Patrick Hidalgo’s path of downward mobility
My dear friend Patrick Hidalgo, passed away this past week, just hours after we concluded a small group faith sharing reflection in his apartment. His unexpected passing at age 41, from what seems to have been heart failure, shocked us all and left family and friends in deep mourning. This piece in the Miami Herald sheds light on what a remarkable human being he was as an organizer, activist, appointee in the Obama administration, and leader. Amidst sorrow and mourning these past days, I jotted a few reflections on the blessing it was to accompany him spiritually in recent years, and the challenges he left us with to live lives of radical love and compassion.
Since his mother’s passing a year and a half ago, Patrick had deepened his spiritual journey. He had lived most of the past couple decades between worlds, oscillating between spheres of power and grassroots movements. In recent years, he had become less afraid of living a life of downward mobility, a term described in Dean Brackley’s, The Call to Discernment during Trouble Times, the book Patrick was reading during his final weeks.
A month ago, Patrick and I were working outside of a cafe in Wynwood when a homeless Haitian immigrant approached us selling bracelets made out of old forks and spoons he apparently found on the streets. Patrick bought a bracelet and some food for the guy, and then invited him to sit with us to discuss life. He had been stressed preparing a funding pitch he would present that evening to donors to support his organization, the Miami Freedom Project, but unhesitatingly created the time to listen to this man’s story, acknowledge his dignity, and laugh with him.
This was one example of how Patrick was focussing less on the shiny things of the world, and living more radically into ideals he had embraced his whole life. His days at Harvard, MIT, the Obama administration were impactful, but his inspiration these past years sprung from Mirabai Starr, St. Francis of Assisi, Richard Rohr, his work in communities, his family, and building the Miami Freedom Project and Economy of Francesco movement.
Patrick had grounded himself in reality, and in radical love. He was tired of holding back about his political/economic views as a progressive Cuban American in Miami, and was vociferous about the need for radical economic reform to overcome harrowing inequality in the US. I was deeply inspired by his renunciation of shiny things in the world and commitment to the “harder thing, to actually live out his faith and live out radical love” as he shared in our reflection group, just hours before he passed away.
Six weeks ago Patrick and I sat on the balcony of his apartment in South Beach and reflected in silence over the below passage from GK Chesterton’s biography of St. Francis of Assisi. A few nights ago, hours before Patrick passed away, a small group of us gathered to reflect on this passage again, and he mentioned that this passage had ‘shaken his world’:
“If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasize the idea of dependence.. it would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hung the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way around. …he who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth; we might almost say the cold truth. He who has seen the vision of their city upside-down has seen it the right way up.”
Patrick saw and called out unsustainable political and economic structures. He peered through a lens that enabled him to see the world upside-down, and was transforming reality into the right way up.
Reflecting aloud just hours before his passing, Patrick articulated an analogy of humans being like little metal pins and God being an overwhelming magnet. He shared something along the lines of this: We are all in our lives constantly being drawn towards that magnet, sometimes we are lucky and we experience hints of that magnetic force during our days on earth, but eventually each of us are drawn by that force and fully enveloped into God’s love as we cling like pins to an overwhelmingly powerful magnet.
Patrick had become willing to be enveloped in that love during his time on earth. The shiny things had lost their shininess and radical love for marginalized folks was winning. May his life be an inspiration for us to not hold back from speaking difficult truths and living lives of radical love and compassion.
