The Gospel Truth in the Age of AIDS
by Elizabeth Kaeton

I’ve been working in one capacity or another with People With AIDS since 1983. My ministry began in Boston where I worked as a nurse to help pay tuition and living expenses through seminary. AIDS ministry has followed me to Baltimore and then to Newark, New Jersey where it has been an integral part of my work as an ordained priest.

I confess that I have often tried to escape this [AIDS] work. It is often a daunting, heartbreaking ministry. I recently read a quote from an AIDS worker in South Africa: "I don’t dream. I don’t cry. I do get migraines."

I confess that I have often tried to escape this work. It is often a daunting, heartbreaking ministry. I recently read a quote from an AIDS worker in South Africa: "I don’t dream. I don’t cry. I do get migraines."

One of the greatest rewards has come from the lessons I’ve learned from the people I have been privileged to serve. I’ve found that I have been given a new hermeneutic, a different lens through which I now read the gospel stories and the sayings of Jesus. I have found that dull, dry texts which previously had been viewed as irrelevant are resurrected in the death and dying of People With AIDS and come alive in an entirely different way.

I want to tell you about a woman I met when I was in Baltimore. Everybody called her "Bertie," but the name given to her at baptism was Bernadette — for the Saint and the movie by the same name. She was a 24 year-old woman who looked much, much older than her years. That was probably because she had traveled farther and on a much more difficult path than most people twice her age. It was 1988 and hers was one of the first of the "new faces" of AIDS that began to emerge as the second wave of the epidemic hit the cities of the Northeast Corridor.

Bertie was a prostitute and a heroin addict who loved to drink beer — whiskey when she could get it — and occasionally indulged in cocaine when her clientele offered her some. Before you rush to judgment on Bertie, you should know a little something more about her life. I don’t offer this as an excuse or a reason for her life choices, but sometimes, the enormous burden of the circumstances of one’s life can be pretty insurmountable. One slip, one wrong move, and the weight of it can tumble you right over the edge and into oblivion.

Facts about Bertie’s life were sketchy, mainly because she didn’t like to talk about the past. It was clear that her alcoholic father had repeatedly abused her — physically, emotionally and sexually. That she ran away from home at age 11 when she realized that her older sisters were also being abused and her mother knew about it and had done nothing to stop it. Then, by some small miracle of grace, she found sanctuary and lived with her grandmother for two wonderful years.

Her ‘Nana’ had promised before God to protect her and keep her safe forever.  "And," said Bertie, "Nana told me that a promise made before God is one that stays in God’s heart forever." Except, one day Bertie came home from school and found the police at the door. Her Nana had gotten very sick and was taken to the hospital. The police said she’d have to live in a place they called a foster home until her Nana got better, but three days later, the police came back to tell her that her Nana had died.

Bertie says she ran away from that foster home. She never said why. She didn’t have to. She only said that her grandmother broke her promise and she could no longer trust anyone. She said she could only trust herself. So, at age 13, Bertie started living on the streets. She couldn’t remember when she started using drugs. Probably somewhere around the same time she started being a prostitute, and shortly after she started drinking "boiler makers" — the beer and whiskey chaser often preferred by the clientele who frequented the bars in her Southwest Baltimore neighborhood of the working poor.

I first met Bertie when she was 21: a newly diagnosed HIV positive young woman with AIDS (which means she was probably infected around age 15 or 16, but, depending on the particular strain of the virus, perhaps as early as age 13). She earned the dubious distinction of being the youngest client in our clinic. She couldn’t be sure how she got AIDS — it might have been from having sex but it could have been from exchanging needles for her heroine. When you use drugs or alcohol, your judgment is seriously impaired. You couldn’t practice "safer sex" even if you knew how or wanted to.

AIDS made its first appearance in a medical journal on June 5, 1981. In its first incarnation, it was known as GRID: Gay Related Infectious Disease… While the name may have changed, it certainly has done nothing to protect the innocent. Stereotypes, harsh judgment and misinformation continue to abound.

Bertie began to shatter all of the stereotypes we had accumulated about AIDS in the seven years we had been engaged in the epidemic. AIDS made its first appearance in a medical journal on June 5, 1981. In its first incarnation, it was known as GRID: Gay Related Infectious Disease. Only after babies and their mothers began to be infected was the name changed to AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. While the name may have changed, it certainly has done nothing to protect the innocent. Stereotypes, harsh judgment and misinformation continue to abound.

On December 1, 2001, we will observe a National Day of Prayer for AIDS. In the twenty-one years of this pandemic and the nineteen years I have done this work, I find that I am far less certain of anything about this disease than I seemed to be when I first began. I’ve watched the statistical increase and the progression of this disease in a sort of numbed horror. Personally, I stopped counting when I lost my 50th friend to this disease. I thought if I continued it would make me insane. Or, paralyzed. Or both — like that hideous portrait "The Scream."

The hideous truth is this: We are in danger of losing an entire generation to what is now a worldwide pandemic. Teens and young adults are the one group at greatest risk. It is an alarming statistic that in many parts of the United States, the infection rate in some suburban high schools is higher than their inner city counterparts. In some parts of Western Africa, as many as 60% of the young men under the age of 21 are infected with HIV where heterosexual transmission is the most common factor. In the United States, not only is heterosexual transmission the most common vehicle to carry the virus, there is a direct link between alcohol and drug use and infection with HIV.

The truth AIDS has taught us is this: It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, whether you are rich or poor, come from a good home or live on the streets, have sex with someone you’ve known forever or with a total stranger. When you use drugs or alcohol, you are not able to use good judgment. This disease is not about far away countries or types of people — it’s about BEHAVIOR. You don’t get AIDS because you are gay, or Black or poor. You get this disease because you made a decision — a dangerous decision — to enter into a particular set of behaviors that put you at risk. And, what you risk is your life.

People who call themselves "religious" seem to preach another reality, but the truth is that the virus that causes AIDS also doesn’t care about your morals or your religion. It doesn’t care about your age or your gender or your race or your sexuality. It doesn’t care how much money you have or where you go to school or what kind of car you drive. AIDS is an equal opportunity disease. It does not judge. It does not discriminate. It will infect anyone. It will infect you. You don’t play with this virus — one small step in the wrong direction and you’ll find yourself going right over the edge into oblivion.

I was the one who told Bertie her diagnosis. She looked at me as if I were speaking a different language. She asked me to repeat the diagnosis to her again. "You are HIV positive, Bertie," I said, "and that cough you have is probably not from smoking cigarettes, and it may be pneumonia. Let’s get you over to the ER and get a chest X-Ray." Bertie walked over to the ER with me in silence, as if she were in a trace. She was eventually admitted to the hospital but after she was discharged I lost track of her for about a year.

When I saw her again, I hardly recognized her. She was amazing! She had gained about 20 pounds, and she looked wonderfully healthy. She had gone into a Detox program, was off drugs and alcohol, and was working as a community AIDS educator — her specialty was talking with high school kids. She had even met a young man at the Detox center and was dating him, "All natural and normal like," she assured me.

"When you first told me that I was HIV positive and then I heard that I had AIDS, I had my first important realization: I was going to die. And, I decided that if that was so, then I had a choice: I could either die a junkie and a prostitute, or I could die clean and sober."

"How did you do it, Bertie?" I asked. "What finally changed your life?" "Well," she said, "When you first told me that I was HIV positive and then I heard that I had AIDS, I had my first important realization: I was going to die. And, I decided that if that was so, then I had a choice: I could either die a junkie and a prostitute, or I could die clean and sober. I decided that maybe I had lived most of my life a junkie and a prostitute, but I didn’t have to die as one. So, I decided that I had to clean up my life and go into Detox." (Do you hear that Gospel story about the Samaritan Woman at the Well in John 4:7-26?)

"It was in Detox that I had my second important realization: My Nana hadn’t lied to me. A promise that you make before God lasts forever. Sometimes, life changes. Sometimes, for whatever reason, you can no longer keep the promise you made. Sometimes, people die. Sometimes, even love dies. Sometimes we kill it, and some times we abuse it and sometimes, it even dies a natural death.  But, a promise still stays in God’s heart forever. And, that’s where my promise to take one day at a time and stay clean and sober is: right in the heart of God."

Bertie only had two more years of life, but she made good on her promise not to die a junkie or a prostitute. In the three years of sobriety she had created, she did more good than many people are able to achieve in 50 or 60 years of life. She was a tireless advocate and activist, making real changes in the laws governing health care for the poor and the homeless.

Bertie only had two more years of life, but she made good on her promise not to die a junkie or a prostitute. In the three years of sobriety she had created, she did more good than many people are able to achieve in 50 or 60 years of life.

Bertie was a popular speaker on the AIDS Circuit — raising awareness about the disease and teaching high school and junior high school kids about early intervention and prevention. God only knows how many lives she saved by putting her life out there for everyone else to see and learn. ("No greater love," said Jesus, "is there than the one who lays down their life for a friend.") She was even invited to the Senior Prom by her boyfriend. Several of the guys at the clinic got together and got her a gown and shoes and even rented a tux for her boyfriend and a limousine to drive them both.

I have no authority to make this assertion, other than the authority that comes from my firm belief in a God of Unconditional Love — a God who honors and keeps promises. I know this much to be true: When Bertie died at the tender age 24, I am quite certain that she died healed, restored and forgiven. Further, I am convinced that the angels tenderly carried her to heaven, where she lives now in the very heart of God, right in the midst of glory of the promise she made and the one her Grandmother made before her. Although her life may have been broken, those promises never were.

Bertie was one of the many people with AIDS from whom I have learned the Gospel in ways I never learned in seminary. My life has been changed and transformed by what I have learned from many courageous people who live until they die with AIDS.

Jesus taught: "What God has joined together no one can put asunder."  And, "What is bound on earth is bound in heaven." Bertie taught: "A promise made before God lives in God’s heart forever."

The Rev. Canon Elizabeth Kaeton is a regular contributor to A Globe of Witnesses. Her monthly column is Another Word for Justice. Elizabeth can be emailed at EMKaeton@aol.com

Related Links:
See Elizabeth’s article, Exercising Tolerance: A Protection from Our Deepest Fears? in this month’s issue of The Witness magazine, "Embracing Religious Pluralism"