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PAGE 4 Q-Notes February 1991 Profile: Rev. Christine Oscar By Janelle Lavelle Special to Q-Notes Even her friends say that Rev. Christine Oscar of Greensboro's St. Mary's Metro politan Community Church can be "a tough cookie" to work with. She's been a thorn in the side of MCC's six-state GLAD district for four years, pushing her fellow clergy to begin address ing death and grieving issues associated with AIDS before their congregations were hit with an onslaught of deaths as Greensboro was in 1987. A passionate defender of the centrality of lay people to MCC ministry, she has often found herself the lone clergy person on the Lay House's side of an issue. She is devel oping one course to emjxiwer lay leaders, and has travelled the district teaching another on the grieving process, playing to packed houses from South Carolina to Alabama. As she celebrated the frrst anniversary of her ordination and the begiiming of her ninth year at St. Mary's, Oscar was in a familiar position: lead voice in a controversy. As usual she was on the side of her AIDS clients, women clergy and proper respect for the pioneers of local AIDS efforts as she argued against splitting local HIV support groups into gay and non-gay factions. And. as ii.sual, despite her fiery rhetoric and sharp temper, she did not fail to lose sight of the importance of expanding the horizons of the all-too-human other side. "Bringing them along, even if you've got to bang a tew heads together," as she calls it, is the reason she does not stay only within the gay ghetto, choosing instead to work also with non-gay ministers and health leaders because that is where basic institutional change must (Kcur. Oscar can claim r(X)m to bang heads be cause of her adeptness at touching hearts. It is far from unconunon tor someone who has argued with tier for years to turn to her in time of trouble. After the fourth ftmeral encounter with one opjxment, she sidled up to them at the graveside and said wryly. "We've got to stop meeting like this," opening a new Ime of aiminunicatbn. ''You've got to allow for each other's growth," she said, citing her own exjwrience in Tu elve-Step programs as evidence of the potential difference that recovery from pain can make in people's lives. Glowing up as one of ten children in a fragmented family in Washington state, Oscar understands the backgrounds that led many of her clients into drugs, promiscuity and AIDS. As a former nun. she knows the im- |X)rtance of strong community to successfully negotiating both life and death. As an openly-lesbian female minister in a conseiA'ative Southern city, she knows the pain of the prejudice her clients and congregants face on a daily basis. As a member of the AIDS team at Green.sboro's Moses Cone Memorial Hos pital, the primary AIDS treatment facility frir several counties, Oscar has sensitized nurses, diKtors and other caregivers to the special tears and needs of AIDS-affected clients and their support systems. "We had a problem with the nurses at Cone at one point, particularly on the second shift," she said. "After one especially blatant incident, I asked for and was given an op portunity to do an in-service training ses- .sion." The change in the personnel's attitudes was dramatic, she said. "Some of the nurses wanted a way to let their gay patients know they were sympathetic and gay-positive without jeopardizing either the patients or themselves," so Oscar bought a handful of buttons from the local gay bookstore and handed them out. The message: "Gee, Toto, I don't think we’re in Kansas any more!" She has become close to the hospital's social worker, Hope, whom she nicknamed "Mary Poppins" because of her wide-eyed attitude toward life. Hope was one of the speakers at a "roast" held in Oscar's honor on December 1. She presented Oscar with a porcelain Mary Poppins figure and spoke movingly of "the difference I've seen Christine make in the lives of the AIDS team and of the patients." Oscar's local innovations in AIDS care are almost too numerous to mention. When she realized that the clients' food stamps would not cover paper and personal-care products, she start^ a PWA Pwitry to supply such basics as toilet paper, deodorant and shampoo — often provided through her suggested "Travel Program," where MCC members and friends contribute the free toiletry samples provided in hotel bathrooms. When access to enough fresh food be came a problem, she struck an unprecedented bargain with the Winston-Salem Food Bank, and she or one of her staff members make weekly forays to their larders and distribute the food to AIDS clients and their famiUes. She began a yearly AIDS memorial ser vice before World AIDS Day existed, "be cause so many times the families of clients shut our people out of the process, and we needed a place to grieve together," she said. She was the first openly-gay Hospice vol unteer, and despite ifferences with Hospice leadership still sends openly-gay people to . their program. She struggles to maintain working rela tionship with all the service organizations that affect her clients, no matter how much "care-fronting" of homophobia issues is necessary. "I fight to get them to respect tne because that means increa.sed respect for the people I represent — the gay and female AIDS-af fected folks who cannot be open and for whom I speak. It's only in their name, and with their support, that this work is possible for me to do." She has also developed rituals to provide emotional and spiritual sustenance to AIDS clients and caregivers, "which includes our whole congregation — it's not by accident that the 'Ministers' on the MCC letterhead are listed as 'The people and friends of St. Mary's,'" Oscar said. There is a simple but moving process by which people who are ready to identify themselves as HfV-positive can qieak to the congregation as part of the Sunday service. All present are invited to join in prayer and a laying-on of hands if the client desires it. Even those not yet ready to "go public" receive a "Love Bear." A professed "bear freak" with dozens in every room of the house she shares with her long-time spouse Sharon, Oscar believes that the bears pro vide an important external symbol of the otten-unspoken support within the church. As a bear is passed hand-to-hand down the aisles, each person gives what they can: some pray in the bear’s ear, some couples hold the bear and each other tightly, some just cry into the ftir and think thou^ts of love and health. The Love Bears are powerful — even life-altering — for both the givers and the recipients, some of whom did not believe before the bears that God work-s in the lives of outcasts like the AIDS-affected. She encourages people to tell the church as soon as they can, Oscar .said. "They need the support and the other church members need to put faces to this disease that is killing our people. That's the only way we'll end this silence: the denial that the disease is real is what keeps it spreading." . MCC Memorial services, planned by Oscar and the client as part of the dying process, have been designed by Oscar as times of affirmation as well as of mourning. Services include individualized program covers that represent some facet of the person's life and prayers developed by Oscar and a handfrtl of church members to reflect inclusivity and acceptance. "We've had Marilyn Monroe, a unicorn, even the U.S.S. Enterprise on the pro grams." she said with a laugh. Each service ends by launching lavender, pink and white helium balloons into the air above the church woods, "releasing the person into their new life." The clients are sometimes reluctant to do this." Oscar said. "Curtis IJones. one of the people for whom the Triad Health Project building is named, died in June 1989] kept saying he didn't want this in it, didn't want that, didn't want any kind of service. I finally said gently. 'Curtis, it isn't for you, dear. You aren't going to have to be there. It's tor me and for the rest of us.'" Oscar has lost many close friends to the disease, including Jones, a black non-gay recovering drug addict who brought her into contact with the Twelve-Step programs "and knew me better than I knew myself. Curtis was my heart," she said. "This fall we had a little ceremony spreading the last of Curtis's ashes on the flowerbeds. As I took a handful to place into the earth, I found that I was still very, very angry at him. I found myself thinking, 'You s.o.b., why did you have to go and die on me when I still needed you?'" The greatest personal reward of her work with MCC and AIDS-affected people has been the way the people involved have challenged her to confront her own demons and grow to her fullest potential, Oscar said. "I was dragged kicking and screaming into this grief ministry. I didn't want to do it. I kept praying, 'Not me, God, not me doing all this work around dead and dying people.' I felt scared, and like I was not up to Ae task, and surely someone better was around to do it. As one friend says, I kept waiting around for the grown-ups to show up and take over this work. But she slowly realized, Oscar said, that God did indeed mean for her to become involved in the front lines of the struggle. "There was a need. There was no one else to do it. I know it had to be done. So I started Rev. Troy Perry talks to Rev. Christine Oscar of St. Mary's MCC in Greensboro doing it myself and training others to come along on the journey with us," she said. "And, despite the loss and pain, the rewards almost daily are worth it." ACT-UP: Phillip Morris Continued from page 1 However, a direct action group can't be direct without tace-to-face exchange so memlxjrs of the group continued to cross the street in an attempt to engage people in constructive dialogue. The group members offered condoms, explained their position regarding Phillip Morris and Sen. Jesse Helms respectively and also discussed AIDS issues with the pubhc. The response from the crowd was mixed, according to ACT-UP Triangle member Mark Zumback, "A lot of people were uncomfort able with us there, but also a lot of parents were taking the opportunity to explain to their kids what we were demonstrating tor and tliat the Bill of Rights which they were there to see is what gave us the ability to do so." One particular incident retold by Keith Floyd involved a man dressed as Uncle Sam, "He was very angry at us for being there and thought that we should leave and stop ruin ing the disjilay for everyone. He then asked if we had 'ever fought in a war before,' to which Mark Zumback won- derftilly replied. 'I fight in a war every day.' He was not pleased with the remark and immediately informed us that he meant a real war." ACT-UP continued their protest the re mainder of the day, further staging a kiss-in, continuing the condom dispensation, and heckling the Phillip Morris employees. For their first major action (the aroup only officially formed in August 1990fmost considered the event a success despite all attempts to derail the protest. One woman in the crowd, with her baby daughter in her arms, stated, "The demon stration was the highhght of the day for me. We were ushered through the display and it was old and unreadable. The protest was really what the whole idea of the Bill of Rights is about." The Bill of Rights now goes on to con tinue its tour of all fifty states with a pnimise from ACT-UP D.C.'s Michael Petrelis that until the trek concludes in February 1992 tlMt organization will continue to engage the di^lay in protest and demonstration. This naticHial di^lay of the Bill of Rights is going to cost Fhillip Morris an estimated $60 mdlicwi. Guess Who*s HIV Positive. Some men's idea of risk reduction is simply to avoid persons they think are HIV positive. If you think you can tell who's positive by what you've heard — or what he looks like — then you've lyeen playing an aufully risk)^ guessing game. Don't play roulette or live by rumors. Stop Guessing. Condoms . . . every time. map Mefrolina AIDS Protect
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