Memoirous

In the 80s and 90s, when listening to late-night radio, I’d catch an episode of *Unshackled! * Unshackled! is a radio drama series produced by Pacific Garden Mission, in Chicago, Illinois, that first aired on September 23, 1950. It is one of the longest-running radio dramas in history and one of a very few still in production in the United States. Wikipedia Unshackled originated in Chicago—just down the street from our city mission, also in Chicago. I loved listening to the first-person testimonials of how people’s lives changed. Something about listening in the darkness to hope and light created a warm glow inside of me. Then we heard that Star was going to be on Unshackled!. Star was already a star at our place, but this elevated her even further: a mega-Star. Notes were posted about when her episode would air. Anyway, the other day I had a flash memory, thinking about Star going downtown to the Unshackled! studio to record her testimonial and wondered if the digital footprin...

Remembering the laughs, the tears, the upsets, the betrayals, the inconsistencies, the hierarchy, the absurdity, the surreal, sitting at Cook County for hours on end, Deac rides, Deac cars, tokens for the L, or having to jump the turnstyle, Mondays off, donation doughnuts, barrels of orange juice, government cheese, Malibu quiche, treats, getting awakened in the middle of the night to give up your bed, stepping over the sleeping homeless in the lobby, Strider. Answering the telephone, ignoring the telephone, getting telephones, handing out smartphones, info mail Checking to see if you’re on the money list, waiting in line for gas money, reserving a car Linda handing out Christmas supplies, afterwards trading pecans for more walnuts, eating the bag of chocolate chips before even going up the stairs, fighting for the kitchen, room on the stovetop, losing your favorite measuring cup, finding it in the dishroom, staking out your laundry slot, weekend work rotations, wrapping gifts for ...

Talking on the phone about Ron Brown’s Memorial   You have to trust that every friendship has no end, that a communion of saints exists among all those living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another. You know from experience how real this is. Those you have loved deeply and who have died live on in you, not just as memories but as real presences. --Henri Nouwen   A kind of grieving, missing, longing Missing not just a single man A great man, a big-hearted man But who we used to be   In the pictures I see Henry Huang, Lottie Jones, Stan and Vera I see their kids—or don’t recognize them Everyone is older, indistinguishable   The Communion of Saints Unsaints, using walkers Some, themselves, facing grave illnesses   Divorced now, separated All of us, in our own spaces, comfort zones Into old age, disease, ill-ease Mental health, fragile I can’t help but wonder Who we’d be all together Even grumpier, haters ...

Lost and Found In the film one of the women, at a very intense part, almost offered comic relief by telling a story of her beloved horses. Greta tells the story of driving in her buggy along a country road bounded by drainage ditches on both sides. Along the way there was an aggressive dog that scared the horses, who in the past had bolted and run into the ditches, upsetting the cart. So Greta learned that in order to keep control of her own fears, she had to not look to the left or the right but simply keep her eyes focused in the middle of the road and keep Ruth and Cheryl the horses going in that same direction.   I understood this lesson well. When on my cross-country road trip and other bike tours I’d been in a similar situation: When traffic got intenseon Highway 101 (t he Pacific Coast) or in the mountains of Norway on narrow roads without guardrails, where the sides sloped down precipitously. Any mistake and me and my bike could be at the bottom. I had to learn, despit...

Who am I? Still trying to figure things out   While watching Women Talking I had so many thoughts, I began to take notes. One) I was reminded of Corita Kent who left her religious community after 32 years and Two) myself, who left a religious community after nearly 40 years. I entered Jesus People as a single recent college grad, four years later I married and two years later became a mother. I also was a driven worker. I worked at Cornerstone Magazine and with the Cornerstone Festival doing advertising and PR. I networked with local and national media trying to generate stories about the festival which at its peak attracted over 20,000 people. I was used to doing TV and radio interviews and also setting up interviews for the festival director and press conferences with the bands. We also started up a book publishing arm called Cornerstone Press, which at its peak put out about 4 titles a year. In 2007 my daughter graduated high school and began trying to figure out who she...

Who Would She Be?   When Sister Corita contemplated a step away, she had to completely re-imagine her identity, who she was and who she would be. She had been a member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for 32 years, since 1936 when she decided after high school to go into the order. Her devotion was such that she had to give her all. During her time at Immaculate Heart College she thrust her whole self into teaching. Many of her former students could testify as to the amount of work she piled on them as if her class was the only one they were taking. Her assignments ranged from visiting gas stations and grocery stores to observe signage to helping create installations for the New York World’s Fair and a walk-thru exhibit at the World Council of Churches Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden. And, of course, there was the Mary’s Day Parade where the class printed banners, programs, etc for the ceremony. This last move would be a great leap. For so long she had been a teacher-nun, a si...

Change is coming, a time to leave   During the process of Vatican II, Corita and her community embraced change, not just for change-sake, but to become more relevant to the students and broader community they served. If change was needed to bring the message of Christ to their constituents in this turbulent time, then they were for it. The sisters voted overwhelmingly to pursue Vatican II renewals, such as eliminating the habit and compulsory daily prayer. Archbishop James McIntyre was not happy. From that moment on he sought to restrict the order and banned them from teaching. He gave them an ultimatum to abandon what he saw as leftist tendencies or dispense with their vows. Another vote. Three-quarters of the sisters left to form their own order, Immaculate Heart Community, an ecumenical community for both men and women of all faiths. Prior to this Sister Corita took a sabbatical at the invitation of a friend and spent the summer of 1968 in Cape Cod. There, away from the in...

 Stay and Fight?   The early Sixties would later be known as a hotbed of creative and artistic experimentation—indeed, ushering in an era of radical priests and nuns. Sister Corita had started a series of masterclasses at Immaculate Heart featuring some of the most ingenious voices in the arts, visual, literature, and music. The lectures and conversations of the Great Man series (notice how this was titled purposely not to stir up controversy) featured Charles Eames, John Cage, Alfred Hitchcock, Buckminster Fuller, and Father Daniel Berrigan. It is this enduring friendship with the Vietnam War critic and activist that doomed Sister Corita. Los Angeles Cardinal James McIntyre who served from 1948 to 1970 would later be described in a Washington Post obituary as “one of the Catholic Church's most conservative and controversial prelates.” He was a Nixon man, a John Birch supporter, a staunch anti-communist, and even his own allies and fellow priests had to kindly ask him ...

A Personal Calling, or Vocation Vocation—the difference between work and putting your passions into action. Yes, I labored, getting up early before the sun and sometimes working an overnight shift at the community’s magazine Cornerstone. Volunteering outside my other volunteer hours. You see, the work was not compensated monetarily. We worked together for the benefit of others and basically for room and board. It is a complicated kind of communism where ideology is supreme and we corporately strived to see that the greater whole grew, got better. It is a concept almost entirely archaic. No one does this except maybe a recent grad taking a gap year—except this was no grand tour or backpacker’s dream trip; we wanted to share Christ’s love in action by providing meals, housing, relationship. Ourselves. Outside of the practical work of feeding the community (sammies, kitchen crew) I did visitations to the elderly, in the form of light housework and wellness checks, taking them to the docto...

Finding Community, Finding Home, part 2 Community in Chicago at Jesus People USA did not immediately feel like home and it took a while for me to think that they “got” who I was. There were a lot of misunderstandings along the way. One of my first jobs was making sammies. Our work crews that went out during the day (comprised entirely of men) required packed lunches. I was on a crew that made sandwiches, slapping peanut butter and jelly between two pieces of bread. Not the most nutritious lunch for those doing hard manual work all day outside, but it’s what we had. The addition of chips and homemade cookies if you were lucky. A piece of fresh fruit was considered a luxury. I then got moved onto a kitchen crew where we literally worked ALL DAY, from 4 a.m. getting breakfast out first for the workers, then for moms and kids going to school. If you were late, then nothing. The day finished around 7 pm after cleaning up. At first none of these jobs were me; I could identify with hardly any...

Finding Community, Finding Home, part1 It took a while. I finished high school. I started at Wright State University. I dropped out of Wright State. I went to Maranatha Bible Institute associated with my church. Then there was a church split and I was excommunicated. Friends were told to mark, admonish, and avoid me—a sermon preached from the pulpit, as laid out 2 Timothy chapters 2 and 3, Scriptures taken out of context and perverted for power over others. I suffered a breakdown. I went back to Wright State while at the same time moving out of my parent’s house. I was struggling for clarity. I dropped out of Wright State—again—and traveled out West, getting a seasonal job at Yellowstone National Park. I extended my work contract, as I had no future plans. Late 1979/early 1980 found me in Athens, Ohio enrolled at Ohio University. I chose this school as I wanted to be close to a very solid friend, someone who would call me out and also encourage me: Keith Wasserman, who would go o...

Outside my French doors a light snow is falling, dusting the decks. The past few days have been gray, the skies leaden with nickel-colored clouds. Yet, I’m struck by the fact that I’m in nature, that I’m living this life. My here and now, despite the gray and gloom, includes red birds, the sounds of wind, dry leaves rustling, a disgruntled squirrel chirping. For so long I was closed off. I was in Chicago from the age of 23 until I left during the pandemic in 2020 I will be 65 this year. I never planned to be gone from nature that long. Chicago was supposed to be a one-summer commitment, a stop along the way, but at the end of my summer in 1982 I had to ask myself—Where is it I’m trying to get to, where am I going? I didn’t have a ready answer. I’d just graduated from Ohio University with a degree in secondary education—a career I wasn’t sure I really wanted to pursue. All I knew was this: I loved Jesus and I wanted to do good in the world. That’s how I ended up in Chicago at an inn...

Hey! Check out my guest blog called Ugly Mugs at In Some Measure. AND go out and enjoy the sunshine!

Hilde’s scar is 27 years old. She got that scar the day before my wedding. On our last run. Though it wasn’t our last run. It was my last run as a single lady. We have continued to run for 27 years. The day before my wedding we planned one hour. To run. There were so many things to do. Before my wedding. Somehow we knew things were gonna change and we needed one last run. We ran down Leland Street, past the graffiti and corner store that sold gin in pint bottles. Crumbs of glass glittered the sidewalk. We ran toward sky and beach and a great unknown. I’d stood up in Hilde’s wedding and now Hilda was to stand up in mine. The next day. Along the lakefront, back behind the golf course, we ran on top of the breakwall, a jumble of concrete boulders. So many times before, and this would be our last time. Maybe. The next time we would both be married ladies. So we ran and talked. The whole time I was wondering what changes the next day might brin...

A bold challenge, I know, but if you know of any others—please contact me and I will post here. This year in 2013 Jesus People USA Evangelical Covenant Church comprises more than half of the 73 runners committed to running to end homelessness for TEAM CCO . So far 36 church members are in marathon training. TEAMM CCO is an organized charity running group where participating runners run the Chicago Marathon and at the same time raise money for Cornerstone Community Outreach.  a third of the TEAM CCO runners gathered for National Running Day, June 5th  A few years ago CCO the shelter I am associated with (doing programming and creative writing workshops) began a program called Strive 4 More, based upon the principle that one person could, by asserting effort, make a change. Actually more than one person. Anybody could strive for more. The program worked well motivating school children to get up and get out and exercise and, in collaboration with Strive 4 More, collect...