Statue of homeless and
rejected Jesus

All is getting cold in the gardens around the house. I have a few more preparations for the winter to make and the gardens will be ready for the death of winter. It is easy to prepare for the death of winter. I raked up some leaves from the street, instead of putting leaves in the street for city pick up because I wanted them for the compost pile. On the worm compost pile I put wood chips with the leaves to offer a frozen hood over the earth pile where the worms can be warm and eat and get deep.

A friend today talked about the natural dying of our mind and body that seems to take place in the winter. The adjustment in the fall to slower and colder times tires me and by body but in death we believe there will be life.

Death came to me today in a letter from the National Office of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The staff and a few leaders of the local council have built over the years an agency that spends millions of dollars but few for the main mission of the Society, to serve person to person people in need. Doing the works of mercy is what drew me to the Society in the first place when we leaved in Madison. Pat, my wife, and I fell in love with the Society and once on a trip to Paris, France visited the grave of Frederick Ozanam, the young university student founder of the Society and went to the international office. The more I experienced the work of Society, the move love and respect I had for it, the largest lay Catholic organization in the world.

However, in 1995, when I moved back to Milwaukee and was given an administration job as Assistant General Manger of the three thrift stores at the time I became greatly disillusioned and depressed. I had been asked by the Expectative Director for find why the thrift stores were losing so much money. After working each job in the thrift stores I came up with, but that it was the structural of the Society in Milwaukee that was losing so much money and hurting the very mission of Society to serve those in need. Naturally that was not the answer he wanted to hear and now two of the employees he hired to build the social agency empire are now running the show.

The death was not in being excommunicated by the National Office, the very people I, as a last resort, tried to tell about what was wrong, maybe legal but wrong. I really do not care with people in central office in Milwaukee or national office think about me. I am disheartened that I cannot make any home visits to people in need. These home visits have brought me so much grace and blessings and the experience of people in need gave me the strength and inspiration to fight this injustice, transferring money given to poor to those who are not in need.

This is not the first time I have been rejected, fired, expelled, punished or banned from a group that I have, in conscience, tried to nonviolent change. Bur each time it happens it hurts. Like an injured tree I feel the lost. But one of lessons I have learned from being rejected is not to react but take the pain in internally and respond with love and graciousness. I pray for the courage and blessing to practice “love of enemy and friends” this time. I am not the only one that is being expelled for ‘speaking truth to power’ in local society. At least one more person, a devoted Catholic with deep love for those in need, has been excommunicated. He is talking about fighting this injustice legally. That is fine if he wants to do that but, for me, this is opportunity to fight injustice to poor nonviolently. I need to remember the death of fall will past and all will be well.

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