Reverend Jan Madsen, Wheat Ridge, Colorado

Reverend Jan, Shannon’s Hope, Wheat Ridge, CO

Reverend Janice Madsen invited me to meet and interview with her in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, a suburb community outside of Denver. Reverend Jan – as she is called by most people – is running a christian maternity home for pregnant women or mothers who have predominately been homeless or have recently been incarcerated. The home is called Shannon’s Hope and has been in operation under different leadership mantles for the past forty years. Initially, Revered Jan agreed to come and help with Shannon’s Hope through leading bible study classes with the women but assumed running the daily operation of the home with its founder, Leslie Pottebaum.

When I arrived, I was greeted warmly by Reverend Jan and taken on a tour of the facility. Reverend Jan was focused on me and our upcoming interview but she was also focused on every conversation and flow of women coming in and out of the home. Conversations with every woman we passed with residents and staff, addressing needs, smoothing interactions, bouncing babies, making introductions, and clarifying tasks; all of this Reverend Jan facilitated while talking to me and showing me the space. A multitasker of the highest order.

Reverend Jan was preoccupied at one point with the fact that one of the young residents had left in the middle of the night. Left out of one of the back windows taking the twin bed mattress she had been sleeping on with her. Reverend Jan saw the humor, the pathos, and experienced the practical frustration of losing the mattress. Reverend Jan referred back to this young woman later on when we were in the actual interview process. The woman had called her right after jumping out the back window begging her not to hate her for leaving and stealing the mattress. Reverend Jan’s response was one of compassion and genuine love, explaining that of course she didn’t hate the woman or was angry with her, she just wept that the young woman wasn’t ready to start healing. Reverend Jan explained her mission statement of building faith, life skills, and self love into the desperate women and their children that she housed, and that she had the deepest compassion for the ones who were not ready to heal and that they would always have a place to come back to when and if they were ready. Reverend Jan then laughed, and bemoaned the loss of the bed, good mattresses for her women were always hard to come by.

Reverend Jan states that her God directed her to come back out of retirement by the shore of Coos Bay, OR where she was content with living in her RV and beach combing, and return to the Denver area. Reverend Jan had spent all her life as a christian crusader for the most desperate, the most in need in her community and she was specifically called back to Shannon’s Hope through her conversations with her God. Reverend Jan’s God is very specific and is her daily sounding board, touchstone, confidant, best friend. Reverend Jan is a self-described, “holy roller, evangelical ordained reverend of the christian faith” and her God is her one true light. Every interaction that Reverend Jan has is in tandem with her God by her side.

Please enjoy Reverend Jan’s full length interview by clicking here: https://vimeo.com/291582894

The thing of it is, I really like Reverend Jan and I like her relationship with her God. Reverend Jan has a kindness and acceptance in her world view at that same time that she has her firm belief in the literal and therefor, rigid adherence to the scriptures and laws of her faith. She is compassionate and intelligent and deeply connected with the mysticism of her experience with the divine. She has devoted her life to be in service of others, to be in service to the weakest, most vulnerable individuals that exists in our society. Reverend Jan has been an adoption advocate, worked for years with the homeless population in Denver, her husband and her worked with the foster care system and also adopted children from that system, and then in these past years, running Shannon’s Hope and being an advocate for at risk women and their children. Reverend Jan is a true crusader for the poor and helpless and she leads with the banner of her God and Jesus Christ.

I am also fascinated with how Reverend Jan straddles true compassion and the rigid code of conduct mandated by her chosen religion, evangelicalism. In speaking to me, Reverend Jan was across the board open, emotionally available, kind, accepting of others in their love for a god or not, nonjudgemental, articulate in her wisdom. There were also hints in our conversation of her conservative belief system; women and men created by her God for exclusive partnership, contending that the bible is fact and inviting anyone to come and disprove its authenticity in debate. I didn’t question Reverend Jan specifically about abortion counseling, but i believe I can safely say that after looking at the Shannon Hope website and knowing a bit about the born again christian faith that she is a minister in, that there is no counsel and information given to the women in the safe house about abortion options when finding oneself poor, alone, desperate, and then suddenly pregnant.

Another aspect of Reverend Jan I find intriguing is her relationship with one of her children, Merhia Wiese who I interviewed for this project as well and who was the facilitator of interviewing her mother. If you read and view Merhia’s interview, you will know immediately how different these two are from each other ideologically. Merhia is a leftist, grown up pink haired punk rocker who works for the corporate artist collective Meow Wolf, and has three kids, one of which identifies as non-binary. Reverend Jan is a evangelical minister that supports Trump and the far right and is a compassionate crusader for the hopeless and helpless people in our society that very few wish to assist. A fascinating, dynamic duo of mother and daughter that mirror so many aspects of what we are battling out as an American society with such fury right now.

But here’s another thing, these two are not furiously battling it out, they love each other and at the end of the day, they accept each other despite and I’d say, because of their great differences. I think at one point and time there was a lot more divisiveness in their relationship, but at this point, Reverend Jan and Merhia bicker and i don’t think, bite when they disagree. Age is part of the acceptance of their core disagreements, Merhia in her mid forties, Reverend Jan in her mid seventies; mellowness over time. They are mother and daughter, blood being the connector right? Here’s another fascinating fact on these two – Merhia is adopted, she is one of those most abused in our society that Reverend Jan adopted and raised in her home. At one point, Reverend Jan was on a mission to create a family out the most severely traumatized kids in the foster care system she could find, Merhia was one of them and alternately flourished and did not and became the amazing woman she is today under the care of Reverend Jan. These two are mother and daughter, fiercely bonded in ways many mothers and daughters could never imagine. So its not blood that makes a person accept another no matter what, its true, unconditional love, caring and compassion. Just like Reverend Jan said when she was describing sanctuary – and this is why I like Reverend Jan as much as I do, that she gets that about the power of Love.

Mothers and daughters. The way that that intimate duo takes off and puts on masks in rapid succession when they interact. A myriad of psychic reflections that highlight and contradict. The mystery and magic that binds them together, The profound love and powerful hate. Expectations and disappointments. Shadows of ego and externalizing of of self. Self sacrifice and divine devotion. Joy and laughter in the face of so much strange. Mother and daughter are the same, they are not the same. All obvious and all inexplicable. its a bond for always, It lives beyond birth and death. You do not need to give birth to a child to be its forever mother. You do not need to be alive to be always be the first voice in each others head.

There is another thing that fascinates me about Reverend Jan, its a thing that fascinates me about every woman. Its how women so often identify with themselves in connection to another or something external; mother, partner, career. Its rare that a woman connects and identifies with herself primarily and then secondary how she connects with others. This is gender training, female=others first, male=self first. This is shifting in our country and worldwide and with that shift in gender norms, and definition, there is a great groan and resistance as that heavy societal weight is finally moving and becoming fluid. Reverend Jan shared a story of her own reckoning with self that didn’t occur until she was in her forties and fifties, its beautiful and simple; its when Reverend Jan chose her own favorite colors. She shares it here in this clip:

I wrote these words in after my first impression of Reverend Jan: deep faith/bedrock, strong and intimate relationship with her God, traditional, loving, compassionate, fighter, strong, stubborn, funny, full of laughter, thoughtful, aware, caretaker, zealot, crusader dedicated, intelligent, bossy, connector, literal, aware of paradox and mystery.

This is Revered Jan through my eyes and as a result of our experience together.