Oasis - About Us
Jim Toy's Bio - Page 3
for the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan in 1987. He has served since 1987 as a certified
Pre- and Post-Test HIV/AIDS Counselor and as a support-group facilitator and volunteer
trainer for HARC. He is a founding member of the City of Ann Arbor HIV/AIDS Task Force
and of two four-county HIV/AIDS prevention and resource-provision groups.
His archives are housed in the James Toy Collection at the University of Michigan's
Bentley Historical Library. He is included in the Profiles Gallery of the LGBT Religious
Archives Network (LGBT-RAN).
In Jim's work as a therapist, counselor, trainer, facilitator, educator, and advocate he
has sought to share the burden of those to whom he has been called to minister. In so
doing he has attempted to resonate with their other "burden", the fundamental tone of
their lives, the refrain of their life song, their basis for being - as we resonate to
the "burden", or deepest tone in a peal of bells, or to the "burden", or chorus of a
carol. And to do that he has had to face the reality of his own stigmatization so as
to let himself resonate to his own pain, and finally come to accept and affirm his
sexual orientation. For until we know and accept ourselves, we cannot helpfully reach
out to our neighbors. Charity indeed begins at home. And from that necessary beginning,
it can expand and transform the world.