Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor by Gary Smith (Engli

Description: Radical Compassion by Gary Smith Through a series of compelling vignettes, Gary Smith, S.J., chronicles his life and work among the poor. "Radical Compassions" touching, and often heartbreaking, stories reveal the gritty reality of life on the streets, introduces people who have touched Smiths life, and shares hard-won wisdom on love, acceptance, and forgiveness. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description In this powerful, inspirational memoir, Gary Smith, S.J., chronicles his life and work in the poverty-stricken Old Town section of Portland, Oregon. Through a series of compelling vignettes, Smith reveals the gritty reality of life on the streets, introduces people who have touched his life, and shares hard-won wisdom on life, love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Back Cover loving the unloved of society "I realize that God brought me into this world, blessed with skills and talents. The only thing that makes sense to me is to use them in the service of the poor. It is at their feet that I find myself." or almost ten years, Gary Smith, S.J., lived and worked among the poor of Portland, Oregon. With this memoir, he invites us to walk with him and meet some of the abandoned, over-looked, and forgotten members of our society with whom he has shared his life. Just as Smith found a deeper, truer understanding of himself and of the heart of God through his work, these people and their stories stand to transform us. "Although its subject matter is bleak, the book is not. Smith has found love amid the despair. His book is touching, at times hopeful, and the kind of book that is hard to put down, that fascinates, horrifies, and rivets ones attention." --Booklist "Smith takes us where we would rather not go, the heart of the poor, the lonely, and the abandoned. In true Ignatian fashion, he finds God there. An unforgettable experience for those who have the courage to walk with him." --Michael L. Cook, S.J. Professor of theology Gonzaga University "Smith performs modern-day miracles of compassion, and his book sets a new standard for writing about the rich faith of those who are materially poor. His stirring prose and utter honesty will change the hearts and minds of many readers." --Gerald T. Cobb, S.J. Chair, department of English Seattle University Author Biography Gary Smith, SJ, worked for six years with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Sudanese refugee camps in Uganda. He is the author of They Come Back Singing, a journal of his time in Uganda, Radical Compassion, an account of his ministry to the poor and disabled in Portland, Oregon, and Street Journal Table of Contents contents chapter one People with Nothing to Prove: Living among the Poor Excerpt from Book Chapter One People with Nothing to Prove: Living among the Poor I write this book so that the reader will have a better understanding of the poor. One morning I went to the hotel room of Stewart, a thirty-five-year-old man who suffers from cerebral palsy, which has disabled an arm and a leg and his sight. Stewart has lived in single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) since he left home in his twenties. His is a grungy looking room, needing a paint job. It has a small bathroom, a bed, a set of drawers for his clothes, and a tiny half-kitchen. The door leads out to the long and gloomy second-floor hallway of a four-story building. The window looks out onto a bleak inner court. I had come to help him get ready for a doctors appointment, and he talked as I helped him undress and get into the shower. "I have this dumb disease, in this stupid body," he slowly told me, "which I hate." The smallest tasks of this young mans daily life are the tortured efforts of time and concentration: unbuttoning a shirt, drinking a cup of coffee, unlocking a door, crossing a street. As I helped him dry off and dress, we chatted about our lives and our families. "How many brothers do you have, Garibaldi?" he asked, using his nickname for me. "Are you married? What did you have for breakfast?" "Two brothers, Studebaker," I replied, using my name for him, "and a sister. No, I am not married, and I didnt eat breakfast." His speech reflects longings and deprivations in his life. He told me of his twin: "He looks like me, but he is normal." Stewart has an unaffected candor. As a matter of fact, he has no idea what it means to be pretentious. What you see is what you get. If he is happy, it is all there; if he is sad, one has no doubt. That is often the way for people with no power, no money, no exterior beauty. They have nothing to prove. And so Stewart is nonthreatening. He crashes through my defenses. He brings out what is good, whole, and deep down in me: the ability to love tenderly, speak truthfully, receive openly, and face gently my own weaknesses. ¦ ¦ ¦ On my way to work every day, I walk down Third Street in Portland, in a section of the city called Old Town, through a scene played out in the poor areas of every large city in the United States: the unemployed looking for work; drug dealers furtively hawking their heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines; residents from the many SROs moving in and out of their buildings; burned-out alcoholics coming off or beginning another day of panhandling and drinking and misery; addicts engaging in the endless hunt for another fix; lines of people waiting to get food or clothes or shelter; the occasional nervous and fatigued prostitute wandering by; individuals talking incoherently to themselves; staff persons from a variety of agencies going about their work; alert police slowly surveying the streets on foot, on bikes, in cars. All this activity takes place in an area comprising low-income SROs, a Salvation Army facility that feeds and houses the poor, a couple of rescue missions that also run drug rehab programs, storefront operations that come and go depending on money and interest, vacant buildings retained by speculators waiting for the economic boom to swallow Old Town, dark and dreary taverns, city-run shelters, parking lots that are full in the day and empty at night, a nonprofit restaurant that serves the needy of Old Town, a womens drop-in center, Outreach Ministry, a strip joint, an adult bookstore, and a community police station. Creeping into all of this, as Portlands economic prosperity asserts itself, are upscale coffee shops, some high-priced restaurants and mom-and-pop grocery stores, and SROs that are being converted into condos. I live in the middle of it all in a room in the Downtown Chapel of St. Vincent de Paul Church. I wear several hats in terms of my ministry: working part-time for Outreach Ministry in Burnside (OMB), a money-management and personal care agency; assisting the Macdonald Center, a social outreach arm of the chapel, with SRO work; ministering to inmates at the county justice center; and hanging out on the streets. On occasion I come across a young flutist in the downtown commercial area of Portland. He is an Ichabod Crane of a man, wiry and fragile, and looks as if he is made of broomsticks and baling wire. He is usually wearing baggy pants and a raggedy sweatshirt. His full head of hair flies in a dozen different directions, especially on a windy day. There is a beat-up old hat at his feet containing a few coins from appreciative fans. His entire self is absorbed in the furious tooting on his cheap wooden instrument. Coming closer, one hears a strange thing: hes playing nonsense notes. No melody. No organized rhythm. The listener experiences incomprehensible music and the mysterious force that propels those flying fingers. The musician never seems to stop, lost in and driven by the inner power of some mysterious melody. He looks straight ahead, apparently oblivious to gawkers like me. I linger for a few minutes whenever I see him. Inevitably I have created an imaginary scenario between us in which I approach Mr. Flutist and point out the obvious: "Excuse me, sir, are you aware that your music is not making any sense?" He drops the flute from his lips, eyes me, and says, with a hint of exasperation, "So what? Im crazy. But, man, Ive got to play my song. I mean, dont you?" This book is about my song. It is not all the music in me, but there is a lot of it here. It is a song primarily about the people with whom I have lived and worked over the past several years as part of my mission on the streets as a priest in the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. I have changed most of their names, but their stories, their compelling stories, I could never change. I have tried to express how they have broken me open and helped me to understand my own heart, and how they have led me closer to the song of hope for all human beings, which is in the heart of God. I write this book so that the reader will have a better understanding of the poor. I write it, too, to keep out in front of me a fundamental chord in my song: that the church, when it becomes poor and internalizes the suffering of the poor, understands compassion and the demands of justice. The just and compassionate church becomes the incarnation of the heart and song of Christ. Chapter Two Cockroaches, Conversation, and Collectors: Inside the SROs In the midst of one-way conversations, I am communicating all the time. I try to affirm this human being, so lost in his own world of memories, bitter and sweet. There is in me a longing to be real, to be authentic, to be a clear reflection of what my heart holds at its deepest levels. It is a goal that the gospel steadfastly holds up as an invitation to me, to the church. It is when the church embraces the gospel selflessly that it bears the heart of God and becomes real to the world. And when it is real, the church makes God believable. This truth is the impelling force behind the ministry of the St. Vincent de Paul Downtown Chapel, where I live. The chapel sponsors a social service outreach program, in which I participate, out of a facility called the Macdonald Center. Macdonald Center takes its two-person teams of staff and volunteers into the forty-plus single-room occupancy hotels in the Old Town/downtown Portland area. There in the SROs, within the confines of the small rooms, the teams spend time visiting with people who have limited, if any, contact with the outside world. Like the dirt and concrete pockets under the Portland bridges or the recessed doorways on Skid Row, these rooms are the nooks and crannies of the citys poor and near homeless, and frequently, they are the spawning grounds of paralyzing feelings of separation and loneliness. Paradoxically, the darkness of such places is light for the church, because there the church is invited and challenged to claim what is best in itself: the ability to love compassionately, to serve unselfishly, to profess and speak to what is truthful. ¦ ¦ ¦ I was in a hotel this afternoon, carrying on one of those endless conversations with Ned, who tells the same story over and over to anyone who will listen. He might as well play a cassette. That is, if he lets you in his room. Ned is in his late seventies, one of those rare birds who has lived that long in spite of pounding down a fifth of vodka a day and complementing his drinking with a couple packs of cigarettes. While he was in the middle of his monologue, a cockroach appeared, laboriously climbing up the wall behind him. It was hu≥ in fact, it was so huge that it couldnt retain its adhesion to the wall, and about a quarter of the way up, it crashed to the floor. It followed this cycle repeatedly: climbing the wall, falling off, and beginning its bloated way back up again. Sort of a metaphor for Neds stories. He regaled me once again with tales of his lost family and of how his two sons had dumped him ("Its all their fault"), of the crackpots in his hotel ("Why do they let nuts like that in here?"), and of his World War II exploits. Such conversations take place in the confines of these obscure little rooms. These encounters are the essence of the ministry of presence. In the midst of one-way conversations, I am communicating all the time. I try to affirm this human being, so lost in his own world of memories, bitter and sweet. I cou Details ISBN0829420002 Author Gary Smith Short Title RADICAL COMPASSION Language English ISBN-10 0829420002 ISBN-13 9780829420005 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2002 Imprint Loyola University Press,U.S. Subtitle Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor Place of Publication Chicago Country of Publication United States DOI 10.1604/9780829420005 AU Release Date 2002-10-01 NZ Release Date 2002-10-01 US Release Date 2002-10-01 UK Release Date 2002-10-01 Pages 198 Publisher Loyola University Press,U.S. Publication Date 2002-10-01 DEWEY 248.4092 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:9500644;

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