God and the Homeless

By Mike Santa Rita
Posted: January 27, 2010

Rev. Jeremy Tuinstra, 35, is not afraid to go to the dark places.

His mission is to the homeless and he regularly drives to the tent communities around Laurel, picking up the homeless and taking them back to his small Presbyterian church near Laurel for ministry, food and, most importantly, friendship. He spends time with the homeless outdoors, in hospital rooms and court rooms, he said.

He makes it a point to take between 20 and 30 of the homeless into his small church of 70 members on Sundays, and he keeps them afterward to feed them — and to talk with them.

“Some come stoned, some come drunk, some come in spurts because they’ve been locked up,” he said in a recent interview.

Victims of the economy, drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness, Tuinstra tries to reach them all at his small Covenant Presbyterian Church. I was impressed by Tuinstra because he said he did not believe in “throwing canned goods at them.”

Instead, he said he focuses on “redemptive relationships,” — friendships extended to the most vulnerable in our society, restoring their sense of dignity and self-worth. What people need at their worst is someone to talk to, to relate to, to let them know they’re not alone, Tuinstra told me.

“At least they’ve got a friend they can talk to in the misery,” he said. “What we need are strong redemptive relationships when we’re at our weakest … to get to the bottom of any problem that people are struggling with we’ve got to know them.”

Before you can help someone, he said, it’s important to find out “what’s going on behind the things that we are observing.” The only way to do this is to build a relationship and learn about the traumas that have shaped them, he said. This, to me, is part of Christianity’s perennial appeal: its ability to meet people where they are. And Tuinstra is an embodiment of it.

Tuinstra has a special affinity for the homeless because seven years ago he lost a church job in the state of Washington and found himself and his wife and two children living on friends’ couches throughout Washington before moving back home to Michigan, where his father also had lost his job. The pain is evident in Tuinstra’s voice when he talks about the experience. Tuinstra knows what it is like not to have a home, so he speaks from experience.

In these times, more people like Tuinstra are needed as economic upheaval leaves thousands without jobs, or futures, or friends. In the midst of economic devastation, “I talk about an economy of hope,” Tuinstra said.

Perhaps Tuinstra’s minstry resonated with me because in some sense we are all homeless. Perhaps it is the dynamic, constantly changing nature of capitalism to lurch from crisis to crisis, creating upheaval and the constant mobility in the work force. I was reminded of this in watching the latest George Clooney movie, “Up In the Air,” about a corporate man who spends most of his time in planes flying around the country laying people off. At one point in midflight a pilot asks him where he’s from. “I’m from here,” Clooney says, seated in a plane in midair. That is the nature of the modern world and its mobility; people are constantly moving from place to place and home is increasingly hard to come back to. Fewer have extended roots in a community anymore.

The German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, realized that man is essentially alienated from the world he lives in, he finds himself thrown into the world with no solid anchor or values to cling to, and experiences profound anxiety as a result.

So the work of men like Tuinstra is not just for the physically homeless, but for those who might find themselves spiritually homeless, too. He seems intent to help as many as he can.

One example is Weldon Lincoln, who lives in a trailer on Tuinstra’s church property, after living in a tent. Lincoln has a job now and credits Tuinstra with getting him back on his feet. “He may not be able to give you a big bag of money, but he’ll give you a strong relationship, someone to talk to,” Lincoln said, adding, “Strong relationship with friends and family, and God as well, gets you through some of the worst times.”

Perhaps best of all, Tuinstra has found his own place to call home. “That’s exciting,” he said, “to spread redemption in these broken places.”

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The Essence of Leadership

By Mike Santa Rita
Posted: January 13, 2010

What makes a great leader?

It’s a question thousands of management consultants, politicians, historians and authors ask themselves daily, leaving reams of books and no doubt boring Powerpoint presentations on the subject.

Being a low man on the totem pole here at Patuxent Publishing, it is a question I seldom give much thought to. But I had the opportunity this week to talk to three Maryland leaders in the realms of military, law and academic life on their philosophies of leadership and came away trying to determine the essence of a good leader. The men I spoke with were Attorney General Doug Gansler, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and Naval Academy Commandant Matthew Klunder. I was particularly impressed with Klunder’s philosophy of leadership, which I’ll get to in a moment.

First, I’d like to get to my definition of what makes a great leader. There are many qualities — from the ability to negotiate, to being able to identify with your followers, to becoming the embodiment of a people’s hopes and aspirations. The last quality is one you see frequently in third-world politics; for example, where the hopes and dreams of a people are realized in the Mandelas, Perons, and Chavezes of the world.

But when you chisel it all away, what are the essential qualities that make a good leader? To me it comes down to four — three that can be learned and a fourth which cannot. My four are: Courage, language, caring and charisma.

Courage is the most essential part. Winston Churchill said, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

This statement from one of the world’s greatest leaders is echoed in both ancient and modern literature. As Christopher Sten, a former college professor of mine, has noted, all ancient epics esteem courage because, “While courage may not be the only significant attitude one can hold toward life, man can achieve nothing until he has first achieved courage.”

The second quality is language. A leader has to be able to communicate. He has to be able persuade them and convince them of his vision. Think of Churchill’s great speeches during World War II, explaining to the British people why they were fighting, what the cost would be and the real menace of Hitler. Or think of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address or his Second Inaugural, where he explained carefully in precise language what the Civil War was about and why it had to be won from a moral and political perspective. As a native South African, I was reminded of Nelson Mandela’s ability to relate to others in watching Clint Eastwood’s new movie “Invictus,”  in which Mandela addresses his white, Afrikaans staff in their native language saying “Wat is verby is verby,” which loosely translated means, “What is past is past.”

To me the first two qualities are best embodied by Churchill. He was a man of courage in that he was one of the few men in Europe who was genuinely not afraid of Hitler. He was also a prolific author and master of the English language who was able to communicate the necessary fight effectively to his followers.

The third quality is caring. Former Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Desmond Tutu says in his book on that nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “The true leader must at some point or other convince her or his followers that she or he is in this whole business not for self-aggrandizement but for the sake of others.” Back to literature for a second. Captain Ahab, in “Moby Dick,” has all the other qualities: Tremendous courage, powerful rhetoric, fantastic charisma. But he puts his own ego and need for revenge above the needs of his crew and, as a result, the whole ship perishes. In my interview with Capt. Klunder, of the Naval Academy, he espoused what is essentially a philosophy of caring. His said he learned his leadership values from his family — “the values you expect when you sit down at the table.” He learned to give his students the tools necessary to do the job, to learn about their situations and needs from a human perspective. As he said, “Do I know what’s going on at home?” Klunder also said he needs to take care of his students morally and, for those who believe, spiritually. Most of all, he said, you have to set a good example. A man who cheats on his wife loses his legitimacy in the family, he said. Similarly, a man who lies to his followers loses their trust.

The final quality is the one that cannot be learned. It has to be innate. That is charisma. It’s the somewhat mysterious magnetic force that draws followers to a person. There is just something about this person that is special we followers say. We don’t know what it is — the enigma of greatness.

Combine those four: courage, language, caring and charisma and you have a great leader. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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The Needle and the Damage Done

By Mike Santa Rita
Posted: November 18, 2009

People get themselves in situations beyond their control and end up degrading themselves.

That is a major theme in the work of writer Hubert Selby Jr., according to colleague of mine, Dave Sturm, a copy editor and font of knowledge about noir literature and other tales of urban squalor.

I recently got a chance to examine an interpretation of Selby’s work when another colleague of mine, reporter Dan Schwind, lent me the movie version of one of Selby’s works, “Requiem for a Dream,” a tale of drug addiction in the New York borough of Brooklyn.

The film tells the tale of two 20-somethings in love who develop an addiction to heroin as they plan to open a clothes boutique by selling heroin themselves. The pair, their friend and the lead character’s mother all develop drug addictions and the situation spirals into one of degradation and horror. If Sturm is right about Selby, the movie accurately reflects his theme of people getting themselves in too deep with degradation, and humiliation following.

I decided to pen something about this film because I recently wrote an article about the county opening a new methadone clinic to treat heroin addicts. While heroin addiction counts for only about 12 percent of the county’s addiction problems, the county’s central location near Baltimore and and I-95 makes it an ideal location for heroin traffickers, according to Mike Gimbel, Baltimore County’s former drug czar who has studied the issue. Additionally, Gimbel told me heroin has become a much more middle-class drug in recent years as more affluent teenagers are trying it as a result of media glamorization.

As a person who came of age in the early 90s, I can attest that the glamorization of such heroin addicted rock stars as Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain and Scott Weiland added to the drug’s allure to my generation. I once interviewed a doctor in Massachusetts who told me that he had treated a patient who deliberately became addicted to heroin so as to resemble his favorite rock star. Such are the follies of youth.

I was fortunate that my father had an unflinching zero tolerance rule on drugs in our house. Two of my father’s friends had died from heroin — one who had picked it up in the Portuguese colony of Macao, where it was rampant, and the other who overdosed in a bathroom stall in a train station in the Portuguese city of Porto. I think my father’s first-hand account of his friends’ deaths provided him with the moral courage never to go easy on drugs in our household.

Of course, while methadone might be a substitute and good treatment for heroin addiction, the only long-lasting cure is not to try the stuff at all. This is where films like “Requiem for a Dream,” unlike the arguable pro-drug “Trainspotting,” come in, showing the real consequences of this behavior.

The film shows that the addict’s world is one bereft of values. Nobody stands for anything. In looking for the easy score, the quick fix, the kids are just wannabe hustlers in a game they do not understand. Basically, good kids in love, they end up hustled and humiliated — their lives destroyed. And that is the real tragedy of it all.

Perhaps unflinching cinema like this and other forms of education can train new generations of young people to keep away from heroin.

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Truth and Consequences

By Mike Santa Rita
Posted: November 4, 2009

Pontius Pilate did not wait for the answer.

In perhaps the most famous encounter between a political leader and a religious one, the gospel of John records that the Roman governor asked Jesus of Nazareth, “What is truth?”

But he did not stay for the answer.

That encounter between the religious and political spheres has ongoing ramifications  2000 years later.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has stated a fascination with Pilate, for example. In an interview with the British newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, several years ago, Blair said of Pilate “He commands our moral attention not because he is a bad man, but because he was so nearly a good man. One can imagine him agonizing, seeing that Jesus had done nothing wrong, and wishing to release him. Just as easily, however, one can envisage his advisers telling him of the risks, warning him not to inflame public opinion. It is a timeless parable of political life.”

Tony Blair, a Roman Catholic convert, is one of the political leaders that retired Columbia Rabbi Martin Siegel, 76, is in negotiations with to come to Columbia to discuss the influence of spirituality on political life in an effort to improve the quality of political dialogue in the country.

“We’re talking about the common nature of what it means to be human, which I think motivated the creation of the country,” the rabbi told me in an interview.

The rabbi kicked off the series of talks Sunday night with Sen. Norm Coleman, former Republican senator from Minnesota who recently lost a lengthy run-off against Democrat Al Franken for the Minnesota senate seat. Coleman, who is Jewish, discussed how the Jewish people survived thousands of years through the transmission of shared values from family to family, helping them endure as a people.

Orthodox Rabbi Hillel Baron of the Lubavitch Center, in Columbia, who attended the talk and participated in the interfaith panel discussion afterward told me before the talk that he welcomed the chance to discuss religion with people of other faiths.

“For those who are truly religiously committed, we share so much,” he said. “The way we raise our families, the way we approach things, the way we talk of things.”

Then watching the senator speak I was reminded again of the encounter between Pilate and Jesus, the religious and political spheres. I think Blair was right, what is interesting about Pilate was not that he was a bad man but that he was so nearly a good one.

“It’s always been an area of tension between religion and the state,” Rabbi Barron said to me before the talk. In a country governed by the enlightenment values of separation of church and state, the relationship can be a tricky one. But not for Coleman.

“The separation of church and state doesn’t mean you separate your faith from the decision-making process,” he told the group of about 40 who came to hear him talk. “The Judeo-Christian values I have been brought up with drive me to be my brother’s keeper.”

For me the forum illustrates why the encounter between Pilate and Jesus remains relevant. It is easy to see Pilate as a moral relativist, sneering the question, “What is truth?” But I see him more as a hapless provincial bureaucrat unfamiliar with his province and its religious divides. “I’ve got roads to build aqueducts to build, armies to maintain. I don’t have time for these provincial religious squabbles,” I can hear him thinking. “What is truth?” And then turning to other matters.

But today after thousands of years of what Sen. Coleman called Judeo-Christian values, things have changed. Western Civilization at its best has become a collaboration between the legacies of Athens and Jerusalem.

Today, thanks to the efforts of Rabbi Siegel and those like him, when more politicians ask the question about the nature of truth, they have the opportunity to hear the answer religion offers them.

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Policing the Mentally Ill

By Mike Santa Rita
Posted: October 9, 2009

A few years ago, I was sitting at my desk when I got a call from Sean Piccoli, an old friend who covers pop music for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

Without introducing himself, Sean said two words: “Pat’s dead.”

For years, Sean and I had watched Pat, my first editor, fight a life-threatening battle against depression, going through psychiatrists, therapists and hospital stays, as well as heavy bouts of self-medication with alcohol. Finally, the fight had ended. Pat had killed himself. He had been a great editor and a kind and generous friend. To coin a Shakespearean phrase, he was a man “more sinned against than sinning.”

A few weeks before he died, Pat had told me of his plans to kill himself as the two of us sat in a bar in Silver Spring watching a basketball game. I had little to say to him except, “If you believe in God, you can’t do this.” His answer was as simple as it was despairing. “Sometimes, I don’t believe in God,” he said.

I thought of Pat again recently after interviewing two police officers who have undergone enhanced training to recognize the symptoms of mental illness when on a call. Cpl. Jeff King told me that police usually ask two questions if they suspect someone has mental illness: Do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to hurt someone else? If the answer is yes, an officer can detain the person without his or her consent and take them to an emergency room for evaluation where he or she can be held for up to three days based on a psychiatrist’s opinion. King told me that recent training would arm him with a host of other questions regarding the person’s thought process that will help him make a preliminary diagnosis and would potentially help him make more involuntary commitments.

“I would probably do a (emergency) petition in a lot more cases now than I would have before,” King said.

“Nine times out of 10, these aren’t criminals,” he added. “These are medical conditions and these people are in crisis, and we want to treat them that way.”

I was glad to hear King speak this way because it seems to me that important moral and legal issues are raised when an illness is treated as a crime. The more police recognize that mental illness should be treated in a clinical context rather than a criminal one, the better off we’ll all be. King’s observation that he would be more inclined to commit the mentally ill for treatment — rather than arrest them — seemed to be a humane response to this kind of medical crisis.

The problem with criminalizing mental illness comes down to a question of moral agency: To what degree is a person aware of reality, and to what extent is the person able to control his or her actions? The answer to the second question depends on the answer to the first.

I interviewed a former teacher, who suffered from bipolar disorders with psychotic features and who was frequently in trouble with the police in the 1990s. “Mentally, I couldn’t make sense of reality — what was real and what wasn’t real.”

Cpl. King said much the same thing: “It’s not just somebody acting out. They can’t control it.”

Another thing Cpl. King said was that he wanted to get mental health organizations such as the Howard County Mental Health Authority more involved after a person has been detained to check up on patients, ensuring that they have made a doctor’s appointment and are taking their medication. This will cut down on the need for police to keep making emergency calls to the same house, he said.

I agree with King that mental health is a community issue as much as it is a police or medical issue. While police can respond to the call, a psychiatrist can treat the pathology and a therapist can work on the developmental issues, science and the police can’t provide the continued support that a patient often needs. There needs to be a spiritual answer, too, in my opinion, because while psychiatrists can treat symptoms they can’t provide answers to questions of ultimate meaning or value that the mentally ill often — like my friend Pat — so badly crave.

For a while in the ’60s, it was fashionable to go along with theorists such as R.D. Laing and Michel Foucault, who postulated that society’s treatment of the mentally ill was nothing more than conformist society imposing its values on people who happen to think differently. This kind of thinking created more harm than good with the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Today we recognize mental illness as a real illness that needs to be treated as such and not ridiculed, feared or unnecessarily criminalized.

Police Chief Bill McMahon struck a pragmatic approach when I interviewed him, one that seems sensible to me.

“Yes, there may be criminal acts involved, too, and that’s one way we can address it, but maybe not the most effective way,” he said.

As Jack Kavanaugh, director of the Howard County Detention Center said, “The key to all this is getting people on their medications. You can see sometimes some dramatic change in people. They’ll come in very ill and over time they’ll make progress.”

Perhaps in focusing on the clinical aspect of mental illness and  devoting more resources to its treatment,  more medical, spiritual and legal answers will be found that will help prevent tragedies such as Pat’s and countless others from occurring.

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