An evening of saints

A few threads are converging as I go through my evening: I am watching Sister Wendy & the history of painting, in which she reviews the European works from Lascaux to the renaissance.

The sister's tone is frank, she doesn't avoid any detail of the pieces and doesn't skip over anything to make the work more palatable, unusual, considering her religous devotion. There's also something to her habit/formal appearance & disposition that provides a deeper understanding of the work - as many of the pieces from the works she reviews were sponsored by the church. I really enjoy her take on art & am looking forward to seeing the other dvds that she's done.

One of the topics she covers is the renewal of passion for the Catholic church in the 13th century, an effect of St. Francis' approach to religion. She said of him that "everybody was inspired by the little poor man from Assisi, who called the sun his sister & the wolf his brother" and mentioned a paradox, the richly painted Basilica that was built to commemorate this man who rejected material things for a life of poverty.

That reminded me that my mother has had a statue of St. Francis from the time we kids left home in the 80's through the time she lived with my brother & his kids. My experience of her Catholicism is that she practiced it in a very ego-less way. I got the feeling that the desire for money, fame or prestige was less valuable than the desire to pick up a stranger stuck in the rain or giving shelter to people, even if it sets you back a bit. That separation from the drive to achieve for the goods it will get you has remained with me, sometimes causing odd tangents in my behavior, but I think it's been mostly for good.

My mother also attended a parochial school named for another saint, St. Frances Xavier - apparently, the patron saint of immigration. This brings up for me the struggle this country is having with how we will accept folks from abroad. The antipathy toward immigrants that has overwhelmed the country in the last 4 years or so worries me. I understand that I'm not privy the scope & difficulties of the immigration issues, but the richness of this country is derived from the multitudes of folks from all over. Maybe that's my DC upbringing talking - I loved it that I could have lunch in high school with my best friend from Pakistan, another from French New Guinea, another from Mexico and another who was an American Black Muslim. We all enjoyed it. I don't know a lot about Frances Xavier, but I think it's worth it to check him out now.

I have been going through our trusty file cabinet, specifically through old personal papers. As I've meandered through writings from the past, I came across a card for Martin de Porres House of Hospitality, where I volunteered while living in San Francisco in 1987. This saint was noted for his mixed race (although he is not the only saint who is not lily-white), and his compassion for people & animals. His story is here.

The story of the House of Hospitality is also very generous. From the large interior space, the small but beautiful landscaped grounds and to the mod-cons like free showers within a safe, gated area in the Mission District, San Francisco. The deal with Martin de Porres was that folks coming in for meals were fed as many servings as they could eat & left with a bag of food. There were clothes for folks who needed them. With the art covered walls and music in all of the dining areas -the environment was strikingly different from the streets outside.

I remember an example of how different it was being the resolution of a fight between guests of the soup kitchen. They were fighting over a loaf of bread. Two women from the kitchen (I was one) went over to them to ask them to stop fighting. We brought more bread and reminded them that they didn't have long to enjoy the peace and quiet, soon they'd be back tussling on the streets. We urged them not to waste this time & reminded them that they'd get the boot for disturbing other folks ... although I didn't expect it, our tactics worked and they went back to hanging out after their lunch. The idea that we could actually create and enforce a safe space for a group stuck with me.

I'm always up for saint stories - or I guess stories of any kind - so I couldn't resist tossing these thoughts out there, loose as they may seem and as inconclusive as my observations appear to be.