Road least traveled

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 10, 2000 by Arthur Jones

"Bottom line is one day we were hanging out at the Vincentian volunteers' house, talking about this stuff," said Andersen, "and she invited me, as they were heading out the door, to a Mass for Jim Lindsey, incoming director of the Catholic Network for Voluntary Service, at Catholic University."

During the Mass there was a litany of saints. It included people like Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero, Cesar Chavez and Mitch Snyder.

"I felt a little like I was back in that church building in San Salvador. They had a litany of saints."

Andersen wondered if there was a Catholic place for him in Washington. Welch suggested he try "St. Al's" -- St. Aloysius, the Jesuit parish on Capitol Hill. One Sunday, Andersen went.

"I had come home," he said. "The upbringing I'd had, the values I'd received through the gospel, had basically oriented me toward seeking the truth." He'd arrived without denying the crucial role punk rock and the collective Positive Force still play in his life. He went through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, the church's official rite for new members. It was "a great experience," he said because the group at St. Al's was small, with a la), leadership team and priest "willing to listen to a lot of questioning." They would keep guiding the discussion "back to the essential," he said: "following Christ, through a challenging and open-ended Catholic vision."

These days Positive Force volunteers, along with others from Howard and George Washington universities and local churches, work with the Emmaus elderly.

A decade ago, it was an unkempt, testy Andersen, hair awry and dressed in raggedy clothes, still living in a ramshackle commune, who applied to Emmaus for a part-time job as "street outreach worker" in the Shaw district.

Emmaus director Diane Amussen "must have detected something beneath that exterior," Andersen said. "Her faith in me was a precious gift."

Soon he was a fixture in the people's lives in rundown Shaw, with seniors who ran out of food or medicines or needed someone to talk to or help fight the drug traffickers taking over the building.

He tells of fixing a vacuum cleaner in one apartment while homicide squad detectives dug errant bullets out of the refrigerator from a fatal shooting next door.

"Another time I helped convince a desperately ill and paranoid 94-year-old blind woman, haunted by the ghosts of abusive relatives, to let an ambulance take her to the hospital," he said.

He had become a member of what was known locally as "the SWAT team for the elderly."

Andersen's concerns for the District of Columbia's persons at risk don't end with the elderly. Read behind some Washington Post headlines, such as the 1998 candlelight procession for slain prostitutes. Note the organizers and sponsors: St. Aloysius, Asbury Methodist and other churches -- and Positive Force.

Counterculture still

He carries the message where he can.

When the Washington archdiocesan young adult ministry organized its recent Jubilee Justice and Service Challenge for "20- to 30-somethings from across the D.C. metro area," Andersen was on the fliers inquiring, "Would you like to meet other young Catholic adults, learn more about your faith, and serve those in need?" with his e-mail address (emmausdc@aol.com) and phone number (202-299-0429) listed as contact points.