How it feels to be screwed over.

It has been a rough couple weeks.  Rough on my family, our faith, our patience and probably my blood pressure.  The last two weeks we have been living in a Twilight Zone kind of reality, where everyone seems to be abiding by a different set of rules than what appears obvious to me. 

It may be the only time in my life when I have gotten the short stick of justice.  I have been appealing to the powers that be to do the right thing; to stand up for and protect the innocent.  I have begged them to obey God, to follow the law and their own policy. 

And for two weeks I have watched those in power succumb to the lure of money and the fear of politics.  I have watched the victims be further victimized and humiliated.  I am angry.  I want to cry but the tears won't come.  I want to scream and fight but those who are in control could not conceivably care any less about the anger and pain this has caused my family.  I am sick to my stomach as I watch my church making bad choices.  I am constantly reminding myself that although Christ created His church, He is more than, bigger than, better than His church.

I am powerless.

I have never really been powerless before.  It is new to me.  I am poor because I choose to be.   I have experienced misunderstandings with friends and my bank has made mistakes in my checking account...but this is altogether different.  It is inexplicable to my soul and my family WHY people in power choose to do the wrong thing.  WHY they ignore those who suffer.  WHY they bow to  money and politics instead of justice and Christ.

I told my children to remember that some people live this way everyday of their lives.  For some, injustice and oppression defines their existence.  It brings us very little comfort in our own unjust situation but we are grateful to God for this understanding and the empathy it will bring as we serve others.

It's None Of My Business

My poor children have had a rough week.  Three of the four of them.  It was a week of jumping into the middle of situations to which they previously had only been skirting the edges.  This morning my daughter, exhausted and embarressed from the fall-out, exclaimed that she should have kept her mouth shut because it was none of her business.

None of her business. None of my business.  None of our business. 

Such a sad, slippery slope.

We live in this society, don't we? Walk with your head down, keep to yourself, MYOB.

17 years ago, I accidentally walked into a room where a mother was beating her daughter with a hanger.  I quiety muttered an apology and then turned and shut the door.  Later, around the same time, I saw an orphaned child crying on the street.  He grapped my hand and showed me a horribly infected burn running down the front of his arm.  I muttered again and walked away.   For way too long a time I drove by every homeless person I saw, ignored every pain I encountered and turned my t.v. up every time I heard my neighbor being beaten by her boyfriend. 

None of these were any of my business but they are my sins.  And someday I will have to answer for them and for the countless other times I have done wrong and failed to do good. 

Poverty Hide and Go Seek

A facebook comment irked me a couple days ago from someone  who said "there is no poverty in the United States."  Another friend suggested "If you have money for cigarettes and tatoos you do not need welfare or food stamps." 

Of course neither of these are accurate statements. They are ridiculous and easily dismissed when someone is willing to participate in a conversation   The truth is Poverty has changed in the United States. 

The breadlines and homeless families we remember seeing on grainy black and white photos which depicted the worst of the Great Depression are no longer common.  The homeless we see on the street now are most likely mentally ill, addicts, probably a combination of both. 

Where did everyone else go?

They moved.  The government got tired of seeing families suffer, taxes were collected and programs created.    The breadlines and soup kitchens moved from the street to the checkout line in Walmart.  The homeless families moved from the back alleys to government housing.  Those who were dying in the streets of America are now able to die in emergency rooms and cannot be turned away. 

They moved but they are not gone. 

The food stamp EBT card, which is making banks rich, is making families fat and unhealthy.  Government housing is substandard, dangerous and is surrounded by gates and police.  It is a soul-crushing place to live and raise your family.  Education is little more than a lottery ticket.  Medicaid cares for some of the poor but never the poorest of the poor.  The consequences of poverty have shifted from physical harm to mental detriment.  The suffering is hidden away behind a poorly locked door.  Poverty no longer evokes our sympathy.  Christ never saw poverty as a consequence for behavior.  He never condemed the poor for being so.  He never admonished the beggers.  But we do.

Government programs are not the answer to eradicating poverty.  Government programs greatest accomplishment has been to plant a seed of jealousy, justify our hate and permit our spit on those who suffer the most in our country.  

I am grateful that my tax dollars go towards the *massive* 13% of our national budget to safety net programs (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258).  I am thankful my government got tired of seeing hungry children in the street and babies dying of curable diseases.  Thank God for these safety nets.  However the unintended consequence of hiding poverty away from public view is that we created an illusion that poverty no longer exists in the United States. 

Poverty is much more than a financial situation. 

Poverty is abuse.  Poverty is addiction.  Poverty is madness.  Poverty is depression.  Poverty asks more of us than just a handout.  It asks us to educate ourselves. It asks us to befriend and become uncomfortably involved in the lives of those we serve.  It challenges us to find a higher level compassion, to see the poor as Christ...pure and blameless.

Forgetting Water Bottles- By Charles Beard

Several homeless men take turns panhandling at the bottom of the exit ramp I take on the way to work. There is a different person there each day. As I get off the highway, someone is almost always standing there carrying a sign. The signs say things like “anything helps” or “rather beg than steal” or even “God bless.” If there is a line of cars waiting at the light at the bottom of the ramp, he (always a he) walks up and down the line, hoping for some luck.

I’ve never bought the idea that we shouldn’t give homeless persons cash because they may use it for booze. They might and that’s not good (though if I were homeless I’d certainly drink!), but I figure my obligation as a Christian is to be generous. If someone abuses my generosity, that’s not my responsibility. Christ never said, “Give responsibly.” He said, “Freely have you received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8). So if I’m carrying cash, I usually give something to panhandlers.

The problem is that I hardly ever carry cash. The last time I gave to one of the men at the bottom of the ramp, I had to give him quarters out of my toll road change jar. I felt the need to apologize to the gentleman for the inconvenience.

Recently I thought instead of giving cash, I can make a point of taking a bottle of water with me to work and hand it to the person at the bottom of the ramp. The Beard household is lousy with plastic bottles (since we recycle…eventually). It wouldn’t be any problem at all to grab a bottle, fill it with water, and take it with me.

I have yet to actually do this. It’s not that I don’t have time; I’ve been teaching mostly at night and my days are my own to write or to read. The problem is I just clean forget and don’t think about it until I’m at the bottom of the ramp, trying to give the homeless man dignity by saying hello without making him think I have anything for him.

I’m not very familiar with the Catholic Worker movement, and the Catholic Worker House here in Tulsa is more like a couple of families who try to live the lifestyle while staying in touch online. But I think that the Catholic Worker’s commitment to voluntary poverty is important because it forces us to remember less fortunate persons. I don’t mean this in the trite prayer-before-Thanksgiving way, but I mean it helps us to physically remember them. The hunger that we choose to feel is like a rubber band around our wrist telling us there was something we have to do.

When we don’t feel that hunger, we forget.

It never occurred to me to give out water bottles until the air conditioner in my car went on the fritz and started working intermittently. It was only then that I saw the men and thought, “Boy, they must be hot out there!” (Maybe if my air conditioner broke all the way I’d actually remember the bottles!) Voluntary suffering breeds empathy with involuntary suffering, and empathy breeds action.

My challenge for the next week is to utilize God’s grace to spur that action.

Non-Profit is Big Business

$95,129.00
$71,749.00
$75,000.00
$235,780.00
$81,113.00


These are the 2010 reported incomes of the directors of the 5 most popular non-profit/charities located in Tulsa.  They are all supported with a combination of Federal, State and Private dollars.  They all say they serve the most vulnerable and impoverished families of our community.  They serve the hungry and the homeless.  They serve the physically sick and mentally ill.  They provide turkeys at Christmas and spend a lot of their time fundraising and grant writing.

Fundraising. The mouse wheel that began to run on when we first discovered that charity could be a job.   Social workers, receptionists and janitors were hired and CEO's were appointed.  Overhead was developed and attention slowly moved away from the window.  Now the charities have salaried employees that they are responsible for.  The survival of the mission is critical, not simply to care for those on the street but to assure the continued employment of those inside the buildings.

So in order to ration the funds, charities are forced to limit the services they provide.  Now intakes and qualifications are required and those waiting in line are no longer brothers and sisters in Christ, they are clients.  Your family can receive assistance once a month or twice a year but when this generosity is not sufficient to ease your family's pain you are blamed. Then families are forced to "charity-chase" from one agency to the next and charities can scowl at them for behaving like this. 

Non-biblical references are quoted like "God helps those who help themselves" to justify the charities behavior and paychecks.  Charities give our community permission to ignore their neighbor or refer them to an agency.  The complacent faithful allow Charities rob us, every single day, of the opportunity to personally serve the living Christ.

Charities don't trust in God to provide, they trust in our government to grant and bestow.

I Disagree with the Bishops but I'm Going to Participate in the Fortnight for Freedom Anyway — by Charles Beard

By now, most American Catholics are aware that bishops have asked us to spend two weeks in prayer and fasting between June 21 (the eve of the feast of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher) and July 4 (Independence Day) for the preservation of religious liberty. The bishops believe (and a good many others agree with them) that religious liberty is under attack due to the now-infamous mandate of the Obama administration requiring employers to cover contraception on their employees' insurance, even if the employer is Catholic or a Catholic institution.

The bishops have even presented us with a prayer for the occasion, available here.

The reaction of many liberal Catholics to the bishops' effort has ranged from bewilderment to outright hostility. I don't really count myself as part of the liberal Catholic crowd, but Vincent Miller at America magazine summarized my own feelings succinctly: "I’ve wrestled with the USCCB Religious Liberty campaign for some time. I support its big-picture goals, but so much about its tone, argument, timing, and politics leaves me concerned."

Even though I practice the Church's teaching on contraception, I have a hard time seeing how the mandate violates my religious liberty. I have an even harder time seeing how the revised mandate (the much-maligned "accommodation") violates the religious liberty of Catholic hospitals and schools. And I have the hardest time understanding how, even if I am wrong, the mandate represents an "unprecedented threat," as some bishops are claiming, or why it justifies the type of civil action from Catholics that the bishops are asking for.

This is not the place to discuss why I think these things. Suffice to say I do, and I'd be happy to discuss it in another place.

However, there are a number of reasons to follow the bishops' request anyway. I intend to pray and fast during the Fortnight for Freedom, and would encourage others who disagree with the bishops to do the same. Allow me to list three reasons you should.

Reason One: It's never a bad idea to pray when the bishops ask us to pray.

I hear the complaint frequently that the bishops are turning into Republican politicians and aren't doing their job as spiritual leaders. I think that charge is overstated, but it is not without merit. Well, here they are asking us to do spiritual things like pray and fast. That can't be a bad thing.

In fact, such a thing should be encouraged. We should remember that Dorothy Day, our patron saint as Catholic Workers, thought prayer and fasting were indispensible parts of the spiritual life and lamented when parts of the hippie movement—with which she identified—lacked that discipline. If our bishops are asking us to pray more than the bare minimum, even if we question their goals and motives, we should rejoice and do it.

Reason Two: We might be wrong.

It's not pleasant to contemplate, but it's true. Obviously this doesn't mean we stop engaging in activism and it certainly doesn't mean we should pretend to agree with the bishops. But it does mean that when we approach God in prayer and expose our true selves with whatever good or evil we have done, we cannot pretend to be infallible. It is important to remember this, especially when we strongly disagree with those—such as the bishops—whom the Lord has called us to be in communion with.

One of the things I love most about the Catholic Church is the way it embraces the primacy of individual conscience while maintaining skepticism of individual judgment. Intuitively, we know and understand these two concepts—that we always have to do what we believe to be right and that so many of our own decisions turn out to be wrong. But to my knowledge, the Catholic Church is the only organization on earth that actively tries to live out that tension. Lord knows it doesn't always do so very well. But that doesn't mean we should abandon the tension and descend into self-righteous certitude.

It could be said that the bishops themselves have descended into self-righteous certitude. Maybe, but it's not our job to judge or even to worry about the bishops. Our job is to be Christ's love in the world, and part of that means acknowledging the possibility—however remote—that we might be wrong. For me, one way to acknowledge that is to pray with those I disagree with in the Fortnight of Freedom.

Reason Three: Living in a "big tent" Church cuts both ways.

Liberal Catholics like to complain that conservatives want to push them out of the Church. Conservative Catholics, particularly in the blogosphere, don't do the best job of disproving that opinion. Liberal Catholics in this country feel marginalized (sometimes it seems they like feeling marginalized) and talk about becoming Episcopalian, while conservative Catholics note (sometimes gleefully) the ongoing train wreck of the Episcopal Church, laying the blame on people in that church most like liberal Catholics.

At that point, liberal Catholics throw up their collective hands and appeal to the quote attributed—probably wrongly—to St. Augustine: "in essential things, unity; in non-essential things, liberty; in all things, charity." They ask conservative Catholics to accept them as part of the Church and let them be.

It's probably true that conservative Catholics have an overly broad view of what constitutes Church teaching. They should do a better job of extending the benefit of the doubt, but liberal Catholics must do the same thing. Maintaining the unity of the ark of salvation that subsists in the Catholic Church is of paramount, almost overwhelming, importance. It's not reasonable to expect that every single Catholic will agree on every single thing. Just as conservatives shouldn't accuse liberals of heresy when they arrive at a different prudential judgment on the contraception mandate, liberals shouldn't accuse conservatives of abandoning the poor because they are insufficiently committed to universal health care. While we agree on principles, we may freely disagree on the application of those principles and remain part of the same Church. Praying with the bishops during the Fortnight of Freedom is a good way to remember this unity in spite of the disagreement.

Though we may disagree with why the bishops are asking us to pray, all Catholics believe that God's providence ultimately will prevail. We also believe that Jesus Christ prefers unity in the Church to disunity, since he prayed, "I have given them the glory you [the Father] gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one" (John 17:22). If we cannot in conscience agree with the bishops, surely it is better to pray with them rather than against them. While it is appropriate to take our frustrations to God in prayer, it is even more appropriate to pray in conjunction with those who frustrate us, to show that we don't allow those frustrations to divide us. Rather than praying, "Lord, there they go harping on government and birth control again," we should pray, "Lord, they're harping on government and birth control again, but I love them anyway and trust in Your will on the matter."

-

When it comes to the Fortnight of Freedom, I have mixed feelings on its goals and disagree with its tone. It also has a hokey name that reminds me more of freedom fries than the sublime mystery of Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, the Beard household will pray for religious liberty every night during those two weeks. I will try to fast a couple of those days as well (I make no promises: I suck at fasting). In doing so, I hope to contribute just a little to the "in all things, charity" part of the mantra, even if Augustine didn't say it.

A good evening...

It has been a great couple of weeks.  I am hesitant to discuss a lot of the details but God must be glorified.

Our family, very spontaneously, has begun hosting community cook-outs.  The  second one was tonight and it is just amazing to see Christ work.  There was no advertising or advance planning.  Very simply and quietly, hamburgers were set out on the grill by the pool.  A table was set with chips and fruit and when the hamburgers were done, hungry people just showed up.  A prayer was said to bless the food and then we all sat and ate together.  Later, of course, we relit the grill for smores. 

Here is what I have noticed...when God is asked to bless something, boy can He come through!  We always had food left over, which was surprising considering how many hungry boys were sitting at the table.  Everyone left with full tummies and may God be thanked, worshipped and glorified.