What Connects?

“I was about ten years old when it happened. I was standing in the kitchen of my grandparents’ house, where I lived with my parents and younger sister. I was making a pickle, relish, and crispy bacon sandwich when the question came to me: “If God made everything, then who made God?”… I was trying to make sense of the powerful, conflict created by the strict orderliness and cleanliness of the life downstairs in my grandparent’s rooms, with its promise of a heavenly home at death (if we but believed in the Gospel of Christ), and the hell my sister and I lived in upstairs with our parents in the complete disorder of the attic, with no promise of a better life, ever.

So I stared at the sandwich and began to think back, to before me and then before that, until I reached a sensation that felt as if I was going off the tip of my nose into an altered state of consciousness. I was in a strange space and could feel fear arising, along with an excited curiosity that ended all too quickly. After this brief moment was gone, I attempted to repeat it without success. I will never forget that moment. It was perhaps my first and most intimate experience of walking toward a threshold of human suffering in order to know and be known, beyond the reach of my struggling mind.

My grandfather, with whom we were living, migrated along with many others to the United States from Sweden in 1890 in search of a new earthly home to rekindle the spiritual life of his Christian faith. He had longed to be a preacher of the Gospel, but he was part of the majority of Swedes who were the working poor—peasants and laborers. Once here, he managed to study at Chicago Theological Seminary, setting the foundation of his belief system, walking the path of its beckoning service, and dying in the assurance of heaven somewhere beyond the blue.

It is said that the apple does not fall far from the tree. I did not realize how closely I have followed in my grandfather’s footsteps.

Like him, I have sought a renewal of the human spirit by walking toward suffering. I recognize this path as my own and walk it in a spirit of common shared humanity seeking for home. My intimacies with the unknown have come when I have found it necessary to move directly toward that which I don’t understand, or fear, or find difficult. As a child I had two imaginary friends, Oscar and Blowy, who were the truth tellers negotiating for me with a confused adult world. Now they are the clown and the mime, who work to keep me, as an adult and a minister, honest in a less-than-honest society, and who bring me the joy of play.

As a wife and mother I looked into the most difficult and fearful unknown of all when I left my family and everything of monetary value. Carrying only a suitcase, backpack, and three books, I literally left home to “join the circus.” Now in old age, I walk into the unknown of the city streets of San Francisco. With those I encounter as fellow travelers, I seek to know and be known, always listening for the inner voice of recognition of the other one, who like me, asks, “What holds me separate? What keeps me separated? As I walk these streets, what still connects us? Rather than seeking salvation in an imagined heavenly home, we seek it in a real one that we have in each other.”
~ Rev. Kay Jorgensen

“Nervously approaching a homeless man standing on the corner, Siple asked him for directions to the nearest soup kitchen. His news was not good. There weren’t any nearby. But the man, who later told her his name was Thomas, reached into one of the plastic bags he was carrying. “I can offer you this rice if you are hungry.”

For more than 10 years, the Faithful Fools, an organization founded and directed by a Franciscan sister and a Unitarian minister, have been sending hundreds of people to the impoverished neighborhood, which guidebooks of the city recommend avoiding. To date, some 3,500 men, women and teenagers have ignored the tourist advisory, deliberately, mindfully and often fearfully venturing into the depths of the Tenderloin. They have walked out the door from their orientation session at First Unitarian Church, a place of privilege in the cushy Cathedral Hill area, to descend 20 minutes later into the world of the poor. They have carried a mantra with them: “What holds us separate? What keeps us separated? As we walk the streets, what still connects us?”

For Siple, who practices Soto Zen meditation, the connecting thread was generosity. “Thomas gave me food from his little surplus but it came from such a place of abundance.” Thomas’ kindness set the tone for the next seven days. “Every day, people shared their possessions with me, their knowledge of the streets, their company.” Franciscan Sr. Carmen Barsody and Unitarian minister Kay Jorgensen have grown accustomed to hearing stories such as Siple’s. One of the main reasons Barsody and Jorgensen started the Faithful Fools a decade ago was for sheltered, middle-class people to experience the company of homeless people, to listen to their stories and to discover the common denominator of their humanity on a level playing field.

Jorgensen used to accompany her physician father when he made house calls to poor neighborhoods. She and her sister would stay in the family sedan while he was inside. She never forgot the black children who would stare through the windows at them. She later majored in theater and religion at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and married a psychologist. They moved to Lafayette, Ind., so he could attend Purdue University. One day, the French mime Marcel Marceau made an appearance at the school. “Watching him perform was life-changing,” Jorgensen recalled. She began studying mime and started a theater called Fantasia Folks in her home.

When her marriage ended, the mother of three brought a street theater company to San Francisco, but it didn’t succeed. There was too much competition. Jorgensen cleaned houses to support herself. In San Francisco, she couldn’t help noticing the increasing numbers of homeless people. Their presence reawakened her compassionate social conscience and led her to become a minister. She enrolled at Starr King School of Divinity in Berkeley and graduated in 1987. After a pastoral stint in Minneapolis for a few years, she moved back to San Francisco to be near her eldest daughter and began attending First Unitarian Church.

When the church board decided to establish a social justice outreach ministry, Jorgensen became its minister. Somehow, she knew she needed to build an outreach to the homeless using both of the two major parts of her life -- theater and ministry.

Americans who are immersed in a fix-it mentality might wonder: Has Faithful Fools’ ministry of presence inspired a profusion of life turnarounds? Knutson chuckled. Perhaps six or seven people have made the leap. As for the rest? Fools don’t judge or try to change a person, she said simply. “Whatever happens, we don’t go away.” Frequently, Faithful Fools street retreatants return for their second and third experiences.

On the last day of her retreat, Siple was moved to proclaim to the world what truth she had found by walking with the homeless as a homeless person herself. “I took a piece of cardboard and wrote on it in black marker: ‘I believe in the strength of human generosity.’ I sat in front of City Hall in the grove of trees holding my message.”
~ Sharon Abercrombie