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Faithful Fools Street Ministry Inspires Urban Church Conference Attendees
 (Chicago,
IL Friday, March 9, 2001) In a dark paneled ballroom of the Congress Plaza
Hotel in Chicago, decorated with murals inspired by the crusades and Arthurian
legend, people wearing jester's hats, celebrated another kind of crusade in
Friday morning's Urban Church Conference worship service. The 170 attendees
joined the Rev. Kay Jorgenson and Sr. Carmen Barsody, co-directors of the
Faithful Fools Street Ministry of
San Francisco, in singing UU composer Jim Scott's "Song of the Earth":
If the people lived their lives
As if it were a song for singing out of light
Provides the music for the stars
To be dancing circles in the night."
 Rev.
Leonetta Bugliesi, of the Beverly (IL) UU church, led the responsive reading,
"A Network of Mutuality," written by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single
garment of destiny.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be
maladjusted.
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can
do that.
We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression,
and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations
of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that
we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.
The Rev. Kay Jorgenson acknowledged the work of Karen Day, ministerial intern
with Faithful Fools and First Church of San Francisco, as well as her close
partnership with Sr. Carmen Barsody, of the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls,
Minn. As a ready, Jorgenson related the story of her ministry as it developed
- of her joining with Barsody, of Jorgenson's studies for the ministry in
Berkeley, CA. She walked by a subway station, she said, and heard an inner
voice which directed her to look down. There, she found two pennies on the
ground, which she picked up. As she bought a sandwich, she met a man who needed
just two more cents to get a drink. She gave him the pennies, and as she did,
she said, she heard the hymn, "Morning Has Broken." Jorgenson said she continued
to find pennies, and said it seemed to be so for her, "and now for us, and
I hope for our movement and the world, the realization that we will have what
is needed before it is asked of us.
"And being on the streets, being a presence there, it came one day that we
should look for a building. There is a donut shop that used to be an office.
So," she related, "Kay and Carmen went block to block till they came to a
building, and met Rameesch, who runs a copy shop. And it became clear that
he too wanted us to have the building. He offered it to us, although someone
offered him $300,000 more (for that space). He said, 'no, greed tempts, but
my conscience is clean.' And so we operate out of the building as faithful
fools."
 "The
hats, Jorgenson said as she continued into her homily, "are here to help us
negotiate the boundary crossings we may need to make to help us understand
each other. We often take ourselves too seriously, and it gets in the way…I
stand before you with the words of the Imam still ringing in my ears…to be
in solidarity with our sisters and brothers living in poverty. To remember
that we have been called by the principles of our faith…to be with those who
are consistently marginalized and oppressed in our society. To reach back
through time to find the habits of our personal ego structures, where the
causes of our personal habits lie. Simply passing through cities, we can see
that poverty and racism are alive and well. Rev. Marilyn Sewell…preached a
sermon on economic injustice to the largest gathering of UUs I have ever seen…at
the Service of the Living Tradition last year. There was something going on
that day. She touched a chord that resonated with her. I sense the tribe is
restless… there is a rumbling of unrest in our minds and our hearts… the economic
gap has become so pervasive that the sleeping privileged people of our land…are
awakening. Urban churches are going to have to sing a new song in our cities…sing
it for the whole world to hear.
It is literally at our doorsteps…we can not avoid it… someone must bear witness
to a human being [through the ] situation that we have all helped to create…the
trickster -- and that is what we are as fools -- we can cross those boundaries.
For someone to bear witness, the trickster must help us across the threshold.
v
 We
have lost a great deal of what it means to bear witness to another human,
and what relation she or he has to us. At the [First Unitarian ] church (of
San Francisco), we had a meeting to vote on a new mission statement. It contains
the phrase, 'to bear witness to pain and suffering. It was a passive word
to many…but as a fifteen year old put it, 'we don't want to stand around and
watch…we are people of action.' I would like to suggest that to bear witness
is an action that carries us into the presence of another person … to know
and be known, in the fullness of our true being. To bear witness moves us
through observing into relation. It results in an internal change and external
transformation, for practical reasons, or for the moment. We will then never
be the same…you can count on us… it is what we call sustainability.
"In the Faithful Fools," Jorgenson said, "street retreats are at the core
of our ministry. We get people on the streets with people who don't live on
the streets. And that place in between is where change can happen. We ask
these questions of each other: when do we recognize another being as human?
When do we see our own humanness reflected back from another being? Who do
we recognize, and when do we recognize our own needs through another's? And
when do we recognize our own needs sufficiently so as to make wise choices
that will affect another's life?
We can't help everyone at once, but we can be present when people come to
us… Street ministry… is a container for people to offer and hold those things
that they might otherwise not have met. Experience for two groups is a catalyst,
a shock, that brings to you to a realization that you might not otherwise
have had. Recently," Jorgenson said, "a British journalist met billionaires
in Silicon Valley, and then had a street retreat, to be present to the grim
street scene in San Francisco. In choosing to put people from opposite ends
of a continuum together, she wondered what would happen if she invited the
billionaires to a street retreat… it may happen. One never knows where movement
will happen.
"It is time to extend our resources to extend the parish boundaries … Community
ministry is a resource we are throwing away…let us not forget this stuff about
not having what we need…remember the penny story…we are a moving story. Every
urban church has a story of its own. When we can not bring diversity into
our congregations, let us bring our congregations to where the diversity is."
Jorgenson, in her concluding remarks, recognized the ministries of the Revs.
Jody Shipley, who established the UU Community Ministry Center, and Don Robinson,
Director of the Beacon community school, and the Rev. Dorothy Emerson, and
Sr. Carmen Barsody.
Jorgenson concluded, "Let us sing a form of new forms of worship, of being
together. Let us sing a song of wonder and love, and the fighting spirit it
will take to reach a new form of justice…for one human being to love another
human being… that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted
to us…the work for which all other work is only preparation.
"Come visit us in San Francisco… we have hats for you. We will take you out
on the streets to see what is there… it is not all dark and dank….teenagers
who go there have said they see 'strength, and community, and caring.' People
who we think are suffering, have much more to offer the community than we
think they do. When we go on the streets, we go not to serve them, not to
change them, but to be there so that we will learn from them, and from each
other…they are our true teachers."
Worship concluded with singing Carolyn McDade's song of empowerment and hope,
"We'll Build a Land."
Click here for a full report on the sermon
by Rev. Kay Jorgenson, "Singing a New Song in the City."
The Faithful Fools Stree Ministry has a web page. Click
here to visit them on the web: http://www.faithfulfools.org/
Reported for the web by Deborah Weiner;
formatted for the web by Julie Albanese.
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