|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
[Back to index of July/August articles] Taking it Outside By Lucy Chumbley Three blocks from The White House in Franklin Square Park, the Rev. Anne-Marie Jeffery lifts a folding table from a small cart, sets out a woven basket of sandwich bread and a plastic bottle of grape juice and opens her arms wide. It’s lunch hour in downtown D.C., and women in sunglasses and summer skirts sip bottled water under the trees, while businessmen with Blackberrys share benches with the destitute. And it’s Tuesday, the day volunteers from the Church of the Epiphany on nearby G Street pack up programs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and take church to the street. Billie – The Rev. Shaman Mrs. Billie Razer Bill Louk, according to her name tag – has been singing since the group, pushing two carts laden with lunch, straggled into the park at a quarter to one. “Holy. Spirit. Thou art welcome. In this place,” she belts, head tilted back and arms outstretched. “Oh omnipotent. Father. Of mercy. And grace. Thou art welcome. In this place.” Jeffrey pockets her cell phone – just in case – shoos a squirrel away from the sandwiches, and invites one and all to take part in the worship. The service is short, and the message is simple: A Gospel reading on Nicodemus from the previous Sunday. A short homily – “not much because it’s hard to hear with the sirens.” Prayers of the people. A Eucharistic prayer. Communion, with the sandwich bread and grape juice in small plastic cups. “Do you experience Jesus in the most broken part of your life, when you realize you have lost everything?” Jeffrey asks, looking around at the group of about 10 that has gathered. “We have a God who is still present with us,” she continues, without oration. “A God who loves us so much he sent his only son.” A dreadlocked man on crutches limps over to join the circle. A pastel-clad grandmother offers an occasional “thank you, Jesus,” as she and her granddaughter eat hotdogs nearby on the grass. A fight breaks out over a nearby bench. And a woman laughs out loud when two men run away as Jeffrey approaches to offer them communion. “They think it’s a collection plate,” she cackles. PB&Js in the park Each week since Feb. 28, when Street Church began, a stalwart group of about five has assembled at Epiphany – already well known for its Sunday breakfast program – to make lunches. Today Jewel Terrel, an 80-year-old grandmother, and Brenda Morris, a soft-spoken retiree, are assembling sandwiches with two young men, Jose Perez and Sam Hensley. Perez and Hensley slather peanut butter on slices of brown bread, while Morris spoons strawberry preserves from a catering-size can and Terrel bags the sandwiches. Others help out occasionally, Morris says, but the core group is fairly consistent. “One of our challenges is to get a steady rotation,” she says. “I don’t think I had planned to come every week.” “I hadn’t either,” says Hensley. “I hadn’t either,” says Terrel. “But it’s good to be here.” “I’m grateful for it every day,” Perez says. “Show somebody I do care.” A former stage manager, Perez found God in May, and happened upon the group in the park shortly afterwards. “I just felt something calling me,” he says, and he has been showing up for Street Church ever since. The volunteers usually make about 80 sandwiches, and after the group returns from the park Hensley records the number given out on a spreadsheet. (This Tuesday’s tally was 60 sandwiches, 40 pieces of fruit and all of the bottles of water). “If anyone wanted to fund us, it’s good to have stats,” he explains. Leftovers are handed out on the way back to the church, or taken to the nearby offices of Street Sense – the newspaper sold by the homeless. Common cathedral Street Church is new to the Diocese of Washington, but Ecclesia Ministries, a Boston-based program, has been inspiring similar initiatives in cities across the country for the last 10 years. As well as donating brass crosses for the volunteers to distribute, Ecclesia offers a wider sense of community by operating a listserv and inviting the various open air churches to pray for each other each week. In late 2004, Epiphany’s rector, the Rev. Randolph Charles, spoke with Ecclesia’s founder, the Rev. Deborah Little, about starting a “common cathedral” in Washington. “After he got off the phone, he asked me to make it happen,” Jeffery says. She worked out a time, a place and a format and began finding answers to the many questions raised, such as “Do we need a permit? Who do we talk to about getting one?” “At one point I thought, ‘This is never going to happen,’” she says. “But then it did.” To minister in a public place, Epiphany had to obtain a permit from the U.S. Park Police that must be renewed every 21 days that the group is in the square. And food service rules mean that for now sandwiches are limited to basic peanut butter and jelly. Once plans had been made and volunteers mustered, Jeffery had to address another concern: nerves. After months of preparation, she was worried about how the service would be received, and some of the volunteers were apprehensive about interacting with the homeless guests. “It took a few weeks before I stopped being nervous, but now I’m starting to settle down,” she says. Thanks to Epiphany’s long-standing breakfast program, many of the volunteers are accustomed to dealing with the homeless, Jeffery says. For others, a workshop that taught de-escalation techniques and offered guidelines about when to call 911 helped to quell some anxieties. “We give out a tip sheet,” Jeffrey says, explaining that she also takes newcomers aside to offer them a few pointers, as do the more experienced volunteers. Anything can happen on the street, she concedes, but so far hostility has not been an issue. “When you’re homeless, I think that people are always chasing you away,” she says. “They’re not looking at you. If you go and sit next to [a homeless person] they’ll start talking. You’re sitting together, you’re eating the same thing. People are willing to let you sit with them and join with them, usually.” Community and prayer On the way to the park, Hensley stops to buy a copy of Street Sense from a vendor, and invites him to the service. He greets a man pushing a grocery cart with a friendly hello, and invites him, too. At the park he hangs a handwritten yellow sign from a tree, “Come Join Us for Worship and Lunch Every Tuesday at 1 p.m.” Attendance has been steady, Jeffery says, and she is starting to see some regulars. “We did notice that more people came out when it started getting warmer,” she says. “But people who are homeless are outside in all kinds of weather because they have nowhere else to go.” The service lasts about 15 minutes, and the format is not altered from week to week. “We keep it the same because when you’re outside you get accustomed to something,” she says. “We sing the same songs each week – Amazing Grace, Let Us Break Bread Together, We Shall Overcome.” The message is similar each week, too: “We talk about God’s love: God has not abandoned you. God is waiting for you. Comfort words. A down-to-earth, simple, straightforward message. They’re tired. They’re exhausted. They need something they can hear easily.” And they need to be accepted for who they are, where they are, she says. “A lot of people won’t come near a church for one reason or the other,” she says. “They’re worried that they might smell, that they might not be dressed properly. “[Street Church] is a place where they can connect. It kind of brings back community, and that’s an important thing. Community and prayer. People are making this their own. This is church.” And under the blue dome of summer sky and the dappled light of trees, all are equal in God’s sight.
.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
