charity

That’s Shabby

I dress kind of shabbily, or so I’ve been told; not in a mean way. I don’t mind hearing that. In fact my bandanas and old jeans and t-shirts with worn out shoes have allowed me to gain some insight into something going on in the churches that is or should be of great concern to us.

Not too long ago I stepped into an adoration chapel at a church I don’t attend as often as my own parish. I was looking at some pamphlets and holy cards near the front door in the foyer. There were some people who had just finished an event that seamed to have ended. One of them came over to me. “Can I HELP you?” She asked pointedly. I was dumbfounded which is funny because this isn’t the first time this has happened to me at church ( I do attempt to dress more nicely for mass). One time when this happened, I had said, truthfully, “Yeah I’m looking for the ministry schedule.” This time I could think of nothing to say for myself. We continued to stare at one another. Suddenly she looked at my Immaculate Heart of Mary shirt and seamed embarrassed. It was OK. I wasn’t mad. I didn’t want her to feel bad. But because of experiences like these I have had and that others tell me they have had or have seen I am worried about something.

I’m worried that we don’t seam to have contact with the poor at our actual Catholic parishes generally. In my area and also in Lubbock the Catholic Churches have kind of “contracted out” that experience to a Diocesan charity all the parishes contribute to. I’m sure it’s not intentionally in order not to have the poor and homeless around our churches. However that is mostly the result. Furthermore it appears everyday Catholics don’t want the poor and the homeless around. Some have police or security guards at the door during mass. There could be a lot of reasons for this. I have asked around but never gotten a satisfactory answer, only vague or seemingly evasive ones or else the people I asked didn’t know.

I just have to wonder what message we give an outsider who may be nervous about coming in. Some people are comforted by the presence of the police but I don’t know any low or no income people who are. Having grown up in an alternative or “subculture” style household I don’t like seeing police around either. No hard feelings I just don’t. Their presence doesn’t mean anything good to me. So I imagine anyone needing help or community but hesitant to enter a church even though they want to may interpret a police presence as unwelcoming and frightening. It’s a great deterrent but is that what we want? How necessary is it to have that? I’m open to answers. I honestly don’t know.

In Austin I attended mass at a parish that has a little attached building in the back of the church where the homeless can come and get something to eat, something to wear, a blanket, whatever. When you come to the church during the day there are unhoused people sitting at picnic tables drinking battled water, maybe eating sandwiches. Some of them come to mass. I like that a lot. There is a chance to get to know them, an opportunity to learn what their lives are like, what their problems are, and in what ways they want to be helped in contrast to how we want to help them. Not everyone stops to say hi to them but some do. What a great idea.

By seeing the unhoused at mass with us we receive the message that we are one with them, that we are all in God’s eyes, on the same level. This is so much better than having them be out of sight.

It seems to me that the more contact we have with people in need and get to know what they’re about and what chronically troubles them, and what they think they need, we would be better able to deal with these problems on a larger scale.

Another time I was coming out of mass with everyone else in an Austin church on a very cold night. A young woman was waiting outside. She looked very young and very scared. She had two little kids with her. She was asking for bus money or anything anyone could do. Most people filed past her as if she were not there. Others looked at her as if they smelled something bad. I didn’t smell anything but winter air and unkindness. What are we all doing here worshipping Jesus and then ignoring him outside of mass?

That’s shabby.

Sometimes I have looked away from someone in need when I knew I didn’t have any money or any way to help. I had to learn to cut that out. It’s a shabby reaction. I can at least greet people like this and talk to them, try to find out what’s going on, let them feel cared about. I may even be able to help them in some other way than what I thought they would ask.

In the same parish where some people have treated me like I don’t belong, I was scolded years ago by a long gone priest at a local parish about having been late to mass because a woman with a baby was standing out in the cold asking for help and I tried to help her… which made me late. He said they didn’t want to encourage this kind of thing (people coming up to the church asking parishioners for help) and also that I should prioritize being punctual for mass. This was another time I had no idea what to say so I just looked at him. I said, “Oh.” I wanted to tell him I didn’t think I could do that, just couldn’t. On the way home I prayed about it. “Am I really supposed to do that?” I didn’t know. But it has never made sense to me.

A pertinate Catholic social teaching is the Preferential Option for the Poor. How can we practice that as Church if we are only sending money to some charity we know little about, or random collection of faceless (to us) poor? To me love should be more personal if at all possible.

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship… but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3, a &c)

It does seem as if just giving money isn’t enough.

How can we as Church encourage our government leaders to enact policy that is really helpful to the needy if we don’t know what goes on for them or even know any of them at all? When we don’t know we tend to make things up, assume things we shouldn’t, or just believe other people who may have their own agendas concerning the issue at hand. I think we should find out if a politician speaking about these things knows any low income or no income or mentally ill or unhoused people personally before we consider their ideas about what should be done or not done.

I often hear, “We should let the charities take care of that.” The problem with that is that the need is overwhelming. Donations are low. Local charities in my area are out of money almost as soon I they get it. One I’m fairly knowledgeable about only takes calls on Fridays. On Fridays about twenty people can get through and then they’re out of donations again and can help no one else. I usually advise those in need of their help to invite all their friends over and have everyone call repeatedly starting early in the morning. Then maybe somebody will get through.

A good friend of mine who had to resort to food stamps when her husband was ill and needed constant care was only able to get $23 per month in assistance. Sometimes I talked to her and she hadn’t eaten for several days. She lives eight hours away or I would have taken her our dinner. The food bank where she lives is out of food all the time. Charities do amazing work. But we can’t always think we don’t have to help because they’re doing all that on our behalf.

On behalf of another family I was trying to help I called and I drove all over town and could only get a Wal-mart card for $50 from Catholic Charities. They were out of money. Everyone was. The clinic said they couldn’t help the very ill mother either because her extremely painful illness was not on their list of illnesses they could help with. The family, the very sick mom and her two sons only got $11 of food stamps per month. Yes you read that right. Eleven dollars.

I have learned so much about what really goes on by getting to know people who live in survival mode and have to depend on charities, churches and government agencies for the necessities of life either all or some of the time. I learned enough to know I don’t know anything about anything and that I need to make an effort to find out for myself what they go through.

What I’m hoping to do here is make a case for Catholic Churches to stop merely farming out their work for the poor and welcome them instead. As parishioners we are missing out not having the poor around. We are also getting the message that the practice of our faith and worship is separate from helping the poor. Nobody says that but isn’t that the way it is playing out? We want to go to mass and not be bothered with them. We think it is a nuisance. Maybe it is but I don’t think Jesus has prioritized that.

One area parish I called on behalf of someone needing help does refer everyone to that charity the churches here contribute to. However they also have someone in the office who calls and talks to the person and sees what else the parish can do. The person I was calling for had just lost her boyfriend to a tragic event she had witnessed. He had died a few weeks prior. I hadn’t even thought of grief counseling for her I was just trying to get her help with her bills. The woman who called from the church got this girl hooked up with free grief counseling.

All the parishes can do that. Maybe they do. However in my experience of trying to be of help people, what they get when they call a local Catholic Church is sent away with yet another phone number to call or list or a brochure to check out. Sometimes these are outdated and the places on the list don’t even exist anymore. We can do better than that. We can be more personal. We can make sure they don’t feel stupid or unwanted or unwelcome when they come to us. We could have a little food pantry or clothes closet or some diapers on hand at least. Some of our churches do.

We can keep somebody on staff whose job is to truly connect with compassion and respect, to walk people through what they need to do next, help them fill out a form or make a call. Maybe that person can be you. Maybe we can all take turns being there. We can ask questions kindly, really wanting to know; not because we are worried they are going to pull a fast one on us, but because we want to see if there are any other ways we can help.

Yeah I dress shabby. But what’s really shabby? This. It’s shabby. There is no need for it. Sure dress nicely for mass as expected. But first, as a community, let us be resplendent in charity.

January 12, 2024 6

Annunciation House Day 5

Casa Vides
El Paso
October 22, 2019

I woke up tired but looking forward to the day with everyone and to learning more.

Today was the day we were supposed to dress up because we were going to Federal Immigration Court. I stuck to the dress code. My friend Jocie had taken me out and bought me an outfit. She kept asking if I was sure about the shoes. Hey all they said was that the shoes had to be close toed.

Downstairs my brother-in-law, Frank was sitting alone with a cup of coffee. Seeing me he said without expression, “You’re looking very… legal. Except for the shoes.” I laughed. The shoes weren’t outrageous. Just some black vans with socks and tights with my more formal skirt and button up shirt. “Just a little touch of funky,” I had said
“Of course. Always the rebel.”
“Yeah, I guess.”

I didn’t feel like eating but I grabbed an apple since we had a full schedule again today.

People smiled at one another as we slowly assembled in he dining area. The migrant guests looked at us with mild interest. I wondered what they thought about all this.

We met a woman named Cata in front of the court house. She told us what to expect and a little about what the immigration lawyer she worked with did. I don’t remember much abut it except that it was kind of cold and that El Paso judges have a 97% denial rate on asylum cases.

What we were about to see was a plea hearing for two migrants (they didn’t know one another) who were from Brazil. There might be a bit of a wait that had something to do with an interpreter being found. (Both migrants spoke only Portuguese.)

Inside an official wanted to speak to one of us who was a Wisconsin State Senator. His name was Tim, and he functioned as our comic relief and feeder of the stray cats outside Casa Vides. After a while he came back and sat with us.

The defendants were led in in handcuffs, and bound in chains hand and foot. This surprised me. It seemed like over kill. However I hear that it is the usual thing.

One of them was as young as my youngest daughter, in her early twenties. She was very slight and small in stature with tiny features and long brown hair.

The other inmate was a middle aged man with big black eyes. Both wore prison garb.

The young woman was charged with defrauding the U.S, government because when she was caught she lied about her relationship to the young man who had been with her, and about his age. She had said he was her 17 year old step son and that was not true apparently.

The man was charged with illegal re-entry, his second.

The magistrate explained who he was, who he worked for, and what his job was. He made sure both people understood their choices, and what they were being charged with.

He said this was independent of any asylum claims. They said yes they understood everything. Both plead guilty after hearing the maximum sentence (2 years in prison for her and a big fine, 5 years in prison for him and another big fine.)

It seemed mostly to be a formality, as if everyone involved were reading a script they had studied beforehand. Maybe it was like that.

Outside we thanked Cata and talked among ourselves about what we had seen. Cata had been talking to us but she had been way at the end of our bench and I hadn’t heard much. It was sad anyway.

Most likely each of the accused would go to prison for a while and then be deported. That is all we learned about their stories. I wonder why they came? I wonder why the man tried twice to get in?

woman in maroon shirt with black chain on her body — Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com on Pexels.com

Next we went to a place called La Mujer Obrera. At first it looked like a museum but it was more of a community center. The woman who talked to us was obviously very strong and passionate about the work she and others here did. She talked about the beginnings of her organization which began to help women in the garment industry, and the work of building community and what community organizing was. She said they didn’t need some progressive hipsters coming in and telling them what social justice was. They didn’t want conservative politicians coming in and telling them about “progress” either, or those who assumed they needed education to “get out of this neighborhood.” What about lifting up the neighborhood? How about relying on our community’s own fund of knowledge? How about studying together and creating jobs for themselves, starting their own enterprises, asking people in the community what they wanted?

She said Pope Francis’ Laudato Si was like a handbook for them, especially the parts about building community. She said it inspired them in all they did.

I was amazed at her. I never heard of any of this stuff she was saying before.

One of their community enterprises was Cafe Mayapan which was a restaurant serving indigenous foods. She said they had had to study to learn how to run a restaurant, and learn their ancestor’s recipes.

We had lunch there. I loved my grilled cactus stuffed with mushrooms and chipotle.

Ruben Garcia, the founder and director of Annunciation House met us for lunch. They already had his guacamole salad ready.

He was gentle in manner but very solid, I thought, inside. He reminded me of Pope Francis around the eyes and the way he greeted and spoke to everyone. He seemed like a gentle and humble man but authoritative- and there was something powerful about him. This was about to become more evident. He humbly said he never really prepared for these talks. I asked if he just went with the Holy Spirit. “You could call it that,” he said. He was quiet, looking down at his guacamole salad.

Then he boomed,”YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!”

We sat in stunned silence.

He went on to make the point that we weren’t needed here. “We don’t need your charity! We don’t need you to do something nice to help migrants! I want you to go back home AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!”

He said the last two years had been “BAD” and that we had let all this happen.

I was upset but then I caught his drift and thought that if he was talking about the current administration he was as much at fault as anyone else. Then I felt better. I relaxed. What a tractor beam the guy was.

I said I come from a very conservative small town and how was I supposed to talk about all that I had learned without people at home tuning me out? “People are very pro life but also pro wall,” I said.
“When I try to talk about immigration issues or the suffering of migrant children, the response is often, “but the babies!”

He nodded thoughtfully. I don’t remember that he had any answers for me. I guess I have to rely on the Holy Spirit too.

Some of my group asked if telling the personal stores of migrants would help. Mr. Garcia said that people already know those stories. They are on the news. “At some point justice has to stand on it’s own,” he said.

I am still thinking about what that means.

He related a story about why he had been late today. A few things had happened at once. He had been driving a man today who had been perfectly happy in his home country. He had his own business. His wife had a good job. They had a home and two cars. They never wanted to come to the U.S. Then the gangs started to come after his 14 year old son. They had come for him one night after a lot of harassment and demanded the father turn over his son to them. Somehow he convinced them to let him talk to him and they could come take him in the morning. That night they fled for the U.S., the only place they knew they would be safe. They were immediately detained. They didn’t know anyone, no one who could sponsor them. While they were in detention their teen-aged daughter turned 18. She was immediately separated from her family. They were released but she was not. Apparently this happens all the time. She was sent back to Juarez. Her family had been frantically calling Mr. Garcia trying to get someone to help their daughter, young and all alone in Juarez where migrants are targeted, kidnapped raped or murdered every day. Mr. Garcia had sent someone to find the girl and take her to a shelter there. That was bad too, but better than wandering the streets for a young girl.

He was angry. “Our government is killing people! Go home and do your homework! End this!”

He left early. He never ate his guacamole salad. I didn’t know what to think.

My group began to ask Chris and Brinkly if it would help for the group to sponsor someone.

I was thinking. I got a fresh cup of coffee and got up to mill around with some of the others.

“Damn,” I said to Frank. He seemed annoyed by the whole thing, but resigned all the same. He said that when you have a hole in the boat charity is bailing the water out. Social justice is fixing the leak.

I said that it seemed that we lived in a duplex, with the only way out for our neighbors being the door to our house. We had let a dangerous animal into our neighbor’s house, slammed the door and locked it. If anyone got out, we tied him up and threw him into our bathroom. “And took his children,” someone said. “Yeah.that too.”

La Mujer Obrera of El Paso

Frank remembered that the priest at the church in Juarez had said that the first thing to do was do our interior work, and secondly, to build community.

woman working on a textile machine — Photo by Nguyen Nguyen on Pexels.com

Back at Casa Vides I asked Chris, who was so impossibly centered, compassionate and patient, how he kept from being outraged all the time with all he sees. He just looked at me.

I told him that when I hear heartless stuff about immigration, or when people try to justify the child separations to me, I just want to rip their heads off and sometime I verbally do. “How can I be patient with people who seem heartless to me? How can I not freak out?”

He thought about this.

He told me that at one point he had to leave Annunciation House and go stay with his parents for a while to regather himself. The child separation policy was intense for them there at Casa Vides. He was seeing what happened to people, the traumatized and desperate parents, for instance.

He seemed to have secondary trauma from seeing what he was seeing. One day he felt that God helped him remember the depth of the migrants’ faith. “They were the ones actually experiencing the trauma. They had such faith. It was like I was being asked, “Where is your faith?” So he had come back to Casa Vides and continued the work. He was able to do it then.

“I like it!” I said. We went downstairs for reflection.

First we had a talk from one of the volunteers we had not met before. One of the things I remember her talking about was the messaging people in these other countries are getting. She had been in this village where there were fliers everywhere for various coyotes (human smugglers) advertising false promises. People were pouring all they had into this trip to the U.S. where they were told they would be welcomed. At one point there was a rumor that there was a date in September that if you showed up at a port of entry that day, everyone who came would be let in.

She had worked with Border Patrol, Immigration and other related posts with different presidents. She said something Obama did that she thought helped a lot was to try to get the right message out to people that no, this stuff was not true, don’t come.

She also talked about the subjects others had: the effects of NAFTA, the drug trade, and the root causes of mass migration. My group talked more about what they could do back in Milwaukee.

white framed rectangular mirror — Photo by Abel Tan Jun Yang on Pexels.com

We did a special reflection lead by Chris. He said this was the traditional reflection for the last night of the Border Awareness Experience.

We were to sit back and close our eyes. We did so and he talked quietly about our days there; our arrival, and what we had done each day. When he got to the end, he showed us that he had set out a bowl of water, a bowl of rose petals and a bowl of pebbles.

We were to go up one by one and take a pebble, throw it into the water, and say what we wanted to leave behind here. The we were to take a petal, drop it into the water and say what we wanted to take with us.

I remember watching the others do this and being moved by it. Several of us said something like wanting to leave the anger behind and wanting to take up the courage to do what they were supposed to do. Chris did this also and he said he wanted to leave behind any bitterness and take with him love.

I said (I remember because I wrote it down) “I want to leave behind any timidity or reluctance to speak confidently about what migrants and refugees go through, and I want to take with me the courage the people of Annunciation House and others who do this work have – to be bold as love.”

To our surprise, Chris brought a birthday cake out for one of our group, a kind lady named Suzanne who I had talked to a lot, and we all sang her happy birthday. “What?! I asked her, “You chose to be here on your birthday?! That’s love!” She smiled.

All these people here are all about love.

food person happy smoke — Photo by Matthias Zomer on Pexels.com

Before we went to bed Ruben Garcia brought in five children who had been living under a bridge in Juarez. They were American citizens but their parents were stuck in Juarez. The family had been here in the U.S. but gone into Mexico for some reason and were not allowed back in. I remember the tents we saw along the railroad and other places, and being told by a minister who goes to help the kids under the bridge every day to see what she can do, that there are over 3000 people under the bridge because of the practice of metering. These five kids seemed very happy to be at Casa Vides. They were able to call their parents before bed. Mr. Garcia told Sister Bea she would be “Mama Bea” for now. The sisters were very happy to be able to help these kids. Each child got a shower and something to eat and a warm bed. I could hear the sisters laughing with them in the Romero room. The other guests smiled on them. So did we all. But it hurt at the same time.