Never Look Away

Photo courtesy of Christian Murdock, The Gazette

“Compassion is a covenant between equals; not a relationship between healer and wounded.”

 – The Gubbio Project, Guiding Principle #5

John and I grew up together in the same small, agricultural town in eastern Washington. The hot, arid summers were spent, for most of us, either under cherry trees, necks craned and picking furiously with a metal barrel fastened to our chests, or in sorting lines, feverishly picking Bings or gently sorting yellow-red Rainiers during the harvest.

I remember John in that time of our lives with a full, jovial laugh, stylish spectacles, and a lot of hand gestures. We were in the debate club together, and he was in all of the school plays; I admired his ability to fill any character role with vibrant gusto.

Though we keep in touch via electrons, my cold call to him was the first we’ve likely had in over 20 years. His clean-shaven face has given way to a beautifully peppered beard, his voice familiar and warm, but it’s now several octaves lower and with a pensiveness and humility which affirms a wisdom beyond its years and which has lived and seen many things. He came out regarding his sexuality after we parted ways in high school, at a time and place which was likely a very difficult road for him, personally. Despite what I’ve always recalled fondly as a commanding presence, he assures me that he is, in his own words, indeed a “6 foot tall gladiola. Someone could push me over with their pinky, but I don’t necessarily look like it upon first approach.” Which is likely an asset, particularly considering his vocation.

John has been a chaplain and seminarian much of his adult life, over six of those years spent working with the homeless, his “unhoused neighbors” (a term I will hopefully use for the rest of my life) on the streets of San Francisco. He has worked in the San Francisco Night Ministry, which walks the streets from 10pm to 4am, and its clergy are just with people, wherever they are. He currently serves as a program director at the Gubbio Project, which provides sanctuary and respite to his unhoused neighbors during the day. Much to my good fortune, he took some of his valuable time one Saturday morning to chat with me over the phone, where we discussed, among other things, our mothers, advent, stinky smells, and Christmas. There were quiet pauses mixed with hearty laughter, and despite the heaviness of his work, I felt an occasional twinkle from behind his eyeglasses. There was so.much.there. And while I can’t distill all of it here, I’d like to highlight a few of my most poignant takeaways, without wrecking any of his thoughts with any clumsy paraphrasing of my own. Thus, I left it exactly as our conversation went and in interview format. Regardless of your religious affiliation (or no religious affiliation, for that matter), I hope there is something you can take with you this holiday season, too. And I have a feeling you’ll hear from me, about John, again.

On the uniqueness of night ministry (and his philosophy in his ministry in general) in not focusing on rehabilitation, or conversion, but in just seeing and being with someone, wherever they are.

John: People…might try to jump to a place of hope, but perhaps not a place of real new life or new fullness, but a false hope, a papering over of darkness someone is sitting in. I find real sacredness of being in that nest of the unsure where, perhaps, something might yet grow but without demanding it, without trying to point to a new day too soon. And it’s as if in that space something can also grow in me. A larger humanity. I was thinking of The Velveteen Rabbit before our call and thinking about that concept of what it means to become real and what it means through love that realness is realized.

The philosophy that I have with companioning people without demand[ing] that they change understands that I do not have the power to fix someone…that comes from another place which will be found within themselves. I want them to have their own agency. The people I work with in the streets have many places, many social workers/case managers/many other spaces of charity where people are asking them to move through a process of point a to b, and it’s almost as if I’m hoping to work on a different scale, one that is an internal journey.

How this philosophy of not fixing informs, affects, and improves him. 

John: Sometimes focus on the fixing can take the legs out from someone. It’s no longer their own process. And in those moments when perhaps it is still too difficult to successfully “take the step,” it’s a further underscoring of many societal and personal narratives of not being good enough, and so, I can take for myself a reminder of the agency that I have in my life to continue to address the areas where I struggle. One of the reasons I come to this work is because I have an empathy for what is broken in this world because of what I’ve experienced through what society told me around being LGBTQ+. The reality is that we continue to have work to do as long as we’re still breathing. It’s not going to go away and it’s not necessarily something to take the wind out of our sails, either. Much like the velveteen rabbit image, it is part of what makes us deeply human.

On beautiful parts of his interactions with his unhoused neighbors.

John: One of the most beautiful parts of my work is that I see people…who are living in the streets [care for and assist each other]. Despite being made invisible, despite having their humanity taken away by others regularly, how many people continue to seek to give, to assist, to offer information to those who are newly in the streets, how many people are taken under someone else’s wing, saying, “hey, you just became homeless or you just left an abusive relationship and now you are finding a shelter for the first time, it’s raining outside, you don’t know where to go next”–how often I get to see that within a group of maligned people.

On advice for interacting with those who are on the streets…our own unhoused neighbors.

Editor: I think a lot of people reading…I think the question they would have for you is if you had one piece of advice to offer someone in how they approach the homeless in their streets, what would you say? My husband is that person who is always going to give five bucks, and he doesn’t care if somebody spends it on booze. He’s just like, “that’s how I feel, Cam.” My thing has always been that I won’t give money but I will always look them in the eye, and be like HAVE a good day and send love.

John: Between the two of you, you have identified the two things I would say. First, find what’s comfortable for you, which your husband (and you) have articulated, which is “this is what I can do. This is what I’m comfortable doing. This is what I’m called to do, so I’m doing it.” It may not be perfect, but the imperfect is also a good.

Editor: Because it’s authentic?

John: Yes, it’s authentic to him, right? And so he is living into his own fullness, his own sense of possibility in the good by listening inside himself and following through. As are you. The other thing I would say is, first, find what you can do or are comfortable doing, and then go ahead and do it. The second is never look away…again, that violence that is experienced when people are ignored when people move a little bit more quickly past someone that makes them feel uncomfortable. Even if you’re not going to give money, and there are plenty of reasons not to as well, don’t look away.

I think that we do violence to ourselves as much as the other person when we look away. We diminish our own humanity when we look away. Because part of the looking away is that there’s a discomfort, and perhaps we are rejecting something that is true about ourselves. Some way that we think that we do not measure up. Some way that we are unworthy. Anytime that we try to say this is an unworthy person, this is an unclean person, we’re actually saying that they’re not somehow a person or they are unworthy, and at least from my faith stance, there is no person that can be described that way.

And that brings us to Christmas.

On what Christmas looks like on the streets.

[Editor’s note: Somewhere in here is where I try to stifle a big, ugly cry.]

John: I think the Christmas season is difficult for those on the street…really for anyone who isn’t having the picture window version of Christmas where you’re looking in on the decorated tree and the family surrounding it. We have so many sociocultural messages of what Christmas should be. I’ve seen a lot of writing and reflecting on this…around those who experience loss and are grieving, maybe loss of a family member, and how the first and subsequent holidays can be painful. I think it’s not dissimilar for people on the street who may or may not have memories of better Christmases.

There can be a daily grief in the streets of all that is not. And so again finding those ways to connect humanly, humanely, despite the grief, and not trying to take it away but acknowledging it and finding a special moment nonetheless. I don’t necessarily mean to encourage or suggest that those who might be materially well off sort of jump off into a holiday volunteerism or go treat your unhoused neighbor a little bit better on Christmas day—that’s what I want to happen every day. I think for people already doing the work and who are already volunteering wherever that may be with folks who are being marginalized, anyone who might be struggling, to offer some way towards inclusion as much as possible.

And…I am not saying anything that many before me haven’t said, and many people have waxed far more poetically, but I will repeat: That Jesus was born into a MANGER, and that manger was not a well-appointed, aesthetically pleasing creche that gets put out every season. It was a stinky place full of manure. And so, perhaps someone on the streets who is smelling a little bit ripe, because it’s been raining or snowing and they haven’t been able to take off their shoes, they haven’t been able to find a shower…maybe that is the stench of Christ upon them, and that you’re looking away.

[the end]

Thank you, John, for providing a window into what you do, and for providing a breath of perspective for me personally that I would not have found otherwise through your impact to your neighbors. Wishing all of you kindness, safety, and moments of beauty in this Christmas week, wherever you are.