A Word on Words; Rev. Becca Stevens; 4204

set the national public television sets do you away celebrated authors literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on words jobs don jon civil welcome once again to word on words today a welcome reverend becca stevens episcopal priest based at st augustine's church at vanderbilt university nineteen ninety seven but the sound of the resident recovery program and allows in nashville which provides two years cost free housing to survivors of sex trafficking addictions and prostitution four years later she found that this or farms of successful social and draws employs forty residents graduates madeline meier market

not a factor and sell natural buy their products she's written several books including sanctuary unexpected places where god family here today with their latest book schmitt oil it will use the beginnings of the end for us with stories from the long journey one is twenty women in the community so nice to have you and so glad to be here a hundred it's a close my arm and then it's a lovely book and it tells the story of the song these women you have taken somehow they found you where you found them and their hope in different ways and some in many ways as we said prostitution drugs alcoholism down and out and you get much into rome back where the

idea come from and how did you find that these women are out there you are a nice smoked reasonable fear on the street with these with anyone in cotton in this terrible trap of addiction you know i think i've always wanted to believe that love was a force for changing world of wanting to believe that since i can remember and i think when i started volunteering in nashville being a priest and i grew up in st luke's community center right here in this community you know the one of the lead he can go out and love people and have it make a difference that only in so first decided that we are an open a small sanctuary just have five women come off the streets and live for as long as they needed to to get the help they wanted it literally was can anyone house five women just try and see if that would work you can love people and being canadian and people would change that's the basic uneasy allies

and we would be outside all the system's no government help no you know our post release program suggest community signed by fat women nobody had and opened less than ten years on the streets of nashville probably not less than a hundred arrests on the record on average and the women came in and me no one left and so six months later because everybody was clean and sober and work and so hard in building its media that we opened up another house and then really the model started picking up staying in the stories you know more powerful and healing stories and that's when the stories we were collecting your stories for the book not that book but just collecting our collective stories to think about is there common threads or something universal about the story that the women on the streets or going through you know it's born under individual bodies are sent them were learning is there a bigger story and so years and years later i do think we found each other and i mean in the women the women that were coming in the

nats we all need to believe there's a reason each other and i guess that's true you have the experience it it strikes me though that that the audiences or farms which comes later was inevitable and i get this leave the boat suddenly realized that here they are barbers about another yeah we didn't show you have food and their cigarette money and they still smoke thing and the self sufficient so we hope and so you come up with those reforms is a way to do that well the idea is that if i you know if we are really talking about love being an agent for healing if you're worried that some of these economic and social wellbeing that's a pretty much way and when you're talking about love so you have to be about their economic independence of women that were coming in the program and it wasn't just about

ceremony which is you know porno have enough money to make some individual decisions but this was money she can make like or restitution cossiga see your kids again or that when you know you hit the streets at fifteen or sixteen and you got a ticket and now you're twenty five years old that take it's going to be four thousand dollars to pay back your debt you know a living wage that has some serious skills to bailed her family has gone on you i've got to do more and to do something more so they're not just tear one would overhear earning some money for themselves and i don't know when it doesn't mean that it never goes away like i still have that feel like we opened at six houses now six communities and all we do is we say no to somebody every day there's more than a hundred women on the waiting list when your loans up in their house or you know in south carolina hope in theirs immediately you know if you build it they will call every day people

over to you really has in its like ok makes sense if you think about how many women are in our criminal justice system who are trafficked a young ages who on average are re between versus ages of seven and eleven you know hundreds of thousands of women and we offer long term healing for a community to hundreds yes so the numbers we still had a long way i guess i still have that feeling of like winning anymore so when i saw open a book start know a really tragic story follows death and somewhere along the way the episode here's your ways one of them and i'm thinking and that's what that that's what that was the magma that the poor are the poorer end to help these women she won a bill aimed at what inappropriate one well the color so that's where it all started and then i get them

would be deeply involved in the book and i'll find that there was something else there that is clearly a deep and heart wrenching motive and why is he about being abused you know you write about it was simplicity and that with simple it's because there is a lot of self governance and eloquence and straightforward and the child abused by a trusted friend of the family oh talk about the perilous not just silly experiments were also how it served to put you in this role of saving women most of whom went through that same experience at some point in early childhood right and i try not to

compare my experience with anything that most of the women who come into the magdalen community the thistle farms community have gone through you know what what i feel like is that what happened in my own life was the dow was their personal medvedev as a minister he was killed and this is the man they came in as the spiritual leader the calm senior wardens an episcopal tradition came in is that person to help run the community so they had another priest and he was a friend of the family and the bees actually started right in the church's the first time at least i remember the whole thing was awesome and it is horrendous in it so you're thinking the thought was their own fears were overblown then suddenly everything that was beautiful as ugly betty don't know as a kid you don't think like this is this is you know i can only come back here or this has now turned its it child if you don't know how they figured out you don't even have words

for what's happening to no one's giving you those words to even put it into words so as you go through and you on grow up it makes you question everything and makes you question authority or people that you do trust or how the world works it's light is the were crazy or not crazy you know what what its not matching and i think for me when i realized i'm not crazy that this stuff was wrong in this happened to me and try to put into place it makes sense that i would be drawn to the women who are walking the streets probably had more common in the pastures i was serving and i think i realize that the stuff that i went through the views that i went through that it lasted a couple years' time that all that could be part of the gift of ministry but it does get your heart of compassion and as making fearless about things like that were they tended to a you know that point and unitas are there gifts senate to them and it was hard

and i wouldn't wish those gifts on anyone but i think he now it hasn't in areas there is a form of how he's hiding it and making you buy it you're fearful you're afraid there comes a moment in the book in which you have a combination in its later and how important was that confrontation in terms of i don't know it's there and it was really important to me and i think the idea is that for a lot of people who have gone through sexual beings you carry the story you carried a secret you carry the story you carry the fear of like he's really mad at me if i tell you what other parts of our community will fall apart will mess up the church that strategy going on those things and i felt like i was done i mean i really felt like i was done karen store owners rating given that what happened was i was ordained i really i want to go to a wedding

and he and his wife are there at the wedding i was doing and he walked up and gave me heart at the wedding and and i was very new priest ended and i was like does he think that we are okay or that this may and then of course you can really function in arizona where a lawyer's of subversion is the air and some of those national he's right there and it's like this is not cocaine he can't connect you can imagine can perform a wedding until their job isn't minister when the gap you know thats done all this you're sitting right there so that's when i decided to fix this as far as i was concerned in this story back to their family and let them figure out what you look like and i didn't suck haldeman i went to their house and he had his wife are in the room and i said i had a story that i have a name to tell long long time he got really nervous and she start weeping she left the room says she was sick so waiting for her to come back

and she came back he said i don't want to talk about this for a long time and he admitted all of it thank god i can't believe he did but he adds he admitted all of it which was huge for me in front of a witness to say i did this to you that that point are you already thinking about helping others were in trouble your new priests you know early in the church would be you know you're going to be in the streets to us and our ways i literally have as long as i've been a priest and done as much ministry outside the church as i have done you know inside the church and the chaplain which is about the low thank you can be a crazy out the ecclesiastical church of china's state located in our only institution that kind of tried to stay close to the streets in a home life those are you're just joining us i'm talking with rebecca stevens says she's risking priest about a book snake oil

the art of healing and truth telling let's talk about your self description of the psychosocial yeah i must say that officers if that's what it is you're selling off a lot of people who were in this community have gotten onto a man who reached out to giving its support i'm surprised at how will magner about his tone and how will fizzle forums turned out as an economic and growers now i know i'm not as surprised and grateful that i'm not surprised because i think it's really simple and i think it's as old as the idea of selling your homie patrick oils with a good story and saying this will help you get better and people by an eleven and not so that not been surprised at how people welcome the women back into community have supported through volunteerism and buying the so farmed products and giving generously money we've never had taken unfair or state monitor and communities

and it's just really an old model and when you see that it runs well it works well that sufficient it's lavish and economical people do it and i just think it's great and i'm so grateful that it's really a movement now where you know we have probably i would say eight to ten different cities a market come and spend days with us is called immersion national education days you know they're trying to learn the smile what is it look like to just go and help women who are coming off the streets and out of jail out of traffic and prostitution criminalization and bring a new life you know it's you just work so not surprising describe what you love you were separated from the snow and mainly you were in the safe confines of the church were your father then for you yes and the problems there and you can find them but you know it's a giant leap from where you are on and saw that sanctuary

on the put yourself on the streets for young women in the it was a tough and what they learned that it was it was a tough to say women do this and i'm not ask people to give money to support well not just police it's a saudi in some ways maybe would say the worst of society they lived well and yet i don't know i think there've been tapped moments ago i was thinking about there was one woman that we went to the air and she was in this apartment and we had to i asked when drove down there has gone together and educate the bathroom car and they know their shirts on their own bravado stayed here in the car i have to go past the car to get a knock on the door her partner and i walked way around the

car and i was really mad at myself the cost of chicken and some level like not just to the right up tonight tonight you know that after far enough around where i didn't have to confront him and then i can remember sometimes being in meetings where you're actually in a meeting with a foundation with money and you're asking for money and it feels like your professional beggar not that you have this great gift for getting into and i go around the issues and i had both of those like kind of memories are hard on me or i haven't done the best or i hadn't been as courageous as only in sharon message if that makes any sense but mostly just being in the marketplace or being on the streets telling the story in selling really good product has felt beautiful uneasy talk about this is those terms nicholson that's a pejorative

in my mind the mind of the people have their own ozone terrorism cycles in the world as you talk about what was really just the idea that it's just kind of started as a joke i was speaking at a luncheon in advising your salads and i said we basically take it this a farm's years the ingredients in your salad dressing that you're eating makes him into a biter project tell a good story and remind people if they buy it they can ring women off the streets ray likes a snake oil salesman that's away are minerals it that i had many said something that fell negative about the products or the puffs the negative about this but i really think that there's some beautiful about telling a good story with a project and offering hope and so that i'm trying to reclaim the term more positive one way is peeling back the layers are not saying it's a scam that saying these highly empathic old school recipes told with a good story and a message of hope

in on every product is the word we have love heals they can change the world made news so how has your work the nylon house of christians farms intersection is compatible with your work in sun city dozens of animal yeah i had no idea that might not bessie allen here my best preaching would be coming from the work and then reflecting on the gospel that i think in divinity school you learn to do this reflection on the gospel in your inside and then you take that message and go out and i haven't always been share of the work but i know it's informed my priesthood in their preaching than anything you could imagine in that it's a lens through which to understand the stories and possible you know you don't quote name names

you identify a woman with whom you have interactive movie blue come to my own house some of the first things when you tell the stories on a long wondered how they were about that did you talk to them about before you're both going to get into the us invaded you rely on memories and outs of how it came to you know you can do it but travel all over the country talking about mantle and thistle farms are never go without a couple of the women for mandolin and how would tell stories that they tell publicly in the book so there was no story in them but that hasn't been from their lips told in a public situation didn't count anybody and we had taught all talked about the book before mr my favorite comments about the book was doris to a teller story and you have to turn and she wrote me emails she said after the book signing i came home and read chapter ten again and i just grayson just put ashes on my eyes and i laughed i cried so much the

eyelashes came off so now i have to go read an eyelash as banks you know she was so happy so people i think the women at least two are telling their story in a professional public way that i share in this book are grateful that it's not a secret anymore i think all of the samurai to tell our story the speaker truth and that's part of what a snake oil salesman does really well let's talk about what goes on inside their hips own for you or for your one about one about oh every time now i don't know it now is so heartbreaking truthfully john it's like that's the hardest part so about seventy five percent of women that come in to our program are clean and sober two and half years later huge beautiful success rate remains twenty five thousand women now and we've buried women who hadn't made it they have grieved with folks for the women who haven't made it just seemed that bad

choices and bad relapses that have had over the years and i think i agreed and then move on and mayors that's all you can do i think in this world is grief and move on and not lose hope because that would mean defeat and i don't think any of us really is that kind of how often does have to tour and so it's at we just don't have room every day every day like crazy eyes can believe it make every single day so yeah i mean there's there women who are literally dying to come in and i wish that we had you know i wish we had another five or six houses newest or another five or six communities ready to open and make that kind of commitment because really you know they say you ought to kill a village rape the women you write them young in rape and often if your heel village you look at those same women in you help heal the women and helps heal generations of folks and dismantle sick family

systems nashville is a better place because of mangling not just in the same city you know half million dollars a year in court fines and jail time and all men who were all more hopeful and were healthier and we you know our a better light to other cities because of how we care for the women who were coming up the streets you know you're you put those little these sort of incidents and baucus so what that song see me stop but the truth is the mind is that to do work well you must immerse yourself in the same music as place love the lives of women on the streets that women and prostitution women and drove women who were addicted and some to drugs some the sex the sun to a way of life

how do you break this cycle i think that you take a walk with somebody i think you take a long walk and to break this cycle didn't happen overnight it's not some kind of near quote cure that happens it's about that journey that is like let's go up to mount everest to see what it looks like at the top and we are already we make that journey and by the time you get there all of us are changed in its stunningly beautiful and if that's how you look back and say the cycle has not only been broken but we have cut to something so beautiful and so deeply never want to go back you know what you do in some ways runs against the grain of war we think of those conventional religious practice and

that grain is growing what goes on in most churches and a year and a year and a year in a denomination that has something about our argued there are there are pastors and there are bishops and men and there are power points how you view a lot worse thank you deal with the bishops the same way that you deal worth women on the street you love people yet there's embarrassment as a good friend to him he would appreciate that that you just deal with people you know as your brothers and your sisters and you love them and you're not caught up on whether somebody has an arrest record or somebody has the word the right reverend before their name that we love each other and we treat each

other well nowhere in the journey isn't over the nation's overburdened wrong yes there have been calling it has done well you know there's political issues that come up in the church and i haven't always been necessarily on the same track as other folks who are going through there and so i've had some bumps but you have been embraced lovingly not a church in general which i'm grateful for them and will as a chaplain for eighteen years that's awesome liane hanson it's a guest to be allowed to do this work and have that kind of stability and have a home alter has been wonderful thanks so much for coming thanks all of you for watching and dancing of your own words