Finding God in street people and stories

Greg Eaton, a retired marketing professional and father of two from Apple Valley, has learned to live the Gospel. He serves the homeless through Friends of Dorothy Day and helps lead spiritual retreats for the incarcerated through Twin Cities Prison Ministry. The experiences have been profound, said Eaton, a member of St. Thomas Becket in Eagan.

Q) You just buried your sister Jan, you lost your parents decades ago and your sister Kae died at age 12 from bone cancer. How did that early loss shape you?

A) I was 9 at the time, and that’s when I started to learn the true meaning of community. We did it the old-fashioned way, where we had Kae’s body in our parlor for two days as the community filed through our house.

Q) Your only remaining sibling, Judith, who is widowed, has also battled cancer. What was it like being her companion on that journey?

A) She is a brave soul. In one year — the year before COVID — we shared 76 doctor appointments together. It was about being each other’s advocate. The fact that she allowed me to do that — to sit there and be part of it all — to me, that’s love. That was a real gift to me.

Q) What compelled you to serve the homeless through Dorothy Day?

A) I’ve always thought of the Eucharist as not just Sunday Mass. It’s Eucharist-type living, where we bring our whole lives to the table when we celebrate the Eucharist as a community, the good and the bad. I felt called to live the Gospel, not by writing a check but by spending something which is near and dear to all of us: our time.

Q) Prior to that, you’d done meaningful service through JustFaith Ministries.

A) It made my faith feel more seamless and genuine. That’s why we were put here, to be in solidarity with each other. There was one man — a recluse who lived on Goodrich Avenue, behind the Cathedral (of St. Paul) — and he could not get out the back of his house. The sapling trees had grown within inches of the back door, so we spent the afternoon cutting them. The first time he went through that door, he cried.

Q) You opened the door for him — figuratively and literally!

A) It felt good. But more importantly, it’s like: This is meant to be. This has been here the whole time, it’s why we were created, to share all of life. It’s a feeling of completeness, that we’d been completed doing what we were created to do.

Q) Then you started volunteering by spending the night with homeless men at the old Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul, a former mortuary that was then being used, by day, as the Catholic Charities offices. You checked them in, served food, set up mats and sanitized. And most of all, you focused on relationship-building through one-on-one conversations.

A) The biggest part of the evening was to not be Martha, who was too busy to sit down with Jesus. It was to sit down and ask, “How was your day?” They were frozen (in the winter). The coffee was a God-send. These people had little dignity during the day. They would hide out at the library or down by the trains.

Q) How did you dignify them?

A) I learned to ask a question and be quiet and listen. We tend to be fixers. But that’s not the point. I wasn’t there to fix. I used to say, “I can imagine” or “I can’t imagine that.” I quit saying that. The most I would say is, “I’m here and I’m walking beside you.” And I wouldn’t relate their story back to me. I would say, “Boy, that’s gotta be tough.” When you say that, they just keeping going. They open. Sometimes they’d talk till midnight. To give them the ability to open to you, to themselves, is huge.

Q) How did you stay engaged when it got so late and their stories became repetitive?

A) I sensed that this was very important to them, and they weren’t being approached this way very often — if at all. Some of the greatest conversations were around faith. One man was reciting the original Torah from memory. These guys knew Scripture like nobody else. One guy came with a big stack of books. He was doing a detailed comparison of the three Abrahamic religions of the world. An hour later, I felt like I’d been at a course at St. Thomas. These guys are walking around the streets of St. Paul.

And the love stories! Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you don’t still love someone. Life does not stop.

Q) You planned the funeral for one homeless friend.

A) The first time I saw Gary Smith on the street — he was a Black man of very large stature — I didn’t want to walk past him. But then I got to know him. He was a leader on the street for good, a Vietnam vet. He treated people with dignity and knew how to diffuse arguments. He was dying of kidney failure, and he was sleeping on the floor and spending two hours a day on the bus to get to the VA for treatment. We got him into an apartment with a bed and set up a driving ministry for his dialysis. The memorial service was powerful. His friends from the street came and the president of Catholic Charities and an Air Force colonel in full uniform.

Q) Tell me about the things they carry.

A) One night, Gary Smith realized it was his friend Tim’s birthday. We spread the word, and one by one the men went up to Tim to wish him happy birthday, and one of the guys rigged up a little card. When we gave Tim that card, he cried. He said, “I haven’t been wished a happy birthday from anybody in years!” I saw that card in his backpack a month later. Another man, Silas, offered me his last tub of ramen noodles on a night we ran out of food. He knew I hadn’t eaten. He microwaved it for me and served it to me. I protested, but he said, “Greg, just say thank you.” So, for once I shut my mouth and I just said, “Thank you, Silas,” and I left it at that.

Q) Now Higher Ground is welcoming homeless people through its Pay For Stay program, which helps them transition to housing.

A) That’s the goal. You’ll hear, “I think I got a place!” We voted at our last (Friends of Dorothy Day) board meeting to start funding some of these people to help them move to their own place. The details of homelessness are complex. You get an interview, but you can’t get to the interview because you don’t have a car. You get an apartment, but how do you get your furniture to the apartment?

Q) What have you learned about humility?

A) Sometimes we think of humility as something to be achieved. I think of it slightly differently: It’s something that grows out of your experience with faith. It’s more of an acceptance of who you are, your true self, rather than acts of humility. You discover humility by discovering and accepting who you really are, warts and all.

Q) Tell me about the REC retreats for the incarcerated — Residents Encounter Christ.

A) There’s so much darkness in their lives. Any little touch with faith while in prison can be life-changing. At the last retreat at the Stillwater prison before COVID, we were joined by an inmate from Uganda. He had no faith tradition. He was in prison for murder. He was full of shame, and he’d just been put on suicide watch. But right before the Eucharist on the last night, he said he felt good. Archbishop Hebda came to celebrate Mass, and then he stayed afterwards to listen to every inmate’s story. The inmate from Uganda is starting to write a book about his experience.

Q) You must have such hope, to see redemption up close.

A) You got it! One guy on retreat had been in prison for 19 years and was about to get out. He said, “My father walked away from me, and my mother never loved me. This weekend is the first time that I felt loved.” I’m a terrible pray-er, but I do open to God in stories. The way I know God is through people.

Learn more about Eaton’s ministries at friendsofdorothyday.org and tcprisonministry.com.