Prayer of Compassion: Actively Support Survivors of Abuse Instead of Just Saying We're Sorry

I was baptized Catholic by a dynamic priest in June, 2001.  Eleven months later he was removed when a man accused the priest of abusing him when he was a teenaged boy.  The people of my parish reacted to these accusations with profound grief and confusion.  The parish divided between those who loved and supported the priest and those who thought we were blessed to be rid of a dangerous pedophile.  I was among those who supported the priest.  Inspired by the Peace Prayer by St. Francis, I wrote a prayer for the him -- The Prayer of Compassion.  I wanted to offer the priest my belief and my support.  Since I was married at the time, I also wrote the prayer for my husband.  It didn't seem right to write a prayer just for the priest.

It took a few years for me to come to terms with the abuses perpetrated by that priest.

The first step was to recognize denial when I heard it.

I remember shortly after the priest was removed from ministry some older ladies in our parish who adored the him said of his abuses, "It must have been a misunderstood hug."

I said nothing to those ladies, but I knew it wasn't just a hug.  The priest had confessed to much more.  Still, I wanted to believe the abuse was consensual.  The priest was so charming.  I could imagine him charming a boy....

But a new accusation hit the media 19 months later.  The priest had gotten a boy drunk and had violently sodomized him.

I was sick with the flu at the time that accusation came out.  It is hard to know where the flu let off and being sick over that accusation began.

After I recovered from the flu, I handed out newspaper articles in my parish.  In quick order I was thrown out of the parish and got divorced.  The two events are related and make a dramatic story I am not yet ready to tell.

After I was thrown  out of my parish, I met the survivor who accused my priest in May, 2002.  I don't think he would have trusted me if I hadn't been thrown out of a Catholic Church.  (God works in mysterious ways.)  The survivor was fragile, struggling with depression, thoughts of suicide, and inability to maintain relationships or work.

My heart was filled with grief for his losses and compassion for his pain.

I realized I had written my prayer for him too.  He also needed my belief and support.  I am sorry that my relationship skills were not good enough at the time to support him the way he needed support.

As I have worked with other survivors, I've come to realize that not only do many feel alone and abandoned and many truly are alone and abandoned.

I was alone and abandoned when I was thrown out of the Catholic Church.  It feels pretty lousy when you are telling the truth and other people are persecuting you.

But eventually, as my messaging became more positive, more about healing, more people came around to believing in me and supporting me.  One of these supporters was a lady who thought of the Sackcloth Penance Patch to symbloize penance for abuses and prayers for survivors.

Some survivors have felt supported and uplifted by these Patches.  Some have expressed that the Patches are too symbolic.

One survivor suggested that Catholics both wear the Patches and donate to a fund to pay for therapy and other forms of support for survivors of abuse.  I think this is a great idea, but I don't have enough support to implement it.  I welcome support from anyone who wants to help me do this.

We've handed out the Sackcloth Penance Patches these last few years with a prayer asking forgiveness for our sins.

This year, at Ascension Catholic Church we are doing something different.  Ascension is staffed by Franciscan Friars.  Yeah, the Franciscans did the bad stuff of abuse and cover up too.  They also investigated their own abuses pretty thoroughly back in 1993 through The Independent Board of Inquiry.  They were dragged into it by parents of abused boys, they kept names of accused priests confidential, they left an abusive priest in ministry..... but worst of all, they didn't see the good they had done in being more open and honest about their own flaws.  They retreated from the right path rather than embracing it wholeheartedly. But they still did a really good thing that should be emulated by more Catholic Orders and Diocese.

Those flawed Franciscans have wandered a bit from the vision of Brother Francis, but they still have something of him in them.

St. Francis is supposed to have said, "Preach always.  If necessary, use words."

Fr. Ben spoke last Lent about performing positive penances such as taking a walk or praying every day as opposed to giving up something.

That is what we are going to do with the Sackcloth Penance Patch this year.  We are distributing the Prayer of Compassion this year with the Sackcloth Penance Patches to encourage Catholics not merely to prayer for survivors of abuse but to support them and believe them when they come forward.

I am sharing my prayer to help inspire other Catholics to think about how we can express belief and support for all survivors who come forward.

Prayer of Compassion

Lord, you have given me great love;

Guide me in its use.

Give me the wisdom and the strength

To do good,

To support and believe in

Those who need my support and my belief,

To give confidence to those who are faltering.

Lord, give me wisdom and strength

To succumb not to my desires for pleasure

But to act in ways that bring happiness to others.

Lord, help me listen lovingly

To those who need empathy from someone.

Through the tangled snags of conflict,

Help me make peace

And to return anger with patience and compassion.

Through my heart,

Lord, fold your arms around the weary.

Through my eyes,

Declare your love to those who need it.

Make my manner gentle and kind,

My heart humble and pure.

Lord, you have given me great love;

Guide me in its use.

Copryright 2002 to 2011 Virginia Pickles Jones.  Please do not reprint prayer without permission from the author.

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What Egypt Can Teach Us

My kids came home from school every day the last few weeks talking about Egypt.  They were fascinated by the demonstrators in Tahrir Square who were protesting the regime of the American backed dictator, Hosni Mubarak.  My son, in particular, would ask me if there was news from Egypt.  They were depressed when Mubarak didn’t step down, and then they were elated when he did.

True democracy inspires hope in people and when a government won’t give it to you, when elections are rigged, it is awesome to see so many people standing up for freedom, for truth, for justice.

There were concerned voices.  One radio and TV host worried we’d have a new caliphate.  Some Israelis expressed understandable concerns about how change in Egypt would affect peace treaties with Israel.  Some people in American felt we shouldn’t dump a dictator who had long been a friend to America, and some people in America wanted us to dump the dictator as fast as possible.

But mostly I heard and saw joy and admiration and hope -- joy and admiration for the people of Egypt and hope for humankind that we may follow the Egyptian example of non-violent revolution.

What were the factors in Egypt that led to a joyful success?

Non-violence: The protestors policed themselves, checking people for weapons when they entered Tahrir Square.  They also cleaned up messes left by clashes with pro-Mubarak forces.  If the protestors had not been non-violent, they would have lost international support pretty quickly.  The government of Egypt invalidated itself by engaging in violence against protestors and journalists.  

Giving a voice to the voiceless: It was very important that the people of Egypt were heard through Al Jazeera, the New York Times coverage, the Huffington Post, and through CNN with Anderson Cooper and other broadcast and print media.  We admired the professional restraint of the Egyptian military that  seemed oriented towards preventing violence between different factions rather oriented towards silencing protestors.

Joyful atmosphere:  Musicians and singers came and sang to the protestors.  Families came and picnicked together.

Inclusion:  women and children were included, particularly when the atmosphere was nonviolent.  Everyone from all political and religious spectrums was included, but the protests were led by idealistic youth trying to build a better future for their country.  Some commentators in the United States tried to portray these protests as controlled by radical Muslims and while the Muslim Brotherhood was there, the real leaders included a 30 year old Egyptian marketing executive for Google, Wael Ghonim, who set up a Facbook page for a man who had been beaten to death by the police and some high school and college age students who gathered together in an apartment to reach out to others through Facebook.

The last point bears repeating.  Young people led the way.

And humility: Wael Ghonim never aspired to start a revolution or lead a country, and he promises to return to work as marketing executive for Google as soon as possible.

People persevered: People kept on coming to the Tahrir Square or they camped out in the Square day after day.

People helped each other: Because the protest took so long, because protesters camped out, others brought them bananas, bread, and water.

So how do we apply these lessons to other situations?

How can we apply it in the United States? 

But I also want to ask, how can we apply these lessions to other issues such as abuse in general and clergy abuse in particular?

For both Church and country, I don’t think we can wait for our leaders to do the right thing.  They answer not to us but a to a power structure that is wedded to the status quo.  For Catholics who think everything is fine and the leadership has taken care of everything, just look at the staying power of the Survivors Network of those Abuse by Priests.  Lets face it.  Lawsuits are not very inspiring.  They exist not so much because lawyers push them, but because we Catholics haven’t done enough to support survivors coming forward.  We haven’t done enough to support survivors healing or to stop abuses, because reports of recent abuses still find their way to the media.

What can we learn from Egypt that might strengthen our cause of eliminating abuse and caring for survivors?

How can we be nonviolent in our actions?  I think this also includes how can we be emotionally nonviolent?  When we are emotionally violent we turn away people from our cause almost as surely as we do with guns and bombs.

How can we give a voice to the voiceless?

How can we be joyful as we proclaim serious issues?

How can we include everyone who wants to be included?

What can we do to inspire young people?

What role does humility play?  Who most needs to be humble?  How can we all be humble ourselves (because we can't expect others to be humble if we aren't humble ourselves)?

How can we persevere when things don’t go our way?

How can we help each other?

You tell me.  I want to hear from you.

This is me in Soviet Armenia in 1989 working in a joint Soviet/American peace group to build homes for people who lost them after the December 1988, earthquake.  Protesting is the easy part.  How do we build a better future?

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Blogging Jaime Romo's Book: The Value of Flexibility

I have been using Jaime Romo’s book Healing the Sexually Abused Heart: A Workbook for Survivors, Thrivers and Supporters for my support group.  Since some people have trouble motivating themselves to do the exercises in a serious form -- writing down their responses and sitting with them and writing them down again, I decided to blog my way through the book to try to help others to do the same thing. I already completed the first exercise in the book and so it is now time for the second exercise -- Action 1.02 -- on flexibility.

Jaime begins by asking, "How can I be more flexible when dealing with unfamiliar or uncomfortable ideas?"

I would add "and situations" to the question.

The last question in the exercise is, "What do I commit to now in order to be more flexible."

This exercise instantly put me in a state of anxiety, because I have an abusive person in my life right now. This person is constantly making demands on me. Some are reasonable. Some are outrageously unfair. And when I stand up to him and tell him “no,” then he acts as though I am being unreasonable and inflexible. And yet, I virtually never ask him to do anything for me. I don’t want to interact with him any more than I absolutely have to because interacting with him is so unpleasant -- so I try very hard to solve all my issues without him.

Why do I, the person who is being abused, have do be flexible and do all the compromising? It feels totally unfair. It feels as though I am going through abuse over and over again.

I think this is what happens to survivors. We get mistreated so many times we start to get rigid in an attempt to keep from being abused again.

There are two problems with this. First, sometimes we get so rigid that we are not open to alternatives that may be very healing for us if only we try them. Second, the outside world doesn’t not perceive reality through our eyes. doctors, lawyers, therapists, judges and the like hear not only our story, but also the story of the person abusing us, so they judge us not merely on our story, but also on our behavior, which means that when we are rigid in trying to protect ourselves from being abused again we look like we are the problem and not the victim.

That being said, I have to be rigid in discussing my own situation because it is an ongoing situation. I worry that I’ve already said enough to make myself vulnerable to further wounding. I have some good examples among the survivors I work with how people have wounded themselves with their own rigidity, but I can’t really keep their confidences and support them and tell their stories to other people. I can only tell a few stories from my life to illustrate the point I think Jaime Romo was making about flexibility.

Abuse shouldn’t happen -- anywhere -- in any relationship, and society should care about wrongdoing and stop it, but there are so many situations where wrongdoing happens and nothing is done.  About ten years ago I knew a woman whose purse was snatched. She reported it to the police only to be told that the situation was so minor that the police would not pursue it beyond taking a report on the incident. So the woman tracked down the purse snatcher and took her evidence to the police so they could arrest him.

Do you know what the police did?

Nothing.

There has also been a case of elder abuse in my family -- an older cousin of mine is being taken advantage of by a much younger man. He is verbally abusive of her and always persuading her to give him money. I reported the situation some years ago. The result? My older relative was mad at me for causing trouble for her boyfriend, and Adult Protective Services did nothing because she was lucid and wanted the man in her life. Recently my relative fell and had a cracked rib, and her much younger boyfriend let her languish in pain for a couple weeks before someone else finally took her to a doctor. The horrified doctor, who is a mandatory reporter, reported the case to Adult Protective Services. Once again Adult Protective Services did nothing because she was lucid and wanted this abusive man in her life. However, my cousin did get rid of the doctor.

What do you do?

Unfortunately you can’t control everything, and sometimes, even though it feels to the core of your being that something is totally unfair, you have to be flexible and try to adapt to a less than perfect situation. And sometimes you never know, but if you're patient, something good will happen that just happens not to be what you wanted to make happen.

That is always happening to me. I am always trying to make things happen when something else happens that I did not plan on. The clergy abuse issue is a great example. The reason why I got into the clergy abuse issue is an abusive priest was removed from my parish. It took me a year or so to put the pieces together and realize that what Church leadership had told our parish about the priest was a whitewashed form of the truth. I came to the sad conclusion that there were more victims and that I needed to do something. I handed out newspaper articles in my parish and thought people would support me in my quest for truth and justice. I hoped to inspire the parishioners of my parish to write a letter to Church leadership asking for truth and justice.

I can hear the cynical laughter of quite a few survivors of clergy abuse.

No it didn’t happen.

But something else happened just as good and maybe even better.

In response to my attempts to do something about the clergy abuse issue, Church leadership put me in touch with a clergy abuse survivor in another state who was trying to work with the Church.  I had heard about him, that he was allowing himself to be used by the Church for propaganda purposes. I never imagined myself going to him for advice and help. After Church leadership advised me to contact him, I wrote him an angry and confrontational letter. To my surprise, he wrote me an eloquent and compassionate response. We corresponded for about a year. He even made a trip to Portland. We went to dinner at Powell’s bookstore and then visited a park after dinner with my children. My children adored him because he was funny and playful.

I guess that was the icing on the cake.

The cake was that he helped me get forums started in my parish. The forums were run by church personnel and were limited in the healing they offered, but enough parishioners came forward and said they were hurt by the clergy abuse scandal that the forums were continued and eventually, with the support of Franciscan Friar Armando Lopez, they morphed into Compassionate Gatherings run by me, a lay Catholic parishioner and Elizabeth, a clergy abuse survivor. Our very first independent Compassionate Gathering a family member of a clergy abuse survivor came to us seeking our support and survivors have come to us since then, slowly, one by one, but they are still coming. I was contacted by a new survivor just before Christmas.

So what I was trying to make happen did not happen, something else happened that was probably even better. If I had been rigid and said that healing could happen only one way, then the good that happened from me being open to an alternative, probably would not have happened.

Do I work with this survivor anymore? No, he stopped writing to me after about a year and that was that.

Although I was disappointed, even his departure was it’s own gift. I had wanted and expected to keep working with him. But as I said before, he works very closely with the Church, which strongly influences how he does his work. If I had kept on working with him, I would have had to let the Church significantly influence my work. However, not long after he stopped writing to me, I ran into a reference on the internet about The Compassionate Listening Project. Compassionate Listening sounded like just the thing to me because during the forums of clergy abuse church personnel allowed people, especially me, to be interrupted, put down, and criticized. I had thought that if only Catholics met survivors of clergy abuse face to face that they would become more sympathetic to them. Then I realized that you can’t bring survivors face to face with other Catholics because they will criticize them, put them down and interrupt them. This sort of experience would be really wounding to survivors.  When I saw the work of the Compassionate Listening Project, I knew you could bring survivors and Catholics together if you taught the Catholics and some of the survivors Compassionate Listening. Compassionate Listening works beautifully. This is what Compassionate Gathering does.  We bring survivors together with other Catholics and members of the community so people can tell their stories in a supportive environment.

My last story about flexibility concerns my daughter. My daughter has a bubbly, sparkly personality, but when she hit puberty she became a lovely girl with a bubbly personality and lots of insecurities. For the last three and half years we have been volunteering once every couple months at a shelter for homeless families. For a long time my daughter intermixed with the homeless children with ease.  She was a wonderful source of fun for them and big help for me. But her last couple visits to the shelter she has grown too shy to easily mix with the other kids. This last week at the shelter there have been a couple girls her age. I collected toys to bring to the shelter this last Sunday for our shift as evening host, but my teenagers grumbled that the toys were too small and uninteresting to give out. They were leftover toys from the freebies given out during church picnics -- small plastic odds and ends. After we arrived at the shelter, my daughter stayed in the kitchen, and read her book and helped set up for dinner, but she did not mix with our guests even though there were several girls her age present.

There were two families in the shelter. For reasons that will become obvious I am obscuring their identities. One was a Mexican family with a mother and father and five kids. One was an Asian family with a single mother and five kids. All the adults spoke halting English, and all the kids were very well behaved. In the past we’ve hosted adults struggling with drug and alcohol and abuse issues. More recently our shelter has hosted happy families in which the parents have lost their jobs and stopped being able to pay rent.

The single mother had a ten year old son.  I sat down across from him at dinner and noticed he looked very sad, so I asked him a few questions. My children told me that I was being intrusive. I asked the young man, and he agreed, so I stopped asking questions.

After dinner I sat down by the boy's mother and commented on how hard it must be to be a homeless single mother. Not only did she have 5 children, but one of them was a five month old baby.

She had moved abruptly in mid October from a state two or three states away from Oregon. She had slept in her car with her kids at the FoodCo parking lot for a couple months before someone told her about the shelter for homeless families. Sleeping in a car life this with a five kids is hard enough, but a newborn baby? That is unimaginably difficult.

I told the mother I noticed how sad her son was.

She said, “He misses his grandmother back home”

My mind silently screamed domestic violence. Why would a woman move to a state two states away from her family with no money and no job and winter coming on and a newborn baby? Moreover the state she came from had lower unemployment than Oregon.

There had to be a reason bigger than any usual reason.

I asked the mother a few questions and let it be. She didn’t open up and tell me what I thought was the case. I wish she had been able to trust me, because there are Domestic Violence services in Portland that are specific to ethnic communities.  Probably shelter staff who screen shelter applicants were aware of the woman’s circumstances and referred her to appropriate services.

Although the mother was very circumspect about her circumstances, she did tell me one story. She told me how her kids were wishing for toys and would ask her if she had a dollar so they could go to Fred Meyer’s and buy one of the cheap toys for sale there.  Then she would look for change in the car and usually come up with a dollar or so.

This was the opening for me to bring in my children’s leftover toys. I asked her if she wanted them. She did.

So I went out to my car and brought my one small bag of toys into the shelter. There were inflatable balls and a helicopter, a bubble blower on a cord that could be worn around the neck, some crosses on chains, a plastic magnifying glass, and a children’s magazine.

These poor children lit up as though it was Christmas and soon all children were playing together, including my daughter. My kids thought our toys were too cheap to give away, but the homeless children were delighted with them. And with the joy, my daughter’s adolescent insecurities disappeared.

Monday night we went through our toys and clothes and came up with four bags of toys and kids clothing to take to the shelter. My daughter had great fun figuring out which toys and outfits she wanted to give away. Tuesday night we went back to the shelter and gave away these four bags of toys and clothes. And now some homeless boys are playing with my son’s pirate ship and a homeless girl owns my daughter’s baby doll.  But there were other toys too -- enough toys for everyone to receive something. My own children once again laughed and played with the other kids.

So there you go (as my Irish friend always says). My daughter was afraid to interact. She was afraid our toys would be insulting. Instead she had so much fun playing with these kids that she looked forward to visiting them again and giving them even more used toys and clothes.

If you never try anything new, you might miss a lot of fun and healing.

Or, another way of putting it is, if what you are doing isn’t working, try something else. It might work.

And so it turns out that flexibility is really valuable for healing. So if you have a copy of Jaime Romo’s workbook turn to page 16 and start thinking about how flexibility might help you heal and how you can be flexible. If you don’t own open of his workbooks contact me or contact him and one of us can send you off a copy for a bout $20 to cover the cost of the book and handling.

E-mail Jaime at jr@jaimeromo.com.

The specific questions Jaime asks in the exercise include:

How can I be more flexible when dealing with unfamiliar or uncomfortable ideas?

When is it okay for me to be flexible with unfamiliar or uncomfortable ideas?

What might be some benefits to my being more flexible with unfamiliar or uncomfortable ideas?

........

What is keeping me form being more flexible?

There are more questions but you will have buy Jaime's book to find out what they are.

Being an Instrument of Peace

These days are sad ones for our country, with the shooting of Democratic Representative, Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona as well as the shooting of the little girl Christina Greem, who was born on 9/11. These shootings were an act of a man, Jared Lee Loughner, who appears to have suffered from emotional trauma meted out by a verbally abusive father. Jared may be schizophrenic too. Maybe his stimuli were all internal, and he was not influenced by angry rhetoric from Republican or Democratic politicians and pundits....or maybe he was influenced. My opinion is that probably an emotional violent father coupled with possible biochemical disturbances in Loughner's brain made him more vulnerable to influence from violent rhetoric and more likely to commit the insane act of violence when most of the rest of us know the rhetoric is intended to incite political action and not actual violence.

That said, now what do we do to help our country heal?

President Obama gave a moving speech the other night at the memorial to the dead in Arizona, especially his words about Christina Green, the little girl born on 9/11 who was a member of student council and aspired to follow in Gabrielle Giffords footsteps, "I want America to be as good as she imagined it..."

Don't we all?

The Arizona memorial was one that brought together Republicans and Democrats -- Republican senators John McCain and John Kyl attended as did retired Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Conner.

I listened to Jon Stewart on the internet this morning. He played clips from Fox News criticizing the memorial in Arizona. The Fox news pundits criticized and criticized and criticized.

It gets tiresome to hear all that criticism. The brain shuts down, and I was reminded why I don't subscribe to cable television.

And then I think about my area of interest -- abuse in the Catholic Church.

Yesterday, I had Facebook message exchanges with two different people -- both people wounded by abuse. One woman was abused by a nun. She was older and frail and unable to travel. She felt alone. I referred her to someone I knew abused by a nun. She told me she had tried contacting that person without success. She was afraid to tell her story alone, because she was afraid of what the Church might do to her. She said she felt like ending her life because she felt so alone and uncared for. She lives afar away so I cannot go to her.

Catholics cringe when they hear criticism of their Church like this. They hurt, but the abuse survivors hurt much more. How can we bring healing to this issue? How can we care for people such as this nun abuse survivor who feels so alone that she wants to end her life? How can we address the fears of Catholics who feel wounded by criticism? They know in their hearts the abuse happened, but they don't know what to do so they shut down and do nothing -- which perpetuates the problem.

Later yesterday, I heard from another Facebook friend, Jaques. I only met the nun abuse survivor yesterday. Jacques I remember from First Grade. I remember him swinging on the Monkey Bars much more ably than me. We went to school together all the way through high school. High school was a terrible time in my life when no one asked me to date or dance.

Everyone said high school is the best time in your life. I hated it. I didn't have the money for nice clothes. I had way too many pimples. I was the class brainiac which never makes you popular. I went to a dance at the urging of my friends when I was a Freshman. As usual, nobody asked me to dance. So I asked someone. I asked Jacques. He was middling in popularity so I thought he was a safe bet, but he turned me down.

It hurt, and I never went voluntarily to another dance (however I was involuntarily taken to a dance two years later). My relationship skills were poor, and I suffered from low self esteem and depression. In the years that followed I made several half hearted suicide attempts. I had a secret. Two teenaged boys had taken me into a basement when I was 4 years old and they sexually abused me. On top of that my mother had been sexually abused as a child and through out my childhood struggled with disabling depression and alcoholism.

From the prism of my mind, I interpreted Jacques declining to dance with me as confirmation of my unworthiness as a person.

But Jacques had a secret too.

He is gay.

But in high school he dared not tell anyone, at least not anyone I knew of.

When we reconnected last year through Facebook, he told me about the rejection and labeling and discrimination he suffered all of his life for being gay. And then, in 1994, he was with his male friend in Greenwich Village...holding hands.....when they were attacked and beaten by three young men wielding golf clubs. Jacques escaped permanent damage, but his friend suffered the loss of hearing in one ear and later struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism until his death a few years ago. Jacques struggled with a different kind of damage. He was filled with anger and fear that he would be attacked again for being gay..... because some people view gays as evil or filthy so it is acceptable to discriminate against gays and lesbians, it is acceptable to attack gays and lesbians and wound them or kill them. And, for some reason, other people do not identify these actions as hate crimes because they think, "People make the choice to be gay.'

Looking back on the high school dance and the way I felt and the way Jacques felt -- neither one of us chose what we felt. I did not choose to be abused, and Jacques did not choose to be attracted to boys instead of girls. In our small town, both experiences had be kept private because everyone knew everything, and there was no tolerance for people on the fringes.

Jacques left our home town and worked his way up through Greenpeace and then as an artist and art studio owner in New York. Now he can tell people from our hometown that he is gay, and he is respected because he is the most successful person from our high school graduating class if not from the whole school.

Still, for many years, Jacques, struggled with darkness in his soul -- pain and anger that so many people do not consider attacks on gays and lesbians to be hate crimes. He was able to move forward towards healing when President Obama signed a bill in 2009 making it a federal offense to attack someone because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. Knowing he had more access for justice helped Jaques heal the wounds of his psyche.

Sounds familiar. One of the deepest wounds clergy abuse survivors feel is the lack of access to justice because of laws limiting statutes of limitations on criminal and civil prosecutions for abuse.

In our e-mail exchange yesterday I told Jacques that he can use his success as an artist and art studio owner as a platform to do much good as Oprah has used to her television show.

Jacques liked that. He wrote back, knowingly or unknowingly quoting the words of St. Francis.

"Thanks for the words of inspiration...," he wrote, "I choose to be happy...where there is darkness let me bring light.."

Jacques words inspired me in turn.

I thought about where our country is now, with all the conflict and anger between left and right. And I thought about the relationship between survivors and other Catholics. The church takes tentative steps that often appear either clueless or for show and not genuine. And survivors remained silent in the church or outside the church, angry at the lack of genuine progress, and the person in the pew has either left the church out of frustration or he or she remains in the church, confused and uncertain. We all wait for justice and healing, not knowing what to do.

The answer for Church and society is the same. We need to heed the words of St. Francis in his Prayer of Peace. Some people, such as Gaby Giffords or Christiana Green and a great many survivors of abuse, are dead or so wounded they can't do anything. The rest of us must carry forward and live the words of St. Francis.....

Lord, make me an instrument of Your Peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

(c) 2011 Virginia Pickles Jones

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Why Not Give Compensation to those Who Suffered?

My television is hooked up to my Mac Mini as a computer monitor. I guess we could watch television if we really wanted to, but we'd have to disconnect some wires and reconnect others. So we don't watch television. And if we did have our television positioned to be able to watch it, I don't subscribe to cable. I have this thing about Comcast. I have an allergy to giving them money. I prefer to use my money spending quality time with my children and to giving support to survivors of abuse.

Well, anyway, to get to the point, I was reading the Huffington Post online and their front page story was Jon Stewart's show on 911 First Responders and how congress voted down compensation for 911 responders who suffered health problems.  The article contained a link to Jon Stewart's show, and I watched Jon Stewart drop his humor and interview some first responders who have lost their health and how they felt about congress voting down benefits for them and others like them.  You know, I'm a peacenik.  I'd get us out of Afghanistan in a wink and a nod if I had the power to do so.  But that does not mean I don't care about what happened on 911.  I have watched documentaries and movies and You Tube segments on 911 over and over and poured over many books written on the subject.  In one day we saw the worst of what humanity has to offer as well as the best.  The worst was the terrorists who thought violence was the answer to their concerns and the politicians who demagogued the disaster.  The best was the selfless actions of the policemen and firefighters who entered those burning towers to risk their lives to save people or to die trying.  People came from around the country to help.  But in the collapse of the burning towers toxic chemicals and ash were released into the atmosphere and now many of those who risked their lives to save people suffer from respiratory and other related ailments.

If we ask people to risk their lives for our country, whether they be war veterans or First Responders,we need to properly care for them.  I feel pretty annoyed that Congress and the president sustained tax cuts for the wealthy and left out people in need, especially those 911 First Responders.  The House passed the bill and paid for it by closing a corporate tax loophole.  But the Senate voted the bill down.  So corporations that are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of reserves and not hiring are more important to care for than First Responders?

Talk about misplaced priorities.

And then my thoughts turn to another human made disaster -- the disaster of abuse.

My first thoughts were about clergy abuse survivors.  Wikileaks revealed that the Vatican, while one side professing concern for survivors, took offense that they might be investigated by a commission investigating clergy abuse in Ireland.  Once again the concern is for those who hold power and prestige and not those who are wounded.

Jesus said, "What so ever you do for the least of these, you do for me."

In the expanded version of that saying -- in the Gospel of Matthew 24: 35-46, Jesus actually says that you will go to hell if you don't give to those in need or visit those who are sick or in prison.

I think many Catholics are afraid of losing their churches and their schools, but one of the most dynamic parishes I've ever seen was St. Juan Diego here in Portland, which managed without a church building for 6 years or so.  The people of the parish lived the saying, "The church is the people."

I understand that it is a pain in the neck to cart around everything, but the point is that people who are dedicated to their faith and to their Church, don't need a building.  The Church is built on spirit, not on bricks.

Moreover survivors who come forward are like First Responders to 911.  Abuse happens when we are silent.  We have to speak out to end it.  Unfortunately, not everyone in society is grateful for when the wounded come forward.  Sometimes the wounded are reviled for disturbing our peace.

And what is true of clergy abuse survivors is true in society in general because Child Protective Services  and foster family programs are seriously underfunded everywhere.

Abuse is corrosive of our society.  I went to a lunch yesterday here in Portland given by the Wholistic Peace Institute.  I sat, without knowing next to Israel Bayer, the editor of Street Roots, the newspaper sold by homeless people struggling to get out of live cycles that caused them to be homeless.  I am a fan of Street Roots and often speak to the men and women selling the paper.  At least half were abused as children.  Some tell horrendous stories.  One man lived in a series of foster homes and was abused in almost every home he lived in as a child.  The man had a life long struggle with drug and alcohol abuse, but selling Street Roots was among his efforts to clean himself up and get himself off the streets.  But that is really hard to do alone.  Fortunately he had help from Street Roots and some other non-profit organizations.  But there are so many people who have to wait for these services.

When a survivor come forward they are like a First Responder to a disaster.  They are fighting in their own way to end this scourge that is so expensive to our society.  The abuse cycle continues as long as people remain silent and so often when people come forward they are reviled for disturbing the peace of those around them.  Catholics can't believe that the priest they love did such a terrible thing.  Members of the community can't believe that this well liked man terrorizes his family in private.  All too often survivors of all stripes are not supported.  And like the 911 First Responders, they have so many long term wounds.  How can we abandon survivors as a Church or as a society?

So what sacrifices can we make as a Church and as society to support our first responders to our human made disasters?  We also cannot wait as a people for Church leaders or politicians to address these problems.  We must do what we can ourselves now to support those in need.  So ask that we all give.  Why can't we establish an independent fund for survivors of clergy abuse to support when the Church fails to do so?  And for regular survivors of abuse there are all kinds of deserving charities such as Street Roots and well, Compassionate Gathering too.

Copyright 2010 Virginia Jones

Reconnecting to Spirit: Survivor Leads Labyrinth Walk in Portland, Oregon

On Monday, December 6, 2010, Elizabeth Geoke, a survivor of an assault by a priest that foreshortened her career as a nun will do something she might have done if she had remained a nun.  She will lead an Icon Labyrinth Walk to begin the Advent season.  Elizabeth’s journey to this event has not been an easy one.

In 2002, almost 40 years after leaving her religious life, Elizabeth returned to her former Mother House.

Another former nun asked her, Of all the young nuns, I thought you were the most likely to remain a nun.  What happened?”

“Well, that was the year I was stationed away from the Mother House,” Elizabeth replied thinking about the reasons she left her order and the Catholic Church, “And then there was the fact that I was abused by a priest.”

On Christmas Eve that year when she was still a novice nun, not yet professed to her final vows, her confessor told her that he had a right to her body.  She fought him off but became bruised and bloodied in the process.  She pulled herself to play the organ for Christmas Eve Mass, but she could not keep silent, so she told another, younger priest what happened.

He put her under a seal of silence, with threat of excommunication...

Well, do I need to tell you the rest... Everyone who reads Abuse Tracker on a regular basis can fill in the blanks.  When Elizabeth couldn’t remain silent, she was thrown out of the church.  Eventually she married a Quaker man and had three children.

Elizabeth admired her husband’s Quaker faith, but she was never inspired enough by the mostly silent Quaker meetings without any music or readings from the Bible to become a Quaker herself.

Before anyone thinks I am remotely critical of Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends as Quakers are more properly known, let me tell you that my ancestors who came to this country were Quakers.  They believe in the equality of all before the eyes of God that all of us have the light of God in us, male, female, black and white, Christian and non-Christian.  Quakers fought against slavery before most other white Americans were moved to do so.  Quakers were also among the founders of the feminist movement and Quakers had female “ministers” before most other religions did.  Quakers are pacifists and they believe in living simply and they are better than most people of faith in really living their faith.  If you go to a Quaker meeting house, in the parking lot you will see an assortment of broken down cars and bicyles but inside you will meet doctors, university professors, engineers, lawyers, former peace corp volunteers and the like.  They can afford SUVs but they won’t buy them because they don’t believe in valuing material objects.

I love the Religious Society of Friends.  I attended on and off for 8 years, but I was raised by parents who were not religious.  I didn’t find enough support for learning about faith in Quaker meeting.  We had the silent meetings of prayer for an hour, but I didn’t know how to pray.  I learned how to pray in the Catholic Church.  Although, honestly, in other ways, I feel more comfortable with the Quaker lack of authority and hierarchy.  At the risk of being excommunicated myself, I have to confess that I am more of a Quatholic than a Catholic.

So I understand Elizabeth.  For many years, she told people for many years after leaving her religious order, “I don’t do religion.”

But inside of her was an ache of longing for connection that she suppressed until that day in 2002 when someone asked her why she didn’t remain a nun.  LIke so many ex-Catholics, she loves the liturgy, she loves the music and the richness of the Catholic faith.  

Her second, more public confession of having been abused, was not really more supported than her first.  No one in her very Catholic family of birth or her religious order.  Her Quaker husband accepted her and supported her for who she was, but that is what Quakers do.

Coming forward in public as a clergy sex abuse survivor became a spiritual journey for Elizabeth, She had suppressed that part of herself so long she didn’t even know why she had suppressed it.  Coming forward as a survivor of clergy abuse helped her understand that she wanted to reconnect to faith she has so long been disconnected from.  But, due to the lack of support from her Catholic birth family and from her religious order,  Elizabeth was not able to reconnected to the Catholic Church.  However, she found an Episcopal Church, one with a dynamic woman priest, and became involved.  

She said at first that she thought the problem was men, but when the woman priest left, she found that the male Episcopal priest who replaced her was fine, so the problem was not men but Catholic priests.  But eventually she met enough supportive Catholic priests, including the Franciscan priests, Fr. Armando and Fr. Ben, at Ascension where we hold our Compassionate Gatherings, but by then she was already involved at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral here in Portland, Oregon, and decided to stay.

In her journey to reconnect with spirit, Elizabeth took classes and went on retreats, eventually gaining the skills to lead retreats herself.  One of her choice involvements at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral is the Labyrinth Guild.  Labyrinths are not mazes.  Mazes have dead ends and often lead the walker very confused.  A Labyrinth leads the walker on a clear path to the center and back again.

Labyrinths are found in many religions and cultures and date back at least to ancient Greece.  They were adopted as a form of walking prayer or meditation in early Christianity.  One of the most famous labyrinths is found on the floor of the Chartes Cathedral in France. 

Labyrinths can be a metaphor for one’s own spiritual journey.  Our paths in life take on twists and turns away from God, but eventual our spiritual path take us to our center to reconnect with God.  The path itself can be a metaphor for how we life our life.  Rarely is one on the path alone.  Do others pass us by or do we rush impatiently past others.  Are we distracted or can maintain our minds in meditation.

Elizabeth will be leading a Labyrinth Walk at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Portland, Oregon, on December 6 from 4:30 PM to 8 :30 PM.  This walk is centered on the season of advent and includes a procession of icons of the Holy Family and of the saints at 4:30 PM.

I am going with my children.  They are beginning to rebel against traditional church services.  My son, who like me, connects to God best while hiking of the side of a mountain, experiences almost as much uplift from walking the labyrinth as he does hiking.

Other survivors of clergy abuse or other forms of abuse who have puzzled how God can allow abuse on the earth, may find Walking the Labyrinth a healing experience, a metaphor for their own journey of life, and a way to reconnect with faith without entering a Catholic Church or even an Episcopal Church because the labyrinth is in a parish building across the courtyard from the Cathedral.  If you find Elizabeth (she is the lovely woman in long grey hair), tell her that you are a survivor of clergy abuse and she will give you extra support.

The labyrinth at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral is an especially lovely labyrinth as it is made of inlaid wood.  Soft music will be playing and the room will be lit by candlelight.

Below is an icon arrangement by Elizabeth.  The icons will feature saints and the Holy Family as this one does.

Here are several links to You Tube videos about walking the labyrinth.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVHOC60zcJo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D453ajtWb74&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u16CswmyRlE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B0-41YYuhU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP6bacDhnXo&feature=related

Every Person is Sacred: Part Two of the Screening of Hand of God

The conventional wisdom has been that survivors of Catholic clergy abuse could only rely on other survivors for support and belief, so we worried what would happen when we brought survivors together with other Catholics and members of the community for the screening of the film on clergy abuse, Hand of God, in September 2007.  We found that the conventional wisdom was wrong.  Not only could we come together without wounding each other, together we experienced spiritual healing and transformation.

On that Saturday in late September 2007, we experienced the sanctity of the community.  We also experienced the sanctity of each individual present.  Each person who came, brought their own special gift.

Paul Cultrera, the subject of Hand of God, and his brother Joe, who directed the film came to Portland just for the screening.  However when another guest cancelled, they agreed to fill in the gap in our schedule despite the fact that Paul Cultrera was exhausted.  A business commitment on Friday night kept him up until 2 AM on Saturday morning. but Paul stayed with us the most of the day, sharing his story and his journey of healing.

Other survivors told me they found Paul’s presence and his willingness to share his story very healing.

“His story is my story,” one survivor said.

Joe Cultrera, who had hoped to get in some sight seeing in Portland, gave up his free time and shared his presence and support with us for most the day along with his brother.

In addition to Paul and Joe, we invited clergy abuse survivor, Billie Mazzei, to contribute to our event.  Billie is from the state of Washington.  She studied with Marie Fortune of the Faith Trust Institute.  For many years she lead retreats for survivors of clergy abuse.  Now she is semi-retired, but she still offers spiritual direction and small groups for survivors.  Both Elizabeth Goeke and Billie Mazzei spoke about how to heal the wounds of clergy abuse.  Billie’s offerings will be included in future blogs.

Clergy abuse lawyer, Kelly Clark, who was on a tight schedule, walked in during Billie’s presentation.

“Who is the woman who is speaking?  She is excellent,” he said.  

Kelly Clark filed the lawsuit that went all the way to the Oregon State Supreme Court and opened up Oregon’s court system to allow survivors of abuse to sue for civil damages within three years of realizing they have been harmed.  More importantly, he is a compassionate lawyer who tries very hard to connect his survivors with support services to help them heal.

After Billie finished speaking, Kelly spoke about the process of helping survivors figure out if they want to file civil lawsuits for damages caused by abuse.  He advises that the process is often painful and best taken if justice and some sort of public acknowledgment of abuse are needed by the survivor for healing.   Sometimes suing the Church is the only way survivors can get the resources they need for healing.  Moreover, as painful as these lawsuits have been for Catholics, they have pushed the Church to work much harder to keep children safe.

Kelly also spoke about the importance of apologizing for abuse.  Many Catholic clergy abuse survivors do not feel apologized to by the leadership of the Catholic Church.   Sometimes these apologies have the right words but are made to a room full of Catholics in an event to which no survivors have been invited.  Other times these apologies are worded in ways that diminish the apology (I.e. “If in hindsight, people were hurt, we are sorry…”).

Kelly Clark recounted one time he was present during a sincere apology.  A survivor wanted an apology from a Bishop.  The Bishop agreed, and he spoke from his heart.  

While Kelly Clark was speaking, Franciscan Friar Fr. Armando Lopez, then the pastor of Ascension Catholic Church in Portland, Oregon, walked into the Hollywood Theater.  Fr. Armando was impressed when he heard a clergy abuse lawyer praise an apology made by a bishop.  

The screening of Hand of God also brought forth two special people who were not clergy abuse survivors and who had no connection to the Catholic Church.  One of those people was a man I call Eddie.  I told his story in an article, Giving Eddie a Break, published in the Fall 2009 issue of Alternatives magazine as well as on the Abuse Tracker Blog.  Eddie was never sexually or physically abused.  But he had been abused by society and by our legal system.  When I spoke on a local radio station about why we were screening the movie, Hand of God, he was drawn to my words and wanted to join our Gatherings.  Eddie helped to remind us there are many forms of abuse and that all forms of abuse devastate lives.  Another special person who came to the screening of the movie, was a mother whose children were sexually abused by the same man.  Her children came to terms with their abuse too late for their abuser to be prosecuted and imprisoned.  Frustrated, the mother struggled to find support and justice but found very few people who would even listen to her compassionately.  In September 2007, Colin Fogarty, who was a reporter with the local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate, interviewed Elizabeth and me.  The mother heard about our group on the radio and came to the screening of Hand of God.   Although the man who abused her children was not a Catholic priest, she wanted to find someone, anyone, who could understand the anguish she and her children had gone through.  It was this mother who decided to Walk Across Oregon to stop child sexual abuse.

When we see each person as special, we open ourselves to receiving the gifts each person has to offer.  The Walk Across Oregon has given us the opportunity to meet many survivors of many forms of abuse.

Sadly, the mother’s story is a common one.  These last forty years we have made it much safer to talk about sexual abuse, but many survivors still experience judgment and little or no support when they come forward.  Too often those who abuse slip through the cracks in our legal system and go on to abuse many others.  This is true not only true for clergy abuse survivors, it is true for ordinary sex abuse and rape survivors as well as for survivors of domestic violence, physical and emotional abuse.  The more I Walk Across Oregon, the more stories I hear.

An abusive man, who had custody of the nieces and nephews he abused, just moved when authorizes began to investigate.  He was a respected foreman in his field of work; finding another job was easy.  It was years before authorities removed the children from his home.  They say that justice delayed is justice denied.  Four decades have passed; the survivors live crippled lives.

A grandmother grows increasingly hysterical when authorities won’t listen to her stories of how her grandson is being abused.  Reacting to her hysteria, officials tell her that she is the problem, not the person she accuses of abuse.  But what loving, healthy parent or grandparent would not become hysterical upon finding out their child or grandchild is being abused?  

I have many stories of pain and healing to share, so stay with me, dear reader.  Together we can explore what can be done to stop these abuses and heal the wounds.  Every story is special.  Every person is sacred.

© 2009 Virginia Jones