The battle for the steps has been engaged again

4/17

A hard start to the day. Kristen and Kris(ten) from Project Reachout have come to do an intervention with Antonia and Wesley. Teddy is along for muscle. We meet in our office to plan the strategy. The two K’s are recommending actually closing down the steps. If you eliminate options, people more willing to accept services. Antonia and Wesley actually forced BJ to go that route. They say that Holy Name and even Fifth Avenue Presbyterian have too. Fifth Avenue was the church that went to court against the city to retain the right for people to stay on their steps, a fight that we supported and gained from. It’s also hard to ban some people from your steps unless you ban all people. We are agreed that we have to tell them that they must move on. 

When we get out there, the trio from yesterday is back, the hostile man spread out over three steps, actually looking passed out. K and K have never seen them before. We decide to speak to them first. The woman says they have another space they usually stay. (The sullen man has gotten up and left, wanting no part of this conversation.) K and K will alert the Reachout team for that neighborhood. The woman agrees to consider services.

Wesley and Antonia are watching all this, wary. I begin the conversation by telling them it’s not working, they’ll have to move on. Wesley says they’ve had one appointment Tuesday and another scheduled for Thursday. Antonia seems open at first then retreats when one of the K’s approaches her. Wesley’s packing their many bags. he waves his arms in frustration. Says its all about her panic attacks. That’s what keeps them on the street. The bottom line is they’ve got to go. Alright, alright, he says, we’ll go somewhere else. 

Anna and Puppy  have been observing this from a safe distance. 

Back inside, we talk again. How will we enforce what we just agreed to? It’s not clear. We’ll see what happens. We’ll stay in touch. 

These are hard questions. It really adds up to having to split up Antonia and Wesley. For her own good.  Teddy says Wesley’s concern for Antonia’s panic attacks is self-serving bull shit. I’m not sure. Well, yes, part of it is. He’s a long time street person, a hustler, a player. On the one hand she’s manipuated and coerced into her realtionship with him and on the other its codependent. And at some other level, part of him truly cares for her. Nothing ever back and white. Take it from the street to the coop, similar dynamics play out, albet more nuanced. 

To save one, a couple has to be  broken up. In all honesty a similar reality may come to our OWS coop when it has to break up with no effective  plan for continuation. Seems to be heading there. Clearly some couples may have to break up so that one might make it. And honestly, it’s the story out there in the world. Only there sometomes someone splits to save themselves.  Wish it weren’t so. But it is.

So what is my responsibilty? What is my call? Feel like the battle for the steps has been engagred again.  

the community garden on 89th

Steve comes in to take care of some business. It's early and already I feel done. I'm going to get a cup of coffee. Go sit in the community garden at 89th awhile. So many different kinds of tulips. 

Wrestling with reality

4/16

Sekou and his wife Carlene have come in to talk about our upcoming Revolutionary Bible Study which will focus on the Gospel of Mark and Ched Meyer’s Binding the Strong Man. Struggling with how to do it in such a way as to engage the people so as to build a base for praxis, not just an exploration of exegetical theological ideas. 

Steve  comes in to pick up a ticket for a ballgame we will be going to later that night. My friend Liz comes in for a visit. I knew her  for years as one of the soccer parents. But then at a party discoverred she ws a social worker and she wanted to come in, see what’s going on, if there might be a way for her to play a part. 

As I greet her at the door, I see that Wesley and Antonia have arrived early. Problem. And in the south doorway, a threesome have set up camp. I tell them they can’t be there during the day. One large man, with what could only be called a baleful and glowering  presence, stares at me and says We ain’t sleepin’. I look back, say, Not the point. You can’t be here with all this stuff during the day. We have to keep these doors open. He looks back at me with an evil glare. An all but spoken sense of threat. 

Teddy comes around the corner. Yo, is there a problem? He stands by me. Soon the steps are clearing. Back inside, I’m showing Liz the sanctuary when RL walks in, three piece suit and cowboy hat. Talks about his wife Harvey’s trip to the hospital. Explains that he calls her Harvey ...he has a nickname for everyone he cares for...because she was an actress and her last part was in Harvey, the play about Elwood P. Dowd and his invisble 6’3.5 tall rabbit friend, Harvey. 

RL recalls a conversation where Elwood is told he’s got to face reality. Elwood responds: Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it. 

I remember how much my father loved the movie with Jimmy Stewart when it came out. How he brought home a four foot inflatable bunny for me and called it Harvey.

Along our tour, Liz meets Runi in her protective shell winter down coat and watch cap, even in  warm spring weather.  Raven is cooking cream of vegetable soup from fresh vegetables in  the kitchen. I learned his real name today. Always thought Raven was his nom d’occupy but he’s had it since he was a teenager. Seems he had a bird that said raven.

Was it a raven? I ask.

No, he says, it only said raven. Everybody started calling me that. I’m looking for an Edgar Alan Poe (our neighbor from two blocks down, lived across the street fom the old Park Church)  angle here, but its not quite there. 

We finish our tour. Go off to talk about thier efforts to create an exit strategy. The emotional issues we’re confronting in  doing that. In an hour, she's had a good look at our life here, at all that's challenging, wonderful, fufilling and impossible. 

Late at night, Steve and I are coming back up 86th. Carl Pavano, who spent a benighted two years in New York as a Yankee and is now loudly reviled and despised with every appearance, has just held on after a rocky start to shut down the Yankees. We talked Occupy business all night. We stop in front of the church. Talk with little Christopher awhile. All my issues are still facing me. Tomorrow is tax day. We too, are still wrestling with reality. 

Second Sunday in Easter: Pondering joy

4/15

Rafael is helping me to get ready for the service. Hope arrives soon after. A couple has come to visit from outside of Buffalo. They’ve visited with us before. When when we were in residence at SPSA. Thier daughter around the corner has told them we’re back so they’ve come to check us out. Amy is back from Michigan.

This week our opening Alleluias! are Celtic. Our opening hymn is O sons and daughters let us sing... John reads the passage from Acts where ...no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (4:32)

I choose a different translation for Psalm 133: How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in harmony...Ask how many have a memory of that passage and several remember how it hangs on the banner in front of the sanctuary at SPSA. That it was the banner they hung as a sign of welcome when B’Nai Jeshurun came to live with them after their roof fell in. How that living togtether gave new life ot both congregations. And how whe we lived there for three years, we were under that banner as well . And how I prefer harmony to unity...In unity, we all sing the same note. In harmony, we have different notes that all weave together. And then we sing it in Hebrew:

Hinay ma tov umanayim, chevet achim gan yachad....

The BJ/SPSA theme song, you might say...After reading John 20: 19-31, John’s Pentecost, so to speak, we sing Breathe on me breath of God...

And then it’s time  for reflection. I ask what’s special about the weekend. Someone mentions the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. A chance to see Leo and Kate all over again, and that tear jerking, manipulative  song. Recall that my father was fascinated by that story. Collected books, stories. I can’t remember why. 

No particuar theological significance. But, I tell them, James Clifford did tell me he’s not like the Titanic, not going down that fast. 

Before the Dodgers, Jackie was a Monarch

I also remind folks that its the 45th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major leaue debut opening day at Ebbetts Field, 1947. I hold up a hat from the Kansas City Monarchs, Jackie’s last Negro League team. (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/boxscore/04151947.shtml

But my real question for today, this second Sunday in Easter, is what would it take for you to believe? That’s what I asked my class  in Newark last Monday. How do they know the Resurrection is real? We were reading James Cone, who after pages of analytic theological exposition essentially  says that we do because we do...

We’re into 50 days of Resurrection living, like the Jewish 50 days of counting the Omer,50 days from Passover to Pentecost (ie, counting 50).We count 50 days from Easter. Last week I asked about what we have to leave behind, in order to leave the grave, step into new life, resurrection. This week I’m going to flip it, ask what do we take with us? How do we know Jesus? Last week, he looked plain. Ordinary, like a gardner. (No glow, no give away halo.)Mary knew him through his voice, the way he said her name. The voice of a lover, a friend, a family member. The way no one else ever said it. The sound of intimacy. 

And now we here we have Thomas. (Now I have to note that even after Jesus sightings, they’ve got the doors closed and locked. Fear is still winning here. They’re not coming out. )Today, Thomas needs something else. To touch the wounds. And that’s what I want you to see,...the wounds remain, even after resurrection...they are part of what made Jesus human,what made Jesus recognizable, what made Jesus Jesus and they are part of what make you you...We bring  our wounds with us as we step into resurrection. 

I want to be very clear here. I’m not talking about holding grudges. One wrong word at a family table echoes for years. Not that. And I’m not talking about the refusal to work at reconciliation. That is not an option. Jesus commands, demands it. And I am especially not talking about holding onto an identity of victimhood..These are things we leave back in the tomb..they are the things of death...but the hurts, the sufferings, what we have lived through... helps make us who we are...give us ways to connect with, live in solidarity with others...

That proof people want to see, it comes through a new way of living...like it says in Acts...the people were of one heart, one soul, held everything in common...There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 4:35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need... So it didn’t begin with Marx, but the Bible...that first Christian community was  truly an intentional community...

John says that this was the word of life and that God is light, and that we are to walk in the light ...why? so that we might have joy complete...

I’m thinking about that. Working on that. It’s not part of my religious cultural upbringing. When the summer camp song leader taught us slap bang here we go again, jolly  Presbyterians, our own youth leader shook her head, uh, no. That’s not who we are..And yes, I’m always suspicious of too much happiness. But I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, in Black churches, in worship led by my lgbtq friends at General Assembly gatherings. In communities of struggle. That just like hope is a theological category, so is joy. But it arises out of the  struggle. No joy without struggle. Joy rises from resistance. I’m working on it. I want to go there. Will you go with me? Can we work on it togtether? 

And that’s my sermon for today. 

And then something unexpected happens. the congregation bursts int applause. And I feel humbled. And I feel shaken. For this moment, the Holy Spirit was there. And I felt it. And it was real. 

When  we take up the offering, we sing Jesus the Light of the World, only with Easter verses. We sing a Caribbean Halle, halle, hallelujah. Make our circle. Sing our amens. Linger awhile. Not wanting to leave. 

The session meets. Reviews all our various challenges. Proposed programs. We are ready for struggle. And I walk home. Pondering joy.

A night with Emiko

4/14

There’s been an incident. There was confusion as to what time our security was to be on hand. Emiko and her cast were there at 4:30 for final run throughs. She’s been told the head of security was Raphael. A man was sitting there.Are you Ralph? she asked. He nodded. Are you head of security? He nodded again. How long you work here? she asked. Four years, he replied. When their backs were turned, he went through their stuff, stole a wallet and cash and disappeared. The police were called, arrived, took interviews. 

When Raphael arrived, he was quite upset. He takes great pride in keeping this place safe. Did not want anyone thinking he had fallen down on the job. Emiko realized that this was the  real Ralph. 

Her benefit was to coincide with the one year anniversary of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. She drew a bigger crowd than her last benefit. Easily over 250. My neighibor and friend Ric opened with his double flute solo and his new song Pray for me. Japanese pop icon Setsuko Hata followed with a Whitney Houston flavored set followed by hip hop dance artist Toshihiko Nakazawa, fresh from amateur night at the Apollo.

Our friend Chzuru dances a solo to another pop song then a series of Broadway show song and dance medleys from The King and I to Flower Drum Song to West Side Story follow.  

Mambo!

I’m impressed that Chizuru now sings as well as dances. To see both Jets and Sharks performed by Japanese performers a bit startling though Natsuko Hayashi’s dancing as Anita could be in any production. Chizuru as Rosalia singing Puerto Rico...in America gave me a smile.

At intermission, I find Antonia, heavily made up, on the steps, holding up a sign, begging. I tell her not the time or place. She’ll have to go and come back later.

Noh Mai Toshinori Hamada

The second half began with a traditonal Japanese Noh Mai featuring Noh artist Toshinori Hamada. And I remembered Leslie in high school who inside her majorette had a passion for Ferlinghetti and Japanese Noh. 

The rest was all opera with the ten o’clock show stopper being Takaoki Onishi’s largo al factorum from Il Barbiere di Siviglia. I notice that Rafael has eased into the sanctuary, taking it all in. And for a moment, I remember the great opera moments in this place, all those years of Lauren and Comfort Ye, the warmth of the memories, the profound sadness of loss. 

Emiko herself sings an aria from Madame Butterfly and then Met legend Lucine Amara, now 87, closes the show. Still singing, wise enough to know what she can do and then do everything with what she has. I am pleased that her spirit has joined the house 

Emiko, Takaoki Inishi, Lucine Amara

Emiko is an intriguing woman. Clearly a professional in planning and shaping a gala, hiring the right choreographer and director, light and sound staff to realize her vision. A taskmaster with her eye on every detail, passionate about opera, her own people and culture and the next generation. Ric and I both impressed with her ability to attract, use and nurture  young artists in their twenties. Her presence, our space, an exchange of gifts.

At the  reception, I hear one of Dona Amara’s entourage say ..seen better days...about the church...so I walk over and share our story. 

Ric and I say our goodbyes. I thank Rafael. Ric and I head home together. 

Bob, Chizuru, Ric

Friday the Thirteenth

4/13

Friday the Thirteenth. Brief stop at the church before Opening Day at Yankee Stadium. Turns out Teddy worked on the construction crew building the new theme park version of Yankee Stadium. Installed the spinklers under the deck, and helped build the dugouts. Grew up a Yankee fan. Used to be able to see into the original Yankee Satdium from his wife’s apartment. Bitter about how the new stadium displaced the park where the Dominicans played ball but even more barbecued and hung out. There’s a classy ball field on the site of the original field. Heritage Field its called. Tightly scheduled. Not the same.  And angry that he can’t afford to take his kids to a ballgame anymore. And a funny story about a protest buried in the dugout wall.

Steve and I talk about other games at other ballparks. His growing up and going to Jack Murphy in San Diego. I remember the 98 Yankees-Padres series at the old Stadium. The group of Padres fans who thought it would be cool to wear giant Mexican sombreros in the upperdeck. Bad idea. 

Come back after the game to find Steve, Requiem and Rose tabling, passing out free clothes. Advertising tonight’s 99% movie night featuring Inside Job, the Matt Damon narrated doumentary on the destruction of the economy. 

Jamie drops by after work. An overwhelming agenda of issues to cover. Feels like its all closing in. 

And we actually had to outlaw lynching

4/12

An empty bottle of Courvoisier Cognac and a New Webster’s Complete Dictionary. 

Teddy tells me he had difficulty getting Antonia and Wesley to move on. He was gentle, given the hospital situation. How Wesley had come in last night during our meeting and said Yo,I know you and I have had our beefs but I got to take my woman to the hospital, can we bring our stuff inside? and Teddy had taken care of him. 

I tell Teddy about my morning with Occupy Faith. Reports of the national meeting in Oakland. Would have liked to have been there. They’re serious in Oakland. Everybody’s planning something for May Day. What will we do? I hear decriptions of one event we’re invited to take part in. How can we control the message? Someone asks. You can’t, I say. Even the Messaging Work Group can’t control the message. Someone else reports promises connected with a certain action. We’re invited to provide collar cover. They come with all good intentions, I say, but you cannot be romantic. You just cannot romanticize this. Green, red, black...at best there’s communication, don’t even think about coordination...we can control our own message, maybe..the best we can do is to be a pastoral presence...I tell this story to Teddy and he agrees with me. The coop is his main commitment right now. 

I talk with the staff at Project Reachout. They had actually been behind Antonia’s hospitalization last night. They fear that she is deteriorating. And they’ve got a back story on Wesley. Longtime street guy. Actually got him housed for awhile. But apparently the man has issues. Especially with women. They became such an issue at our neighbor B’Nai Jeshurun synagogue that BJ closed off its steps. I’m not going there. But we’ve got to do something. An intervention planned for Tuesday morning.

Runi has issues to discuss. Jean has issues to discuss. Lots of internal issues. Anxieties. Runi hanging and waiting for Jane. Jane asks me what I think. I say, they’ve got to get a social worker to do a group process, soon. No one in the group can handle this...Jane nods in agreement. She hugs Runi and takes off. 

Carol, Hope’s friend comes in. Turns out she’s from Wooster, too. Graduated three years ahead of me. Wooster continues to  turn out students with a conscience and heart for a better world. Didn’t realize it when I was there, the older I get, I find Wooster folks in the best places. That is where they believe they can make a difference.

Walter Francis White

Tonight is the Times Square Playwrights’ reading of Rudy Gray’s Conversations with a Kleagle...based on the true story of Walter Francis White who used his light complexion to interview a Klan leader in Lousiana. One of only many. His work ultimately led to national anti-lynching laws. (Yes, we actually had to outlaw lynching.) Rudy Gray himself is there with us to talk about his play. What he’d learned about Walter F. White and the early days of the NAACP. Wish more pople could have been there. This play is exactly what our church, our center, is all about. One of the actors, Doug Stone, goes back to Frog & Peach days in the Balcony Theatre. I say goodnight to Rafael and head home. 

Not the Titanic

4/11

Deacon James has shaved. Looks only slightly less distinguished. Still wearing his African hat, quiet and dignified. The chemo is tiring. And the new teeth are not right yet. I tell him I know it can’t be easy. Well, he says, this is not the Titanic. I’m not going down that fast. One of these days, it’ll all be over. And I’ll just roam around heaven all day. But for now, I’m still here.

John H is in to help us with last minute financial analysis going in to tonight’s meeting with Melisa and her partners. We need to make sure that we understand everything in order to have an intelligent discussion. 

Teddy in my old t-shirt

Teddy comes by for an update on discussions regarding their exit plan. 

I head out to talk to Jack. It’s been too long since I’ve seen him. When I get back, Jamie is there. One last preparation discussion. 

We meet wih Melisa and her partners in the chapel. Our session members, the Center board, Danielle. And Berik. Explore issues of finance. Insurance. Programming. Ask hard questions. They handle it well. And we feel good about the meeting. 

When they leave, we review the mountain of issues re. money, repairs, etc. that are confronting us, looming, like a waiting iceberg in a freezing North Atlantic. It even feels cooler today.

On my way out, Teddy stops me. They’ve brought Wesley and Antonia’s things inside. She was taken away to the hospital. He had to go with her.