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| Parishioner Steve Boyle’s Small Christian Community Built a March |
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“We cannot stand idly by and watch as disaster approaches. Our knowledge tells us that the whole of humanity is increasingly in danger of death and we must use this knowledge to create hope and salvation to give substance to our beliefs and opinions.” |
The Scriptures are filled with stories of those who journeyed from one place to another. Abraham, Paul, the Good Samaritan and so many others that are introduced to us as journeyers. At 56 years of age, Steve Boyle, has lived enough life to refer to it as his journey. His past and present are part of a journey, and the present finds the name of Steve Boyle identified as the frustration spark that helped to ignite the October 26th Antiwar Rally in St. Paul. So how did this happen and who is the man who helped organize October’s third largest public demonstration against the projected war with Iraq?
The western border of Minnesota has a section that bulges out into South Dakota. Straight west of the Twin Cities is Graceville, the birthplace of Steven Boyle in 1945. Youngest of three boys, his parents were farmers. Steve describes his Irish father as one who didn’t trust change, and things new or different made him uncomfortable, moody and unpredictable. Memories of growing up are linked to a bleak, sullen routine of mostly hard work including among other chores, carrying water to the house. Steve‘s life is one of dichotomy, he enjoyed school and the socialization it brought, but home life was choked by his father’s life view which was made worse by his fundamental Catholic belief system. The school was a haven from the demons of his father and the rantings of clerics at Church. This was a time and place when fear of losing one’s immortal soul was a worn but too frequently used pulpit theme. Steve’s mother did what she could to right-side life but it was an uphill battle against negative priests and a sullen father.
College at Moorhead was the ice flow that gave Steve more freedom and he thrived in college. In high school he admired a teacher of Business and English so he decided that is what he would do, become a teacher. After college came a teaching job in Long Prairie, marriage and children. Steve and his wife had three, now grown, children. Steve and his wife taught in Long Prairie for thirteen years and then took teaching jobs in Cambridge. He served as vocational counselor for five school districts. In time Steve got restless and applied for an assistant principal position for Minneapolis inner city schools. He did this for three years at Sanford Junior High, but he said it was all day disciplining and he didn’t think he was making a difference so he took an assistant principal job in Minnetonka and worked there for sixteen years. He loved the world of education and preferred student contact to administrative meetings so he stayed an assistant principal. Privately his world was more chaotic.
Steve always felt he was by his definition, ‘different.’ Marriage was hard and Steve finally came to grips with his gayness but not without long bleak period of sadness and despairing moments. Unfortunately, all efforts to get help or counseling support did not work out for a gay father of three. For almost twenty-five years Steve’s emotional life was one of stops and starts but finally he and his wife agreed to separate and he began the process of building a new but different life.
In the same year Steve was born, Tom Davis was born 100 miles north. These two men met in their mid thirties and became friends. In time Steve and Tom became partners after Steve’s marriage ended. Steve said that during all of this he always went to church in spite of my spiritual and emotional struggles. Those childhood fears of hell and damnation hung on for a long time. One day Steve heard about a church in south Minneapolis where Father Harvey Eagan was pastor. Harvey had been a childhood priest that he remembered and he wanted to see if Harvey had changed. Going to St. Joan of Arc was Steve Boyle’s introduction into a whole new understand of inclusive Christianity? In the years that followed came the repeated experience of Gospel as the message of acceptance and love. Steve and Tom became more comfortable with who they were and their place in the spiritual church family. Like many, many others, Steve Boyle found that it took a very long time for him to get his comfort level up with God. Tom and Steve decided to join a one of the new Small Christian Communities in the parish. Steve honestly describes his group of three men and eight women with loyal affection. It is one which as struggled with identity and purpose, but one that has grown in it spiritual depth and has set goals.
With the sounds of President Bush’s call for war and a new American imperialism, Steve became more agitated. He went to his Small Christian Community and they agreed to set a new goal and find out what they could do. The rest is organizational history, phone calls were made, small meetings became more inclusive meetings, people emerged from protests past, students got interested, various peace and church groups joined and they all agreed to march on Saturday, October 26th. Two weeks prior to the march, I sat as an observer watching leadership at its best. Sitting in the large circle were experienced and suave protesters sharing ideas with neophytes to the resistance movement. All worked together under Steve Boyle’s kind but firm direction.
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“Where there's life, there's hope. For instance, if the bombing stops, there's a small chance of avoiding an invasion. If an invasion starts, there's still a chance of avoiding nuclear weapons. And if nuclear weapons happen, what then? Well, I will feel like dying, but I will also pick myself up and say, well, let's make what we can to avoid it happening next. There really is always the next time. We're not facing the world blowing up as we did during the Cold War. It will take a miracle to stop this war, but not more of a miracle than South Africa having a peaceful transition, not more of a miracle than the Berlin Wall coming down and East Europe being Liberated.” |
For all the many years as assistant principal, Steve Boyle dealt with hundreds of kids who wanted to solve their frustrations and anger with violence or hurting. His words to them were always basically the same; “You need to find another way to solve your problems if you are going in live in this world.” Now after 34 years, Steve took early retirement and is as he says, “in transition.” Steve repeats the advice in meetings, “We need to find another way to solve our problems as we live in this world with others; we all want the same basic things“. But his transition is being affected by the conduct of his country that seems to be losing it’s moral compass. “We are the strongest, richest, and most powerful nation in the world, we are in a position to demonstrate and model compassion. We should be helping other nations, but instead we talk only of war.”
Feeling compelled to do something, Steve currently is leading the Peace Group that meets on Monday evenings at St. Joan. He believes that it is the churches or the people in them that can bring about change. In September of this year, he agreed to serve as a member of the parish’s Pastoral Council. He firmly stood his ground and was joined by all the council members in denouncing the Vatican’s recent comments on gay clergy and gay people. St. Joan of Arc, because of people like Steve Boyle and his fellow parishioners, is and will always be a community of total inclusiveness and equality for all.
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Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability: it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this ‘hard word’, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. |
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