Christmas has passed, and so has the green naiveté in which Erica, Josh and I started this journey together. Our placements have pushed us beyond our comfort zones and beyond each of our most outlandish expectations. Our ministries look very different. Erica knits together a community at St. John’s the Compassionate Mission. Josh balances time between Seeds of Hope the shelter around the corner and maintaining a steady home base for Canadian Jesuits International to coordinate their missions abroad. I accompany immigrants, refugees, and newcomers in East Toronto and Scarborough. But the common thread among our respective placements is solidarity with Toronto’s marginalized persons; a solidarity we have never felt – and never lived – before.
The hardest thing to give is not food, nor money, nor time. It’s your heart. Our greatest lessons have been through ministry of presence. Josh doesn’t have a lot of pocket change, but he has a relationship with just about every panhandler and homeless person around our block because they come to Seeds of Hope. Or if they don’t he will invite them.
Erica’s formal job is to organize, promote, and recruit for St. John’s summer camp. And she’s been doing that from the start the best way she can: by getting involved in the bakery, Food for Families, and every other point of connection with the parishioners and clients of St. John’s. Not because any of them might support the camp, but because every one of them needs a community and Erica believes in this place they call a home base.
I am learning Spanish, and English as if it was a second language. I accompany a couple of newcomers through my placement at Becoming Neighbours, one of whom needs to learn English. She’s the best student because she is also a teacher, so she is helping me learn Spanish along the way. The weekly lessons are the hardest English lessons I have ever had because I have always been the student, and language has just been intuitive all my life. Now as the teacher I have to think on the spot and answer questions I didn’t know could be questioned! I am unlearning my first language so I can relearn with my companion and she can make her learning her own. I am breaking down my constructs so that we might rebuild something new, different, and better than anything I could have imagined myself.
We each are giving in ways we didn’t know we had to and didn’t know we could. There are the immediate unmet sustenance needs of “the poor” – food, water, shelter, and clothing. But there’s so much more that “the poor” remind us we have each and all lost: hospitality, dignity, and humanity, tender and loving care. Living in the midst of a rat race culture there are so many good and well-intentioned people falling between the cracks. They have a lot of baggage, psychological, emotional, and social trauma – which makes me face my own baggage, psychological, emotional and social trauma that I would rather ignore. But God is drawing each of the three of us into relationship – into connection in an isolating age.
“The greatest disease in the West today . . . is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
— Mother Teresa
We minister to the poor and broken and end up poor and broken – for the better. But it’s hard to break down.
Breaking myself down, levelling this house to its foundation I see myself for who I really am. I feel weak, vulnerable, and depressed. In a culture of progress and self-invention I find myself sitting on the sidelines wondering why I can’t keep up. As an introvert I want to be able to figure everything out on my own. As a youngest child I want to find the place I belong. Living in a community of three triggers the insecurities, unfairness, and imbalances in growing up with two older sisters. If democracy rules, why did it always come down to two against one, and the odds seemingly never tipped in my favour? I always knew I had to unpack my regrets and self-doubt I had locked up so tightly. What I didn’t expect was that I would have to put them back on again, and walk around in them.
“Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth”
Now I live my life backwards living in the downtown core and working in the suburbs. My time is not my own, so I hardly have a “social life,” but I am always busy. If I am not caught up with projects and events at Becoming Neighbours I am housekeeping and/or community-building with Erica and Josh. Evenings and weekends fly by with retreats, social justice events, local lecture series to unpack Laudato Si – it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. The tenets become routine, routine becomes mundane, mundane becomes boring. I take myself, my community, my placement, my life for granted. I need a reset.
Are You There, God? It’s us, the JVs
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For more information about the Jesuit Volunteers Canada click here [1].