Mark Redmond - This Church

 

 

So, I moved to Vermont a little over 10 years ago with my wife and child, and we bought a house in Essex. It's a town about 25 minutes from here. And right before we moved into the house, we took a little walking tour of the neighborhood, and we met a neighbor. And she said, “Oh, you're going to love it here. There's a lot of little kids. The schools are good. It's safe.” And then, she asked us a question. She said, “Are you going to look for a church to join?” I thought this was a little unusual to be getting this question. I moved up here from Yonkers, and in Yonkers, they typically don't ask you that. But I thought, well, this is Vermont. Maybe that's what they ask you. It's a little different. 

 

So, I said, “Well, we're Catholic, so yeah, we'll probably look for a Catholic church to join.” And she said, “Well, if you're looking for a contemporary Christian experience, that's my church. That's the church that joins. So, when you move in your house and you want to learn more about my church, please come over.” So, we did move into the house, and then I met a different neighbor, and I told her about this neighbor promoting her church. And the neighbor said, “Oh yeah, I know what church she's talking about. We call that the Hollywood Church. Every service on Sunday is a big production. It's big screen, multimedia, big extravaganza.” I said, “Okay.” 

 

And then, I met a third neighbor, a guy down the block, and I told him about this woman promoting her church. And he said, “Yeah, my wife and I went to that church once. We're not going back. That was messed up.” [audience laughter] So, at that point, I'm like, “Okay, okay, I'm convinced. I'm convinced. I don't need to hear anything else. I'm getting the impression this is one of these feel good churches, and that's not me.” I do go to church every Sunday. I classify myself as a peace and justice Catholic. Meaning, to me, if you're going to be spiritual, if you're going to be religious, it's about helping the poor, sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, civil rights, saving the planet from destruction, social justice. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

And the people I've always looked up to are people like Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, the nuns on the bus. [audience applause] People who really put it on the line. Their faith led them to action, to try and change the world. And that's how I've tried to live my life. I studied business in college, I worked for two years on Madison Avenue, I left that to start working with homeless and at-risk kids, and I've been at it for 32 years here. Thank you. [audience applause] 

 

Here in Burlington, I'm director of Spectrum. We work with homeless teens, kids addicted to drugs and alcohol, kids who are in trouble with the police, kids suffering from mental illness, runaways. It's really my religious beliefs that drive why I do the work that I do.   [audience applause] 

 

A couple of weeks later, I'm at work and I get an email. It's an all-agency email from our volunteer c  oordinator. Because this church, the one I'm talking about, has contacted her, because a group of kids there have collected some items to donate to Spectrum, and they want someone to come that Sunday to pick up the things and say a few words to the kids. 

 

So, my first reaction is, I do not want to be the one to go to this church. [audience laughter] Even though, I've never been there, I don't have a good feeling about this church. It reminds me of these mega churches you read about. But I'm the director. I live closer than anyone else in the organization to the church. It's like two miles away. I said, “I'll go.” So, I showed up that Sunday and I went inside. And I'm going in with an attitude. Are you picking that up? You getting that? Going in with an attitude, I admit that.

 

I said who I was. They said, “Yeah, go upstairs. There's a classroom up there. There's a group of kids waiting for you.” So, I went in. It was like 20, 25 kids. Little, like 9 and 10 years old. It was a couple of adults, four or five adults. So, I went in and I gathered the kids around me and I told them about Spectrum and the work that we do. They brought up this box, and I opened up the box and it had sheets, towels, soap, and toothpaste. I remember it had dental floss, [chuckles] because I remember taking the dental floss out and saying, “This is good, because even homeless kids need to floss their teeth every night.”

 

So, I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking, wow, this is great, man. 15 minutes, I'm out of here. And the adult standing right next to me says, “Mark, before you go, there's a little girl here named Emily, and she has something special for you. Emily, will you please come up to the front?” So, this little girl comes walking up to the front, dragging this black duffel bag behind her. She stands in front of me and she looks up and says, “My brother died this year, and my family would like to give this to you to give to a boy at Spectrum.” So, I leaned over and I unzipped the bag. It had a lot of the same stuff that had been in the box. It had soap, and toothpaste, and towels, and it had a Bible, a white leather-bound Bible, and it had a card. 

 

So, I took the card out of the bag, and somebody had written an ink on the front of the card to a young man at Spectrum. So, I took the card out, and pre-printed on the front it said, “Always remember, God is watching over you.” It had a picture of her brother pasted to the inside of the card. Now, this girl's nine years old. I'm expecting to see a little boy, but it's a young man. It's a young guy. He looks like somebody we would work with at Spectrum. It's got the ages of his birth and his death, and he's 21 years old. He's handsome, he looks happy, he's smiling in the picture. 

 

So, I leaned over to the adult who was next to me, and I whispered to him, “How did her brother die?” And he whispers back, “Heroin overdose.” When I heard that man, it was like the words ripped right through me, you know? And it was something shifted deep inside of me in an instant. It was one of those times in your life where you see things very clearly, Like a Zen moment, a moment of awakening. The first thing I saw clearly was my own blindness, my own foolishness, my own prejudice. And then, I saw that maybe this church is not the kind of church that I prefer or the worship that I would like, but there are a lot of really good people in this church. And some of them, like this little girl standing in front of me and her family, are in tremendous pain. 

 

And if this church is where they go to find peace, hope, and healing, so what? So what? What right do I have to judge that? So, I knelt down, and I looked at this girl, and I said, “You have my word. I am going to give this to the right young man at Spectrum.” I gave her a hug, and I left. I brought that black bag into work that week, and I told the staff the whole story, and I said, “We have the perfect person. We took this homeless kid in two years ago, he'd been living on the streets, he'd been living at Spectrum ever since. He's done really well. In fact, he's gotten into college. He's moving to Vermont Technical College in Randolph in a few weeks. He's going to live in a dorm, and he could really use this stuff.” 

 

I said, “Great, give it to him. But one condition. I'm going to find the address of this girl and her family, and I want him to write a thank you note.” I know he did that. I thought that was the end of the story, but it wasn't. Because a few months later, I got a letter. I got a letter from the mother of this young boy who had died. I would get this same letter for the next two or three years in a row. And every letter would start the same way. “Today, would have been my son's 22nd birthday, 23rd birthday,” whatever year it was. And she would enclose a check for $250, and she would write in the letter her son's favorite restaurants. This one, she writes, “The little Indian restaurant on North Meenakshi Avenue. Nectars, Shanty on the Shore."

 

She would say, “Please take a group of your boys out to dinner with this money.” In this letter, she writes, “The thought of a group of guys going out, having a good meal together, laughing and enjoying themselves will do me good. I wish we could be doing that with my son. But I'm blessed to be able to do this small thing in loving memory of him.” The church itself, over the last 10 years, has been unbelievably generous to Spectrum. Food, donations, money. If I emailed them tomorrow and said, you know, in about a month it's going to be cold in Vermont and we have hundreds of kids who need coats and gloves and hats and scarves, our shelves would be filled within a week. That's how good they are. 

And you know, I did something I never thought I'd do. I went to one of their services. Yes, I did. [audience applause] 

 

They had a Christmas pageant, a Christmas show. Was it Hollywood? Yeah, it was a little Hollywood. [audience laughter] They had singers, dancers, and drummers, and confetti, and the fake snow coming out of the-- [audience laughter] But it was very sincere. I found it very meaningful and very spiritual. At the end of the night, they packed my car with wrapped Christmas presents to take back to the kids at Spectrum. Thank you.