I find myself in the fascinating and compelling position of working hard to help two men who live only a few feet from one another but who could hardly be more different. They are each at one side of one of the great divides tearing at our country – the assault on gay men and women by religious fundamentalists who believe any kind of homosexuality is a sin worthy of damnation.

Oddly enough, I am close to both of them, looking for ways to help each of them. Art is a fundamentalist evangelical most recently from Montana. Bill is a former actor and a gay man recovering from a severe stroke. Both men are in their 80’s.

Art things Bill’s soul is in peril, Bill is seeking to connect with his community and working hard to heal.

The Army of Good, great hearts all, balked at contributing money to Art, for reasons I completely understand. I was able to get him a new reclining chair, an air conditioner, a CD player and a big boxed set of the Bible on audio discs.

I am working to re-connect him with his family, from whom he has been long estranged.

We got Bill an air conditioner also, and have asked people from his community to write him, which they are. He is getting some of the most wonderful letters.

People are also writing Art, and they have lifted his lonely spirits. Both men feel isolated from their communities, I am trying to help each one connect in their own way.

This week, a dozen people sent small contributions to help Art. “He is a human being, he needs help even if I find him offensive,” wrote a gay woman from Minneapolis. I feel the same way. It’s not for me to judge or argue, not in an assisted care facility where people live on the very edge of life.

Yesterday, I went to the Mansion to give Art important news. I made contact with his son, who works in Montana and Wyoming, and asked if he would be comfortable calling his father. We had two different conversations, both went well.

I told Art I had spoken to his son, and I can’t promise anything, but his son told me he would call his father, he wanted to speak with him. Art has alienated almost everyone in  his former life, his religious views are so intense and sometimes extreme.

It is a great creative and spiritual challenge for me to get close to both of these men and to figure out the very different ways in which I might help them.

When I told Art this news, he began to cry and couldn’t talk for a minute. “God is here,” he said, “he is here with me, he must be.”

I told him i couldn’t speak for God, but I am here, and would stay with him and perhaps we could help his son to come and visit him here in upstate New York. Art was overcome, he closed his eyes, I think he was praying.

Today I am going to see both of these men again, my friend Sandy, an evangelical of softer cloth than Art, is coming to join us. I  hope his son calls, I will keep gently trying to persuade him, Art says he has good reason not to call. But he hopes and prays that he does.

I believe he will call. He has talked to me twice, and I think he knows I will not pester him, but neither will I go away. And I strongly believe he wants to hear his father’s voice.

I am a student, I think, and both of these men are unconscious teachers. They teach me about listening, compassion and the great joy of doing good rather than living in fear and anger.

If you seek to be empathetic and compassionate, it makes no sense to me to only be compassionate to people you like and agree with. That is something other than empathy, which I take to be the highest human calling.

And the curious thing about it, is the more I see and speak with both of these men, both quite different from me, the more I care about each one.