February 2006 - Father Terry Brennan

He walked away from a lucrative career as a lawyer.

And then, Father Terry Brennan, kept on walking. When he became the mission priest at St. John the Baptist Church in San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico, he joined the Diocese of Santa Fe's "Ecumenical Walk" to wrest back the tough streets where the trade in crudely produced "black tar" heroin and cocaine was brisk and more and more young people were being draw to gang life.

For the city's unsavory characters, he might be an unwelcome presence. But for the faithful families that take up the ranks behind him, he is a hero.

"It's been a history of survival out here -- In the climate, in the environment, the dryness, and in the battles between the people who have lived here," Father Brennan said. "We've flown the flag of Spain, of Mexico, of the Confederate states, the territorial flag and then statehood,"

On his walk, those who join with him know that they are doing something significant - and essential. They are determined not to let their neighborhood slip away into faithless, family-demolishing vice. And they are determined to practice what Father Brennan preaches: pride, community spirit, organization, and care for one another.

During one of his Ecumenical Walks, Father Brennan's group collected 90 used syringes that had washed up in the murky ditches of the town. He knows about the lure that drugs can have for the dispossessed - and this visual proof of a stuffed bag of syringes is disheartening, but with hopeful, symbolic undertones. Clean it up literally, and then get at the source. That's why he's working hard in this historic Indian meeting ground, where once its people were so powerful that only an O'ke native could declare war for the Pueblo Indians.

To take a stand.in his new war on drugs and poverty, Father Brennan not only works tirelessly to raise awareness of the societal ills of drugs, but he is rolling up his sleeves to do something to keep young people from being drawn to lives of drug experimentation and the curious, misguided sense of "belonging" that gangs offer.

On the site of an abandoned orchard and vineyard, he has begun developing a miniature golf course and a basketball court. With the right luck and the grace of God, Father Brennan will give youngsters and adolescents some positive activities (and perhaps share a little about the Gospel with them while he's at it . . . ). The popular priest is right at home in this new kind of Vineyard of the Lord, where so much is at stake.

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