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A message from Rose hung on the wall: “Keepin’ on Keepin’ on” along with an old-fashioned portrait of an angel playing the piano. Iceman sang “The Rose” like I’ve never heard it—so powerful. And Bob sang “Amazing Grace” beautifully. There was lots of singing mixed in with eulogies, stories, poems, prayers, a sage ceremony and even dancing.
Messages were pinned up everywhere. “Thank you for sharing your life with us.” “ I don’t know you but I love you.” “Rose has started a Peace House in the sky. There’s no city zoning there.” |
There were huge bouquets of roses and photos, photos, photos. Rose’s high school picture lay on the casket and a friend said, “Olivia de Haviland had nothing on Rose.”
Steve said he had been in Rochester when he heard about Rose’s death. He grabbed the first bus back to Minneapolis instead of waiting until the end of the week as he had planned. Just knowing she was around had always given him a lot of security.
A member of the community told the group the following week that the vice president of Central Community Housing Trust whom Peace House is afraid will put an end to Peace House, was there, and had assured him, “You have my word and commitment that Peace House will go on.”
Jim McCauley, a for-profit developer who believed Tillemans’ work was really valuable, attended the wake. He stated, “People who are less vulnerable need to protect the people who are most vulnerable.”
Rose Tillemans’ Vision
I met Rose Tillemans in February of 2002 when I went to write a story about Peace House. She welcomed me, affirmed me and gave me a lot of her time. I knew I was in the presence of a remarkable spirit. Five months later, with great sadness, I am writing about her again, compelled to learn more about her: She died on July 5 of cardiac arrest following six weeks of intense migraine headaches.
Peace House, the incarnation of Rose Tillemans’ vision, which opened in 1985 when Tillemans was 62, is a a loving, welcoming refuge for people at any stage or degree of vulnerability, weakness, debilitation or suffering. Most of the people who find their way to Peace House don’t have what they need for physical survival. The place may sound grim but, in reality, Tillemans built a happy, peaceful community and gave us a new, revised definition of “church.”
People naturally respond to love with love and Rose’s heart was full of it. Like hundreds of others, I couldn’t help but love her. Love and respect for a great, visionary soul can be life-changing. Many lives have been changed because of Rose and her vision, and now, since her death, I find it necessary, in the midst of my grief, to try to understand the nuance of her vision.
Patrick Michael Kelly wrote down what Rose wanted for Peace House. “This is what the Peace House stands for: seeking spirituality, friendship, and affirmation. The Peace House means: meditation, focusing on what the lives of homeless are like and how we survive amid brutality and lack of shelter. The Peace House emphasizes participation in the housekeeping of the day, affirm one another, work on nonviolence, and pray for our needs.”
It is significant that Tillemans, who was a member of the sisters of St. Joseph of
Carondolet, didn’t like the title of “Sister.” The fact that she was a nun meant she was privileged in society; she had a college education and she was protected by a large institution. She didn’t like to call attention to that inequality. She also didn’t think anyone’s authority should come from their title. Yet, I think many people, myself included, respect someone who is clergy because we know it means they have persevered through many years of study and, in general, practice an advanced level of self-discipline and self-sacrifice.
So, while a part of her authority did come from her status as a nun, most of her authority came from her loving spirit.
Love was essential to her life. Apart from the authority question, I liked and still like to call her Sister Rose because she was the kind of person you would love to have in your family, and who, indeed, was a sister in many families: Her birth family from
Minneota, Minn.; the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, 400 socially conscious nuns based in St. Paul; the community of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church; the Peace House community on Franklin Avenue; and a loose organization of people who work in peace and justice causes of all kinds. Tillemans was involved with the latter for years, protesting the production of weapons of mass destruction at the Wednesday vigil at Alliant Tech and going to Fort Benning to protest the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). She supported the campaign to end sanctions in Iraq and opposed U.S. involvement in Colombia. She spent her last day at a Veterans for Peace picnic. Representatives from each of her families shared stories about their visionary sister at her enormous funeral Mass held on a sweltering July night at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church on Clinton Avenue.
Dedicated to Peace
I found out Rose wasn’t doing well in the middle of June when I went to Peace House one day for meditation. (Peace House, between Portland and Fifth Avenues on Franklin, locks its door Mondays through Fridays at 11:30 for meditation, discussion, prayer and a meal). I don’t think anyone thought she would actually die. I sure didn’t, even though I was aware she led a Spartan life with few comforts. At 79 she took the bus everywhere. And she didn’t eat meat. In her book “Savoring Grace,” a journal kept during Peace House’s fourth year, she talked about living in solidarity with the poor and that’s why she didn’t buy meat. She would eat meat if it was given to her as a gift. When I visited Peace House in February I noticed that at one noon meal there wasn’t much food left. Rose said, “That’s OK,” and got a half a white hamburger bun with a teaspoon of peanut butter on it and glass of water for her lunch. Then, later someone passed out brownies and she took one, wrapped it in a napkin and said, “Thank you, I’ll take this home for dinner.” Perhaps because up until now she had survived the harsh physical existence she had chosen for herself, I believed she was invincible.
I know Rose didn’t want to be canonized or enshrined or anything like that. She didn’t want to be worshiped; she only wanted her work to go on. She didn’t want to be known as a cute, saintly lady who went about, quietly picking up the pieces of this broken world. She did not accept poverty as an unalterable fact of life. She was not fatalistic. And therefore not “harmless.” She challenged everyone. She believed society had to become equal and the church non-hierarchical.
Some people might say that because Jesus said, “The poor you always have with you,” we should accept poverty and just “feed the hungry and clothe the naked” without rocking the boat. But Rose was a rebel who didn’t mind rocking the boat. Her work was radical and sometimes she had to call forth her most loving spirit to deal with people who opposed her work and her philosophy.
In the last weeks before her illness, around the end of May, Tillemans received threatening phone calls at Peace House. A woman said, “We want you out of the neighborhood,.and I’ve started a petition to shut you down.” She claimed that Rose was an enabler who kept addicts and prostitutes from changing their life styles. Rose talked with the woman and invited her to come and visit. The woman agreed to come one day but never did. The woman had given her name but later it had been impossible to locate her. Rose was very shaken by the incident. Various people suggested that this caller had killed Rose or at least pushed her in that direction. It would have been easy to pursue an idea of a “Killer,” like irrational vigilantes. To do so would have been to ingest the violence of the phone calls and would have been a complete contradiction of everything Sister Rose believed. Gail, who was
Tillemans’ right hand for the past three years, said, “Let everyone open their hearts to the utmost truth.” Meaning (I think) that whoever made the calls knows what their intention was and they are the only one who can work with their own spiritual issues.
At the end of the afternoon on July 4 Rose went to the emergency room with another terrible headache. A pain reliever helped, so around midnight she was given another one. A half hour later when the nurse went in to see if her headache was better, Rose didn’t answer. The intensity of the pain reliever had stressed her heart so much that it stopped beating. By the time they got it started again, her brain had died. There were a few people who wanted to sue for malpractice but the majority of her friends and family believed the medical people were operating in good faith. Besides, a settlement would never bring her back.
Rose wouldn’t want revenge. And I think she was ready to die in the sense that she had no regrets. But I’m sure she didn’t want to go. She was having a good time here, and, according to Ward Brennan of Vets for Peace, she really enjoyed the picnic.
Changing the Way we Think
What was Rose Tillemans trying to do on this earth? One of the things she was trying to do was have fun and be happy. In her autobiography, “I’m Still Dancing,” published by Twenty-Third Publications and due to come out this fall, she wrote, “I guess one could say I was quite a pious girl and young adult. . . . I went into a period of scrupulosity when I pondered the examination of conscience. My mother, noting my misery, took me aside and said, ‘Your religion must be a pleasure to you.’”
Then she went on to explain that while in college she visited the Ramsey County Poor Farm, and came into contact for the first time with “poor people in every bent and gnarled shape, and emotional distress. I held these people in my heart with concern.” How she put her awareness of tragic poverty together with her desire for pleasure and happiness is very interesting.
At Peace House she didn’t want people to come in and sleep; she didn’t want it to be a flophouse. She worked hard to make sure it was interactive because she knew every soul was special and if they were sleeping she couldn’t enjoy getting to know them.. In her other published book, “Savoring Grace,” it is apparent how much she loved and enjoyed the people at Peace House. And how much she savored each moment of her life, for better or for worse. It seemed that her ability to be happy, to be at peace, to enjoy her life, made it possible to give out so much love.
At the same time, she was trying to challenge the structures that keep equality, justice and happiness from happening.
In “I’m Still Dancing” she wrote, “Since the beginning, we have had meditation at 11:30 a.m., focusing many times on what the lives of homeless people are like and how they survive . . . . . All of us volunteer coordinators have been moved by the wisdom of the women and men who gather at Peace House daily. Mutual mentoring has happened since the beginning, which is my idea for the beginning of structural change in society.”
Through Peace House she concentrated on trying to change the way people think. Marge, a volunteer coordinator for 16 years, said Rose wanted to “let people recognize their own power.” Although Sister Rose supported social justice work, sometimes when Peace House volunteers would go off to protest the School of the Americas or rebuild the water supply for a city in Iraq, Tillemans would be frustrated: “Doesn’t he understand we’re fighting a war right here?”
She had many “wars” on the home front. At her funeral Mass the priest said he had called her up once to ask her what she thought of the priest shortage. She had answered, “I think that sounds like a good idea.” He knew she wasn’t saying she hated priests, but rather was commenting on her belief in a non-hierarchical church.
Much as she used the word “non-hierarchical” she was definitely the leader at Peace House. Wayne, a volunteer coordinator for the past three years, said that Rose sometimes corrected him and other volunteer coordinators as well. She was a feisty protector of every soul in need who came through the door. Nurturing was her way. She wanted to make sure that volunteer coordinators were just as nurturing.
She was reluctant to call the police, and preferred to deal with conflicts herself. She wanted to be sure that people who had been brutalized would not be re-brutalized. And she wanted people who had been victimized to find the peace, affirmation and strength they needed to be able to choose to act instead of react.
One of the rules at Peace House is that no one who is using (chemicals) is allowed inside. When Rose had to ask someone to leave, it was more as a firm mother than as a threatening bouncer. Since an inebriated person is in an almost infantile state, firm kindness is the only thing that works. Demeaning, derisive, harsh language, not to mention pushing and shoving, never work—humiliation and anger remain imbedded in the user’s memory when he/she becomes sober. Wayne knows because he’s been thrown out of places. He worries about being able to escort someone to the door with the kindness that Rose would use. It would be easier to mimic the roughness that was used on him.
A few weeks after Rose’s death, a man named Larry eulogized her kind way of speaking. He said, “She had goodness in her heart. When you have goodness in your heart, it comes out your mouth.”
The phrase that keeps coming to my mind as I write is one (I think) attributed to the French architect LeCorbusier: “It is better to believe than to doubt.” To me, this phrase characterizes Rose Tillemans’ paradigm. It is the reality in which artists, mothers, peace activists and teachers live, and she was all of these.
The Work Goes On
Gail says that Rose’s death has caused “a shift in the crust of the earth.” So much is changing. This has been a grueling time and Gail will resign as program coordinator (a position she has held despite Rose’s misgivings about titles) in August because of health problems.
Irene, a longtime volunteer coordinator, has begun the task of making sure Rose’s books (“Savoring Grace,” “I’m Still Dancing,” and “My Tired Heart”) are to be found in every public library in the Twin Cities. Sister Rose’s intelligent, endearing style encapsulates her humorous, gentle, rigorous, rebellious heart.
At Peace House, discussions and meditation continue. People feel that Rose is guiding them. They can feel her tangible presence.
Just before she died, Rose managed to mail out a brochure to the entire constituency of Peace House and now the money is pouring in. But it will take more than money to solve the problem of Peace House’s future, which is still up in the air as it has been since the day after Chris tmas in 2000 when the Central Community Housing Trust offered to buy the Peace House building. A development plan for the four wasteland corners of Portland and Franklin has been on the drawing board since then. And still no one knows what will happen to Peace House.
The community reviews the mission of Peace House and talks about possible future sites.
Someone asks where Peace House will go when the development gentrifies the area, when “white flight” reverses, as it did in Chicago and St. Louis.
“Jesus came for the poor and the sick so that’s where Peace House needs to be,” Zach says. He is in favor of the development of the four corners and is willing to see Peace House moved as long as it continues to be available to people who really need the safety .
Wherever Peace House goes, it will need at least 1,600 square feet, maybe 2,000; four parking spaces; three unisex bathrooms; a kitchen with a triple sink; handicapped accessibility; relocation costs; zoning approval from the city; and a location within six blocks of where it is now, according to criteria established last February.
The development will begin on the southeast corner of Portland and Franklin, then the northeast corner, then the southwest. Peace House, on the northwest corner, has about a year and a half before they will have to move. Volunteer coordinator Tom explains that it is the responsibility of the developers to find a new place, and it is the responsibility of the coordinators, who form the board and are legal owners of the Peace House property, to approve.
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