Even Within a Sanctuary, a Minister Learns to Fear

I have been a parish minister for 17 years, and in being one of the keepers of a sanctuary I have been richly and warmly supported by the members of my churches.

Recently, I moved to a small New York town known for the variety of its races. It is a working-class spot, the home of a county jail and numerous social service programs. I saw this diversity as an advantage. In this community where I would be raising a family, my children would not be segregated from trouble; they would not think the world was white.

But even after years of working among the poor, I was unprepared for the new experience I have had in my latest ministry: I have had reason to become afraid in Riverhead.

I don’t think it is the place.

I think that it is the times.

Four times this year, I have been threatened in my office by people in serious distress. Never before has this happened to me, despite my having worked in much worse and more urban locations than this spot on the eastern end of Long Island.

One learns over time to judge the troubled, to look them in the eye, to watch their postures, to one-up them if they start to threaten. All social service workers learn the art of personal protection or they get hurt. It is that simple. Never would anyone dare to say they were good at this art, only that they knew it and that its wisdom allowed them to work unafraid among the poor and disturbed.

One of my “enemies,” whom it is my job to love, was deranged about his mother. He was off his medication and hitting his head against the wall. Another was a middle-class druggie; a third was a 26-year-old alcoholic who was using an alcoholic’s thinking to blame something bad that had happened to him on the rest of the world. Each was male and under 30. They were unable to control themselves, and that is what scared me.

Each time I was able to escape harm, and to frighten my secretary half to death by telling her what had happened. She does not get paid well enough for that part of her job; nor do I, frankly, but I at least understand that part of my job is keeping the sanctuary open. Safe places. Places where desperate people can find God. Sanctuaries.

The Man’s Story

But here is the story that has me in a position of re-evaluating a life of security amid fear. A man walks in crying. He is strong and able and well-dressed. He wants to see a priest. I say what I have said a million times, “I am not a priest but a minister, and I will be happy to talk to you.”

He says he almost killed someone this morning. He is clearly drunk. He says he was being set up by a cocaine seller. He found out about it by accident because a man he met in rehab invited him to come and live with him; 28 days in rehab are down the tubes. He says he is in danger because the man in the set-up knows that he knows what is going on. I tell him to just wait out the day in my office, which he does.

He dozes, we chat, he vomits. I call a cop in my congregation and a priest who works in the jail. Each will know the drug language better than I. The priest is busy (who wouldn’t be in that overcrowded jail?), and the cop can’t come till 2 p.m.

My guest tells me about his 17-year-old daughter dying of cancer. He talks about being out of control. He talks about Vietnam, about his work as a cop in Florida. His stories begin to frighten by their very imagery.

Then they begin to frighten by the facts mixing up. He begins a telltale con. Handing out phone numbers, “check with him, check with her. I’m OK.”

He begins to assure me he will not hurt me. He starts to disbelieve his own story. Just before the cop arrives, he walks out of the office. Disappears.

Has he gone to murder his adversary? To throw up? Normally, I wouldn’t take the time with those questions but would go on with the next phone call, the next visitor. But he was talking about crack.

Frightening Drug

Crack scares me. Everything I know about it scares me. I see the looks on the faces of the people who are involved with it. They come in all day long to our food program. Just to touch the crack user-dealer is frightening. Finally I know the feeling that everyone always talks about: I just don’t want to be involved.

A few months ago, a prominent campus minister on New York’s Long Island was beaten unmercifully with a fireplace tool by one of the people he had counseled. Those sorts of things have always happened in private ministry.

The beginning of fear tells me they are going to happen elsewhere, in more public ministries. The fear coming so late in the game for me is part of a larger awareness: I know there is nowhere to put these people. No hospitals, no staffs on the counseling agencies. If they have no money, they can’t even get necessary health care.

I know that very few of my colleagues get support from their congregations to keep the doors of sanctuaries open and friendly. I know why we respond so hungrily to the phrase “kinder and gentler.” We respond that way because we know how mean the world has become.

There ought to be a place where a person can come if fear overtakes. The door to that place ought to be open. The hearts that stand behind the door ought to be capable hearts. Not fearful hearts but capable hearts.

But what is to be done in these times of crack and deinstitutionalization and meanness, in these times when I can only think of four or five people to call if I get a problem visitor and most of them are already sick of hearing from me. In these times, how can fear be beaten?

How? By opening the doors and sitting with whoever walks in; there is no other way. By recruiting people who will do this as the caretakers of the sanctuary. By getting help and doubling up staffs and volunteers so that people don’t have to occupy these empty, open buildings alone, by not being stupid about how the world has changed.

Maybe it is the same thing we have to do with all our fear, walk through it, eyes wide open. If you fall off a horse, best to remount. If you have a car accident, best to get back to driving quickly. If you are beginning to have reasons to fear, get acquainted with those reasons. Learn their names, and get back to work.