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This is one chapter of a book proposal that I have written called Birthing Abundance: patriarchy, scarcity, and the scandal of inclusivity. Each chapter starts with a verb that is used in pregnancy and birth. This chapter was written nearly four years ago, not long after I interviewed Grace who was 86 at the time.
CHAPTER SEVEN: LABORING WHEN BELONGING EXCLUDES And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of the Almighty’s servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name. God’s mercy is for those who fear God from generation to generation. God has shown strength with God’s arm; God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. God has helped servant Israel, in remembrance of God’s mercy, according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” — Luke 1:46-55 Inclusivity, that’s what Jesus was about: including the people that law and order said no to. He walked with the people who were rejected in society: the lame, the blind, he cured them and healed them out of love. He didn’t put them in institutions. He showed love and compassion and care. It’s just one word: love. And love encompasses all that. You can be crucified for living like that or wanting to live like that. — Sister Grace Miller Belonging often comes at a price, and when that price involves excluding others, Sister Grace Miller believes it’s not worth it. Family history Grace Mary Miller was born into the Mierolo family in 1936. Her grandfather, Rosario Mierolo, immigrated to a little town called Corning in western New York from a little town called Futani. Futani (Foo-tah-nee) sits in the mountainous province of Salerno, Italy, about a 40-minute drive to the western coast near the ankle of the boot of Italy. On his solo trip to find a better life for his family, Rosario changed his last name to Miller so he’d get hired by the Corning railroad company—notorious for not hiring Italians. The family followed Rosario both in changing names and homes once he landed the job. Corning’s Little Italy neighborhood is where they found a home, adjacent to the train tracks that sat on a dike. (A generation later, in 1972, the Chemung River would flood their neighborhood and displace them along with 14 other Italian immigrant families.) In addition to seven children, six relatives joined Rosario and his wife, Grazia, in their home “because it was a tradition in the family to help others and share what you had.”[1] In high school, Grace’s twin brother, Neil, determined he was going to be a Catholic priest. Neil started seminary in Rochester, New York, and Grace followed a similar path. She attended Nazareth College, a Catholic female college. She was on the path to becoming a nun. But no vow – neither her vow of celibacy nor her vow of poverty – would stop her from mothering. Formative Work For ten years, Grace worked with the Office of Urban Ministry, where she developed educational programs for Catholic parishes and served as a liaison between the Catholic Diocese of Rochester and Freedom, Independence, God, Honor, Today (F.I.G.H.T.). F.I.G.H.T. was birthed after the Rochester Riot of 1964, which took place three weeks after the Civil Rights Acts was passed by Congress. F.I.G.H.T. organized a widespread campaign “to improve housing, education and employment opportunities for African Americans and the poor.”[2] There she learned to organize, protest, and demand human rights. She also learned that God’s work made a lot of people “angry and uncomfortable.” The dedicated leaders of F.I.G.H.T. were an example to her of dedication, courage, and embodying justice. “Their lives were on the line, but they were fighting for the poor, fighting for change,” she said. “From that point on, I made a commitment to speak out about social injustice and do my best to help poor people in our community. I finally realized that that was the plan God had for me.”[3] But implementing that plan became much harder than Grace thought. She learned first-hand just how angry and uncomfortable people could become. The journey to nonprofit founder was wrought with wandering, anger, and exclusion—most in part due to her boldness. “She really is a thorn in the side of people in power,” said her long-time colleague Sister Rita Lewis.[4] After Grace’s decade with the Office of Urban Ministry, she went to D.C. to study sociology, political science, and theology at Catholic University. Upon her return to Rochester, she took a post at a struggling parish, St. Bridget’s Church, not far from the school she had previously worked at. Unbelonging for a Purpose St. Bridget’s had very few parishioners. So Grace, utilizing the community organizing skills she had learned from F.I.G.H.T., went door to door in her community to hear its needs. Unemployment was the number one struggle. So she started networking with business leaders in the area, asking them to hire locally. It worked. She helped start a gospel choir. The congregation was growing and the community was coming together. But a new priest was soon hired who didn’t like Grace’s boldness, organizing efforts or musical taste. He fired her and warned others in the area that she was obstinate, outspoken, and disobedient.[5] She didn’t fit because he said so. No Catholic organization she tried to get a job with would hire her. Grace finally landed a job at Baden Street Settlement House but didn’t last long. One day, she witnessed an injustice toward a homeless man who had come in to find respite and sit on a bench. “Get out!” the director yelled at the man, throwing a paper cup of water on him. The man had a mental illness and simply came to the office every day because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. “The director was having a meeting. But I went in there and interrupted his meeting and said, ‘Why did you throw him out?! All he did was sit there? He wasn’t doing anything harmful!’ I wanted him to know I was very upset about it,” Grace said in an interview with the author. After that incident, Grace went and checked on the man. His arms were shaking, he was physically and emotionally wrought. That happened in midweek. By Friday, she was fired. “I knew I would lose my job, but there was an injustice. I felt that man had no one to speak for him. He couldn’t speak for himself. I knew in my heart and gut that what the director did was wrong.” After being fired first from St. Bridget’s Church and then from Badin Street, depression hit. “Nobody wanted to hire me,” she said. “I would go for job interviews, and had the interviews, but when the hiring manager found out what happened, they wouldn’t hire me,” she said. “Even the Sisters [of Mercy] started looking at me skeptically.” When she went back to Corning to visit her sister, she would shy away from others, even on the streets. “Everyone knows a nun shouldn’t get fired,” she said. Roommate after roommate in Rochester didn’t work out. She felt scarred, marked for life. For five years, she said she “floundered” going to different programs in different states including Florida, Kentucky, California, and Texas. “What did I do wrong?” was a question that plagued her for years. It was in Texas that she gained a deeper understanding of the path she was on. “I took a course on the Old Testament prophets. Every week we had to choose a prophet and identify our lives through theirs. It was then that it hit me. This is what the prophets went through. They dared to step out of line. People don’t want to hear the truth. It was expected that the prophets were going to be killed. A prophet wasn’t welcome in his own country. I didn’t have to be embarrassed or ashamed. I lost friends. I didn’t’ know where to live or what to do with my life. I couldn’t even go to the Motherhouse to live with the Sisters because I felt that they, too, felt the same way others did about me.” Feeling lost, struggling to find a purpose and a place, Grace said she’d pray. “I’d call on the Lord. I’d say, Lord I’m only here to do your will. That’s the only reason I’m here. I just talked to the Lord: I’m doing your work. I’m here for you to do what you want me to do, let the Holy Spirit lead me.” At 86 years old, at the time of the interview for this chapter, she said that being a misfit doesn’t go away. “I think even now – I feel like it still follows me. It’s like people want rules and regulations, law and order. I believe there’s only one word: and it’s love. It’s radical compassion, and it’s caring and loving the people who need us most. Rules and regulations keep people out. Inclusivity, that’s what Jesus was about: including the people that law and order said no to. He walked with the people who were rejected in society: the lame, the blind, he cured them and healed them out of love. He didn’t put them in institutions. He showed love and compassion and care. It’s just one word: love. And love encompasses all that. You can be crucified for living like that or wanting to live like that.” Motherhood Twelve sets of twins. That’s how many kids Grace dreamed of having as a child. But she became a different kind of mother. “People [at The House of Mercy] feel that there is someone who has the mother qualities they’ve lacked in life, they feel they’ve found a mother. There’s no pomp and circumstance. They see me as a mother. They come because they know they’ll be helped, they won’t be turned away. They know that. They know that they are accepted and loved and the door is always opened to them no matter what,” she said. And isn’t that what the best of motherhood can offer us? The unconditional love stemming from open hands, an open heart, and always found through an open door. This is why Grace doesn’t impose a limit on the length of stay at The House. “I believe in giving people second chances. And sometimes those in authority don’t like that. But people need that.” It’s no wonder the Magnificat, Christ’s mother Mary’s famous prayer found in Luke 4 is one of Grace’s sources of strength. “I love the Magnificat,” she said. “It’s a very powerful prayer: ‘My spirit rejoices in the Lord.’ Mary accepted the motherhood not knowing what the future was for her. She said yes not knowing, yet knowing it was going to be difficult. ‘My savior who has done great things for me and holy is his name.’ He chose Mary who was so humble, came from humble roots and he chose her to be his mother.” Caring, loving, listening, and angering. She says it’s that simple. “Those are the qualities that people see – listening to them and doing what I can to help them. They see the love and care and concern, and the anger toward the injustices,” she said. “I feel that anger is what motivates you to bring justice about. Sometimes without anger you wouldn’t do anything. That’s justified anger.” When asked who her spiritual mothers are, she said the prophets. “They knew what they’d have to go through and they didn’t back down.” Her own parents mimicked that too. “I know my mother coming from Italy, she had a hard time: the language, missing her family. She worked really hard, left her home. I would sometimes see her crying, but she never said anything. Now, looking back, I see she missed her family in Italy. I think the love and devotion I saw from my parents: everything they did for us kids – I see real love and devotion and tender care with my parents.” Finding Home About three decades post college, after unsuccessfully looking for shelter for three homeless men in the harsh, New York blizzard conditions, Grace opened the low-barrier homeless shelter, The House of Mercy, which imposes no limits on how long a resident can stay. “I’ve had to beg shelters to take homeless people in,” she said. “All I can think of is there’s no room in the inn,” she said, referencing the events around Jesus’ birth. Grace said she never planned on opening The House of Mercy, and often is brought to awe when she looks around. “I know now that the Holy Spirit has been guiding me here all my life. And this is where I want to be, with the poor and homeless, because their love is so important to me.”[6] After losing her mother at a young age, and then her father, and brother, finding home hasn’t been easy. It was a month ago of writing this, that Grace’s sister died. But like Christ, from the time I (Gena) was a little girl, I have seen in Grace this inexplicable ability to actually believe that her neighbors are her family members. This week, I have begun to look for a new job because the Christian organization I work at has decided to take an exclusive stance on what their leadership can believe about LGBTQIA and Christianity. When I find my next job, it will be my fourth in a span of 18 months. Over and over again I have found myself hitting a brick wall with white, Christian, male, hetero leaders who have determined that my form of Christianity doesn’t mimic theirs and therefore isn’t real. Diversity is a buzz word they claim, but when we all sit at their table—certain voices are always silenced. This week, I have been thinking a lot about Sister Grace, how she wandered for five years rather than accepting a belonging that wouldn’t include those denied housing. I think about the inner strength it takes to believe in abundance on the lonely road we often must walk to reach it. The ways in which, because of the injustices of this world, abundance sometimes feels like scarcity. In these moments I realize it’s the misfits who bravely decant when a container isn’t willing to be home to all. It’s the misfits who will actually lead us to a better awareness, understanding, and embodied Mother Abundance. For Further Reading on Sister Grace Miller:
[1] Hank Shaw, Amazing Grace: The Inspiring Story of Sister Grace Miller and The House of Mercy, (Rochester, NY: self-published) 11. [2] Hank Shaw, Amazing Grace: The Inspiring Story of Sister Grace Miller and The House of Mercy, (Rochester, NY: self-published) 37. [3] Ibid, 40. [4] Annette Jiménez, Sister Grace: Shelter founder is ‘good troublemaker’, Catholic Courier, 2015. Accessed online May 13, 2022 from https://catholiccourier.com/sistergrace/ [5] Hank Shaw, Amazing Grace, 43. [6] Hank Shaw, 145.
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