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Web Journal of an Alien Street Priest
This blog is about the daily activities of Fr. Damien Sims of San Francisco and his work on Polk Street with prostitutes and the punk culture.
Friday, March 05, 2004
this week has been a good week, stressful, yet filling. when people have joked with me about having work that is not physically demanding, i want to laugh. besides hauling several hundred pounds of food throughout the week etc. this work, the work of a pastor wears and tears on one's very inner being.

My time has been spent this week it seems like with kids who are out of it on drugs, i don;t think i have spent more than an hour with what one would call a "sober" person, but with young guys and girls who are just out of it, high, in pain from being dope sick, tweeking. they are in much pain, even though they cover it with drugs.

In particular I have spent much time with 23 year old S, who wants to be on methadone, wants off h, but just goes around in the same cycle, unable to see that only through his suffering will he find life. there is no easy way out of addiction but through suffering, and the worst suffering is looking at one's self.

J, 18, who was kicked out of his house for being "difficult". he simply wanders getting picked up by whoever to find money and a place to stay.

T, 22, speed freak, here from the east coast, who has been using since he was 11, one of the sweetest persons u can meet, shows me more respect than anyone i know, and his every moment is consumed with finding his next hit.

today i began spirtual direction with a fifty year old hospice patient. he has a mixed history of homelessness, drug use, and now medicates his pain from cancer with boose. he wanted a "renegade" priest. how i find that humours sometimes. he is struggling with his coming death, reconciling his life. he is a "lapsed catholic" who simply rationaized his way out of belief, and now he finds he needs something stronger to hold on to then his rationalizations. i found myself feeling his pain, his struggle, and also projecting how in the end we all will walk this path. during this Lent he is walking the path of suffering, one that we all will walk. we talked and i anointed him and will see him on a weekly basis. then i visited g. 19, and w. 18 in a mental health drug treatment center. both long time speed users, both coming back to the TL to live in a hotel, so they will probably use again.

and so this has been my week and my day--what is there in all of this that makes since, for me at the end of the day all that makes sense for me are the words of Mary in the Magnificat:

MY SOUL PROCLAIMS THE GREATNESS OF THE LORD, MY SPRIRIT REJOICES IN GOD MY SAVIOR FOR HE HAS LOOKED WITH FAVOR ON HIS LOWLY SERVANT. Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!

posted by River  # 11:06 PM
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Sunday, February 29, 2004
i slept until 3 and went and saw G in treatment center. he was so excited to have a visitor. A picked up his id and talked about some of his dates. bought lice spray for several people, licke epidemic, my head was itching just thinking about it. over the years i have had problems one time, knock on wood. at 2:30 a.m. the streets were full of cars, and girls and boys, all looking to find that date--the whole atmosphere was highly sexually tense and all about getting money and receiving satisfaction. as we enter Lent I wonder if we truly understand the depths of suffering that people suffer, and that Calvary is not about paying a price for our sins--but about Jesus suffering with us in our suffering. Deo
Gratis! Thanks be to God!

posted by River  # 3:50 AM
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CONTACT: Father C. River Sims
1550 California Street, No. 6-320
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415)305.2124