Drawing the Saints of the Streets

Sr. Danielle Victoria has spent years drawing the saints and she drew Saint Charles de Foucauld recently to make a prayer card with his abandonment prayer on the back for the Urban Missionaries to hand out to people on the streets. (Saint Charles de Foucauld is the patron saint of Urban Missionaries, the street ministry we have joined for the past year in Portland.)

Sr. Danielle doesn’t just draw people in heaven; she also draws people who live on the streets. In some ways, this may seem to some like a completely different artistic endeavor. But it’s actually quite similar. Just as she draws the Saints in heaven with a focus on highlighting their humanity so that we can find inspiration in their lives and their personalities, she draws people living on the streets with a special effort to highlight their dignity in a world that often ignores or rejects them.

When Sr. Danielle asks people living on the streets if she can draw them, they look surprised and perplexed almost every time. Often they are uncomfortable with how they look and worry about how the drawing might portray them. But when she shows them other drawings she has done of people on the streets, the person’s face inevitably softens and they say, “Yeah you can draw me.”

Sr. Danielle’s drawings elicit trust because they clearly highlight a person’s dignity, made in the image of God. They bring light from darkness, literally. Like a digital etching, she begins with a black screen on an iPad and takes away to bring out the light. Trained in photography, she says that this method is like painting with light. She always says, “The light within is in the eyes. I take a lot of time on the eyes to get them right and I pray to capture it exactly. Then when I do it always happens in a moment, a miraculous, exhilarating moment.”

Recently, Sr. Danielle asked a man named Dynna, a long-standing friend of the Urban Missionaries, if she could draw him. He agreed almost immediately. Scott, the founder of Urban Missionaries, has known Dynna for many years and when we asked him about Dynna, he reflected, “Two anecdotes: he always insists on giving us coins or dollars for our goods we supply. And one brutal winter day he scrounged up enough of his own money for a cheap motel and let a bunch of homeless fill the place for the night.”

Sr. Danielle finished her drawing of Dynna last week and we searched for him during our walk this past Sunday. Every person we knew said they had seen Dynna recently but hours passed and we did not see him. Hope faded until at the last moment, just as we were leaving, we found him.

“Dynna! Sr. Danielle exclaimed as she jumped out of our car.

From inside a tent, we heard Dynna’s voice, “Sister Danielle!”

Like two long lost friends, they embraced and Sr. Danielle handed him the canvas she had printed of her drawing of him.

“Wow,” he said, “Now you’re an artist.”

“I printed two drawings so you can give one away,” Sr. Danielle said.

“Good, I will give the second one to my mom, she has Alzheimer’s,” Dynna said gratefully.

Sr. Danielle spends hours on each drawing; if her drawings were a commission, she would charge hundreds of dollars. To draw a portrait of a person who can never pay for it is symbolic in itself. The hours she spends on each one is a prayer, a sign of the person’s dignity and worth.

Everything about it says, “You are worth it.”

After we gave Dynna his drawing, we stood around for a while and enjoyed the sun setting. Dynna told us about a young girl on the streets that he was trying to look after to make sure she was safe. A neighbor who allows Dynna to camp on his sidewalk joined us and greeted Dynna with a smile. We prepared to leave as the sun set behind us and gave Dynna a hug.

“We love you,” we both said simultaneously.

“I love you too,” Dynna said with feeling. As we drove away, he waved, a glint of tears in his eyes and a big smile on his face.

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Ways to Support the Urban Missionaries:

• Support the Urban Missionaries weekly budget. The three most important material items they pass out (aside from rosaries) are Gatorade, food, socks /gloves/underwear. The weekly budget for Gatorade on a busy summer day is about $75, snack bags are about $100, and socks, etc are about $75 per walk. If you can help with their budget, email Scott Woltze (swoltze[at]gmail.com).

• Buy supplies for the Urban Missionaries to pass out on the streets from their Amazon list.

• Follow the Urban Missionaries on Facebook!