The impact of one life
Kip Tiernan's message resonates today
I admit it. I am an addict.
I’m not talking about booze. After almost 40 years of not drinking, that is an old story by now.
Not just to words alone, either. Specifically, I am addicted to keeping diaries. I’ve done it since the age of 13. Not every day, of course. Sometimes not even every week.
And I almost never re-read them. Once I am done with a notebook, I toss it in aone of several boxes with the other 10 or 20, put the top on, and start a fresh notebook.
This habit of mine helped me a lot when it came to writing my book, “Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery.” I dug out the journals I wrote in high school and college and found, to my astonishment, that they recorded pages of dialogue and scenes, some lovely, some bordering on violence, that occurred in and around our Buffalo, N.Y., home and summer cottage on Lake Ontario. Each entry was a primary source that came in handy.
Last week on a day when the news seemed particularly depressing (yes, it even gets to me sometimes), I pulled a few more journals I haven’t read in 40 years and began to read.
What I didn’t expect to find was inspiration during a time when, too often, I feel helpless before the onslaught of events that are both negative and unjust.
Journalists often get to meet interesting and even historic figures. Because I am a compulsive note taker I wrote about them all in my journals and in the pages of newspapers. Yet once I met a truly great woman, not because I am a journalist, but because I went to church at the right moment.
‘Who decides who gets the condo and who gets the cardboard box?’
Kip Tiernan was and is a legend around Boston for helping the homeless. She began Rosie’s Place in the mid-1970s when she realized homeless women were disguising themselves as men just to get help — otherwise, they would be refused, as the services were for men only. Think about that kind of discrimination - even if you were in desperate need, being a woman meant you would be turned away.
Because Pete and I worked together for three years at a homeless shelter before we married, we were particularly interested in what she had to say. So we were seated in a pew when this tiny woman with short white hair wearing a hat approached the pulpit.
Her words still are meaningful, so here is what I wrote 41 years ago this month:
June 29, 1984, Sunday
Pete and I went to the Arlington Street Unitarian Church today. A woman named Kip Tiernan gave the homily and we were eager to hear what she had to say. Around 10 years ago she founded Rosie’s Place in Boston, a shelter for homeless women, the first of its kind in the country. Kip is a small woman, smaller than me, with a fedora tilted over her short white hair. She wore brown pants, a man’s shirt and had a cigarette butt dangling from her fingertips as she talked, paced and gestured.
Hers is a social gospel, blunt, searing words uttered with eloquence and anger as only 16 years working on the street as “an urban minister without portfolio” can bring. She spoke of a society that is quickly becoming a two-class society, divided between, “the crucified and the crucifiers.” She spoke about Christ as if she had just had a beer with him yesterday.
“He was a radical, you know. He knew that a religion exists for its members, not the convenience of institutional theology,” she said. “He was not a rabbi or a minister. His message was for the poor. And there was a direct relationship between the longevity of his life and the threat of his message to the authorities.”
She spoke about the awful day Rosie’s Place burned down last year. The shelter has temporary quarters now, awaiting a permanent location. The day after the fire, Kip said, guests (those who use the shelter’s services), volunteers, and friends sifted through the ruins, salvaging what they could.
“There we were,” she said. “With the walking, waltzing wounded of the street, standing in the cold, drinking coffee in paper cups. We kept our spirits up by toasting ourselves and each other. We stood with the presence of Jesus, our friend, lover, brother, sister, father.
“And just then an Orange Line subway car passed by on the street. And as the car passed the smoking ruins, it gave a toot. And we all looked up to see the driver give us the ‘thumbs up’ sign. Then we know that Rosie’s, like a phoenix, would rise from the ashes, dust itself off, and be on its way to the sun.”
Kip Tiernan died of cancer at the age of 85 in 2011, yet her mark lingers even beyond Rosie’s Place, which now serves 12,000 women a year with a variety of services, support and classes. In 2018 a memorial sculpture in Boston was dedicated to her example and her life. The sculpture is a series of three stainless steel, interconnected arches representing growth and awareness of issues. Etched on the memorial are quotes from Kip, all of them with the same bluntness I remembered.
“Cui Bono?” (Latin for “Who benefits?”), one of the quotes on the memorial reads, “Who sets the terms of the debate around poverty and homelessness?
“Who decides who gets the condo and who gets the cardboard box?”
Who, indeed. One more quote from Kip, this from the Rosie’s Place website:
”Never forget that charity is scraps from the table and justice is a seat at the table. Charity is giving to others what belongs to you. Justice is giving others what belongs to them.”
Book stuff:
I was honored to be a guest to talk about my book on a recorded podcast for the American Kidney Foundation, It posted last week and it is here.
Buffalo peeps, looking forward to seeing you at my West Side Rowing Club author talk in Buffalo, June 12, 8-9 p.m. I will donate 25 percent of every book sold that night to the Club, which my sister Ellen adored and at which she coached for years.
Connecticut friends, I’ll see you at RJ Julia on Boston Post Road, Madison, Conn., July 16, 6:45 p.m. I’ll be a grateful guest at the store’s Debut Author book club, but it’s open to the public and anyone can join the discussion that evening.
I remember Kip Tiernan well. The Summer and Fall before we married, Huan & I practiced making a wedding cake every 2-3 weeks. Each time, since the cake had to feed 150 people, we carried it down to Rosie's place as our contribution to the women who came to lunch at that church. It was a labor of love in both the making and thw giving.
I fell in love with Kip the first time she opened her mouth to speak.. I was at Mass at the Paulist Center in Boston. She was the preacher. A woman. At a RC mass. Let's start with that. Those guys knew she would preach the gospel. Hell, she lived the gospel. She was profound. She used the truth of the gospel like a blunt weapon. Her words turned over tables and whipped the congregation to attention. Among other things she said that night was this gem: "Justice is not three hots and a cot. Justice is having your own key." Thanks for this memory of Kip. I'll never forget her. She changed my life.