In Any Given Moment

Book excerpt: 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 placeand 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 folksand 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. Toms earlier diary, Go Back, You Didnt 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 millenniumone day at a time.