Switch to a more political/philosophical topic

I believe in privilege and power and the role it plays in our lives.

I was talking today to someone who thinks completely opposite of me.  Which is a valid position to hold, even though I disagree with it, but it fascinates me how something that I see everywhere--some see nowhere.

Are our lives a product of our decisions?  Well, yes, but the decisions we make depend on what choices are available to us.  And if you ask me, there is a VAST variety of the range of peoples' choices.

For instance--I am white.  I am German, French, Dutch, Belgian, and maybe just a little Scotch.  Therefore, I can easily ignore race.  In this country, especially in my little corner of it, if somebody is not white and only white, race is not something they can ignore.  Being not white makes them "different" or "other" and they are confronted with it on a daily basis.

Because I work in such a freakishly un-diverse county, poverty is something that plays a huge role in the differences between people.  The amount of money someone has contributes so much to his or her power, status, and privilege.

For instance--we all make better choices in life when we are not stressed out.  But if you don't know where the next meal is coming from for you and your kids, and you are a single mother, you might latch on to a man--ANY MAN--who can help you get non-negotiable necessities.  You might even think you are being a good, resourceful parent for doing so.  And you may not have the resources to check what his background is like.  Once you start adding in factors such as addiction, having been neglected or abused or molested in your own childhood...well, unless you've been there you probably can't imagine what it is like to try to make all the right decisions for your family while everything is all muddled.  On top of that, let's say you have a state agency on top of you telling that you are doing things wrong and you better shape up or else your kids will get taken from you...how do you not just blow a gasket?  Have a psychotic break?

And here's the question I perpetually struggle with--If I, the holder of privilege and power, am charged with helping 15+ families recover from these kinds of situations, and have 40 hours per week to do so, where the heck do I draw the boundaries??  I can't get enough work done in 40 hours to be considered social justice.  But the state doesn't want to pay us overtime anymore, and I also don't want to work for free.  But should I, in the name of social justice?  Where does my work end and I begin?  How do people in positions of power who want to affect social justice in an overworked system manage?

Purpose

So I started this intending to get more political, and it will come, but the things I tend to be mulling lately are more spiritual in nature.  And religion is also considered to be an impolite dinner topic, so we're gonna go with it.

People who know me know that my job causes me a significant amount of anxiety.  I'm always worrying that I'm not doing enough to help my clients, or please the judge or the attorneys or the review board or the special advocate or the foster parents or...

But...I'd be lying if I said my job didn't bring me a certain sense of satisfaction.  This is not to say that I want to be in this job forever, but it is in my target "field" of work, and sometimes I get to make a positive difference in someone's life, when I am not busy shuffling papers to make central office happy.  It is in keeping with what I feel is my vocation.

To that end, if I believe that my vocation is my calling, and that by following my calling I am doing the kind of work God wants me to do, I am worried about pleasing all the wrong people.  Yes, I need to do good work and follow what is expected of me so I can keep my job, but in the end, I answer to God.  I left my office tonight at 6:30, annoyed with the voicemails I had from people who were annoyed with me for not having returned their calls yet, and I thought to myself "Man, they think I'm neglecting them, I bet few of them are neglecting themselves the way I am."

Then I went on facebook.  A facebook friend had posted the following:

"I am a servant to my creator."

That said it all.  I may serve others, but it is all in the name of serving God.  I have to do the best work I can, but nobody is coming to my home to take care of me except me.  And if I let my job suck me dry, I have nothing to give my clients.  If all I can do on a 3 day weekend is lie around catatonic, and I still don't feel refreshed by the end of the weekend, somewhere I am getting my priorities wrong.

I pray that I can become a more effective caseworker by letting go a little more.

It's true, someone you admire WILL let you down.

Someone you look up to, trust, admire will someday let you down in a big way.  I've heard this before, I've felt it before, but this is probably the "biggest" incident of it I have ever experienced.

I found out last night that one of the supervisors I worked with in my first stint with Child Welfare has been charged by the federal government with child pornography.

I kind of can't think of anything more heinous.

You always think you'd get a creepy feeling about someone who would do something like that.  I didn't ever, ever, ever get a creepy feeling with this man.  I really thought of him as a sweet old grandfatherly type.

You just never know, and right now, I don't know what that means.  Do I just live my life, hoping that most of the time I would "know" if someone I knew was doing something like this?  Should I become hypervigilant?  I mean, probably not.  I was probably never personally going to find out anything about this guy that was going to bring his crime to light.

I guess for me, it brings home something that I thought about often in high school.  Role models are there for us to show us something about God.  (At least, in the way I practice my own spirituality).  Role models are not there to BE God, and if we put them on a pedestal, they are going to let us down simply by not being perfect.

The Parable of my Own Life

It was Christmas Eve, 2002.  I had graduated from high school a few months earlier, and unlike almost all of my close friends (who went on to major universities) I had stayed home and begun my college career at Chemeketa Community College.  I had honestly loved high school and had feared leaving it behind, but was unprepared for how lonely I would feel during this stage of my life.  I had hated my first quarter of college, and was only temporarily boosted during Christmas Break by the return of many good friends.  Community College just didn’t seem to be a place to meet people, let alone something I’d had briefly during my sophomore year of high school, and badly wanted to find again.  Sigh.  A boyfriend. 

At this stage in my life, I have spent a lot of time thinking about why I was so single for so long, and have come to a complex and intertwining variety of reasons.  But I was a young 18 years old and took it oh so very personally.

I attended Midnight Mass at St. Mary’s with my two brothers.  I sat between them in the pew, and sadly watched as both of them got called on to be a part of the almost comically enormous Midnight Mass altar serving corps.  In a time in my life where I felt very alone anyway, it felt devastating to be at Midnight Mass alone.  As I knelt to pray before mass started, I bit my lip hard to keep from crying.  I prayed so hard to not feel this alone forever, and all of the sudden, I felt a sort of warmth in my body, beginning in my scalp and spreading quickly through my torso and limbs.  It sounds so cheesy and unreal, but I swear it’s how I experienced it.  It was this huge comfort, as if Jesus was saying “I’m here.  That’s what today is all about.  I came here to be with you, to walk with you.”  And as I let myself be comforted by that feeling, I looked around me and realized that I knew many people there, and that the church was filling fast.  I may have attended alone, but I was far from being alone that night.

As the years passed by, I felt very close to the Christ Child during Christmas, and have made it a point to go to Midnight Mass every year.  Up until 2009 (more on that later) there wasn’t a Christmas/Advent season that felt devoid of that loneliness (specifically of being STILL single), but there was ALWAYS comfort in Midnight Mass.

I got to thinking today how wonderfully symbolic that is, and how it fits in so perfectly with the love story that is still being written as we speak.  I love to imagine that God often creates on a micro level in my life what he has created on a macro level with his plan for the world and for salvation.  And maybe it’s true…I think those who have similar beliefs to me would have little trouble in seeing it that way.

The Israelites waited many generations spanning thousands of years for the arrival of their Messiah.  They wandered through the desert, were persecuted by other nations, and many probably, frankly, started to wonder if He was ever going to show up.  And when He finally did, it didn’t even seem believable.  A baby?  And where?  Born to whom?  This wasn’t exactly the mighty leader they had been looking for.  But through the years and centuries, He was revealed to be more amazing than anything they could have dreamed up.  When speaking of Sacrifice, many Christians think of the Good Friday story, but until a few years ago, my attention had not been drawn to the Sacrifice of the Christmas Story.

Before Jesus came to earth, we can assume that Heaven was his home.  Don’t get me wrong, I think the Earth is an amazing place with resounding beauty.  But it is no heaven.  It meant Jesus was far away from the Father and the Holy Spirit.  And of course there were the pieces of poverty and persecution.  But he chose this fate, because he chose us.  He chose me.  He wanted to come and walk among us.

Which leads me to Christmas 2008.  I thought I was doing well.  I steeled myself against what I had come to dub “The Christmas Lonelies.”  I was helping a friend through a very difficult time and didn’t want to be self-pitying.  I also had many loving and fun friends and family members around me and just said to myself “don’t pout.”  I invited the Christ Child into my worship during Christmas Eve Mass, but invited him in as joy rather than as comfort.   But maybe this was prideful of me.  Maybe I wanted the comfort.  Maybe I needed the comfort.  Because on the 26^th, we celebrated Christmas with my grandmother.  She is very generous in giving gifts, and puts a lot of thought and heart into what she gives.  But this particular Christmas she gave me something that sent me almost immediately to tears.  She gave me a rose vase she found in an antique shop.  I opened it and smiled thinking that even though it didn’t really fit with the décor of my apartment, it was pretty and I appreciated it.  I thanked her and she said “Well I just saw it and thought maybe somebody would be sending you flowers sometime soon.”  I found an excuse to leave 15 minutes after that, because the first thought in my head was “other than a short high school thing and a short dysfunctional on again off again college thing, I’ve never had anyone that wants to give me flowers.  I have no reason to think anyone will want to anytime soon…or ever.”

There began a relatively short bout of being convinced that my love life was going nowhere, and I should start thinking about what else I wanted to do with my life because nobody would ever want to be with me or marry me.  It sounds so melodramatic now, but it was honestly what I felt and believed at the time, and couldn’t even confide it aloud to my best friend.

Ironically, it was less than a week and a half later that things started up with Zach.  At first, I felt probably pretty similar to the way the Israelites felt about the Messiah being born a baby in a barn.  “That’s sweet and all, but really, he lives far away and this is going nowhere.”  Slowly, very slowly, a bigger plan was revealed, and ultimately Zach made a pretty sizeable sacrifice to be able to come and walk with me, too.

I love the way God can use the parables of our own lives to tell us about His great love for us.

A Public Blog

Hello all!

Being Catholic and also a person with a Master's degree in Social Work, (because of title protection laws, I cannot yet call myself a "Social Worker"), I have lots of thoughts about politics and religion.  But these are not normally considered polite topics to be discussed around the dinner table.  And I already have way too many facebook "notes."  So I decided to start a public blog.  I will probably often weave tales of my own personal life throughout my thoughts, but this is intended to be for public consumption so I won't ever go too personal, most likely.

Please realize that I do not consider myself any kind of authority, final or otherwise, on anything except my own self and life, and that many of my thoughts and opinions are malleable and open to persuasion and suggestion.  So if you find something I say to be just dead wrong, you are welcome to say so.  Just please be kind...no personal attacks of myself or any commenters will be tolerated!