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Breaking the Cycle

The remarkable love story of activist and poet Janice Mirikitani and revolutionary preacher Cecil Williams.

By Dave Bunnell

Monday, August 04, 2008

Can you eat barbecue and sushi at the same meal? If you want to be friends with Reverend Cecil Williams and his wife, Janice Mirikitani, you'd better learn. At least that was my experience the first few times I went to their house for after-church brunch, when the ribs would be piled up right next to the sashimi.

To me, this culinary juxtaposition is symbolic of the powerful co-existence of the flamboyant African-American preacher and the multi-talented Japanese-American poet. Most of what has been written about Jan and Cecil (if you're in the know, her name comes first) has focused on their individual achievements and of course, Glide Church, the institution they've built together. Their mission is simply to end the circle of poverty. No two people have so relentlessly and lovingly pursued such a lofty goal—Glide Church today serves over one million free meals a year and provides an array of programs including housing, health care, counseling, and job training for the "poor folk" of San Francisco, California. Recognized worldwide, Glide and Cecil were featured in Will Smith's 2006 hit movie, The Pursuit of Happyness.

I recently sat down with the charismatic duo in Cecil's eclectic but inspiring office where he keeps African artwork alongside portraits of himself and Jan with celebrities and politicians—people like Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, and Nelson Mandela. The interview focused on their relationship with each other. I wanted to know what makes them tick (and keep on ticking) as a couple. What follows is their remarkable story.

Jan met Cecil in the mid-1960s when she first volunteered at Glide Church—a once sedate, white, middle-class, Methodist church in downtown San Francisco that Cecil had already famously transformed into a hippy radical haven for revolutionaries, drug dealers, homosexuals, prostitutes, and whomever else wanted to attend a church that wouldn't "turn its head away" and would instead empower all those who came into its path. It was a church without hymnals and without a cross—items Cecil removed and won't allow back.

Shy and very reserved as a young woman, Jan was filling in as the church's office secretary when a large, imposing black man stood in front of her. She was startled and could hardly make eye contact.

"Don't you know who I am?" he demanded.

Unable to speak, she simply shook her head.

It was Cecil, of course, and Jan remembers thinking to herself, "Hell, I don't know who I am."

Not long after this introduction, Cecil actually married Jan to her first husband in 1966. A year later she had a daughter. (In 1968, Jan's work at Glide became full time and has been so ever since.)

It wasn't until 1980, after both Jan and Cecil had divorced their first mates, that they became a couple.

"We had some trepidation about this," Cecil recalls. "We lived together for two years before we were married."

"Yeah," Jan chimes in. "He announced to the whole congregation that we were going to live together."

"How did they react to this?" I ask both of them.

"They cheered and applauded," recalls Jan. "It was better for them to hear it from us than to find out later through gossip."

"But some of the ‘church mothers' didn't approve," Cecil remembers.

"They came up to me and said, ‘Are you sure you don't want to get married before you move in with him?'" Jan says.

By the time they married on New Year's Day, 1982, Cecil had made a national impact, and Glide was feeding and providing services to thousands of poor and homeless people. Cecil's fame had accelerated after the February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst kidnapping, when he served as the go-between for the Symbionese Liberation Army [SLA] kidnappers, the FBI, and Hearst's father, Randolph Hearst. During the incident Cecil managed a $2 million food giveaway program which the SLA demanded from Hearst.

The rollicking Sunday services at Glide, featuring a gospel choir backed up by a jazz band, and Cecil's "liberation sermons" calling for unconditional love and acceptance of all people of all faiths, backgrounds, nationalities, and sexual orientation struck a chord with the times. Celebrities such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Bill Cosby, Angela Davis, and then-mayor Dianne Feinstein could be seen sitting in the pews next to prostitutes and drug addicts.

"We had a big wedding. It took three guys [to] marry us," Jan remembers.

"There was a rabbi, a minister from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and our own associate pastor, plus Jan had a whole dance group and I brought in a band," Cecil adds.

"Cecil wore a loud fuchsia shirt and white suit and upstaged the bride." Jan laughs.

"Are you as attracted to each other now as much as then?" I ask.

"It's a new thing altogether," Cecil answers. "We have experienced some things, felt some things, gone through changes, and become committed to each other in ways we couldn't have know about then. The most important thing was when I decided Jan was equal, we were mutual."

"It took me about two decades," he adds, with a wink.

"I'm so shocked it took you so long," Jan says. "Love only grows if you change and if you are mutual; otherwise, it is a master/slave relationship."

"I had a crush on Cecil when I heard him sing," she continues. "I fell in love with his hands, and when he made a choice to be a liberation minister and not people's access to God I knew I wanted to spend my life with him. And then when he said it doesn't have to be a Christian god, that's when I knew I was in love with him."

"Jan is not an easy person to be around," Cecil adds. "She's always getting into something. It just keeps growing and growing. I've had to work hard to find my way with Jan, but it's been a good ride—lots of fun."

"Are you talking about a ride or a journey?" Jan laughs. "Being with Cecil is sometimes like walking into a room and his light is so bright you get invisible. If I felt invisible all the time I would be pissed off at him. I've had to grow my own place. My poetry has saved my life, given me a voice."

Jan's epiphanic moment came not long after their wedding when Cecil persuaded her to "tell her story" to the congregation during one of the Sunday celebrations. For the first time, she told the Glide people how she was born in a dingy barrack at an internment camp in Arkansas. How her family had been forcibly evicted from their Stockton, California farm, and how before being shipped off they lived in a horse stall. One of Jan's frustrations was that, except for her testimony before the 1980 Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, her mother refused to talk about the camps. But, Jan continues, this was minor compared to her most severe childhood trauma—her uncles and family friends sexually abused her from the time she was 5 years old until she was 16.

"I was drowning in my shame, but once I finished, 50 people lined up to tell their stories. We learned that 99 percent of the women in dire poverty had been the victim of incest or abuse," Jan says.

"It turned out to be the beginning of our recovery program as well as the beginning of my recovery, too," she recalls. "I thought I'd be a pariah, but this amazing place welcomes the story and makes you live in the moment."

The Glide recovery program, with its revamped 12-steps, became a model for the entire country during the crack cocaine epidemic. Instead of "admit you are powerless," the Glide program tells you to "take your power."

"We discovered addiction was persistent in our community," Cecil says. "All of us began to feel a sense of recovery."

"As a woman you think the man has to be in charge, but Glide has grown over the past 44 years because we learned to be a team. We were the first Glide team, and now there are others," Jan observes. "Cecil has this tremendous vision and passion, an ability to get people together. And he has an undying commitment to the poor—enormous love."

"My strengths: I knit, sow, create. You know it is the woman's tendency to follow up, write the checks. I pretty much did that, but I learned to have my own vision about programs and we became equally visionary about how poverty should be tackled. It takes a holistic approach to break the cycle of poverty," Jan says.

Cecil adds, "We finally worked it out where I don't have to [be] the one all the time. It has been a relief to me."

"Jan said years ago she was going to take her hand from her mouth, and it has been amazing. She's made her place because she wanted to, and I'm proud of her. Jan's like that song, ‘Natural Woman.' Jan empowers women around her," Cecil says.

I ask Jan and Cecil what they would do if the other one died. "If Jan died, I would get a dog house and move into it. I wouldn't be able to move," Cecil says. "She has been my life."

"And he's been my best friend," Jan answers. "It would be difficult for me to have a life without him, but I'd do it because he would want me to continue, continue the cause."

"That's right," Cecil says.

"I don't know how I'd feel about another woman," Jan laughs.

"What about your legacy?" I ask the two of them.

Jan answers. "We would like something in place to keep our history, we want to pass it on. The San Francisco Library has asked for the Glide Archive, and we're putting that together. Plus we're writing a book."

Jan continues. "But most importantly, we would not want the poor to be forgotten. Jan, Cecil, and Glide will always be reaching out to the poor. Cecil is engaged in building affordable housing so poor people can continue to live in San Francisco and not be driven out by gentrification. They are just finishing a 14-story building one block from the church. Another eight-story building will be started next month."

"And what about your health?" I ask them.

"Cecil has diabetes, but he's been making progress with diet and exercise. He's healthier now since we cut out the sugar and the salt. We both go to the gym, and I ride a bike and jog," Jan says.

"We cut out food!" Cecil protests.

And Jan adds, "Is life worth living without soy sauce and gravy?

To Learn More about Glide and its programs, click here.

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