was Brooks. I only met him a few times, but he seemed like a nice fellow. We'll be holding a memorial service for him this Monday at the Advocacy Center at 1:00.

Scrooge!

2006-11-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

This is beautiful... really just perfect. Meta got a postcard advertisement from the Capital Playhouse today: Jeff Kingsbury is SCROOGE, The Musical.

That's right people, believe it. Even as he uses his city council position to hurt homeless people, Jeff Kingsbury plays Scrooge onstage at his job. I wonder if he finds any irony in this?

The play will be showing Nov 30th @7:30PM, Dec 1,6,7,8,13-15 @7:30PM, Dec 2,9,16,20,&21@2:00 &amp;amp; 7:30PM, Dec 3 & 10 @2:00PM and 7:00PM.

I'm thinking of a picket... can you guess the time?

Highlander's "The Young and the Restless" Campaign

2006-11-17T11:16:00.000-08:00

The Highlander Research and Education Center has been working with youth for a number of years through "The Young and the Restless" program.

From their website: "The founding principle and guiding philosophy of Highlander is that the answers to the problems facing society lie in the experiences of ordinary people. Those experiences, so often belittled and denigrated in our society, are the keys to grassroots power.

"Highlander serves Appalachia and the South with programs designed to build strong and successful social-change activism and community organizing led by the people who suffer most from the injustices of society."

Founded by Miles Horton, the Highlander has had the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Woody Guthrie as students. The Highlander's programs were the engine behind the CIO union sweep of the South, particularly in the coal mines, as well as for the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s.

Of course, if you want to see popular education at work with youth, you don't have to go all they way to the South. Just check out Partners in Prevention Education right here in Olympia.

Stop Olympia Anti-Homeless Ordinances!

2006-11-16T20:06:00.000-08:00

The Olympia City Council is considering new laws that will effectively criminalize homelessness. Included among the new laws is an ordinance that will create a 6 foot buffer zone from buildings in which it will be illegal to sit on the sidewalk. This will push the homeless out from under the awnings and into the gutter, effectively criminalizing their presence in public.

Tell the City Council to stop hurting the poor! Contact the council at citycouncil@ci.olympia.wa.us or come to the public hearing on Nov 21st at City Hall: 800 Plum Street SE.

Responsibility and Nonviolence

2006-07-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

The first bombs began falling on Iraq three days after Rachel died. Will was still in Rafah, in harm’s way. We assumed that the Israeli government would use the conflict in Iraq as a smokescreen to intensify their incursions into Gaza, and to kill more internationals. We were correct.

Emotions were running high for local activists, my self included. I hastily joined an affinity group with a handful of other peace activists, and we began planning an action. I can remember feeling desperate to make some kind, any kind, of difference. The urgent need to stop the war pressed down on us, and we rushed our decision making process.

We decided to target the state legislature. We wanted them to issue a statement condemning the war, and to divest from the military industry (to effectively boycott Boeing, Microsoft, Caterpillar, etc.). We did not use the common channels. We didn’t contact our representatives, write a proposal, or try to find a legislator to introduce a bill. Instead, we sat down in front of the doors as the Senate was about to go into session, locked our necks together with bicycle “U” locks, and issued a terse, one page statement for the press.

There was a rally of about 80 to 100 activists there to support us. There were about a dozen journalists present, representing newsprint, radio stations, and television. There was a small army of State Patrol officers, who marched up in step with one another, forming a wall around us. The rally participants danced, played games, and taunted the police.

The atmosphere was dramatic, and we were certainly getting a lot of attention. At one point, a great big State Patrol officer (Sgt. Dahl, I believe), took a water bottle from one of my fellow affinity group members. She struggle with him for a moment over the bottle, before the top of the bottle popped off, spraying water all over. The press rushed in with their cameras, capturing this dramatic little moment for posterity. Immediately a cry went out among the crowd, and they began yelling and chanting slogans about “human rights”. Some of the other members of the affinity group chanted with them, and protested the officer’s actions. All for a water bottle.

In the end, the police cut our “U” locks and arrested us. I tried to shift the tone of the event a little by openly, loudly, and cheerfully thanking and praising the officer who arrested me.

I don’t regret participating in civil disobedience. But in hindsight, there is a lot that I would have done differently. We didn’t follow the standard nonviolent (read: mature) model for dialogue, negotiation, contemplation, self-criticism, and action. We rushed in prematurely. Even our choice to target the state government is pretty hard to justify. And, as the event unfolded, our lack of circumspection became evident through our behavior.

I see a lot of similar problems running through our local peace movement. There are a lot of unnecessary confrontations with the police. There is a lot of unnecessary attention seeking behavior. There is a lot of unnecessary and counterproductive defiance, agitation, and inappropriate behavior. And when the police react to this behavior, there is a lot of complaining.

The recent protest at the Port of Olympia serves as a good example. Activists were chanting, “Port of Olympia… tear it down!” They shook the fence ferociously, broke through the fence, resisted arrest, and then got angry that the police used pepper spray.

Some of the behaviors at the Unity in the Community festival last Monday also offer a good example. The gathering, which took place in Sylvester Park, was organized in response to a neo-Nazi rally to be held on the steps of the Capitol building the next day.

The festival was a lot of fun. There were speakers from a variety of social justice organizations and faith communities, as well as belly dancers, bands, and poets. Booths were set up around the edge of the park addressing issues that ranged from immigrants’ rights to workers’ rights and women’s rights to choose. Children played games through the facilitation of the YMCA. There were youth, couples, children, elderly people, activists, imams, food vendors, rabbis and priests.

In the midst of the festivities, at around four o’clock, two young women took the stage to play their rap music. I had left the park to run an errand and was just returning as this band was half way through their first song. The chorus line of the song was “What the fucking shit!”

I was shocked and embarrassed to hear, as I walked down the street to the park, amplified obscenities echoing off the walls of downtown Olympia.

Just as I entered the park a State Patrol officer cut the power to the band. Several of the parents there looked relieved. But a small contingent of angry festival participants descended on the officer, badgering him about their “first amendment rights”. I even overheard one person say, “You mean you’re going to let the Nazi’s speak tomorrow, but you won’t let us play this music?!”

When the Olympian printed an article on our festival a couple days ago, someone wrote on the comments page: “We note that in all the times the Nazis have demonstrated locally they have been peaceful and complied with the law. Protestors at the Port of Olympia were violent and damaged property.”

Our own misbehavior undermines our work as activists. It misdirects our energy into unproductive conflicts, fuels the complaints of our ideological opponents, alienates people who agree with us, and even occasionally gets someone hurt.

If we are to be effective, if we are to earn the respect of the people whose minds we would change, we must expand our capacity for circumspection and self-criticism.

To misbehave at a rally, and then to complain about “double standards”, begs the question of who is setting the standards. It certainly isn’t us.

Edward J Harris

2006-07-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

[From my journal]

On the first night of my first road trip – I like to take annual road trips hitchhiking along the West Coast – I made it as far as Wilsonville, a little town just south of Portland. I had done very little urban camping, had never really been so far from home on my own, and had no idea of where to sleep. My traveling partner and I checked out a freeway overpass. It was well lit, and the cops would probably chase us out. I imagined we wouldn’t be very welcome as unannounced visitors in someone’s back yard. I shrugged my shoulders and suggested we go to Denny’s to slug down some bad coffee and smoke cigarettes. I was growing uneasy; it seemed a long way from home, and San Francisco, our destination, seemed very far off. The vast expanse of road stretched out before us, threatening and luring at once.

As we began to make our way towards coffee and relative comfort, a man approached us. He was older, maybe in his fifties or sixties, and his greasy clothes hung loosely from his body. An oversized thrift store coat hung on his slouched shoulders, baggy jeans covered worn sneakers, and his knitted cap pushed down a mat of long grey tangled hair. There was no part to differentiate his hair from his beard, which hung from his face like a curtain of tree moss.

“You boys are travelin?” he asked. “It’s gettin late an yull be needin a place ta sleep… I got a squat jus over that-a-way. I don’t stay there no more. Ya can have it ta yerselves.” His breath smelled of stale beer, and his teeth were sparse and yellow and brown in color.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, unsure of how to react.

Luke, my partner on the trip, grinned. “Hey, that sounds great!”

The man, who introduced himself as Edward J. Harris, led us across a mist veiled field to a little grove of fir trees about fifty yards off the freeway ramp.

“I figgur I’m about the only homeless man in Wilsonville,” he said. “The cops all know me, but they mostly leave me alone, cause I mostly keep outta sight.”

He swept his arm out at the scene of the squat. “There she is,” he said. “It ain’t a house, but it keeps the rain offa yer head and the wind offa yer face. It’s purdy comfy, actually, an it’s got a view.”

The building he was gesturing at had tarps for a roof and for three walls. It was open at the front, and the floor was made of pallets covered with a dumpstered carpet. It had a big telephone cable spool for a table, a couch and a recliner chair, and a burn barrel out front to keep warm by on cold nights. A plastic skeleton was nailed to a tree just in front of the little shelter.

“I call im Morty,” Edward said. “He keeps me compny.”

My eyes were wide open, and I smiled a little. It was a wonderful little place! It was tidy, clean, and well built. I relaxed a bit as it began to dawn on me that this fellow was offering us something really special.

He started a fire in the burn barrel. “The Fire Department’s come a couple times ta make me put er out. But if ya keep it burnin real low, no-one’ll bother ya none.”

After a good bed of hot coals had developed in the barrel, Edward joined us at his makeshift table, and began sharing his story with us. He loved his mama. She was an invalid, and when Edward’s stepfather died he moved in to help care for her. The shelter was now a place for him to get away, to obtain a little solitude for contemplation and to read the Gospels. He loved Jesus and the scriptures, and told us of how his life had gotten better since he started reading the Bible.

After talking for a while, Luke and I laid out our bedrolls. Edward bid us goodnight and walked out into the fog and the darkness.

I laid my head down on my rolled up jacket and thanked God for this blessing of kindness from such an unexpected place. Then I fell quickly to sleep.

On Begging

2006-07-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

[Written in a moment of frustration – from my journal 10/14/05]

I’ve been thinking a lot about begging lately, contemplating its meaning and thinking of doing it a little myself.

I can remember begging as a teenager, when I was a runaway. A couple years ago I wrote about it for the Voice:

I learned to panhandle pretty quickly. I panhandled for food, for cigarettes, and for pot. Panhandling is a lot like hitchhiking. You have to be in the right spot. You have to look un-intimidating. Occasionally someone will screech their tires driving past or throw something at you while you are trying to thumb a ride. Sometimes people will make rude remarks or spit at you when you try to spange money for lunch. At least with hitchhiking there is a sense of adventure. Panhandling was just humiliating.

I think I am beginning to understand the difference between my experiences of panhandling and hitchhiking. When I hitchhike, I intentionally place myself at the mercy of others. As a result, when I hitchhike I am filled with the experience of being on a pilgrimage, of stepping into a great adventure. The hardships make me a better person; the good times and lucky occasions come as little miracles to lift my spirits. I discovered great things about poverty and good fellowship as a hitchhiker. I was taken under wing by homeless people, gifted money by rich people, and offered grand stories by fellow travelers, all given honestly and with a spirit of generosity and encouragement. I asked for rides, for directions, for advice on good places to camp. I was often given what I asked and a good deal more.

When I was homeless, I wasn’t panhandling to place myself upon the mercy of others (although many offered it generously, and I only felt more ashamed). Though I asked for money, what I was begging for was independence. So my actions and my intentions were alienated from one another, and I resented my situation. Maybe that is why work, when it first became available to me, seemed like such a blessing.

I try to imagine what it would be like now to go and beg for money downtown. Aside from the dirty remarks that are to be expected, I think people will question my purpose. Don’t you have a job? You look like you are able to work. Why don’t you work for money? The staff at Bread & Roses might be embarrassed and try to increase my stipend. What would people think of Bread & Roses? Don’t they pay their people enough? How can they presume to help the poor when they must beg for themselves?

There would be condescension as well. I give my money to the Salvation Army. Here, take a resource brochure, do something useful with yourself. You’ll just spend it on booze. (I might well, I do like a beer occasionally, and a good deal of my stipend is spent at my favorite bar.) I’m reminded a bit of the evangelicals who “work for the poor”. I once heard a man from [a faith base social service agency] speak at an Associated Ministries meeting.

“Don’t give them money!” he exclaimed. “They’ll just spend it on BOOOOZE! Give them the 12 steps, but for God’s sake, don’t give them money! God helps those who help themselves, and we should help the ones who are choosing to clean up their lives,” he says. I was boiling hot with anger.

In fact, it is convenient that Ben Franklin first coined the phrase “God helps those who help themselves”, because I say that it is Caesar who helps those who help themselves, and God who helps the helpless, as we should! Let the government care for the avaricious, we should seek a different way for ourselves.

When I think back on it, I would like to have invited this man to step outside onto the streets to panhandle with me. We could’ve spanged money for a cup of coffee, and discussed the experience together.

I want to beg now because I am done with independence. I want hope. I want to know that people are still kind, and that I can count on my brother to be my keeper.

Confessions of a Teenage "Bum"

2006-07-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

[From my submission to the Voice of Olympia]

Sometimes I am struck by the nostalgia I feel for the way that French fries wore themselves into the carpet at the Denny’s in Parkland. I distinctly remember the sickly smell of cheap food, battered and deep fat fried, and how my empty stomach was comforted by the repugnance my nose felt for the slop. Denny’s, noisy and filthy as it was, was my safe haven for the nine months that I was homeless. Whenever I didn’t have a couch to crash on, and when the weather was too miserable to sleep outside, I’d panhandle enough money for a bottomless, gut-burning cup of coffee and stay up all night writing and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.

I first ran away from home when I was fifteen. I had started using drugs, fighting – sometimes violently – with my parents, and skipping school. As I became more rebellious, my parents became stricter, and our arguments escalated.

One night I finally got fed up, packed a backpack, and climbed out my bedroom window. Things had been particularly ugly at home, and my parents, foreseeing the possibility that I might run away, had taken my shoes. I walked barefoot for several miles to a bonfire party that a friend was throwing in the woods. I got drunk and slept outside. Two days later, a friend in Yelm took me into her home and let me stay for a month and two weeks.

My parents tracked me down, took me to court, and had me placed on the “Youth-At-Risk” program. The judge ordered me to return home, obey a curfew, speak respectfully to adults, keep my grades up in school, avoid certain friends… The list of rules was lengthy, and failure to obey would result in being charged with “contempt of court”, a misdemeanor.

As my term in the “Youth-At-Risk” program came to an end, my parents motioned the court to renew my participation. I had already racked up two counts of contempt for breaking the rules, and the tension between my parents and I had grown thick. I decided that I would not tolerate living at home any longer. I packed a small backpack and a gym bag, snuck out my window again, and hitchhiked to Tacoma.

I was aware that I couldn’t go back after leaving. I was still court ordered to remain at home, and if I had returned my parents would have reported me to the police.

At first I was overwhelmed by the sense of finality, and loneliness. My safety net had fallen away and I felt as though I was suspended mid-air, grasping tightly to a thin line of fraying yarn that prevented me from falling. Anxiety pushed stiffly outward from within my chest, hampering the flow of air into my lungs. I was on my own, and the noisy, sinister world and an uncertain future loomed overhead, shrouded in the cold Pacific rain.

I was lucky to have a number of friends in the Tacoma area, and usually had places to stay for one or two nights at a time. Most of my friends put me up out of pity, rather than out of any sense that I would get my life together. I was for them a likeable but rather stupid pot-head teenager who had little potential. Occasionally a person that I would crash with for the night would try to talk sense into me. What were my plans? They would ask. How was I going to start making something of myself? The conversations were generally more embarrassing and guilt ridden than productive for me, and I would talk my way around the questions. From a distance of fifty miles, and without having spoken to them in months, I could feel my parents’ disappointment tugging at my gut.

On my seventeenth birthday, a friend took me out to stay at his cabin on Anderson Island. His father was building a house on the far end of the island, and Scott offered me a day’s work at five bucks an hour to do some pick and shovel work and to clean up around the construction site. It was good, hard work, and he paid me forty dollars at the end of the day. This was the most money I had held at one time in my nine months of homelessness, and I was elated. We stopped at the island market on the way back to Scott’s house and bought fresh tomatoes, herbs, and sausage, as well as a package of pasta to make spaghetti for my birthday. Scott made me the best spaghetti dinner I’ve ever eaten.

I had never bought my own groceries before. Everything I had was unearned, a gift from someone like my parents or the people who gave me change when I panhandled. The spaghetti was good, made from scratch with fresh tomatoes and herbs, but the experience of having earned it was far better.

A month later, my buddy Jeremy let me move into his camper out in the woods on the outskirts of Yelm. I started getting a lot of work splitting firewood and digging ditches. I had quit smoking pot, and was starting to get my energy back. I made enough money to start renting, and I got my first full time job three days before my eighteenth birthday.

In the time since I was homeless, I've worked two years as an EMT for an ambulance company, graduated from the WA State Fire Training Academy, spent three years as a volunteer firefighter (and I nearly got hired on a professional department), and owned a home that I later sold to pay for college. I've spent the last three years as a live-in staff person at the Bread & Roses Catholic Worker Community.

The greatest gift that anyone has ever offered me was the gift of work, the gift of pride in work and the beauty of hard earned food. I was once homeless, hungry, and depressed. I had alienated my family and relegated myself to what I once thought to be the lowest class of society. There were few people who saw any value in me, but their contributions to my life made a tremendous impact on me, and through me impacted the lives of the patients I served as an EMT and the people I serve now at Bread & Roses. I've lost touch with most of the people who put me up as a teenager. If I could visit any of them now, particularly Scott, I'd immediately drag them to downtown Olympia to see the work I do at Bread & Roses. They can take credit for it.

Support Your Troops

2006-06-22T01:53:00.000-07:00

In the last three years since the start of the Iraq War, it has become common to see anti-war protesters standing on opposing street corners from pro-war activists. Sometimes there are visible differences of clothing and hairstyles. Generally the differing worldviews, above and beyond opinions on the war, are strong enough that you can taste them.

Both sides, however, have latched onto one common slogan: “Support Our Troops!”

This slogan is bandied about on either side of the street as though the other side somehow doesn’t get it. In spite of their fervor many of the rally attendees have, no doubt, stepped over the bodies of disabled veterans while walking to the rallies.

I got a call the other day from the Ranger newspaper asking if Bread & Roses had seen any veterans from the Iraq War yet. We haven't. I had to be honest with the reporter. I told her that it takes time for troops' families to give up on them.

People come home from war totally mangled in mind, body, and spirit. In spite of all the sloganeering out there, the responsibility for the welfare of veterans ultimately falls on their families. Many, many families are unable to shoulder the responsibility. This doesn't make them bad or irresponsible, nor does it mean that they don't love their veteran. It DOES mean that taking care of a person who doesn't sleep at night, who suffers from flashbacks, who turns to alcohol for solace, and who becomes sorely irritable, even prone to fits of rage, is EXTREMELY difficult and should not fall on family alone. But it does fall on family alone, because everyone else is too busy sloganeering.

With time, the families give up. I know this because we at Bread & Roses have fed, sheltered, comforted, and advocated for veterans of every war from World War II to the Persian Gulf War. And we are criticized for it.

Veterans who suffer from PTSD often turn to alcohol or drugs to ward off bad memories, as well as to blunt their emotional response to being alienated from society. Imagine enduring the horrors of war for your nation, and then being left to rot in the gutter as a reward. You’d start drinking too.

Homeless veterans experience not only homelessness, but also the stigma of being considered the “undeserving” poor because of their addictions and “anti-social” behaviors. Pedestrians yell at them, spit on them, call them names, and tell them to “get a job”.

This will be the fate of many of the troops that everyone wants to “Support!” when “support” means waving a sign.

I'm frankly sick of all this "Support Our Troops" bantering on both sides of the war debate. We should all stop yelling this mantra and start doing it.

On God and Gays

2006-06-22T01:46:00.000-07:00

[Co-written with Mindy from St. John's]

St. John's Episcopal Church in Olympia recently experienced the blessings of standing with our gay brothers and sisters.

At Capitol City Pride Day on June 17, the Rev. Canon David James, rector of the church, and several parishioners gathered at the church's booth in Sylvester Park to offer blessings to all who stopped by, as well as information on Integrity, the Episcopal Church's ministry with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Those church members who participated later talked about how they felt people's tiredness, hurt and stress fall away, if only for a moment or two. Reactions from the blessed ranged from tears to drawn-out sighs of relief, knowing that they were among Christians who didn't judge them and who carried a message of God's unconditional love for all.

Some people might be shocked at the fact that a Christian church would openly and freely bless gays. In spite of the Gospels, in which the central message is God’s love for us, the most common stories we hear that involve the words “God” and “gay” also involve Fred Phelps, who picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay victim of a hate crime. Or Pat Robertson, who blamed Hurricane Katrina, the attacks of September 11^th, and the Iraqi insurgency all on the sexual orientation of Ellen Degeneres. Robertson was even quoted as saying, “America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation.”

Armed with their Bibles, conservative Christians are waging a crusade against gays all across America. They are fighting to stop anti-discrimination laws, to stop gay marriage, and to defend good ol’ fashioned “family values”. Interestingly, their Bibles won’t serve them well in this crusade. This is because the bible has nothing at all to say about homosexuality!

In spite of this, there are a number of passages that conservatives use to try and justify their views. I’ll go through them one by one.

“Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”-

Many people refer to the opening chapters of Genesis as a suggestion that heterosexuality is the only natural form of sexuality. This is flawed logic. Genesis pairs Adam and Eve, but does not condemn homosexual relationships. The Adam and Eve story is silent on the matter.

Sodom & Gomorrah-

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is often used to condemn gays. In this story, God tells Abraham that he has condemned these cities for their wickedness. God sends two angels in to test the city. Lot invites them home, and the townspeople try to attack them. The nature of the attack can probably be assumed to be sexual in nature. The angels save Lot and his family, who are sent out of town while God burns the city.

Hospitality to strangers was one of the most important values of old times. The desert is harsh and dangerous; to withhold your hand from strangers could have spelled death for them. The sin of Sodom was hard-heartedness. And the scriptures refer to this numerous times. The book of Ezekiel (16:48-49) condemns the behavior of Sodom: “Fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hands of the poor and the needy.” Jesus, in Matthew 10:14-15, instructs his disciples, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” (Maybe we should rethink how Olympia treats its homeless.) In all the references to Sodom throughout the bible, homosexuality is not mentioned once.

The Holiness Codes of Leviticus-

Leviticus 18:22 reads: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” This is the clearest the bible gets on homosexuality. It ONLY refers to male-male sexual partnerships.

There are a number of things to note about this. First, there are two sets of codes in the Old Testament. The first set regards ethics or morals. We see these in the Ten Commandments. The second are the “Holiness Codes”, which are a set of social norms for Jews of ancient times.

The Holiness Codes were designed to separate the nation of Israel from the Canaanite peoples; it is a set of nationalistic rules. They may have had their place at the time. The Israelites were in foreign land and their religion was inseparable from their way of life. Maintaining their faith depended on maintaining their identity as a nation. Though the nationalistic norms may have been necessary to them, they are certainly not binding on Christians. It should also be understood that the Holiness Codes had nothing to do with morals. They included the kosher laws, how to sew garments, and a lot of stuff that amounted to: “Don’t mix your peas with your mashed potatoes.” They set religious purity standards, not a code of ethics.

The passage from Leviticus was just one of the Holiness Codes. It was not a moral commandment. It was intended to prevent Jews from participating in Canaanite practices, which included the exploitation of male prostitutes in the Canaanite temples.

Romans 1:26-27, Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1-10 -

One of the rather beautiful aspects of the Gospel message is the union it promotes among people, even people of very different backgrounds. Jesus first challenged nationalistic separations through his willingness to heal the daughter of the Canaanite woman. Later, while preaching love of neighbor, Jesus is asked, “Who is our neighbor?” To this He replies with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus teaches that differences in nationality and culture are not to be a barrier to love.

In his letters, Paul writes in the same thread. Division and acrimony had arisen within the Church; the Gentile Christians were not being circumcised and were violating kosher laws. As a result, many Jewish Christians refused to eat or otherwise commune with the Gentiles. In an attempt to breed tolerance, Paul writes to the Roman Christians a long, and now famous, argument that salvation is not gained by strict adherence to outward religious codes such as circumcision and kosher guidelines. Salvation comes by faith, a faith shared by Jewish and Gentile Christians alike.

The passage used by some to condemn gays is near the beginning of this letter of Paul to the Romans. Paul writes, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by wickedness suppress the truth. …though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking… Therefore God gave them up to the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves… Their women exchanged customary intercourse for uncustomary, and in the same way also the men…”(Romans 1: 18-27)

Paul here is criticizing the Roman pagans for idolatry. Following the sin of idolatry, they made themselves more important than God (“they did not honor him as God”), and concurrently made themselves more important than their neighbors. Therefore God gave them over to impurity, and following after their idolatrous fashion, they “were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, [and] malice.” (Romans 1:29)

There are a couple important things to note here. First, Paul’s criticism of the Romans is a hook for the Jewish Christians. The first sentence of the next chapter reads, “Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others…” He turns the argument of idolatry against the Jewish Christians! Apparently they were in error when they placed their personal customs at a higher priority than Christian communion.

Secondly, this passage does NOT refer to monogamous, faithful homosexual relationships. Paul is criticizing idolatry, and the selfish, lustful, and gluttonous behaviors that accompany idolatry. The excesses of ancient Rome are remembered to this day. You may have heard stories of “vomitoriums” built to enable the gluttony of a people gone mad with power. The stories you may not have heard are those of the pre-pubescent boys sold into slavery as male prostitutes. Sexual exploitation at the time was highly prevalent and horrific. The Church stood against it then as it does now.

Paul was not talking about loving, long term homosexual relationships. He was criticizing debauchery and sexual exploitation. These are hardly the words to describe the love that two people feel for one another when they wish to be married.

In Corinthians and Timothy, Paul gives a couple brief lists of the sins of “wrongdoers”. “Sodomites” are mentioned, but here he is talking about male prostitutes, not homosexual relationships. He also, again, criticizes at length the sins of idolatry and sexual exploitation.

Conservatives, when debating gay marriage, often like to throw around the terms “unnatural”, “unclean”, and “abomination”. Yet, for all their quoting of Paul, it is Paul who refutes them when he writes, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.” (Romans 14:14)

There are a great number of homosexuals who are now striving to be allowed to marry. They courageously wage their campaign for marriage on the battlefields of the courts and legislatures of the land. Marriage is a holy sacrament. It teaches us, through our spouse’s love, the love that God holds for us. It also teaches us, through our love for our spouse, how to love God.

By condemning gays as “unclean”, conservatives make themselves vulnerable to Paul’s accusation of idolatry. They would allow personal customs and preferences to stand in the way of the revelation of God’s love through marriage.

By offering blessings to gays, and even on occasion to gay marriages, the Episcopal Church is indeed breaking from traditional norms. But the Scriptures (especially the New Testament) were never intended to be normative in effect; rather they were intended to be transformative.

Our common faith is one of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The central message of the Gospel is God’s undying love for us. The central command of the Gospel is that we are to love one another as God loves us. It is high time we stop telling gays that God hates them.

Here is what Fr. James wrote to Integrity about St. John's "Blessing Chair":

"That morning, as I was getting ready to go to the parade it occurred to me as a straight priest, how unsafe the church has been, and is being to this day, to LGBT folk. So, I went into the church and got one of our 'Bishop's chairs' and took it to the booth. I made a sign that designated the chair as the 'Blessing Chair.'

"Throughout the course of the day people would come by and ask 'what's a blessing chair?' Our response was 'the Episcopal Church in Olympia wants to let you know how much God loves you, just as you are.' One passerby called it the 'the Episcopal Church and God doesn't hate you booth.' We offered the opportunity for anyone, gay or straight, to sit in the chair have at least five of us lay hands on them, anoint them with oil and pray God's blessing upon them telling them how much God loves them.”

Just imagine, after years of “faith” based persecution, and after being alienated from the faith community you were raised in, being welcomed back with open arms and a blessing. Imagine being told, for the first time, that Jesus and His Church don’t hate you. This is Christ’s message made personal.

The behaviors of us Christians have been extraordinarily hurtful to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. In spite of this, many of them still love the Church. They have often shown a more Christ-like patience for us than we could muster for them. It is time for repentance and reconciliation.

Lazarus at the Gate

2006-06-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

I did something this week for which I become deeply angry when others do the same. I cleared the brush in my back yard to prevent homeless people from camping there.

My wife and I live in the new Bread & Roses house on 4^th Ave. This house is open to the street community about 45 hours per week. Volunteer advocates gather at our home to help homeless individuals to gain access to services such as drug treatment, disability benefits, and housing. We offer a beautiful, home-centered atmosphere in which this work can take place. But unfortunately we are renters.

When we first moved in, our landlord was excited to be able to support Bread & Roses, but nervous about how we would work out as renters. Our neighbors, who rent from the same landlord as us, were very nervous about our presence.

Neither the landlord nor the neighbors are bad people. In fact, the landlord recently sat for lunch with me and a good friend of mine who lives with serious schizophrenia. The two of them got along fabulously. If this friend of mine were to camp in my back yard, though, it would cause a problem. It could scare off the neighbor’s customers.

And there has been a problem. There have been at least one or two people camping in the back yard each night for the last couple of weeks. The neighbors have commented to us on the situation a few times now. I have gone out each night at odd hours to, in the kindest fashion I could muster, ask them to leave. And finally a few days ago I cleared out the brush to eliminate discreet places for people to sleep.

As I cleared brush, I meditated on how screwed up this situation is. Homeless people need to sleep more than other people need to use credit unions. They need to sleep more than other people need to practice yoga, or get haircuts, or buy office supplies. And the truth is that sleeping homeless people do nothing to prevent people from practicing yoga or stopping in at the credit union. It is the fear of homeless people that stops them.

Sleep is not a choice. It is not a privilege, nor a luxury. It is a necessity. People have to sleep somewhere. There are more than 1200 homeless people in Thurston County (census numbers: ca 600, additional numbers sent from Thurston Co. Schools: over 600), and less than 200 shelter beds. This spells a lot of people sleeping in public spaces, where they are vulnerable to police harassment, or sleeping on private property and breaking the law. There is simply no place for them.

As I worked, I thought about the scriptural story of Lazarus at the gate of the Rich Man. I thought about Matthew 25, “What you do unto the least of these, you do unto Me.” I thought of Jesus violating the laws and customs of his day to help the Canaanite woman. I recited the Magificat to myself and meditated on the Beatitudes. My faith, my politics, my worldview, and my commitment to others stand in direct opposition to the actions I was taking.

I hate our system. I hate it because it forces us to choose between evils. Because I either have to forbid camping in my yard or get shut down, to commit an injustice now or face a greater injustice later. What do I do?

"Nature produced common property. Robbery made private property." -St. Ambrose

Solidarity against Hate

2006-06-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

As you may have read in the daily Olympian, the National Socialist Movement (NSM), a neo-nazi group, have been stepping up their activities in the Puget Sound area. Unity in Community (olympiaunityinthecommunity.org) formed as a community coalition in response to the Nazi activities. Several local anti-hate activists have now been listed on the Nazi's website as "anti-white traitors". We'd like to pack their list! Please email Nazi leader Jim Ramm at mindfelon@yahoo.com and request to be added to their "anti-white traitor" list.

The following is text from an email I sent to Mr. Ramm:

My dear friend Jim,
I, sir, am a christian anarchist and a card carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "wobblies"). I think that qualifies me as a proud "filthy commie scum", and an enemy of hate. I would be greatly honored if you would list me with Jade, Sarah, and others on your website. Thank you and blessings on your day.
-Phil

Stephan

2006-06-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

(Reprinted from my submission to the Voice of Olympia–Nov 2004)

I can’t quite remember the exact moment in which I met Stephan. I do remember, though, that he had recently stepped off a bus from the prison in Shelton, and that he at first used the soft, slightly subservient tone common among men who’ve just been released from prison and who think you’re a part of the system.

Stephan was a middle-aged black man with big hair, pointed cheek bones, and a lower lip that curved out and down a little at the center like an old shoe horn. He had a beautiful smile that lifted his eyebrows and cut deep, chevron shaped wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. When Stephan walked, he stuck his rear out and leaned over a bit, taking short steps because of a back injury. His ankles were swollen and he had a big, round, distended belly that made me think of Somali children starving in the desert.

Stephan had joined the military as a young man, most likely to stay out of trouble or to pay his way into school. He served in the Navy through the late ‘seventies, spending most of his time traveling around the Pacific. The Navy, or more accurately, all the Armed Forces, suffered from an extraordinarily low morale at the time, and drug use was prevalent. Stephan’s ship was chock full of drugs collected at the various seaports of Southeastern Asia. “Hong-Kong had THE BEST heroin,” he once told me. Stephan, like many other veterans of his day, returned from the Navy with an honorable discharge and a drug habit.

After two and a half decades of hopping from job to job and from town to town nurturing his addiction, Stephan was arrested and incarcerated. He hated prison. He told me about having to listen to people scream at night as he tried to sleep. Once, he said, a guy hung himself in his cell and the guards marched all the inmates past him to get a good look before morning breakfast.

One day Stephan was particularly ill and needed to go to the hospital, but was being stubborn. Nick, one of our advocates, went running after Stephan to give him his home phone number in case Stephan changed his mind. Realizing he was lacking a pen, Nick went into the nearest establishment, a bar, to borrow one. Unfortunately Nick was under age, and, after being chased out of the bar and around the block by an angry and violent bartender, had earned from Stephan the title of ‘Damned Cool Caseworker’. Stephan had stood back giggling at the whole spectacle.

People often have funny notions about who drug addicts are. Most people imagine that drug addicts are universally desperate, dishonest, irrational, and dangerous. They rarely notice that cigarette smokers who don’t have cigarettes often behave the same as the stereotypical drug addict, and that we are all surrounded by cigarette smokers. At any rate, we miss out on the personality and character of people when we dismiss them as “junkies”.

As Stephan and I got closer, his courage became increasingly visible to me. Stephan’s probation officer had been relatively easy on him. He had known that Stephan was still using heroin, but continued to give him chances in light of Stephan’s thirty-year addiction. Then one day, most likely under pressure from his boss, the P.O. suddenly requested a clean urinalysis, within the week. Stephan dropped his habit cold turkey, and Meta and I went with him to the emergency room as he kicked. He vomited, yelled, groaned, defecated, panted, and vomited again. Sometimes his eyes would roll back as he held his belly. Rivulets of sweat rolled down his nose and cheeks, mixing with his tears. He’d holler at the nurses, then catch himself and apologized and crack a joke to make them smile before another cramp hit his stomach and he’d yell again. He stuck it out, though- the whole night.

Every winter, pneumonia becomes an epidemic among the homeless. It seems as though everyone in sight is coughing, hacking, and sweating. A few months ago, Stephan came down with pneumonia and was hospitalized. Under normal circumstances, Stephan should have recovered after a couple weeks and been back on the streets and in our lives. But Hepatitis C, gotten from a dirty needle, had been eating away at his liver, and causing fluids to back up in his lungs, belly, and ankles. Instead of steadily getting better, Stephan’s condition crashed as his liver gave out.

Meta and I went to visit him the day before he died. When I walked into Stephan’s hospital room I was startled to find a ghost of a man, emaciated but with a strangely bulging belly. His wild and lonely yellow eyes peered out from an orange tinged face, and a huge, matted tuft of hair stuck straight up from his head like a messed-up lion’s crown. I had known that he was ill before I came, but I was now certain that he was dying. I talked with Stephan’s nurse for a moment, then sat down on the edge of his bed, took his hand, and started to cry.

“Well, it looks like this is it, buddy,” I said to him, shaking a little. Stephan squeezed my hand, held it up against his cheek, smiled for a moment, and said, “The last couple weeks have opened my eyes...” And then his voice became too weak to understand.

Nick, Selena, and I visited him the next day. We held his hands and read Psalms to him as he died.

In life, Stephan was a friend to many, a guest and a brother to us at Bread & Roses, and a junkie to most of the rest of society. He was imperfect, addicted, and afflicted with illness. In the very moment of his death, though, the man that Stephan was, his very existence, the memory of him was rarefied and transformed in my mind. As he died, I thought of how he had stuck it out in the emergency room as he kicked heroin, and of his extraordinary courage. I looked over at Nick as he held Stephan’s limp hand. At this moment I realized that it was Stephan who trained Nick and who trained me and inspired me to be who I am today. And he became for me like an angel sent from heaven to make us good.

I know that this is all a simplification, that I am mystifying an imperfect and mortal man, yet I also know that he was all of these things in his imperfect and difficult life. I also know that we all embody such a beautiful nature, and that it is imperfectly expressed through the filter of our own fallibility.

You see, the memory of a person changes for us when they die so that we might have a chance to recognize real human value for once, to see it anew because we can’t take it for granted anymore.

Life looks different to me since Stephan died. I had an intense commitment to his health and sobriety, and failed. But in this failure I discovered the real contribution I had made to him, and that he had made to me. The job of Catholic Workers, of the volunteers and staff at Bread & Roses, is to be a family for the people on the streets. The only authentic commitment one human being can make to another is the commitment to love. Meta, Nick, Selena, myself, and a whole lot of other people loved Stephan, and served as his family when he died. This is all that matters.

The Rock

2006-06-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

[Note: Though I carefully remove names of Bread & Roses' guests to protect their confidentiality, we at Bread & Roses try hard to share the names and stories of the dead in order to honor their memory. So I have not removed names in this post.]

Three months after I joined the staff at Bread & Roses a man came to our door in desperate need. Terry Seibert was one of the long-time homeless, nicknamed “Crusty”. He was an alcoholic with a pocked face and bulbous nose, a scratchy voice and a permanent scowl.

He arrived at the Transit Center one day, having just been released from the hospital with a severe case of congestive heart failure. The bus drivers wouldn’t allow him to board because he had soiled himself so badly. He could barely walk. The Transit Center staff called the Advocacy Center and asked us if we could help him, so I walked over and invited him to come over.

I am ashamed to say that I recoiled a bit at his odor, and asked him to stand outside a few minutes while we arranged a shower and a change of clothes. One of the other volunteers gave me a severe look and invited him to come in and sit in our bathroom. Terry was pale, short of breath, and dizzy.

We got him showered and cleaned up, and I arranged a bed for him in our shelter. The next day, Selena rented Terry a hotel room. A struggle ensued to place him in a nursing home, lasting two weeks. No-one would take him.

Selena visited Terry daily. They had been friends when Selena worked in the soup kitchen. Terry and Selena shared a great fondness for good literature, and had spent hours at the old kitchen discussing poetry and trading books. On her last visit with Terry, Selena came into his room and asked Terry how he was doing. He replied, “Where is the life that we have lost in the living?”

It was a line from “The Rock”, by T.S. Eliot. Terry died the next day.

Advent at Bread & Roses 2003

2006-06-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Though Bread & Roses has never (at least in my term of service) been so openly and explicitly filled with spirituality as the Tacoma Worker, it has had an impressive history, spirituality and culture. When I moved in, the house was decorated with photos and paintings of Dorothy Day, Mohandas Gandhi, and Woody Guthrie. Posters and flyers quoting the great leaders for social justice adorned the walls. Our dining room, ringed with a painted border of wheat stalks and roses at the tops of the walls, served as an office and was cluttered with desks, notepads, photocopiers, and file cabinets. Selena, a former nun and devout Catholic (at the time –she has since left the Roman Catholic church and become a Unitarian, no less devoted to God) exerted a profound influence over the household, though. She emanated a “nunly” energy, and could say the most extraordinary things! She seemed a pillar of wisdom, marked with an occasional dirty joke or scandalous remark just to keep us on our toes. I had shown an interest in the spirituality of the Catholic Worker, and she fed me great books and innumerable stories.

One day in December, four candles, three purple and one pink, appeared on a table in our living room, along with some flowers. A couple of guests asked me what the candles were for, and we speculated in whispers amongst ourselves before I approached Selena to ask her their meaning. She explained to me that it was Advent, the celebration of the coming birth of Christ.

For the next four weeks before Christmas, we gathered in the living room to read scripture and discuss the meaning of the birth of God’s Son among humanity. The gatherings were required of no-one, but there was a strong interest among guest and staff alike, and our living room was crowded with quiet worshipers. Selena explained to us that the Advent candles, one for each of the four weeks before Christmas, were instituted by a Roman Catholic monk, and with a little smile on her face she declared the monk a rascal. The three purple candles were a proper expression of the asceticism in monastic life, solemn lights to guide the faithful. The fourth pink candle, added to stir things up, represented joy and reminded us that God is love and to never forget to be happy and to love one another. The candles burned pure in our home and all were still for a while.

Bread & Roses 2004

2006-06-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

(Taken from a journal entry in the early spring? of 2004.)

It took me a half-hour to get out of bed this morning. This is a chronic problem – I have always been a grump in the morning – but only recently has it become what seems to me to be an unfair luxury. After sitting up and rubbing my eyes for five minutes, I picked up random articles of clothing from the floor, put them on, and walked downstairs. I peaked around the corner and found that T-- was still asleep on the living room couch.

T-- was recently released from a psychiatric hospital. She had lived with us twice before, leaving once for a stay in jail and a second time into an apartment of her own. T-- is mentally ill, an alcoholic, and suffers from emotional trauma so severe I would not have thought it possible until I met her. T-- is also funny, and a good cook. And when she is sober and trying to socialize, you can acquire a deep sense of both her discomfort and her real need to be accepted. It shows in her shifty feet, hunched shoulders, and the question like tone of her statements. Sometimes she will say something quite serious, quite important, and then laugh a little, sheepishly, as though her thoughts must seem absurd to anyone else.

I heard a hysterical bout of cackling coming from the kitchen, and found R-- dancing around the stove, elbows bent and hands flopping, as he cooed at some ridiculous concoction in a frying pan.

R-- is mentally ill, too. Schizophrenic, in fact, but his posture is totally different from T--’s. R-- is not particularly a drinker, but he has a kind of drunken lurch akin to a blend of “Seinfeld’s” Kramer and Captain Jack Sparrow of “Pirates of the Caribbean”. R-- has an affable, childish nature that endears him to everyone, and he knows it.

Once R-- was sitting on the back porch, smoking cigarettes with Meta (a fellow worker), when he confided in her that he had joined a new political party.

“What party is that?” Meta asked.

“Oh, it’s non-partisan.”

Meta grinned and said, “That sounds like an oxymoron, R--.”

“Don’t give me that college bullshit!” he replied.

A couple months after I joined the Bread & Roses Catholic Worker community, I was asked to build eighteen bunk beds for the men’s shelter. R-- was staying at the shelter at the time, and I invited him to help. I found R-- to be a far better carpenter than I (which isn’t saying much, to be honest). I was particularly impressed, however, with his patience for my fumbling, and his willingness to share his skills with me. R-- was companionable, and liked good music, and we got along well as we worked.

We invited him to live in the Hospitality House a short while later.

As I walked to the fridge, I smiled and said “good morning” to R--, and to E--, a homeless veteran living in the basement.

After digging around the fridge in search of a decent vegetarian breakfast, I gave up, poured myself a cup of coffee, and stepped out to the back porch for a cigarette.

Meta was sitting at the porch table sharing a dirty joke with Sharon.

“Anybody know who the lady is who’s sleeping on the dining room floor?” I asked. Sharon replied that a woman had come in late last night, and that she would be moving into the women’s guesthouse shelter this afternoon.

A--, a kind, simple, rather quiet man, walked by us and into the kitchen, saying “good morning” as he passed. A-- lived with his parents until he was about 45 years old, and became homeless after they died. At first he needed a staff person to help him get from place to place on the buses, and later was aided by others on the streets. He stayed at the men’s shelter for a couple years until we invited him into the House of Hospitality.

Altogether, the Hospitality House has five bedrooms, plus two dorms that we built into the basement, and a large room above the garage. On average, there were eleven people living in the house. We have, at times, had people sleeping on the living room couch, the living room floor, the dining room floor, my bedroom floor (three men, in fact), and Selena’s bedroom floor, all at once. The house has been so thick with people that we practically had to climb over one another just to reach the refrigerator in the morning. In addition to this, there are typically twelve women living in the four bedroom duplex next door that serves as our women’s guesthouse shelter. And forty-four men packed into bunks at the men’s shelter, so tight that a Navy admiral would be impressed.

We had to fight the temptation that came at times to believe that Bread & Roses is responsible for all of the 700 people who are homeless in the Olympia area. I spoke once with Celeste, the coordinator of the women’s guesthouse shelter at the time. She had done a beautiful job of helping the guests to get along better with one another, and was well on her way to creating a powerful, supportive community at the shelter. But she felt tremendous pressure to help each guest to find a permanent home, and to offer shelter to more women who were stuck on the streets. She kept apologizing to me for “failing”. I smiled and suggested that she take on the burden of every homeless person in Thurston County. “Oh, and while you’re at it, there are 17,000 more in Orange County, California, with only 400 shelter beds. In fact, on any given night, there are a million people without homes in America. Why don’t you try and help them all? You can take on India tomorrow.”

Guadelupe 2

2006-06-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

9/30/05

A few days ago I went with Megan to visit the Tacoma Catholic Worker a second time. I plan to visit them every week, now.

I felt a little less awkward, a little more comfortable getting to know folks this time. I talked with Harlan for a while, and discovered that he had been at Guadalupe House for fifteen years and at another Worker house for twelve years prior to that. Father Bix has been there since the founding of the Tacoma Worker (25 years ago?), and they have other volunteers who have been around for many, many years. What experience! I could only dream of the day when Bread & Roses has a staff with such longevity. At Guadalupe this longevity breeds a comfort with the work, the guests, and among the staff that is not only visible in the interactions between the staff, but that also permeates the whole atmosphere of the House. They have a culture, and traditions, and a history upon which their community rests.

At 4:30 the staff gathered to plan the evening. They assigned tasks, discussed the menu, planned for the liturgy, and ended with a prayer. At 5:00 the doors opened, and for the next half hour there was little to do but socialize with the guests and volunteers. At 5:30 we were called to gather for the service, led by a woman named Mary. The service opened with a prayer, followed by readings from scripture, and Mary’s lecture on the life and works of St. Vincent de Paul. Then Mary began to bless a loaf of bread and a pitcher of grape juice.

Mary announced that “here at Guadalupe House we have a tradition of open Communion. The only requirement to partake of the sacraments is that you have a desire to accept Christ into your heart.”

As the bread and the juice came around, I took it with a little eager grin on my face, like a child accepting a forbidden cookie offered in secret by his grandmother. I was so incredibly grateful.

Guadelupe

2006-06-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

9/25/05

The fall is beginning, and the nights here are beginning to get the moist chill so familiar to a Northwest boy like myself. I can’t wait to see my breath in the air in the morning.

I went to visit the Guadalupe House Catholic Worker in Tacoma last night. Megan Starr, a coordinator for the Radical Catholics at Evergreen, picked me up at Bread & Roses at around 4:00, and we had a pleasant drive up, about half an hour. We parked the car and walked a couple blocks from Yakima to G Street and south a few blocks.

There is a beautiful view from G Street that looks out across downtown Tacoma, the rail-yard and the inlet, to the mountains in the east. G Street sits squarely between a gentrifying downtown and the Hilltop slum. The street is lined with trees, old quiet houses, built solidly, and bits of trash lying here and there in the gutters and around the sidewalks. A newspaper there, someone’s discarded jacket here, dirty and matted from several weeks sitting out in the weather, and a stuffed bunny rabbit soiled with dirt, its ear bent to the side.

There is a mural painted on a retaining wall that runs along the west side of the street, with bright, bold colors, blue and orange, red and green. A weathered hand holds up a squash, a hammer breaks the chain binding down a fist. A vegetable garden, about a half acre in sized, occupies the opposite side of the street. And Guadalupe just beyond.

As we approached the house an old Hispanic man greeted us from the porch. His face was like crumpled burlap; deep wrinkles running south from his cheekbones parted around his mouth and his skin puffed out around his eyes. He flashed a friendly but wily smile at us, like he knew something we didn’t. We introduced ourselves and he showed us inside.

I was very excited to meet Father Bix. I had heard so much about him, a priest, an old wobbly, and a catholic worker. I imagined him to be a big, burly man with a gruff voice, but comfortable in his collar as he is in the struggle against injustice. And Spartacus was said to be seven feet tall, right? I blushed a little to myself as I noticed my tendency to build up heroes in my own mind.

The interior walls of Guadalupe House are cluttered with icons, crucifix’s, and prayers written on scraps of paper and pasted up, so that one is filled with the sense of being in some kind of church or holy place, except that each piece was placed by a different person at a different time with no overall scheme but the organic rhythms of people living in community.

A fellow sitting in the corner hollered at me, “Hey Abraham!” as we walked into the dining room. I found this funny because no-one else would think me an Abraham type, and he looked quite a bit like a Moses, with shoulder length matted grey hair and a beard of equal length with no part or seam to distinguish beard from hair. I smiled and said, “Hi, my name is Phil”, and we shook hands. A middle aged woman named Dotti, one of the workers, greeted us warmly and then went to tend to the concerns of one of the guests. Megan and I stood around awkwardly for a minute, shifting on our feet and looking around, and then we each found a seat on the couches lining the north wall.

A man, roughly my age, was seated next to me, and I found upon inquiring that he had just completed a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and had been temporarily hired on as paid staff at his old placement at the Nativity House. He informed me that the Tacoma Catholic Worker community consisted of five houses within a two block radius, and 25 live-in volunteers. These houses included the Guadalupe House of Hospitality as well as a house of prayer. Guadalupe serves dinner on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, with the Tuesday dinner being preceded by liturgy. The staff take turns leading the liturgy. In the mornings showers and laundry are offered, as well as the customary pot of coffee. There are about 15 guests living in the five bedrooms of the house, and I’m not sure where the staff sleep. They have a strong relationship with the local parish, as well as with the Nativity House (which is, I believe, a project of Catholic Community Services).

Dotti called us to gather close for the liturgy, and began with a prayer. We sang a psalm, and then the readings: a story from the Book of Ezra about the rebuilding of the temple and the return of the Jews from exile, and a reading from the Gospel in which Jesus denies his family and says that all who listen to the word of the Lord are his family.

A discussion followed, and a man across the room spoke up. “God talks to me all the time,” he said. “It’s simple. There are two paths. The good one and the bad one. God tells me, ‘Get sober’. But I take the low road, I still use. I just got out of jail, and I know I’m a goin’ back. I talked with my kids on the phone the other day, but I ain’t seen ‘em in fifteen years…” His voice broke, and his eyes welled up.

At the end of the service, we lined up to eat, and another dozen hungry people who had opted out of participating in the liturgy crowded into the room for the meal. The food was fantastic. There was chicken and rice, a variety of salads, pasta, and corn bread with peanuts and bacon cooked in.

After the meal, Megan and I both moved into the kitchen to help clean up. A fellow named Chuck was directing the cleanup. He was one of those “God’s children” types, the kind you feel good just being around. He loved to talk, to ramble on-and-on, and kind of danced around as he talked and cleaned. He had a cleft palate, a speech impediment, and, I think, a mild blend of mental illness with developmental disability. But he could, and loved to, run a kitchen crew, and we all gladly obeyed his directions. I was reminded of the “old” Bread & Roses.

Hospitality for the Poor

2006-06-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

May 1, 2006:

The last week has brought for me a new discovery: It hurts to be unwanted.

Let me offer a little background. We at Bread & Roses are opening a new House of Hospitality at the old Yoga Center building on 4th Avenue. The move represents the fulfillment of a long term dream – to return to our old way of life as Catholic Workers, and to create a more home-centered environment for our Advocacy Center.

The new house on 4th will, first and foremost, be a home for myself and Meta, my wife. Secondly, we will be hosting the Bread & Roses Advocacy Center in the new house. We believe that moving the Advocacy Center (previously located in a storefront office at the corner of State and Washington) into a home will be tremendously advantageous to the program. The atmosphere offered by a warm, vibrant, comfortable home will dramatically affect the dynamic of our work, creating a more informal, far more personal environment in which to serve our guests.

Imagine – rather than walking into an office, signing in, and meeting with an advocate at a desk – walking across a welcome mat into a friend’s home, offered a cup of coffee, and asked how your day was. This is the experience we want each person to have as they come to our door seeking help with navigating the social service system.

As we have been moving during the last week, though, the dream of the new home has been tempered by the reality of the fear, prejudice, and even hatred held by our larger society toward the poor.

One of the new neighbors told me that he wished the landlord hadn’t rented to us. Many of the neighboring businesses, while really wanting to support us, expressed fear that our guests would drive away their customers. A front page article was printed in the Olympian that focused rather narrowly on the “not-in-my-back-yard” issues that plague Bread & Roses. One of our former neighbors was quoted as saying that he was “ecstatic” that we were moving away from his business.

While this all is very understandable and ought to be expected, it has certainly been an unpleasant experience and has affected the excitement that Meta and I have felt about our new home. It also, in the most powerful way that I have experienced, hit me with the day to day reality for my friends on the streets. Our society simply doesn’t want them. By proxy, they don’t want me as their neighbor either.

Two days ago I read the readers’ comments posted on the Olympian’s website in response to the article about our move. The following statements are taken directly from those website postings:

“Kick them to the curb and make them leave downtown. All they do is bother people. Lock them up and throw away the key - these people are USELESS!”

“…you would be a fool to let your children anywhere near them… …These people can’t make decisions for themselves and it is about time the public made them comply with the law.”

“We have a lot of homeless because they migrate here like birds looking for food! …If you feed the pigeons more will come!”

“As far as mental illness goes they don’t have a problem remembering to ask everyone for change as they walk by and what time ‘Din, Din’ is down at good ol’ Bread and Roses. I think the only mental illness most of these people have is called ‘lazyitis’.”

“I’d say the move is a step in the right direction. If we can keep them moving closer and closer to Tacoma, it won’t be long before they are IN Tacoma. Now that would be great.”

“Homeless people are worthless trash! Take them out behind the barn! Now that is problem solving at its best!”

“The VAST MAJORITY of these bums (homeless) choose to be that way. …They choose their lifestyle of being drunk and/or high wanting free hand outs and most likely will NEVER be productive citizens within this or any other community.”

“I too work with these people everyday and almost all of them are complete dregs on society. You people are enablers who allow this type of behavior to continue with no end in sight.”

“I’m sure this news is going to make 4th Dimension Computers very happy-- NOT!!!! Just what they want-- bums hanging around harassing their customers, and maybe even breaking into their building and stealing things. …Phil Owen better do something constructive about riding hard on his clients. How about paying for a police presence to make sure the clients aren’t breaking the laws?”

“You don’t continue to move a problem around, you ELIMINATE it… …Get rid of B&R and then we’ll get rid of the creepy homeless panhandlers downtown who freak normal people out.”

“…invite some of these people into your home, where they will piss on your carpet because it is too much trouble to walk to the bathroom, will leave their needles for your children to find, and will take everything you don’t have bolted down before they walk out the front door, all the while calling you filthy names.”

“If you let them fend for themselves the problem will fix itself, the ones who are hopelessly addicted will just spend their money on their drugs and die from malnutrition.”

“Its ok to hate bad people.”

“Shame them, humiliate them, Make them beg for crumbs. Put them in jail.”

“I wish it were legal to hunt the homeless.”

This kind of hatred speaks for itself; I don’t think I need to elaborate much to create a picture of the kind of bigotry that homeless people face each day.

When I was seventeen and just beginning to recover from homelessness myself, there was a woman who, together with her reluctant husband, opened her home to the youth of the Bald Hills. Not all the youth of the area gathered at her home, but it was a haven in particular to the rabble and hoodlums. These were the kids who were breaking into houses and prowling cars in the neighborhood – the potheads and meth-heads, the runaways, and the rascals. Rizae didn’t institute a program or create an organization; she just offered what little she had for a safe and friendly place for us kids to hang out. I rented a place on her couch for $100 per month, and brought my own food (two packets of ramen per day). From time to time she’d sneak me some macaroni with hotdogs.

I think most people would be terrified to do what Rizae did. Why, the kids would tear our home to pieces. What if they sell drugs? What if the neighbors complain? The impressive thing is that all these juvenile delinquents turned into angels when they were at her place. They were kind to one another (a miracle in itself), respectful of Rizae and her husband, and were unstoppable dishwashers. Rizae did nothing more to encourage this transformation than to be friendly, personable, and welcoming, yet soon the joke among the kids was that she was the neighborhood “mom”.

This is what a House of Hospitality looks like. A House of Hospitality is a place where it is easier for people to be good. It is a place where people can become healthy. Its strength rests on people like Rizae, people who have a burning drive to live in community with others, and who see the good in others and desperately want them to see it in themselves. Each and every person who took me in when I was a homeless teenager was operating a House of Hospitality. And now Meta and I have the opportunity to operate a House of Hospitality ourselves.

Meta and I want to welcome the homeless into our home because the homeless aren’t welcome anywhere else. We want to welcome the homeless into our home because everyone should feel wanted. We want to welcome them into our home because we know them, and care about them, and because we have a fundamental belief that it is possible for people to be close to one another even in the face of challenging circumstances. The homeless are persecuted, reviled, hated, and abused, much as Christ was in his time on the earth. Nonetheless, we believe that it is possible to overcome these challenges and create a little piece of the “Blessed Community” here in our home.

For Christians this time of year is Resurrection season. It is time for our community to put down the bloody nails of hatred, and to step into the light and beauty of the Resurrected life of love. Please, come and visit us in our new home. Come share a cup of coffee and a little conversation with our guests. You will be surprised and delighted with the result.

Purpose of the Canaanite's Call

2006-06-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

This blog is primarily an archive of submissions for the Canaanite's Call, a publication for radicals of faith. There will also be additional posts that have not been published in the paper, though they will be in keeping with the spirit and purpose of the paper. The following piece explains our mission:

When I sat down for coffee and picked up the newspaper one Sunday morning (I generally read the Olympian), I was struck by a great big photo on the cover of the South Sound section. Two women squared off with each other, nose to nose, faces red with anger, yelling and pointing fingers at one another. What was the argument? …The war in Iraq.
According to an editorial published several days later, many complaints had been sent to the Olympian since that photo was published, accusing the editors of a bias against the peace movement and of choosing to portray the only bitter incident in a largely peaceful gathering.
The truth of the matter, however, is that there is a great deal of bitterness and acrimony between the two sides of the war debate, and that little communication occurs between peace movement activists and war supporters.
War supporters often label peace activists as ungrateful, naive, and cowardly hippie-dippies who ought to just get a job – or leave the country. Peace activists often label war supporters as ignorant, aggressive country-bumpkins who ought to put up their shotguns and get an education.
Both sides yell “Support Our Troops!”; it has become the vitriolic rallying call to hippie-dippies and country-bumpkins alike. Yet I have yet to meet a single person (outside of the Catholic Worker at least) who has offered their living room couch to a disabled homeless veteran.
The problem in the debate is that very few people are willing to approach their ideological opponents as intelligent, thoughtful human beings. The spirit of fellowship is utterly absent. This dynamic is not limited to the war debate, either. It has shown up between business people and homeless people, business advocates and homeless advocates, cops and the homeless, Evergreen students and townies, liberals and conservatives, etc.
It is the official position of this paper, the Canaanite’s Call, that our opinions, though important to us, are far less valuable than the way in which we relate to others. Our purpose is to humanize people who have been dehumanized, to offer dignity to the marginalized, to advocate for direct personal responsibility for community problems, and to advocate for reconciliation and love between all people.
You will not find a lot of political diatribe in the Canaanite’s Call, though what you read may alter your political views. What you will find is the human story brought to life in a politicized and polarized world. No matter what your politics are, this paper will challenge you, disturb you, and could even make you angry. Or it might make you fall in love with your neighbor.
Enjoy.
-Phil Owen, editor