The Refectory Manager

The refectory . . . A place to nourish the soul. A place to share the savory comestibles, the sweet confections, the salty condiments of the things that matter. A place to ruminate the cud of politics. A place to rant on the railings of religion. A place to arrange the flowers of sanguine beauty. A place to pause in the repose of shelter. Welcome, my friend. The Refectory Manager

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Location: College Place, Washington, United States

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Main Entry - Prodigal

Main Entry: prod-i-gal
Pronunciation: 'prä-di-g&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin prodigus, from prodigere to drive away, squander, from pro-, prod- forth + agree to drive
1: characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure: Lavish [a prodigal feast] [prodigal outlays for her clothes]
2: recklessy spendthrift [the prodigal prince]
3: yielding abundantly: Luxuriant – often used with of [nature has been so prodigal of her bounty – H. T. Buckle]

(From http://m-w.com/dictionary/prodigal)

Yes, we all so very well know the story of “The Prodigal Son.” From our days of still wearing knickers in the Kindergarten Sabbath School.

But for me, it wasn’t the “lavish” part, the “profuse wasteful expenditure” part that impressed me, rather, it was the separation between father and brother. The reason for that separation. The reconciliation. The “prodigal” part of it was always a distraction to me.

I just finished reading, for the second time, the book “My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story.” A story of spiritual and medical crisis in the late 1980’s in the East Tennessee/Appalachian region surrounding Johnson City, TN.

I was prompted to read this story again, because my friend in New Jersey was having such conflict in his life trying to understand his significant other, a hopelessly closeted man from Chattanooga, TN. His friend graduated from East Tennessee State University in 1986, while this tragedy was unfolding. I joined ETSU in the fall of 1989 as a faculty member, at the time Dr. Verghese was leaving. My friend’s friend is in his 40’s, an administrator in the public school districts of Chattanooga, still lives at home with his parents . . . parents who don’t know, and don’t like his friends. Parents who don’t know, won’t let themselves know, their son is gay. Parents, who set their son down in the center of the kitchen one day, screaming the killer scriptural verses at him, threatening him with hell if he ever so much as talked to that “sodomite” up in New Jersey again.

And so my NJ friend is so frustrated with the lying, deception, conflict in his friend’s life.

I thought this book, “My Own Country” might help him understand the essence of being gay in rural America . . . a life style that is totally alien to my NJ friend.

Dr. Abraham Verghese was employed at the VA Mountain Home Medical Center as the Infectious Disease specialist . . . the only one for miles and miles around. He maintained a small private practice at the adjacent Johnson City Medical Center.

In the summer of 1985, a man driving from New York to visit his parents in Johnson City barely made it to the JCMC Emergency Room. He was deathly ill. Symptoms were alien to this medical staff. Dr. Verghese was consulted. He had seen this kind of thing in his training in the inner city hospitals of Boston. Johnson City had just been introduced to AIDs. Except nobody knew what it was.

It is the story of men and women in crisis. A moving, tender, heart-wrenching chronology of the intertwining of their lives in desperation for survival.

Five years later, when his case load was over 80 active cases and by default, he was their primary care physician as well, he started to see a pattern in the epidemiology of that disease.

The un-prodigal, in the prodigal, of the “Prodigal Son.”

He placed little dots on a map of where each of his patients lived. Scattered all around Johnson City . . . up into Virginia, over into Kentucky, over into North Carolina . . . it represented the catchment area for the Johnson City Medical Center.

He made another map, the outline of the United States, and placed little dots where his patients were at the most likely time they contracted HIV/AIDS. The dots clustered in New York City, Florida, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

It dawned on him that HIV/AIDS was an “imported” disease into East Tennessee.

Of course, there were exceptions. The hemophiliac infected with contaminated Factor VIII, the mining company owner infused with massive amounts of blood following a cardio-vascular accident . . . and because Duke University Medical Center never warned him of the risk of blood transfusions, his wife was now infected as well. Another wife infected by her cheating husband, cheating with both men and women . . . and infecting those women.

This past Sunday, in most Unitarian-Universalist churches, the focus of the worship service was on “Forgiveness.” Corresponding to the awesome Jewish tradition of Yom Kippur . . . the forgiveness, the reconciliation . . . and the Christian tradition of the retelling of the story of “The Prodigal Son.” We were each invited to select a little stone from a basket as we entered the sanctuary, to hold that stone, and when the time came in the service, to go forward to lay down that stone in symbolic unconditional forgiveness that we offered to another.

We were invited to participate as the father, in the father’s role, in “The Prodigal Son.”

And yet, there was also the role of the brother.

And this is where the stories of those dozen or so patients that Dr. Verghese shares with us is both so similar and yet so dissonant from “The Prodigal Son.”

These men, young men, some in their teens, “escaped” the repressive, homophobic environ of family/religious/cultural heritage. They had heard the distant stories of living with openness and freedom in the gay centers of America. It was not to squander their family’s inheritance . . . not at all, it was to be liberated from it. To be alive. To be themselves. To be free.

And squander, they did not. They got jobs, they assimilated into that culture, that society. They were productive. Fulfilled.

And the famine hit . . . but it was not a famine, but a plague. A virus they knew nothing of.

And in desperation . . . they came home. Home as un-prodigal prodigals.

And some had fathers who welcomed them back. And some did not.

Some had brothers who did not welcome them back. But some did.

And the untouchables slowly became a little bit visible in that community.

And that community was in denial . . . in a spiritual crisis.

But some did realize that they did indeed love those they hated.

And some still hated.

And the un-prodigal of these apparent prodigal sons, came home to die.

And Johnson City, TN entered into a new dimension.

And a new generation of Appalachian gay kids have alternative versions of that great Christian-Tradition story of “The Prodigal Son.”

The Refectory Manager


Verghese, Abraham. My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story. Vintage Books/Random House Inc. New York. 1994.