The day began on the steps of City Hall

5/31

I ride the subway back uptown with my colleague Alistair.

What do we want? Housing.When do we want it? Now

We’ve been on the steps of city hall following last night’s sleepover in City Hall Park, in a sense a ritual act (in the sense that Bill Tripp has educating us about) commemorating and celebrating the occupation 25 years ago. City Hall Park....and the steps of City Hall....transformed into ritual space. 

We were there to join the emerging coalition calling for a new housing policy for New York City that could preserve a space for the middle class here.The Coalition to End Homelessness Now. Part of that coalition is Habitat for Humanity, known for their hands on approach, rebuilding houses one at a time....Thankfully Habitat’s Matt Dunbar is open enough to say that at the current rate it would take 5500 years for Habitat to build enough houses. Yes, 5500 years, Policy change is needed. And so they created the Hammer  and Pen campaign including a long scroll to collect signatures of citizens demanding policy change. Today we will roll those scrolls down the steps of City Hall and ask mayoral candidates to sign

Rolling out the scroll

on. We will learn that today there are over 55000 in the city’s shelter system including 23000 children.

Long time sympathetic council member Sal Abanese,who was there 25 years ago to talk with the homeless occupation, is first to sign. Followed by Republican George Mc Donald has  spent his entire public  career seeking legitimate solutions in a classic Republican (think Eisenhower) way. Then finally council speaker Christine Quinn. Who after she signs, draws all the press attention. She is of course, the presumed front runner. She should be the progressive’s favorite with the real potential to be the city’ first woman, not to mention lesbian mayor. But just below the surface, she is a classic New York City Irish take no prisoners politician. She will do what she needs to do to get what she wants.

I spot our own council member Gale Brewer, now running for Manhattan Borough President. Clearly a friend of Homeless Activists. And get her invited to sign as well. I wish I were wearing my collar. Dressed as a normal person, I’m just a body. Alistair, who spent the night bit went home for his collar,  and I agree, it was a good event....

Back at West-Park, Stephen tells me there is the smell of death in the sanctuary. He’s right. And that fills me with dread. When Danielle arrives, we’ll both don masks and enter the pigeon tower, the forbidden zone, to investigate. God knows, I’d love to just send her by herself, but I can’t allow that. So we go together. And find nothing. So we’ll investigate the whole sanctuary. And then together sweep the steps. And I’ll take care of dumping the decomposing dead mouse. (This is true urban ministry.)

He assessment was that the storm soaked the pigeon guan and the sun baked to foulness. We throw open the windows and burn scented candles all day.

Stephen will be tied up in meetings with Martin for hours seeking the elusive solution. 

A man from a theatre company come wanting to check out space. Seems his production takes place while most of the audience is sleeping...OK, then....

I hear a noise and find Edward Green on the steps with a ton of cardboard. Edward, you have to go. I say. You can’t be here. He eyes me, angrily, OK,  you made your point. I’m going. Taking my stuff with me. 

I come back later. He’s still there. Still glowering. I already told you I’m going. I already have a father, he’s older than you. (Maybe, maybe not...)

Edward is still on a wanted poster at Capital Hall. And persona non grata here. He’s the living challenge to my policy of unqualified acceptance. (But not the only one...)

In the sanctuary, a  woman is quietly praying...

Stephen comes in after his  hours of conversation. The dream is still alive. Still possible....but.....

My friend John Scotland arrives from Brigantine, New Jersey. Fighting his own battle with a Presbytery to keep his soup kitchen alive. His laughter speaks of cynicism, reality, determination and faith. But tonight’s agenda will only include his Red Sox vs. our Yankees at Yankee Stadium.(Another ritual space...) Stephen of course, shares his Red Sox tattoo. The first time I hear Boston sucks, I know that we are moving past the marathon attacks.....

Later, after the Yankees hold on to win, I’ll return. Stephen is staffing the Collegiate School alumni event. After I explain to someone that it’s a legitimate party, not some after hours affair, it's time to head home.

                                                                      * * * * 

I wish my #OWS friends could have read Jiler's Sleeping with the  mayor...25 years ago, the homeless occupiers of City Hall Park, kochville,  tried to create a community of radical acceptance, radical democracy, perhaps even sustainability.  They faced just what #OWS did long ago. And their failures, as well las their successes, were important lessons. 

And now for dance....

5/31

Sal from Church Mutual has come for the final walk through. It feels like we’ve got a good shot at getting a comprehensive policy through without breaking the bank. He seems seriously appreciative of what church  means in its fullest sense.

Ted drops in just to check up on how things are going.  And then Raven comes in. Wants to pick up some of the stuff he’s left here. I am very depressed to hear that he’s currently with a group camping  out at Pier 72. Including Jeanie. . It hurts me more than I can say that people who used to be part of a cooperative at West-Park are now living on the docks. The fact that their own choices contribute to this doesn’t help in the least. He is a good  man at heart. No way he should be homeless. He offers to help with graphic design. When he leaves, Danielle and I both are feeling depressed.

Dance people are coming in, getting ready for tonight’ s performances. Marc has found an old amp and  wants us to see it and understand what he wants to do with it. 

I’ve got to go to  a critical Presbytery meeting I really don't want to go to. What I really wan to do is go to the annual Dos Pueblos garden party and art auction to support work in Nicaragua.  And I have to go directly from there to St.Peter’s church, the oldest Catholic Church in the city, to speak at the 27th Annual Interfaith Assembly Convocation and Overnight Vigil in support of the homeless.

I leave and get back to the church in time for the late night performance of Movement Research. Steve is working it for us because we haven’t heard from Teddy in almost 40 hours. Yet another burden on my heart. In the sanctuary, final performance In the music concert is taking place. Soemone playing a Japanese instrument an din the balcony a drummer. Twenty minutes of unplanned improvisation seeking  synchronicity.

Up in the gym, the late dance performance is taking place. We have in the past several months hosted events that have stretched the boundaries of theatre and music. Now we have done the same with dance. Postmodern diesn’t really describe it. Though that's part of it. Boundaries of genre are pushed. Boudaries of gender, of sexual orientation are crossed with intention and also as if they don’t even exist. Power pop music ( I got the power...) provides the background for a solo performance expressing  alienation and the search for identity. Two muscular and androgynous Latinos do an amazing piece to reggaeton. Two dancers bring down the lights an pass out candles for people to light and pass one to the other. I’m aware that we did this exact same ritual at St. Peters a few hours ago as the participants left for an overnight vigil in City Hall Park. Its an evocation of every Christmas Eve service. And again, the mixing of genres and structures takes me back to Bill from Portland who helped us reopen this space and redefine what ritual space means.  The visceral connections are always intuitively clear to me, even if not to everyone else.

Afterwards, I go to Mc Alpin where the bar has been set up. They’ve arranged the  tables in a zig zag format for creation of a timeline  of dance history that has also been inscribed with moments like the Port Huron  Statement and assassinations of Jack Kennedy and  Robert and MLK. How can you record art hisotry of any kind without the social context in which it was created? I’m approached nervously by those who haven’t met me before. It’s my first night here. It’s that minister thing. That reality makes them anxious, expecting judgment. Apologies  for one of our rawer nights. The next performances will be more traditonal. I explain that this is why we're here..to provide a space where you can, as the sign says,  Dream. Real. Hard...push the boundaries, make it real. Take us some place unexpeted. One of the coordinators tells me she was raised  Presbyterian and her mom was big in Presbyterian Women, back in the day. Bobby has come in and is being well taken care of. Steve tells me that Teddy has checked in. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Thirty-second day of Lent: Nothing Biblical

4/14

Norm, Hope and I meet to to go further with the archives. Hope’s unopened bag and the bag I picked up at Jim’s office on the way here are like bags of unopened Christmas presents. With no other place to work, we gather around the communion table, put what we’ve got down to look at.

It’s a impressive array of stuff, that’s for sure. Old hand written deeds. personal letters. Tintypes, kodak polaroids, examples from the whole history of photography. Lists, records, marriages, baptisms. Blueprints, planned renovations that never took place. A letter of dismissal. The Peacemonger Press. Christmas cards. Unsorted, random. History in our hands. This is being destroyed just by our touching it, says Norm as we go through papers from the 19th Century. 

Norm has a sense of what we have. he needs some color things. Some things  that attract attention. Tell a story. We’ll have to look for those. 

When Hope and I go outside, Marty is there. On the steps. Writing in an notebook.                                           “Hey Marty, what are you up to?” “Nothing Biblical, I assure you. My shopping lists, et cetera.” 

Hope says, “You moved,” gesturing across the street. 

“Too hot over there,” he says, "Monday it was near 80, today, ah, 65? I’m looking to live on the median...” 

We close up. That’s all for now. Later I meet Mim with a friend  from Bank Street, the teacher’s college. We give her a tour. She talks about an exciting film program involving kids and their own neighborhoods and video. Like Paolo Freire’s work with cameras. Where people become the subject of their own history. Take back control of their own lives. Our guest smiles when I mention Freire. Of course, she says.

On the one hand, it’s an exciting opportunity. On the other, I am tired of opportunities. I want to see something real. We shake hands. Agree to talk further. 

We go back outside. In the sun. Marc Greenburg of the Interfaith Assembly is there on 86th.  Knocking at the door. Pushing the buzzer. We go for coffee and popovers. History. The Assembly was started by three giants, Father Daniel Berrigan, Rabbi Marshall Meyer and the Rev. Bob Davidson, my predecessor. Formed to respond to the 200 day homeless sleep-in vigil in City Hall Park. Marc has been the only Director. And I am now the President. Part of our legacy. And present. Each year there’s  a  convocation, march, sleepover and morning meeting with elected officials around the budget and the homeless. A liturgy of remembrance and presence.  Turning the Park and the street into what Bill Tripp would call Ritual Space. We finish our conversation.

Time to go work on the budget. 

Different local, same union: Interfaith is not a strategy, it's a way of life

1/17

Large bundles of cardboard boxes flattened and bound with string. Some open, torn, laid flat in the north doorway. Did someone come here seeking shelter? In this 20 degree weather? And was taken by the police to St. Luke’s? Sometimes I feel like an urban version of a tracker, looking at clues to see what might have taken place while I was gone. What I’d see if there was a video camera recording 24/7.

Today, Steven is returning with more of his Woodshed Collective members. And John is bringing a director friend. It’s late afternoon and gathering dark as I lead the tour, beginning in the scariest part, the basement. As we go up and down back staircases to surprise arrivals in different rooms, the theatre folks have the delight of kids in a haunted house or on a scavenger hunt.  As we look at the semi-ruins of the chapel, one member says, “you’d normally have to pay a lot of money to get something to look like this.” We finish the tour. They will continue  to thjnk about “immersive possibilities.” John says to his director, “what could you do with a place like this?” She says, “What couldn’t you do.”

Earlier today I joined in  our annual neighborhood Martin Luther King, Jr Day march for peace. This year’s theme is “economic justice.”  Including a call for support of a bill to provide paid sick leave for city employees. As we march the streets , with police escort, going in and out of five houses of worship, pausing at each for a reflection, a song, an act, we weave a reality throughout the neighborhood. This  is a perfect example of what Bill Tripp spoke of in his presentation on Ritual Space. We have turned our neighborhood into living, breathing ritual space.

Walking from Holy Name to 2nd Presbyterian, I’m  joined by an older woman. She says to me, “I know you, you don’t know me,” her nam e is Ulla. She’s one of  the amazing group of septuagenarian/octogenarian committed members of Peace Action. She speaks of her many years of activity at West-Park. Wants to know if we’re finally saved from being torn down. So I have to slowly explain the realities  of landmarking.  She talks  about having  come to the Crafts Fair/Music Festival, how much it meant to her to be back inside after all these years. How beautiful and alive  it looked. She asks where the money will come from to fix things. And I say, “people just like you’." And she laughs. And then  I  say, seriously. And describe our step by step process.  

At the next stop, I’m disturbed when the pastor, after describing what an inclusive and multicultural place the school at her church was,  asks us to conclude  by singing “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, bearers of the cross.” Well bearers instead of soldiers certainly demilitarizes the old hymn. But doesn’t make it inclusive.

Out on the street, I join my friend Father Duffel,and Lutheran pastors Elise and Heidi. Good solid organizers all. Leaders in working for rights for homeless and for their issues. They share my concerns about inclusiveness. At the Franciscan church, the friar spoke of the God we call God, Allah, Adonai, Dios....Our Presbyterian hosts were Christocentric. That can’t feel welcoming when what you’ve come to attend is an interfaith witness.

I thought back to Thursday night’s event again. The imam calling us to King’s vision of ecumenicity. Rabbi Potasnik of the New York City Board of Rabbis said that we were in  “different locals, but all part if the same union.” Later, I spoke with my friend Rabbi Michael Feinberg of The Religion Labor coalition.  He shared with me his disappointment with certain leaders of this event. “I’m used to people who live interfaith as a way of life. Not see it as a strategic tactic. When they had a preservice ‘prayer huddle,’ I thought of joining in just to be there, but it felt like it wasn’t for me. I’m getting too old for this...”

Elise speaks of how one of our rabbi colleagues finds much of what we do not inclusive. FatherJohn and Pastor Heidi are in agreement. I talk about last Thursday and say, “interfaith is not a strategy, it’s a way of life.” We agree we have to make that more understood. On King Day, 2011, we should be further along than this. 

They want to know  about what we’re up to. Elise came to our Crafts Fair/Music Festival and was very moved to see life coming again. I talk about how we’re not looking for a real estate deal anymore, that it’s a new process. Hard for some to understand. How we tried to rebuild for rebirth but now know we must be reborn to rebuild.

I watch the line  of people winding its way through the streets connecting  our houses  of worship. The kind of ritual space Bill Tripp described for us goes beyond any particular tradition, is by its very nature inclusive. The immersive theatre experience being imagined by Woodshed, how it works, is yet another expression of Ritual Space.  That's the vision of the  Centre we are seeking to bring into being. A place for artists, activists, companion travelers of all kinds. This can be  our part of the emerging Beloved Community we can take responsibility to build.

An Hour of Ritual Space

12/2

As I get to the church after the Advent lectionary study at Union, John is there waiting for me. It’s a cold morning so we go to Barney Greengrass instead of my office to review budget matters. It’s time to go back to zero and start over. And even that doesn’t begin to resolve the money issues.

I see Deacon James starting to sweep the steps. Already a work crew is assembling at the Church. There’s Amanda and Hope and Hugo. And a work team from Brownstone Restorations under the leadership of Jack Pontes has arranged for a dumpster and come for a day’s worth of work. Our job is to figure out what’s garbage and not...their’s is to get rid of it. There are decades worth of stuff to go through. Boxes of papers that were buried until the water pipes burst and water poured through the church. Jack’s crew is even ready to tackle the pigeon situation, but health concerns make us hesitate on that one.

Floor by floor, room by room, box by box we go through the past. Hopes, dreams, successes, fights, failures, all passing through our fingers’ touch. Bulletins, minutes, architectural drawings, reports, visions, plans, projects done and never done. And more than enough from my own fifteen years here. The most important is kept--the original plans for Joseph Papp’s balcony theatre, the list of contents of the lock box, the first contract to establish the God’s Love We Deliver kitchen, issues of the Peacemonger Press, “Viva 86” fliers from the merger struggle of the early 90‘s.. “keep West-Park alive at 86th and Amsterdam” they say...the mundane heads for the dumpster. And what if anything demands to be shredded?

I’ve waited for this for years. At first Hope, like Marsha before her, is depressed and overwhelmed. But box by box the weight disappears. We’ve got a two part problem...we need to get clear with the Fire Department and in order to do that, we’ve got to get rid of our gates. But Jack doesn’t have his saw. None of the hardware stores around have rental saws. So, I walk across the street to the Belnord to ask Nazim if we can borrow a “saw” saw. He tells me that he and his men will come and do the work themselves.

Meantime I head to the Fire Department. But its the wrong station. Our fire districts are not the same as the police precincts. So I head back to 84th and remember when we sang carols there the Christmas after 9-11. I talk to the chief. Tell him we’ve been gone for three years. He asks why we left. I tell him the short version of the story. He says “So you left voluntarily?” And I say, “yes.” And he asks what’s the capacity. I say around 550. And he says how many are coming? And I say 2-3 dozen. And he says are the exits clear? and I say yes and he says have a good night and I say thanks.

Back at the church, Hope has stories. How Nazim and his crew brought down the gates. And she said, “thank you, you’ve opened the doors to our church again” and Nazim, a devout Muslim, smiled and said , “No, God did.” And how she discovered that two of Jack’s crew were from the Portuguese community of Newark and how they then carried on a conversation in Portuguese. “That’s what I want church to be for me, meeting people, making connections all around what we’re doing together. That’s where I find God,” she says. And I say “That is it. That is it exactly.”

Amanda and I put the final pieces in place for tonight’s event, “An hour of ritual space.” This evening has been her idea, her design. Now to make it real. Marsha shows up to help. Then Hope and Holly. We’ve got Matt’s photographs up, his book, a print to raffle. Hot cider, cheese and crackers in my office. And mulled wine in the sanctuary. It looks open and clean. And people start to come. Church folks, friends from our temporary home at the Methodist Church, the city’s new director of sustainability, our city council member, a student following me for a class, folks from Union Seminary, my pastoral counseling supervisor...just the kind of gathering our proposed Centre is designed to create.

I open the evening. It is historic, in its way. I never thought there’d be a night like this again in this space. Next is northwest architect Bill Tripp. With his photos and his words he talks of the ways we create and live in ritual space whether it’s a home, a living community response to 9-11, a memorial to 9-11 or World War II, a church...how they’re interconnected. Then we introduce Matt, our photographer and then Gale our City Council member. The evening ends with Amanda's song written especially for this occasion. A guitar player she met along the way accompanies her. Yes, this is what I wanted.

The Union people say what better time than Advent to start this journey. I’m thinking that no matter how good this feels, the public, everyone who’s happy about this movement...that’s what someone said this is, a grass roots movement... has to know how desperate the financial realities are..

Our members feel happy, a little amazed. The gates are down. The doors are open. The sanctuary’s empty of garbage, clean. Tonight, after three years, we created ritual space once again.