By Mike Soika

I gasped when I wiped the grime from the stained-glass window and saw my namesake – St. Michael depicted on it.  I stood there, dirty rag in hand and paused. I instinctively knew I had been called to this moment.  What was I supposed to learn?  What was I supposed to think?  All I really knew was that – at this instant – I felt connected to the Spirit in a way that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.  I wept silently.

I suppose this story began several years before when I was going through a nasty divorce and found solace in returning to the Catholic church.  I began attending Mass at a prominent Catholic church in a white, middle-class community and became good friends with an associate pastor there – Father Tom – who was my age and who took it upon himself to be present in my time of great need. 

I was working at a job I hated but which created stability in my life – something the divorce judges took seriously.  Did I say the divorce was nasty?  At one point a divorce judge ruled: “He pays the bills.  She gets custody of the child.”  So, I had to pay the maxed-out credit card bills from a marriage that was a wreck.  I had to pay 17% of my gross wages to child support. I was so down and so broke that I walked into the bank that held my car loan and handed the keys to a bank agent and said, “take the car.  I can’t make the payments.”   The agent looked at me quietly and said, “I think I can help you.”  And she did.  I lost the car, but she saved me from defaulting on a loan and ruining my credit.

 I had gone back to divorce court seven times; each instant trying to expand the amount of time I could spend with my then six-year-old daughter.  Eventually, my daughter got to stay with me 50% of the time, but her mother retained legal custody.  My attorney said this was a good deal, and I should be happy about how everything turned out.

Father Tom requested transfer from the wealthy white parish to a struggling inner-city church.  This was his calling, he said.  Of course I followed him.  He was facing a massive challenge, and I wanted to help him in the same way that he helped me.  The congregation was tiny – less than 200 people – including all the children.  The church had a vacant convent, a struggling school, a large rectory, in addition to a large sanctuary and church hall, all of which had to be maintained, and heated in the winter.  The gas bill in January alone was $10,000, which would be about $29,000 today.

Somewhere in the mix of all these changes I got my dream job.  I was hired by the Catholic Archdiocese and became their voice for social justice, leading organizing drives across the state on issues I cared about such as welfare reform, childcare, healthcare, economic justice, and more.

Father Tom and his tiny inner-city church attracted a core of social justice types like me.  We forged friendships that have lasted nearly 40 years and have witnessed the births of our children and the deaths of some of our spouses.  We have a cherished photo of our daughter and our friend’s daughter – both a few months apart in age – and both in bouncy chairs that say, “Made in Wisconsin.”  Now, our children have children.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Crack Cocaine took hold in the neighborhood surrounding the church and the decline was as rapid as it was devastating. Blocks that looked stable in the spring were in despair before winter.  I distinctly remember feeling as if the neighborhood decline was increasing like a movie in fast-forward.

Father Tom challenged our congregation, asking: what is our response to the decline of our community?  We looked around and figured that there was a fairly decent community organization working in the area but that there was a dire need for jobs and neighborhood stability.  So, we set an audacious goal: to start a non-profit development corporation that would create businesses we owned and hire neighborhood residents at wages and benefits to support a family.

I was working for the archdiocese at the time and was given a lot of flexibility.  I took the lead in raising the funds to start the Lisbon Avenue Neighborhood Development Corporation (LAND).  It wasn’t too difficult to raise the money.  No one had a good handle on how to combat the wreckage wrought by crack in Milwaukee.  A Local alderman was threatening violence if the broader community didn’t address the devastation of the inner city.  So, local foundations and funding sources seemed eager to fund a church sponsored development corporation that was spearheaded by some Catholic do-gooders.

With the start-up funds in hand, we set out to hire an Executive Director.  After three rounds of advertising for the position and interviewing several candidates, we didn’t think we had the right person.  At that point, Father Tom looked at me and said, “Perhaps Mike, we haven’t found the right person because this is your calling.  You are the right person.  Maybe you have to take this job.”   I didn’t want to.  As I said, I loved my job at the archdiocese, but in my heart, I knew Father Tom was right. 

Creating LAND was hard work but it did feel more like a calling.  Ultimately, we created a construction company and a lead paint abatement company with which we rehabbed 100 units of affordable housing, and we helped 25 women start their own in-home day care operations. We started a community center out of the church complex and eventually built a new health clinic in the community.

I’ll get to how I believe the St. Michael-stained glass window called me, but first it is important to talk about the creation of the health center.  Because, you see, it was the St. Michael window that allowed me to believe I could raise the $1.2 Million dollars needed to build the health center.

I was driving down Lisbon Avenue as I had done hundreds of times before.  I happened to glance at the vacant Park Electric building, an abandoned two-story stone building that used to sell lighting and furnishings.  As I glanced at the Park Electric – a voice in my head said, “that looks like a health center.”  I didn’t think much of it at the time. But I couldn’t shake the idea of a health center there.  It was like a song that kept looping around to play and repeat.  I knew through our surveys and talks with neighborhood residents that no one actually articulated that we needed a health center.  But single moms would often complain that it was a two-bus ride journey to the nearest hospital to seek relief for their sick children.  

That’s when St. Michael came into my life. 

Two semi-retired School Sisters of Notre Dame nuns housed a ministry within our building complex to teach neighborhood kids how to read.  One morning when I arrived at work, the nuns said they thought someone had broken into the basement and could I check it out.

The 15 X 15-foot basement was nothing special.  The foundation was made from rock face block, which was popular before cinder blocks became widespread. It had two incandescent light bulbs for illumination, and it had four-foot-high white painted wooden shelving along three walls.  On the shelves were dusty boxes holding the history from a time long past when the church needed three masses on Sunday to accommodate the large congregation. 

The only thing I thought was amiss in the basement were the brightly colored “flyer” papers strewn about on the floor.  The boxes weren’t opened, which would be the case if someone was rustling through them seeking treasure.  Nothing was upset or overturned.  Everything seemed normal, except for the flyers on the ground, which I picked up to bring upstairs.

As I was taking one last look around, I saw something nestled between the shelving and the stone basement wall.  I had been in this basement at least a dozen times and never noticed this before and so I walked over to investigate.  As I slid the object out, I could tell it was a piece of stained glass about four feet tall.  It was covered in dirt and grime, and I couldn’t tell what it portrayed, so I carried it upstairs to have a better look.

I carefully laid the stained glass on a table and then found some rags to begin cleaning off the grime.  The first word I saw was Michael.  And as I cleaned further, I uncovered the face of an angel surrounded by a halo with the words St. Michael written within.

I stopped and closed my eyes to take in the moment.  To be honest, I was a little bit afraid.  Afterall, this window of St. Michael called me to it, as if it wanted to be found and to be found by me.  It’s not that I felt anointed, but I certainly felt called.  But called to what?

As I stood there with my eyes closed and tears running down my face, I understood.  The health center.  I’m going to build a health center, with St. Michael at my side to help.  Now I was on a mission.

We recruited a health care provider with the promise that we would build a health center for them.  They said yes on a handshake and are still operating in the same location today – but in a completely new and modernized facility.

Don’t get me wrong, raising the funds and building the health center wasn’t easy.  Funding sources backed away, timelines got extended, enthusiasm waned. Problems with the elevator installation and unexpected deterioration with the encasement of the upstairs windows both required more dollars to be raised….and the list goes on.  While we had problems – I learned to not stress about them.  I remember telling friends that building the health center felt like I was on the back of a runaway stallion and I was just – barely – hanging on for the ride.  Afterall, the idea of building a health center was a directive given to me, as was the powerful symbol of St. Michael – a guardian to help along the way.