Into the Wilderness
he Wilderness of Compassion!
Sunday, August 4, 2024
"Jesus replied: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirst (John? 6:35)
????As the years passed my dad seemed to grow wiser; during the last three weeks on an Ignatian Retreat in the Desert, and the anniversary of my father's death, he was very present and much wiser!
??? I remember around six years old my dad was told by his doctor he would have to go to a tuberculosis sanitorian, for he had the disease.
????This place was in the middle of the Ozarks, and for three months he was there, he called with the news that the disease had vanished, he was joyful, believing it was a 'miracle.' He came home a changed man.
??? Every morning he was up at 4 a.m. reading the Scriptures and praying; in his grocery store at noon, he took time away to do the same, and the last task at night!
??? To me, it was just my dad's daily habits, but when he became ill with lung cancer his faith sustained him, and as he lay dying, he handed me an envelope with instructions to be followed after his death.
??? So many people attended his memorial service they were overflowing from the door, and in this segregated small southern town there were black, white, Hispanic, rich, middle class, and poor, all a mixture of the rainbow coming together to remember my dad.
??? Following his memorial service, I read the note instructing me to go to his business, remove boxes, and burn them; I had no idea why; and as I opened the safe, I found fifty or so boxes going back years, marked with the verse: ". . .As you have done it until the least of these my brothers and sisters you have done it unto me (Matthew 25:31-46)."
??? In each box there were billing tickets, used for charging groceries, never paid, and in looking at the names I observed they were tickets from the? poorest of families, who had no money, my dad gave them groceries and charged them so that they might have? the dignity of paying for them someday, that night as I placed in one large pile, set them ablaze I felt my dad standing beside me, and heard Jesus saying, "Well done my good an faithful servant, enter now into my Kingdom prepared for you, Welcome Home!"
??? These memories bring up a hunger for my past, a time of being included, loved, and cared for; but the past is long gone, and distorted memories of my past can easily lead me in ways God is not leading! Those memories can lead me from a way of compassion, into simply being a caregiver, unwilling to give my all, into trying to survive, and be accepted!
??? Rather, I must continue to walk away from the rigid structures that label and separate us. My colleague, the Reverend Dana once said: "Religious people will destroy a person to keep a tradition.? Jesus will break a tradition to help a person.?? It is into the desert of broken traditions and dreams I walk.
??? Thomas Merton tells us: "There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion. It is the only desert that shall flourish like the Lilly, for true solitude in the desert is walking, and caring for those no none else will touch."
??? And so I choose to walk into the desert where life itself is a primal sacrament, the invisible sign of an invisible grace, into the window of the Divine! Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
=============================
Homeless People Are Made in God's Image!
Come and Serve in the Desert of Compassion!
"Mayor Plans to Clear Homeless Encampments In San Francisco! (San Francisco Chronicle)!
Wednesday, August 7, 2024, We will Vigil at Noon!
Come Join Us!
=======================
"Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. — Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness”
------------------
30th Anniversary Celebration
Victor’s Pizza
6 p.m.
November 9, 2024
WE ARE BEGGARS! WE REALLY NEED MONEY--Really Badly At theMoment!
FOR FOOD, SOCKS, HARM REDUCTION AND OTHER SERVICES!
P.O. Box 642656
415-305-2124
pay pal
(Temenos and Dr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social--Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!
Temenos Catholic Worker
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
Dr. River Sims, D.Min, D.S.T.
Put me in jail, then. Throw me behind your religious bars since you have dubbed me a breaker of your law. I live my days in the courtroom of your criticism. I move unbothered under the gaze of your gavel. I have no interest in defending myself before your bench. Go on, clench your fists, raise your voice to make your point. Type the rebuke that you must make on my page. Who asked you to come through anyway? Is this rage your duty? We operate under a different set of obligations and get worked up to frustration for different reasons, even though we both claim fidelity to God. If you were interested, which I doubt, here is where my passion lies: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, defend the rights of the orphan, plead the widow’s cause, and woe to you who unjustly enforce God’s Law. Why spend your energy policing me when that same energy could be used to love, fiercely? Justice, mercy, and humility. Go learn what this means. Drew Jackson
?
????
?