Michelle Roder ex Gubbio Project's coordinator: "The Kingdom of God a great “wedding feast” where everyone is welcome and participates in the big meals and festivities of life.
Michelle Roder was the first Gubbio Project's coordinator, located in San Francisco, California, USA.
She started a new experience somewhere else now and when she worked for The Gubbio Project she was the lady we interviewed about this project.
The project was just started
She started a new experience somewhere else now and when she worked for The Gubbio Project she was the lady we interviewed about this project.
The project was just started
 |
| The first article appeared in the free press Gubbio7 |
and
this one is a precious interview because you can recognize the first
steps of a great adventure continued with great success at the moment by
Laura Slattery and all the other wonderful volunteers and people
involved in helping the last ones of the world keeping them in good
condition and donating to them dignity and some rest and peace during
the night and the day.
You will find the interview I am sure very interesting.
Enjoy it!
You will find the interview I am sure very interesting.
Enjoy it!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michelle can you tell me something more about you?
I was born in Iowa, in a farming town called Remsen, the “little Luxembourg of Iowa” as our ancestors hailed from Luxembourg mostly.
I was raised in a very Catholic family, where I had to write a report on a saint in order to get my birthday presents from my godfather!
That started my fascination with the saints and the church and then my interest in studying theology in college.
As I studied theology, I began to be inspired by “modern day saints”, people who have worked for justice and peace, like Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (who started the Catholic Worker Movement here in the US), Martin Luther King, Jr. , Andre Trocme and the people of Le Chambon, France that resisted Nazi policies during WW II, etc, so I concentrated my theology studies on the study of justice and peace — mostly on Catholic Social teaching, which tells us to make an option for the poor — that Christians should follow Jesus by serving the poor and working for justice.
When did you start to work for the social? And why? And when did you discover the church of San Boniface?
My college degree required me to participate in “service learning”, which is where students go and volunteer doing some kind of social service work (tutoring, working in a soup kitchen, etc) and then reflect on the experience in the light of our faith teachings.
I was lucky enough to do my service learning during a semester-long immersion trip to the Dominican Republic, where I worked in a community of people who live in a slum and work in the zona franca (free trade zone, essentially sweatshops).
This changed my world view dramatically! I went to that experience wanting to go on to graduate school so that eventually I could be a professor and teach at a university.
I left there not knowing WHAT I wanted to do with my life, except that I knew I needed to work for the benefit of people who are poor in some way.
So, I started by volunteering at a community center, then worked with a volunteer program, and eventually started working at St. Boniface Neighborhood Center in San Francisco.
I had been a parishioner at St. Boniface before working for the Neighborhood Center. I started going to church there because I had friends that did and I loved the pastor — this peace activist priest who really lives the gospel, Louie Vitale.
He’s actually currently serving time in jail for having protested at a US military school called the School of the Americas in November. He was really the force behind the programs that serve the homeless at St. Boniface in many ways...the Franciscans here have always been known for serving the poor of San Francisco, and in fact, they started the St. Anthony Foundation more than 50 years ago to respond to people being hungry — 50+ years later they still serve more than 2500 meals a day.
When was exactly born the Gubbio Project and why was it called Gubbio ;-)?
Fr. Louie got some people together back in the winter of 2004 because as was tradition, the doors of St. Boniface Church were open during the day and what had happened was that the homeless of San Francisco who cannot find a safe place to sleep inside at night, and who end up wandering around the streets so they won’t get hurt would go to St. Boniface and sleep in the pews because the doors were open to them and it was warm and quiet and safe inside.
But, as the numbers of people sleeping in the pews grew bigger, and the bathrooms in the back of church became rowdier, some folks at the church would complain to Fr. Louie that the homeless people were making the church too dangerous and that no one wanted to pray there anymore.
Well, Fr. Louie didn’t want to just close the doors to the people who needed the church for rest, and he didn’t want to just provide security personnel who might be harsh or punitive.
So he gathered some of us together to figure out what to do and we came up with the idea of providing staff in the church who could welcome all people — those coming to pray and those coming to sleep - into the church and ensure everyone’s safety. This staff would keep the place safe, reach out to people who needed help, and generally just keep the church open and welcoming for all.
We decided to call it the Gubbio Project in honor of your town and the story about St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio because that story was about peacemaking between a group of people who felt threatened by the wolf. Francis knew that if the town people looked out for and fed the wolf, that he in turn would protect them instead of hurt them.
So, he brokered a deal and the wolf became a beloved member of the community. We wanted to do the same with the community of “prayers” and “sleepers”. So, in the spirit of peacemaking, we started the project in April of 2004. I actually stepped back from my administrative work at that time in order to staff the project and get it off the ground.
What kind of reality are you meeting? Who are the poors and the homelesses you meet everyday at the San Boniface? And what kind of assistance you give to them?
Well, in San Francisco, there are about 12-15,000 homeless people and only 2000 shelter beds where people without a home can sleep at night.
So that leaves a great deal who are left outside on the street at night.
These are the people that come to sleep in our pews during the day. Many are unemployed, or have disabilities that do not allow them to work. Many have addictions to drugs and/or alcohol.
Many do not have good relationships with family and so they are left to deal with the problems they face on their own.
We try to become family and to become home for these people who do not have family or home.
This is the most important thing we do, I think.
By being as compassionate as possible (depending on the day, of course!) we really try to see the good in each person that comes to us, regardless of how dirty or smelly or grouchy they can be.
We try to get them to trust us, so that we then might work with them to help them get government benefits like welfare, shelter beds, or subsidized housing.
Some of them are able to find a job and re-start a new life after the contact with you and the Franciscans?
Yes, some are. It takes a lot for people to overcome the many challenges they face.
Even if a person gets minimum wage at a job in SF, he or she would have to work roughly 75 hours a week just to afford the rent on an average studio apartment!
The housing prices are just so high and the wages people earn just don’t cut it. Some people do make it, but really it takes a lot of luck to get to the resources that exist and patience to deal with all the “red tape” one must get through in order to get the resources!
Can you describe us the reality of San Francisco that surely is quiet different from our reality?
As far as I know, Gubbio Italy is a farming town, like the place where I grew up.
In small communities, people seem to look out for each other in a way that you just don’t find too much in bigger cities.
I think in smaller communities it’s easier for people to remember that we belong to each other — you know, it’s more obvious.
In bigger cities, it’s easy to think of everyone you see on the street as a stranger and forget that they are someone’s sister or brother, uncle or aunt, son or daughter.
How many people work at the Gubbio project?
Well, it started out with just one person per day, working with the 40 or so people that came in to sleep.
Now we have 2-4 people working each day for the 100+ that come every day. Michele Thorsen is a woman from Canada that has taken over coordinating the project, she’s a Buddhist and has BOUNDLESS compassion for our guests.
She oversees John Weeks, Luis Hernandez, Sandra Sanchez, Paul Fullilove, Angel Silva, and a whole array of volunteers.
Can I ask to you something about the homeless? What do they represent to you?
Well, in this season of Christmas, I’m reminded that Jesus was himself, born homeless in a manger.
During his life, too, it’s said that “the Son of Man had no where to lay his head”.
I guess I do my best to see God, to see Jesus, inside each person I encounter. And I have to say that I’ve had some amazing experiences seeing the poorest people I know give absolutely everything they own away in order to help someone in need. That to me is God working in the world today.
I myself have five brothers and one sister, so I am very practiced and relating to people like a sister — I’m not a nun, obviously since I’m married :) - but I like the way that religious people in the church are referred to as “brothers” and “sisters”. I think that’s a very admirable way to try to live — being a brother or a sister to everyone you encounter.
What other projects the San Boniface's is involved in?
Well, St. Boniface Neighborhood Center also has a traditional night-time shelter for 80 men, this is where I started working when I came to St. Boniface.
SBNC also provides workshops in collaboration with Capacitar International (capacitar.org) to teach people holistic healing practices that can transform the effects of stress and trauma.
SBNC also does some community building work — trying to get our neighborhood to become smaller so to speak by getting people together to celebrate and get to know each other.
St. Boniface Church has four different communities — a Vietnamese community, a Filipino Community, a Latino community and an “English-speaking” community.
St. Boniface has traditionally been a place for immigrants, as it was settled by the German immigrants of the late 19th century who were living in this neighborhood at the time.
There are various ministries to these different communities from St. Boniface Church, mostly that give people the opportunity to worship in ways that preserve their unique cultures.
We just celebrated Our Lady of Guadalupe with the Latino community, complete with Aztec dancing and mariachi bands.
I read in the article wrote by Judy Horan, the day of your wedding you had also invited all the homelesses of the Saint Boniface. This is beautiful.
Well my husband Joe is from Ohio but we met here in SF and he works at St. Boniface Church as the business manager.
So, anyway, it didn’t feel right to have our wedding anywhere else but at St. Boniface, because the people here have nurtured our relationship since the beginning.
Fr. Louie likes to preach about the kingdom of God as the great “wedding feast” where everyone is welcome and participates in the big meal and festivities.
We really liked this image, so we did our best to try to keep our wedding true to that spirit — mingling our families from small town Iowa and small city Ohio with people of different cultures and with people of the streets.
It was a really joyous event — we felt so blessed to have the support and love of ALL the people in our lives that have nurtured us to now, our families of birth and our family “of choice”.
Everyone should be so lucky to have a crowd like that (as diverse and fun) at their parties! Maybe in the next life we’ll experience an even bigger version of that!
I was born in Iowa, in a farming town called Remsen, the “little Luxembourg of Iowa” as our ancestors hailed from Luxembourg mostly.
I was raised in a very Catholic family, where I had to write a report on a saint in order to get my birthday presents from my godfather!
That started my fascination with the saints and the church and then my interest in studying theology in college.
As I studied theology, I began to be inspired by “modern day saints”, people who have worked for justice and peace, like Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (who started the Catholic Worker Movement here in the US), Martin Luther King, Jr. , Andre Trocme and the people of Le Chambon, France that resisted Nazi policies during WW II, etc, so I concentrated my theology studies on the study of justice and peace — mostly on Catholic Social teaching, which tells us to make an option for the poor — that Christians should follow Jesus by serving the poor and working for justice.
When did you start to work for the social? And why? And when did you discover the church of San Boniface?
My college degree required me to participate in “service learning”, which is where students go and volunteer doing some kind of social service work (tutoring, working in a soup kitchen, etc) and then reflect on the experience in the light of our faith teachings.
I was lucky enough to do my service learning during a semester-long immersion trip to the Dominican Republic, where I worked in a community of people who live in a slum and work in the zona franca (free trade zone, essentially sweatshops).
This changed my world view dramatically! I went to that experience wanting to go on to graduate school so that eventually I could be a professor and teach at a university.
I left there not knowing WHAT I wanted to do with my life, except that I knew I needed to work for the benefit of people who are poor in some way.
So, I started by volunteering at a community center, then worked with a volunteer program, and eventually started working at St. Boniface Neighborhood Center in San Francisco.
I had been a parishioner at St. Boniface before working for the Neighborhood Center. I started going to church there because I had friends that did and I loved the pastor — this peace activist priest who really lives the gospel, Louie Vitale.
He’s actually currently serving time in jail for having protested at a US military school called the School of the Americas in November. He was really the force behind the programs that serve the homeless at St. Boniface in many ways...the Franciscans here have always been known for serving the poor of San Francisco, and in fact, they started the St. Anthony Foundation more than 50 years ago to respond to people being hungry — 50+ years later they still serve more than 2500 meals a day.
When was exactly born the Gubbio Project and why was it called Gubbio ;-)?
Fr. Louie got some people together back in the winter of 2004 because as was tradition, the doors of St. Boniface Church were open during the day and what had happened was that the homeless of San Francisco who cannot find a safe place to sleep inside at night, and who end up wandering around the streets so they won’t get hurt would go to St. Boniface and sleep in the pews because the doors were open to them and it was warm and quiet and safe inside.
 | |
| Fr.Louie with a homeless |
But, as the numbers of people sleeping in the pews grew bigger, and the bathrooms in the back of church became rowdier, some folks at the church would complain to Fr. Louie that the homeless people were making the church too dangerous and that no one wanted to pray there anymore.
Well, Fr. Louie didn’t want to just close the doors to the people who needed the church for rest, and he didn’t want to just provide security personnel who might be harsh or punitive.
So he gathered some of us together to figure out what to do and we came up with the idea of providing staff in the church who could welcome all people — those coming to pray and those coming to sleep - into the church and ensure everyone’s safety. This staff would keep the place safe, reach out to people who needed help, and generally just keep the church open and welcoming for all.
We decided to call it the Gubbio Project in honor of your town and the story about St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio because that story was about peacemaking between a group of people who felt threatened by the wolf. Francis knew that if the town people looked out for and fed the wolf, that he in turn would protect them instead of hurt them.
So, he brokered a deal and the wolf became a beloved member of the community. We wanted to do the same with the community of “prayers” and “sleepers”. So, in the spirit of peacemaking, we started the project in April of 2004. I actually stepped back from my administrative work at that time in order to staff the project and get it off the ground.
What kind of reality are you meeting? Who are the poors and the homelesses you meet everyday at the San Boniface? And what kind of assistance you give to them?
Well, in San Francisco, there are about 12-15,000 homeless people and only 2000 shelter beds where people without a home can sleep at night.
So that leaves a great deal who are left outside on the street at night.
These are the people that come to sleep in our pews during the day. Many are unemployed, or have disabilities that do not allow them to work. Many have addictions to drugs and/or alcohol.
Many do not have good relationships with family and so they are left to deal with the problems they face on their own.
We try to become family and to become home for these people who do not have family or home.
This is the most important thing we do, I think.
By being as compassionate as possible (depending on the day, of course!) we really try to see the good in each person that comes to us, regardless of how dirty or smelly or grouchy they can be.
We try to get them to trust us, so that we then might work with them to help them get government benefits like welfare, shelter beds, or subsidized housing.
Some of them are able to find a job and re-start a new life after the contact with you and the Franciscans?
Yes, some are. It takes a lot for people to overcome the many challenges they face.
Even if a person gets minimum wage at a job in SF, he or she would have to work roughly 75 hours a week just to afford the rent on an average studio apartment!
The housing prices are just so high and the wages people earn just don’t cut it. Some people do make it, but really it takes a lot of luck to get to the resources that exist and patience to deal with all the “red tape” one must get through in order to get the resources!
Can you describe us the reality of San Francisco that surely is quiet different from our reality?
As far as I know, Gubbio Italy is a farming town, like the place where I grew up.
In small communities, people seem to look out for each other in a way that you just don’t find too much in bigger cities.
I think in smaller communities it’s easier for people to remember that we belong to each other — you know, it’s more obvious.
In bigger cities, it’s easy to think of everyone you see on the street as a stranger and forget that they are someone’s sister or brother, uncle or aunt, son or daughter.
How many people work at the Gubbio project?
Well, it started out with just one person per day, working with the 40 or so people that came in to sleep.
Now we have 2-4 people working each day for the 100+ that come every day. Michele Thorsen is a woman from Canada that has taken over coordinating the project, she’s a Buddhist and has BOUNDLESS compassion for our guests.
She oversees John Weeks, Luis Hernandez, Sandra Sanchez, Paul Fullilove, Angel Silva, and a whole array of volunteers.
Can I ask to you something about the homeless? What do they represent to you?
Well, in this season of Christmas, I’m reminded that Jesus was himself, born homeless in a manger.
During his life, too, it’s said that “the Son of Man had no where to lay his head”.
I guess I do my best to see God, to see Jesus, inside each person I encounter. And I have to say that I’ve had some amazing experiences seeing the poorest people I know give absolutely everything they own away in order to help someone in need. That to me is God working in the world today.
I myself have five brothers and one sister, so I am very practiced and relating to people like a sister — I’m not a nun, obviously since I’m married :) - but I like the way that religious people in the church are referred to as “brothers” and “sisters”. I think that’s a very admirable way to try to live — being a brother or a sister to everyone you encounter.
What other projects the San Boniface's is involved in?
Well, St. Boniface Neighborhood Center also has a traditional night-time shelter for 80 men, this is where I started working when I came to St. Boniface.
SBNC also provides workshops in collaboration with Capacitar International (capacitar.org) to teach people holistic healing practices that can transform the effects of stress and trauma.
SBNC also does some community building work — trying to get our neighborhood to become smaller so to speak by getting people together to celebrate and get to know each other.
St. Boniface Church has four different communities — a Vietnamese community, a Filipino Community, a Latino community and an “English-speaking” community.
St. Boniface has traditionally been a place for immigrants, as it was settled by the German immigrants of the late 19th century who were living in this neighborhood at the time.
There are various ministries to these different communities from St. Boniface Church, mostly that give people the opportunity to worship in ways that preserve their unique cultures.
We just celebrated Our Lady of Guadalupe with the Latino community, complete with Aztec dancing and mariachi bands.
I read in the article wrote by Judy Horan, the day of your wedding you had also invited all the homelesses of the Saint Boniface. This is beautiful.
Well my husband Joe is from Ohio but we met here in SF and he works at St. Boniface Church as the business manager.
So, anyway, it didn’t feel right to have our wedding anywhere else but at St. Boniface, because the people here have nurtured our relationship since the beginning.
Fr. Louie likes to preach about the kingdom of God as the great “wedding feast” where everyone is welcome and participates in the big meal and festivities.
 |
| Shelly Roder the day of her wedding with the homeless. Invited |
We really liked this image, so we did our best to try to keep our wedding true to that spirit — mingling our families from small town Iowa and small city Ohio with people of different cultures and with people of the streets.
It was a really joyous event — we felt so blessed to have the support and love of ALL the people in our lives that have nurtured us to now, our families of birth and our family “of choice”.
Everyone should be so lucky to have a crowd like that (as diverse and fun) at their parties! Maybe in the next life we’ll experience an even bigger version of that!
 |
| Shelly Roder in another moment of their wedding |
Thank you very much Michelle!
Anna Maria Polidori
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