Moments of Clarity: Volume 2

From standing alone in a doorway of a house on an early-May morning, looking out on the torn backstreets of a Texas city in the early 1990s, Fr. Tom Jackson--a “marginal” Episcopal priest and former “shrink“--began to experience a new life in what seemed to be a strange place...and the house would quickly become known as “St. Dismas House” (named for a criminal/saint)...and the House would fill and overflow with hundreds and hundreds of folks...and a roller-coaster ride would follow: a community life of work and ministry and emotion and loss and gain ...and there would be more Houses and more folks and more kaleidoscopic life. Although this personal narrative is a continuation of the journey described in Fr. Tom’s earlier diary, Go Back, You Didn’t Say May I, it is, in fact, an entity unto itself: a record of the risks and glories of real people dealing with the life-and-death vagaries of Companionship at the turning of a new millennium...one day at a time.

From standing alone in a doorway of a house on an early-May morning, looking out on the torn backstreets of a Texas city in the early 1990s, Fr. Tom Jackson--a “marginal” Episcopal priest and former “shrink“--began to experience a new life in what seemed to be a strange place...and the house would quickly become known as “St. Dismas House” (named for a criminal/saint)...and the House would fill and overflow with hundreds and hundreds of folks...and a roller-coaster ride would follow: a community life of work and ministry and emotion and loss and gain ...and there would be more Houses and more folks and more kaleidoscopic life. Although this personal narrative is a continuation of the journey described in Fr. Tom’s earlier diary, Go Back, You Didn’t Say May I, it is, in fact, an entity unto itself: a record of the risks and glories of real people dealing with the life-and-death vagaries of Companionship at the turning of a new millennium...one day at a time.