The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Brother James and his flock
Compelling stories of hope shared weekly at minister’s weekly meetings
The snow was falling steadily and the wind was whipping across the New Haven Green last Tuesday shortly before noon, but inside Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green, James Thomas and the dedicated participants of his weekly outreach meetings were getting together as they always do.
In better weather, you would see up to 80 there in this gathering of challenged people, some of them recovering from drug addiction or still battling homelessness. Last week, 25 of them dealt with the storm and made it to the basement of the church because they wanted so much to see “Brother James” and the others in the group.
Word has spread about the Spiritual Fellowship Group, which has been going strong for about 14 months. Last month, the national Episcopal Church’s Executive Council awarded a $2,000 grant to the group.
The council’s announcement noted Trinity Church got the meetings going “in response to the growing opioid crisis” and is using its urban setting “to bring Jesus’ message of hope to people struggling with addiction and isolation.”
Shortly before the meeting began last Tuesday, Thomas, who is the church’s outreach minister (he is not ordained) and is also one of its sextons, told me what has been accomplished so far. “We’ve helped 54 people find housing, placed 12 others in drug-treatment programs and reunited families.”
Over the following two hours, I would hear some remarkable stories, rolled out one-by-one as people rose and spoke in the middle of the circle.
Thomas’ story was the most amazing of all. But he didn’t speak until the end of the session.
Fran Bowes, one of the half dozen members of what Thomas calls “my spiritual team,” was the first to address the group. Holding a Bible and walking rapidly in her own little circular pattern, she began by stating, “I want to say a little bit about the snow: We need it for the harvest!”
She said, “My daughter told me yesterday, ‘Oh, we’ve got a snowstorm coming. Are you sure the church is going to be open?’ And I said, ‘Yes. James is going to be there.’ ”
“Love is the action word,” Bowes told the group. “Don’t say you love somebody. Show it! Love is a refuge. Love is like a shelter.”
The others in the group periodically called out, “Come on now!” and “Amen!”
The testimonials kept coming. Ronald Richardson recalled how he moved beyond “getting high on Congress Avenue;” John Kennedy Rizzo talked about the traumatic brain injury he suffered when he was thrown off his motorcycle and spent three months in a coma; Dennis Flowers remembered the stroke he went through in 2015, after which he never went back to drugs.
Joseph Yancey noted he grew up with Thomas in a poor neighborhood of New Haven. “We had good times, we had bad times. I thank God for Brother James. I thank God for giving me this opportunity to stand here.”
Darnell Barnes said he came out in the snow because “This here gives me peace, this gives me joy. This is my family.”
Then Montie Harrell told the group: “I’m happy today. You know why? I’m looking beyond my storm; I’m not looking at my circumstances. I’m looking beyond my homelessness. Thank God people provide me with a roof every night. I don’t get this love with my biological family; I get it from this family.”
After saying he has “11 bullet holes in my body,” Harrell told Thomas: “I’ve got a genuine love for you. If it weren’t for God working through you, this whole setup wouldn’t be here.”
When it was Thomas’ turn, he paced the floor, roaming and jumping and shouting: “This weather outside is nothing compared to what I’ve been through. When I was under those bleachers at Bowen Field, eating little hot dogs out of dumpsters, I didn’t know God had my back. I had to surrender.”
Sweat was pouring down his face. Several in the group came forward to give him handkerchiefs. He went on to describe the death of his daughter, Ebony, when she was just 10 days old and he was attending the University of Nevada at Las Vegas on a basketball scholarship.
“I got a phone call: ‘You better come home.’ They wouldn’t tell me why. Ebony had been bit in her neck by a rat as she lay in her crib. Did I want to live? No! I just didn’t have the heart to kill myself.”
“But you know what?” he said. “I’m happy today! See where the Lord brought me from?”
Wrapping it up, Thomas said, “That’s what this group is all about: hope!”
He told Harrell, “I’ll make sure you’ve got a place tonight.”
He told the group, “Tonight, pray for Montie that his family has a place to stay.” (A few minutes later, Thomas quietly handed Harrell some money.)
Thomas asked me to credit many people for helping with the outreach program, especially the church’s rector, the Rev. Luk De Volder, assisted by the Rev. Elíse Hanley, as well as pastoral associate the Rev. Charles Lemert, the staff at Columbus House and others too numerous to list here.
But when I phoned Thomas a couple of days after the meeting, he said I really must include Joseph Dzeda, the church’s head usher. “I owe everything to him. He’s the father I never had.”
Thomas told me about the day 18 years ago, when “I was coming back from the dumpster at Conte School by Wooster Square and for some reason I walked down Court Street. Joe was outside his house, watering his garden. I asked him for a bar of soap so I could wash my clothes.”
Thomas said Dzeda gave him more than a bar of soap. “He invited me upstairs for a shower and he washed my clothes and fed me. For the next couple of hours, I told him my story. It was the most talking I’d done in several years.”
When they parted, Dzeda gave Thomas a $20 bill.
When I called up Dzeda to verify Thomas’ account, he invited me into his home for coffee. He recalled seeing a skinny homeless “waif ” come up to him and ask for that bar of soap. He said when he gave Thomas the $20 bill, he had no idea what he would do with it. “I later learned he went directly downtown to Burger King and bought his friends something to eat. When I found that out, I knew he was a special person.”
Thomas told me Dzeda found him an apartment on Court Street and paid Thomas’ rent for two years. Dzeda said this was true and he added, “I told him I’d help him if he came to church. Any church.”
Thomas hesitantly started coming to Trinity Church on Sunday mornings. “Ever since then, it was magic,” he said.
“When I helped him out,” Dzeda said, “I had no idea his life would blossom and that he would do so much to help others. When Rector Luke asked him to start the outreach group, James’ first reaction was ‘No.’ He was covert about what had happened to him, about being homeless for 81⁄2 years. He prayed about it. I think he felt called to do this.”
When Thomas delivered a guest sermon at the church, he said that, inspired by his spiritual awakening, “I reconnected with my own family. We now spend family holidays together. I set up a basketball league for kids in the projects and I coordinate after-school activities to keep them off the streets.”
Thomas added, “My lonely years on the streets of New Haven are fading into the background now. They have been replaced by my new life.”