Lenny Duncan - United States of Grace: A Memoir of Homelessness, Addiction, Incarceration, and Hope

Praise for United States of Grace

In this passionate memoir, Lutheran pastor and social justice advocate, Lenny Duncan shares their unconventional life journey in order to illustrate the beauty and horror of life in the United States... They are fierce in both their criticism of Americas institutions and their love for its people. This lyrical testament to life as a blind date with mercy will challenge and inspire.

Publishers Weekly, starred review

United States of Grace traces a remarkable and completely relatable life. From the throes of addiction to the joy of a Grateful Dead show, in this honest, unflinching look at their own life Lenny Duncan tells their personal story of love, triumph, failure, and pain while ultimately leaving the reader with an immense sense of hope.

Leslie Mac, community organizer and digital strategist

Lenny Duncan weaves together history and memoir in a book rooted in journeys across the beautiful and bruising landscape of the United States, where the pointed stare of a Black mama at the Greyhound station and a voice whispering sobriety at a Grateful Dead show become ciphers of ordinary grace. In this astounding book that is both fierce and generous, jagged and hopeful, Duncan makes space for the thorny topography of addiction, freedom, sexuality, despair, and race, refusing to flatten the path for our comfort. Instead, they invite us to walk with them, to see what they see, to inhabit the adventure and heartbreak of a Black life in a country built for Black destruction. A book written with tenderness and joy, United States of Grace points us toward prophetic signposts of what is possible for America, if we have the courage to imagine it together.

Melissa Florer-Bixler, author of Fire by Night

Lenny Duncans tale of escape from the miserable lot that life dealt them is reminiscent of Claude Browns Manchild in the Promised Landpowerful and beautifully toldbut with a twist: Duncans triumph comes through an encounter with redemption. I can hardly imagine a more profound story of salvation. You will be inspired by Duncans strength but also jolted by their anger that the odds are so heavily stacked against all who are trapped by oppression and injustice. This is the work of a truly gifted writer.

Tom Gjelten, Religion Correspondent, NPR News

Lenny Duncans prose has the momentum and pull of a powerful river; this alone would carry both the beauty and pain of the story theyre here to tell. But it is the authors insight, candor, and wisdom that set United States of Grace apart. Simply put, Lenny Duncan is telling the truth; wed best take heed.

Marya Hornbacher, New York Times bestselling author of Madness

A next iteration of church in America is blooming. It is Black and queer, and it shows us all how to love as Jesus loved. The really good news here is that this church knows how to embrace us all, without exception. Lenny Duncan privileges their readers with up-close glimpses of what this radically hospitable community feels like, and how it holds potential to reshape the civic life that continues to be broken by our nations foundational sin of enslavement. Allow Lenny Duncan to be your gentle guide. They may take you someplace you did not plan to go.

Dori Baker, senior fellow at the Forum for Theological Exploration and co-author of Another Way

Lenny Duncan

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

UNITED STATES OF GRACE

A Memoir of Homelessness, Addiction, Incarceration, and Hope

Copyright 2022 Lenny Duncan. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Paperback edition published in 2022. This book was originally published in a hardcover edition 2021.

Cover design: LoveArts; 1517 Media

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8306-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-6407-7

To my daughter, Jenna. Bear, your sacred story will burn down empires someday.

Whenever I tell my storyhow I grew up in West Philadelphia, left home at the age of thirteen, lived on the streets doing sex work and dealing drugs, got my GED in prison, and somehow wound up a preacherI describe my life as a trajectory of grace. In fact, I think grace runs through the ley lines and county borders that litter the landscape of this country, churning through small towns and major cities. Our lives are a blind date with mercy, but we have to pay attention to see this grace revealed. The search for grace seems like a contradiction, to be very honest with you. How do you find a thing, a force, a powerful river of love whose currents sweep us away, usually from behind? But grace can be found, and we can wrap our arms around it and ride it to destinations unclear, unknown, and lovely. Thats what this book is about, tracking this path of grace, stalking it down the highways that are crisscrossing this country like veins pumping the lifeblood of this nation throughout its holy, broken, and often misunderstood body.

An old Buddhist proverb describes a group of blind men who come upon an elephant for the first time. They heard that a strange animal called an elephant had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape or form. Out of curiosity, they said, We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable. So they sought it out, and when they found it, they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, This being is like a thick snake. To another one, whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said the elephant was a pillar, like a tree trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant was a wall. Another who felt its tail described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk and stated the elephant was hard, smooth, and like a spear.

Trying to capture the full beauty and majesty of the United States of America is like this proverb. How do I hold in tension the theft of the Rockies from Indigenous peoples with the beauty of the rising dawn over the Front Range of Colorado? How do I walk through the green rolling fields of North Carolina and not think about my great-great-great-great-grandfather and how he bled in those same fields, how the sweat of his brow is the very foundation of that state? How do I stand in New York City, walk the busy sidewalks of Manhattan, swept up in the awe of the great big things we are capable of, and ignore the NYCHA housing that is crammed next to the monuments to end-stage capitalism? Thats the problem when we talk about America. We are grabbing the trunk and saying this feels like systemic racism, or grabbing the tail and saying this feels safe and like home, or rubbing the ear and saying this feels smooth and just. None of us, including our leaders, has a full picture. Im certainly not claiming to have a full picture. But I have seen this countrys highways and byways up close and personal. I have seen more of it than almost everyone I know. Im going to tell you a secret that most people who know me or have read my previous work would never guess:

Im in love with this country.

I mean in a passionate, up-all-night-texting love affair. Kissing-when-no-one-is-looking-because-it-feels-so-new love. Like sweaty-palm-hand-holding-down-the-streets-of-Brooklyn kind of love. I mean singing-love-songs-while-cracking-open-the-fire-hydrant-for-the-kids-down-the-street kind of love.