...High Church of San Diego
“I personally know that cannabis has the power to heal and enlighten like no other sacrament. It has been a key part in my own healing and salvation. God would want me to share this fact with the world, God would want me to shout about my salvation from the rooftops and encourage others to join me in the holiest of sacraments.”
— Sermon #2, Paul Smalley, Ministry of Hope
There’s not too much difference between the enthusiasm with which some people have taken up the ganja rallying cry and what another age might have called religious fervor. But for University Hills resident Paul Smalley, marijuana is not the messiah of the hedonist but the miracle worker for the suffering.
Smalley is determined to establish San Diego’s own church of marijuana. He and his wife live out their affluence in one of those impossibly built University Hills neighborhoods that defies mudslides.
A polymath with a host of degrees and a roadmap of career paths on his résumé, Smalley claims expertise in economics, accounting, law, financial management, and life insurance.
These days, however, he’s become a high priest of marijuana as founder of Ministry of Hope, a church for pot patients wishing to participate in the liturgy of the joint with the added benefit of community support.
All the more remarkable, in his 39 years Smalley has managed most of his success from a wheelchair. In 1986, he sustained a spinal cord injury that left his lower body semi-paralyzed. He cannot stand upright for any great period of time and spends most of his time fighting a two-front war — chronic back pain and chronic depression.
We talk on his backyard patio, which doubles as his church’s “sacramental chamber.” I smoke cigarettes and he smokes weed. He brings out a small medicine-bottle of the stuff — White Dragon — as we speak and rolls a number with a deft ballet of fingers.
He lights up, pulls on his joint like a sump pump, and holds onto his inhale as he prepares to revisit 1986.
“When I was a teenager…”
No, on second thought, with an impetuous shake of his head, still holding his inhale, he decides to back up into history even further.
“Well,” he says, a thick rope of pot smoke channeling from his mouth at last, “I’ve always been clinically depressed. But when I was 18, I finally threw myself off a cliff.”
He nods, acknowledging to himself that his own account of the injury remains incomplete. After waiting to hit the bottom of that cliff once more in his mind, and with eyelids narrowing at the thought, he says, “I wanted to kill myself.”
Smalley admits that at the time he was higher than the 100 feet he fell from the cliff. But he insists that what he thought was his last joint on earth proved to be his saving grace.
“I read studies after the fact,” he says, looking back at his suicide attempt. “Cannabis is probably the only thing that prevented brain injury. I fell 100 feet straight down off a cliff. I didn’t hit anything on the way down. I just hit the boulders at the bottom. The doctors say I probably bounced.”
Coupled to his psychological crisis was a growing desire to help people — in the hospital, on the streets; anywhere he saw physical suffering, he saw marijuana waiting in the wings, poised to rescue.
“I looked at myself and saw that I was having the time of my life compared to most of these folks,” he says. “I mean, I’m getting my shit kicked out of me while I’m lying here in the hospital, and I’m having the time of my life, comparatively speaking.
“So that’s sort of part of my thing with the church,” he explains. “The people who need cannabis the most are the least able to afford it. I’ve spent $2000–$3000 a month for as long as I can remember — that’s a quarter-pound a month of high-quality cannabis. So I know how much it costs people.”
Ministry of Hope opened its doors in December 2007. Services, such as they are, are very basic, says Smalley, a lapsed Catholic.
“They include no reference to any specific religion or historic religious figure,” he says. “The idea is to be as open as humanly possible and not exclude anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, political view, sexual lifestyle choices, or sexual orientation. I don’t care if you have tattoos or you’re homeless — you’re all human beings and all deserve a place to go.”
Ministry of Hope’s outreach includes weekly public meetings, a website, and the church’s monthly newsletter, “Hope Heals.”
“The [state-issued] ID card is the only way that anyone can get patient-support services through the church — for obvious reasons,” Smalley says, referring to his church’s strict observance of Proposition 215. No marijuana is bought or sold at the church; the operation is strictly BYOW — bring your own weed — but Ministry of Hope offers patients a place to inhale.
A typical weekly church service at Smalley’s house — which for the moment serves as Ministry’s church — consists of preaching, reaching out, and toking up.
“After a brief sermon, I invite the card-carrying members to join me for a private sacramental ceremony,” he says. “I’m doing the main service in the living room, and then we use this outdoor area as the sacramental chamber.”
In the end, Smalley admits he still has a ways to go — and his church is not yet built on the solid financial rock of donations from an overflowing membership. At the moment, the full-time congregation consists of Smalley, his two dogs, his mother-in-law, and his wife.
“My wife and mother-in-law are especially important to me,” he says. “When no one comes for services, they keep me company through it, so I don’t feel like a total idiot. Half the time it happens this way, but like I said, I’m starting from zero.
“If they took me to court today, I’m not sure I would be able to prove I was a church,” he admits. “I think I am a lot more than Scientology — but what are you going to do?”...
