During the early days of COVID, laid off as a restaurant worker, Justin was living with four other guys in a Jubilee Homes sober living house in Pasadena. One of their coping mechanisms was binging “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” In season six, episode five, as Larry David drove down Fair Oaks, the guys spotted Jubilee Homes founder the Rev. Bill Doulos standing on the sidewalk right out front.
It took some binging of his own by Bill’s successor as Jubilee Homes’ executive director, the Rev. Tim Hartley, but he found the clip so he could show us during last night’s second annual fundraising gala at The Church of Our Saviour. Bill’s pop culture immortality dovetailed nicely with his elegiac keynote address. It included a moving reflection about his early days at a cofounder, along with the Rev. Alice Callaghan and others at All Saints Episcopal Church Pasadena, of the now-nonsectarian Union Station Homeless Services. Among other kindnesses, he’d helped an unhoused client named George get his Social Security checks. “You’re God to me,” George told the preternaturally humble deacon one day. Bill found it so embarrassing that he’d never told the story before last night.
Still, since we’re formed and invited to be Christ’s hearts and hands in the world, to lead with our God selves, sometimes people will notice, especially in ministers like Bill. Launched when he turned his own home into a sober living house, Jubilee Homes and its four residences became part of COS 22 years ago. The organization serves 50 at a time, thousands over the years. As our addiction crisis worsens, Jubilee Homes will need all the love it can get (you can donate by going here). As I noted in brief remarks, nearly a third of Americans drink to excess, and perhaps ten percent struggle with alcoholism. Then stir in drug addiction, all of it getting worse as isolation, anxiety, and depression spike in our digitally demarcated society.
The numbers are staggering. And yet hope comes numbered one by one, as we learned from two Jubilee Homes alums and a current client. Justin was in jail because of his drinking when his dad died. Now he’s a fourth-year electrician’s apprentice. Mia used to get drunk with her late mom. Then they became roommates and real besties at Jubilee Homes. Berit thought she’d lose her newborn baby because of her addiction. Now Regan’s one, and she and her sober mom are happy and safe together in their Jubilee Homes apartment, under the mighty shadow of God’s wing. Are Bill, Tim, COS, and Jubilee’s benefactors, staff, and volunteers God? No — but last night, you could see what George was getting at.
