On Thursday of this coming week, we have our fall retreat that focuses on community. I'm excited to get away and have a retreat. We've been told that in the past, many communities have started having some major issues at this point and that this retreat can be both stressful and a good chance to work out problems.
A part of me wishes I could tell you about some kind of community conflict that came up in the first two months (almost) of living together that we pulled together and talked over using non-violent communication and resolved our problem in a way that was good for everyone. I have no such story. So far, everything in our house has been going remarkably well. I'm very grateful to have housemates/community members that I really like, feel comfortable around, and get along with, but I doesn't make a very good story. Stories in which everything goes well and are happy are not interesting.
I would, of course, rather have a good community than a good story, but I'm a writer and I like stories. I also know that it's still the beginning of our year together, so a good story could be in the future. Still, as long as we keep up with the patients and honesty we've started with in our house, we may end up nipping any potential story in the bud, which will be great for the community and the mental/emotional well-being of everyone in the community, but unfortunate for my writing.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Have ballot. Will vote, but for who and what?
Last week my absentee ballot arrived in the mail. Voting is something I've always taken seriously: I've voted every time I've been able to since I was 18 and I've always been fairly well educated about the candidates and everything else that's on the ballot. This time is different. I got my ballot and realized I have no idea who I'm voting for--all I know is who I'm not voting for.
When I voted by absentee ballot last fall, I already knew the issues pretty well before I left Maine and kept up with everything on the internet while at school in North Carolina. Of course, this year my access to the internet has been very limited. Since my computer is still broken, my internet access will continue to be restricted to when I can go to an internet cafe with a community member's computer or to 17 minute time slots at the library. Perhaps I could devote 17 minutes to each candidate and if they don't win me over in that 17 minutes, they don't get my vote.
I wonder, who will do the most for the poor? for the disabled? women? children? education? the environment? all the other things I care about? I wonder if I can find out the answers in 17 minutes. I doubt it, and if I do I'm afraid I might not like the answers I get.
When I voted by absentee ballot last fall, I already knew the issues pretty well before I left Maine and kept up with everything on the internet while at school in North Carolina. Of course, this year my access to the internet has been very limited. Since my computer is still broken, my internet access will continue to be restricted to when I can go to an internet cafe with a community member's computer or to 17 minute time slots at the library. Perhaps I could devote 17 minutes to each candidate and if they don't win me over in that 17 minutes, they don't get my vote.
I wonder, who will do the most for the poor? for the disabled? women? children? education? the environment? all the other things I care about? I wonder if I can find out the answers in 17 minutes. I doubt it, and if I do I'm afraid I might not like the answers I get.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Invincibly and Ardently in Love with Our Enemies
During September I started each day by reading the morning prayer, the daily bible readings, and the meditation of the day in the “Magnificat.” I found that when I started the day in this way, I was able to keep God more in the forefront of my mind throughout the rest of the day. Of all the meditations, there was one that I kept thinking about for a few days after I read it.
The Gospel reading on the day that I read this meditation was Luke 6:27-38 which is the reading about loving our enemies and treating people as we wish to be treated. The meditation was written by Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, a Dominican preacher from the mid-1800s. Father Lacordaire wrote about love in a way that was compelling to me. He wrote, “[f]or the peculiar quality of love is to unite those who love one another, to blend their thoughts, their desires, their sentiments, all the expressions, and all the blessings of their life, and to penetrate even to the substance of the loved one, in order to cleave to it with a force as invincible as it is ardent.”
The language Father Lacordaire uses says something beautiful about love whether it’s romantic love, love between family members, love for God, or God’s love for us. As the Gospel says, it is easy for people to love their children (or parents, partners, close friends, etc.) and to give their children good gifts; however, this isn’t the kind of love we’re especially called to and the kind of love that makes the world better.
The ideas about what love does and means in this meditation made me think a lot about if everyone took God’s call to love our enemies seriously. What if we had the kind of love Father Lacordaire describes for our enemies? What about the poor? The oppressed? The forgotten?
Whether we realize it or not, we make people who are poor and people who are oppressed our enemies. If not conscientiously, we make them our enemies by our actions—or inaction—and in our policies, laws, and social practices that perpetuate poverty and keep oppressed peoples and groups oppressed.
Many people worship God and think to “cleave” to God as the meditation suggests happens in love, but how many of us think to cleave ourselves to the poor, oppressed, and forgotten? Isn’t God in the poor and oppressed? What would the world look like if we really loved who God called us to love and as God calls us to love them? How could we possibly continue to oppress the oppressed if we shared their “substance”? If we got to know their experiences, pains, joys, struggles, thoughts, and desires?
To love the poor and oppressed as God calls means more than to give a gift at Christmas to a child in need or put together a gift basket or volunteer a day a month at the local soup kitchen or give annually to a charitable cause. It even means more—much more—than doing a year of service. All of these things are good and a step in the right direction, but I’m not sure they’re love. Of course, it isn’t easy to love the poor and oppressed because we have to look at our own lives and behaviors. Even harder, once we share their substance, we’ll have to change.
Maybe we believe we already know the substance of the poor and oppressed. Maybe we believe we already know what they want and what they need. But, how can we really know until we’ve stopped judging and truly gotten to know people? Until we’ve leaned about their lives on a deeper level? Until we’ve united ourselves to them? The more you get to know and really understand someone, the harder it is for you to make them your enemy.
Here is another question—what if we really don’t love the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten? Perhaps we can lean to love them by working backwards to understand their substance, hopes, thoughts, and struggles, as well as the blessings of their lives. Maybe in coming to understand these things by living in solidarity with the poor we may come to love them and to see that those who were once our enemies are now people we love with a love that is both “invincible” and “ardent.” If we do this, how can we possibly be the same?
The Gospel reading on the day that I read this meditation was Luke 6:27-38 which is the reading about loving our enemies and treating people as we wish to be treated. The meditation was written by Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, a Dominican preacher from the mid-1800s. Father Lacordaire wrote about love in a way that was compelling to me. He wrote, “[f]or the peculiar quality of love is to unite those who love one another, to blend their thoughts, their desires, their sentiments, all the expressions, and all the blessings of their life, and to penetrate even to the substance of the loved one, in order to cleave to it with a force as invincible as it is ardent.”
The language Father Lacordaire uses says something beautiful about love whether it’s romantic love, love between family members, love for God, or God’s love for us. As the Gospel says, it is easy for people to love their children (or parents, partners, close friends, etc.) and to give their children good gifts; however, this isn’t the kind of love we’re especially called to and the kind of love that makes the world better.
The ideas about what love does and means in this meditation made me think a lot about if everyone took God’s call to love our enemies seriously. What if we had the kind of love Father Lacordaire describes for our enemies? What about the poor? The oppressed? The forgotten?
Whether we realize it or not, we make people who are poor and people who are oppressed our enemies. If not conscientiously, we make them our enemies by our actions—or inaction—and in our policies, laws, and social practices that perpetuate poverty and keep oppressed peoples and groups oppressed.
Many people worship God and think to “cleave” to God as the meditation suggests happens in love, but how many of us think to cleave ourselves to the poor, oppressed, and forgotten? Isn’t God in the poor and oppressed? What would the world look like if we really loved who God called us to love and as God calls us to love them? How could we possibly continue to oppress the oppressed if we shared their “substance”? If we got to know their experiences, pains, joys, struggles, thoughts, and desires?
To love the poor and oppressed as God calls means more than to give a gift at Christmas to a child in need or put together a gift basket or volunteer a day a month at the local soup kitchen or give annually to a charitable cause. It even means more—much more—than doing a year of service. All of these things are good and a step in the right direction, but I’m not sure they’re love. Of course, it isn’t easy to love the poor and oppressed because we have to look at our own lives and behaviors. Even harder, once we share their substance, we’ll have to change.
Maybe we believe we already know the substance of the poor and oppressed. Maybe we believe we already know what they want and what they need. But, how can we really know until we’ve stopped judging and truly gotten to know people? Until we’ve leaned about their lives on a deeper level? Until we’ve united ourselves to them? The more you get to know and really understand someone, the harder it is for you to make them your enemy.
Here is another question—what if we really don’t love the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten? Perhaps we can lean to love them by working backwards to understand their substance, hopes, thoughts, and struggles, as well as the blessings of their lives. Maybe in coming to understand these things by living in solidarity with the poor we may come to love them and to see that those who were once our enemies are now people we love with a love that is both “invincible” and “ardent.” If we do this, how can we possibly be the same?
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Miss Mary, Teacher Mary, Gloria and Otis
On my first day at Catholic Charities Immigration and Refugee Assistance (from here on referred to as Refugee Resettlement), I got a tour of both the office and the ESL (English as a Second Language) school that’s in a different building than the one I work in. I’m very excited to be working at Refugee Resettlement and, overall, I had a good first day. I truly believe that Refugee Resettlement does a good job with the limited resources it has and that the employees really care about the clients and about what they’re doing. However, there were a few things that stuck out to me and bothered me on the first day.
Here is a reflection I wrote on my first day:
Today I was introduced to a couple of ESL classes. Two of the classes were the lower-level classes in the main office and one of them was at the Herkimer school where the mid and upper level classes are held.
I was introduced to the first two classes as “Miss Mary.” This made me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. For one, I think it sounds funny: I’m all about alliteration, but Miss Mary doesn’t sound good to me. Also, I don’t really like “Miss” for myself in general—I prefer Ms. However, the biggest reason it made me uncomfortable was that I was introduced to them and told to call them by their first names while they were using “Miss” for me as a sign of respect. In my opinion, there is no need for the higher level I’m put on simply by the title I’m given. I have great respect for our clients as people and for all they’ve seen, experienced, and gone through (and are still going through), so why should they call me “Miss” while I call them by their first names?
At the Herkimer school I was introduced as “Teacher Mary,” which makes no sense at all because I’m not a teacher. At least “Miss Mary” is accurate.
The actual teacher of the ESL class asked me to photocopy some pages out of a workbook, which I was happy to do. While waiting for the pages to be copied, I flipped through the workbook and looked at the illustrations that went along with the exercises. I wasn’t particularly surprised by what I found in the book, but that didn’t make it any less disturbing.
There were about a dozen characters that were used consistently throughout the book. All but two of these characters were white. The exceptions to the white rule were Gloria and her boyfriend, Otis. There wasn’t even the infamous “Juan” who shows up so often in the word problem sections of math books. Now, I know that there are no doubt white people somewhere in an ESL class, but not in this particular class and I’m guessing that white people are a tiny minority of the students who use this book. The people in this ESL class are from Sudan, Burma/Myanmar, Bhutan, Somalia, Iraq, and the Congo—no one in the text books looks like the students in the class (not even Gloria and Otis).
There was another problem with the workbook: the main activities that women were depicted doing were cooking, shopping, talking on the phone, and serving men while the main things the men did were working, playing various sports, eating the food the women prepared for them, and fixing things around the house. In one, Otis drops by Gloria’s house and valiantly saves her from having to paint her living room and THEN he even takes her out on a date. What a guy.
This book’s copyright is either 2007 or 2008, I can’t remember.
I would think that an ESL book would have characters that looked like the students who were using the books. I also think it would be more helpful for the pictures to depict people applying for jobs, taking their children to school, going the post office, using public transportation, and other things new immigrants and refugees are likely to do.
Here is a reflection I wrote on my first day:
Today I was introduced to a couple of ESL classes. Two of the classes were the lower-level classes in the main office and one of them was at the Herkimer school where the mid and upper level classes are held.
I was introduced to the first two classes as “Miss Mary.” This made me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. For one, I think it sounds funny: I’m all about alliteration, but Miss Mary doesn’t sound good to me. Also, I don’t really like “Miss” for myself in general—I prefer Ms. However, the biggest reason it made me uncomfortable was that I was introduced to them and told to call them by their first names while they were using “Miss” for me as a sign of respect. In my opinion, there is no need for the higher level I’m put on simply by the title I’m given. I have great respect for our clients as people and for all they’ve seen, experienced, and gone through (and are still going through), so why should they call me “Miss” while I call them by their first names?
At the Herkimer school I was introduced as “Teacher Mary,” which makes no sense at all because I’m not a teacher. At least “Miss Mary” is accurate.
The actual teacher of the ESL class asked me to photocopy some pages out of a workbook, which I was happy to do. While waiting for the pages to be copied, I flipped through the workbook and looked at the illustrations that went along with the exercises. I wasn’t particularly surprised by what I found in the book, but that didn’t make it any less disturbing.
There were about a dozen characters that were used consistently throughout the book. All but two of these characters were white. The exceptions to the white rule were Gloria and her boyfriend, Otis. There wasn’t even the infamous “Juan” who shows up so often in the word problem sections of math books. Now, I know that there are no doubt white people somewhere in an ESL class, but not in this particular class and I’m guessing that white people are a tiny minority of the students who use this book. The people in this ESL class are from Sudan, Burma/Myanmar, Bhutan, Somalia, Iraq, and the Congo—no one in the text books looks like the students in the class (not even Gloria and Otis).
There was another problem with the workbook: the main activities that women were depicted doing were cooking, shopping, talking on the phone, and serving men while the main things the men did were working, playing various sports, eating the food the women prepared for them, and fixing things around the house. In one, Otis drops by Gloria’s house and valiantly saves her from having to paint her living room and THEN he even takes her out on a date. What a guy.
This book’s copyright is either 2007 or 2008, I can’t remember.
I would think that an ESL book would have characters that looked like the students who were using the books. I also think it would be more helpful for the pictures to depict people applying for jobs, taking their children to school, going the post office, using public transportation, and other things new immigrants and refugees are likely to do.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Back to the Future
Well, the technology fast is over and I feel like celebrating. The only problem is that my computer is broken. I cannot even turn my computer on, so it is now in the shop. Right now I'm using a computer that belongs to one of my community members. I suppose I'm going to be doing technology fast extended edition.
I don't often personify objects, but--like so many computers--mine seems to have a mind of its own that practically demands personification. Right now, I believe my computer was so upset over my neglect that it broke itself.
Computer problems aside, my first month and a half of CCSC has been a wonderful experience. I like my community, I like my house (expect for the bathroom door that doesn't close and a few other old house quirks), I like my job, and I like Buffalo--though I'm reserving my final judgement until March or whenever winter ends here.
It's hard to reflect much on what has happened so far because it's still the beginning and I've been very busy. However, there are a few things I've learned that I'd like to share.
1) A surprise--being open and sharing isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. When talking to Amy, the CCSC director, she suggested that learning to be open and sharing myself with others was the next step that I was about to take in my personal development with or without CCSC. I think she may be right, but I also think coming here to volunteer and live in community with other volunteers has helped me with this piece of my personal growth and development.
2) It's really nice to jog outside in a park and smile and say hello to people instead of be so absorbed in the music on my ipod that I hardly notice what's going on around me. Also, other people who are walking and jogging without ipods usually smile and say hello back while people with ipods tend to look the other way.
3) On to work matters--getting a green card seems simple enough, but it isn't and it takes a very long time (four months minimum).
4) If you give children paper and markers, they will write on the table.
5) Walking is a perfectly acceptable mode of transportation and a good way to unwind from as stressful day so that I can be pleasant when I come home to my community members.
6) USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) loves numbers. LOVES. There are immigration numbers, social security numbers, arrival numbers, employment code numbers, alien numbers, case numbers, and on and on and on.
7) People of nearly every culture are responsive to a smile and complements about their children.
8) A lot of people wait until the first day of school to register their children for school even when they've had since January (and I'm not talking about refugees).
9) Don't agree to help a co-worker without knowing what exactly you'll be doing. You might end up waiting in long lines on the first day of school to register children and everyone will look at you funny because even though you look like you're twenty-two you seem to have six children (and one of them is 16).
10) Hide the candy.
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