Thursday, May 31, 2012

I am just pissed off.

I watched a family become homeless today.  A single mother and her two very young sons were evicted from their apartment are now out on the street.  She is sick and can't work. She has no family or other support systems.  She actually got kicked out of her apartment about 2 weeks ago but moved in with another generous family in the same complex.  Once the apartment managers found out, they threatened both families with eviction if the mother and two children did not vacate immediately.

The kids, unfortunately, are just old enough to completely understand what is going on and be terrified, but much too young to do anything about it.   The apartment managers had about 1000 ways to show mercy to this family.

I hope the apartment managers don't sleep a wink tonight, knowing that a five year old and a 7 year old boy have no roof over their heads.  The apartment managers did not earn one single penny from this eviction.  They didn't earn a promotion or win an award.  Of course they are perfectly within their legal rights to chuck this family out...big freaking deal.  This is what is wrong with Capitalism, left to itself it is devoid of compassion, of humanity and children get thrown away.

I am not going to sugar coat my anger tonight.  I am pissed.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Looking around.

So here I am. A lone Catholic Worker in Tulsa, waiting for a community to join me.  Perfectly content in my solitary committment to Christ but I still hope God blesses Tulsa with a larger CW showing in our town. 

I get so used to driving downtown or to other parts of town to search for the hungry that I forgot to look in front of me.  There are hungry people living right next door.  My own neighbors, friends of my children go to bed with empty tummies.  Oops. How could I not have seen the needs that I walk by every single day on the way to my car? We tried to fix that oversight over the weekend by grilling and eating outside. The hungry tummies eventually made their way over and we were blessed by God in being able to share, not just the food, but our day and our family time.

May God forgive my blind eyes and be glorified in our lives.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Why Does Tulsa Need Catholic Workers?

     Tulsa is an incredibly generous community.  Non-profit charities and food banks are as common here as gas stations.  There is actual competition for volunteer opportunities.  Just yesterday my daughter received an email from the Tulsa Food Bank requesting 50 volunteers to bag food on Saturday, "first come, first serve!"  Last Thanksgiving I took my daughters down to Catholic Charities to put together food baskets and there were so many people they barely had a place to put us. People actually have to make reservations to come and help. Whew.

With all this explosive generosity, is there really a need for a Catholic Workers Movement in the Tulsa area.?  I think yes, and I'll explain at least 3 reasons why.

     First of all, the CWM is not a charity in any sense of the word.  We do not rely on United Way. We do not apply for private or federal funding. We do not create an extra burden by hiring employees and establishing overhead.  On the other hand, Catholic Workers are also not volunteers.  We are not people who take a break from our regular lives to spend a few hours a week giving back.  Not that any of these things are bad, necessarily, it is just not what defines us. 

     Catholic Workers are a community of believers, following Christ's commandments, who choose a life of voluntary poverty.  We choose to stand beside and advocate for those who have no power to escape poverty.  We serve them with what we have in our own pocket, not with what we can get other people to donate. 

     Unlike a traditional charity, we do not require anything from those we serve.  There are no hoops to jump through to qualify for our services.  We don't care how much a person earns or whether they are married.  We don't ask them to give up personal details of their life or attend educational classes to receive.  It is a gift economy.  Freely ask, Freely give.

     We also have no restrictions on our expressions of faith, because no government entity is looming over our shoulder.  We are free to pray and praise.  Thanking God for His blessings and seeing His face in those we serve. God's light is placed high on the hill for all to see and the glory is His.

    I believe the presence of Charities, despite their pure intentions, actually do damage to our hearts.  Jesus never intended there to be so many degrees of seperation between the giver and the recipient.   Being able to drop off our donations through a drive through window or send in money online sanitizes poverty so that we are separated from the reality of it.  When we allow our opinions of the poor to be formed only by the media and pre-existing stereotypes, it becomes easier for us to judge them.  We simplify the solutions to their plight and scoff because they do not follow our haughty advice.  From far away it is easy to take credit for our status in life and to blame them for their status in theirs.  It becomes easy to hate.

     But when we remove the barriers between us and them; when we allow ourselves to experience the pain, the tears, the smells, the fears and the hopelessness that accompanies poverty, we are consumed by a wave of compassion that can only come from God when we are doing His will.

     Charities create the illusion that only some of us are called to serve full-time. Sure, the Mother Theresa's and the Dorothy Days are noble.  We look up to them but we can't all be expected to live like that, right? Wrong.  Christ never made this distinction.  This is what Dorothy Day meant when she said not to call her a saint.  She did not want to be placed in a category of good-doers who are held aloft for their sacrifice.  She knew that ALL Christians are called to this same service. 

     Finally, we must ask ourselves, what happens if our fragile system of fund-raising and tax write-offs disappears?  If our economy becomes so ill that it cannot continue its generous support of our neighbors, literally over-night it will become the sole responsibility of  the Church.  If we have spent our lives buying in to the idea that it is someone elses job to do the dirty work, if our attitude continues to be suspicious of every stranger standing on a street corner, who will feed Jesus? Who will clothe Him?  An entire belief system cannot change overnight so we must begin NOW.  We must see clearly what Christ has asked us to do.  True Christian faith is as radical an idea now as it was when Christ walked this earth.  We must embrace a life of servant-hood and take on the burdens of others as our own now, as a choice, so that we are prepared for when it becomes a necessesity.

Blessings.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Pizza and the Homeless Man

Pray to God for His mercy.  Today was a day I did just that.  It has been a struggle trying to get the CW movement going in Tulsa.  I have a vision of what it should be in my heart and another vision in my head. And as the internal conflict continues, neither bear fruit. 

I was on the way to pick up my daughter from school, and as I figured she probably skipped lunch, I was stopping to grab her a slice of pizza on the way.  I first saw the man laying in the grass, napping kind of, but not really.  My heart, and its vision, tugged at me.  I should have stopped but traffic was crazy, I was running late, blah blah blah.  You know the excuses that were running through my head.

I pulled into the pizza place (Shout Out Pie Hole) and ordered a couple slices and some ice water to go.  As I sat and waited, who should walk in the door but the same face of Christ that I saw a few moments ago laying in the grass.  He had  dark hair and looked sun-burned.  He was missing all of his front teeth. Dirty of course.

I froze. I wish I could say I responded in a more lofty, spiritual manner, but no. I literally froze in my chair.  He looked around at me and two other people in the resturaunt with his hands outstreached.  He waited a few minutes, shook his head and then turned around and left.  Christ, hungry, left my presence unfed.  Everything I write about and everything I believe turned to hypocrisy and layed meaningless on the table in front of me.  I shut my book and prayed silently, asking God for his forgiveness.  I felt a wave of shame crash over my heart.

When I retrieved the pizza box and headed out the door,  I knew I was looking for a third chance from God for redemption.  I looked down the road and there he was, sitting a half a block away, my mercy from God waiting for me.  I handed him the box and water and he said, "Thank you. I haven't eaten anything in two or three days."  I replied, "It's only a couple slices of pizza, nothing much."  And he looked at me and said "It will be wonderful."

What I missed was the opportunity to provide for him, not just a meal, but some dignity.  I should have invited him to sit in an air conditioned building; to order what he wanted; to give of my time and my heart; to relieve some of his burden. I failed at the most important ideals in which I believe.  May God have mercy on my soul.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Who are we blaming?

A friend of mine once commented to me that during her time as a lector for her parish, she was asked to remove "all those with self-imposed troubles" from the prayer request list.  This seems to be a sad reflection of a country-wide obsession for assigning blame and fault.  And although public apologies have become almost meaningless in our current society, simply satyre for comedians, we, those who are followers of Christ and members of His Church, should never allow fault to determine who is the recipient of our generosity or our prayers.

There is a biblical mandate to provide compassion for both the leper, who was simply a random victim of sickness, AND the prostitute, who was a victim of her own life decisions. Jesus showed compassion to His friends, His enemies, His betrayers, and His murderers.  There was no limit for Christ and there should be no limit for us.

Dorothy Day encouraged love and service of 3 groups: 1. Love the poor.  2. Love those who are not poor.  3. Love Christ and His Church.   Can we make it any more simple?  There are no exceptions for those who drink, or are guilty.  No exceptions for the mother with 8 kids and no father, no exceptions for the Disney stars turned sluts and crack addicts.  No exceptions for those with bad credit, jobless, lazy, stupid, cheaters, swindlers, liars, illegal immigrants...pick your negative label or stereotype and there are still no exceptions for Christs love and there is no exception for ours. 

If we follow Christ, we serve all without question, without exception and without judgement.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

A Trip Down 6th Street- by Charles Beard

I had a meeting at 6th and Utica this morning. Because I like to walk, I parked at Peoria and walked down 6th Street. The Pearl District is an interesting mish-mash of businesses. Construction workers where I parked were renovating an old building — judging from the banner on the back wall I think it’s going to be a dance club. Across the street from this I saw an art studio.
Then the auto repair shops started. I stopped to gawk at a Corvette parked in front of one shop; I could see a nitro tank through the back windshield. One car upholstery shop had the delightful name of Bitchin’ Stitchin’. Various light manufacturing companies dotted the cityscape all the way to Utica. Even with the boarded up buildings, it was a wonderful walk.
On the way back, however, I saw two auto repair employees — working stiffs — take a break outside. They were sitting on the sidewalk in front of their store, probably smoking. An old pick-up truck was parked on the sidewalk, separating them from the street.
As I approached these two, I nodded to say hello. One of them said, “Take a left turn.” I didn’t know what he meant so I kept walking, passing the truck on the right. I saw a homeless man, an Indian with a scraggly beard, walking toward me. I realized that the auto worker had been trying to dissuade me from interacting with the Indian.
I think this incident belies a “keep-to-your-own” culture we have in this city. A businessperson in a suit may have ignored the auto workers. The auto workers ignored the homeless person. Who knows whom the homeless man might have ignored?
Being human, we do this because we have a hard time identifying with people who are not “like us.” If you think about it, most of your friends are probably of the same race, class, and political viewpoint. So are mine. The identification is almost tribal. Yet as Christians we believe that Jesus came to the world to identify with persons from every one of these groups and more. As Catholics, part of the beauty of the Church is its conceptualization as one Body. We are each a vital organ that the Church cannot (or should not have to) do without, whatever group we belong to notwithstanding.
The challenge of this belief is to stretch us outside our tribes. To remain within your tribe is ultimately as isolating as never stretching beyond yourself. Because man is a social being, we will not be able to connect with God unless we are willing to make the effort to connect with others, not just the others we you are advised to take a left turn, for the love of God, don’t.