Small World, Long Post.

Alright, I was having some serious formatting issues. Here's the post, without any fun pictures. Trust me-- I tried!

One day this week, a lady came in for help filling out some SSI forms. Her name is Sandra and she comes to our weekly luncheon with the cute seniors. She often brings her granddaughter, the one who calls me “her friend.” Sandra gets social security because she has a disability. The money she gets is somewhere around $600 and it doesn’t even cover her rent and other expenses, so she still needs to find assistance elsewhere and she’s usually just scraping by. Her son, when he can, helps her pay the rest of her rent. Well, social security found out about this and informed her that they would be revoking some of the “extra” money they’d been giving her since she had been overpaid for several years.

Sandra, of course, wanted to fight this because the money she was getting from social security was by no means being pocketed or used for luxury items. I asked her why she hadn’t reported her other income source as she was supposed to and she said that it honestly hadn’t occurred to her—she’d read the paperwork for SSI years ago and hadn’t looked at it since, and she didn’t remember or really understand that particular rule. She should have reported the assistance she was receiving from her son, but I still couldn’t believe I had to fill out papers for her because they wanted to take back the little money she was getting to pay her bills.

I began filling out the paperwork, starting with her name, address, phone number, etc. “Qué es su número telefónico?” I asked her routinely. She began telling me her phone number, starting with the area code. “Cuatro catorce…” I stopped writing for a moment and looked up at her and then back at the document on my desk and then back at Sandra again. In Spanish, I asked her, “Did you say 4-1-4? That’s a Wisconsin area code, right?” She nodded and told me it was from Milwaukee, where she used to live. I knew it was a Milwaukee area code, but I couldn’t believe the “small world” connection. We stopped doing her paperwork for awhile and chatted about Milwaukee. She told me that she used to live there, that most of her family is still there, and that she’d moved at least four times within the city.

Her last residence had been near the intersection of 16^th and Lincoln, very near the United Community Center where I worked this past summer. I asked her if she knew of the UCC and she said she’d been there once or twice. I told her I went to school there and that I had worked on the south side. Her eyes lit up when she realized I knew her neighborhood, but a sad expression quickly moved across her face. “That part of town has gotten really bad,” she told me, “I used to feel safe but I didn’t feel safe there anymore.” I told her I knew there were a lot of problems and that I was especially concerned with the public school system in Milwaukee. We had a little talk about MPS and my desire (though I’m not sure if and when I’ll act on this) to be a teacher in an MPS school or to just do something to lift that system out of the huge hole it’s in (along with most public school systems in this country). She sighed and smiled softly. “If there were a few more people like you,” she told me before we resumed her paperwork, “we could fix some of these problems.”

I know that there are other people who are dedicated to fixing our broken systems. The people at my work are beautiful examples of this each day. My supervisor is honestly amazing. She has a son and two foster children (with many behavioral and drug abuse issues) and she has A TON of work on her plate at our office. She’s been with Catholic Charities for a good 10 years and she is taking a break later this year because she is absolutely burned out. This is obviously a huge danger for people working in social services; after tirelessly advocating for marginalized people who come to our office, she needs a break. She’ll be going to Mexico with her family for three months this winter (which makes me pretty nervous about how things will work at our office!), and I know that she needs it.

Still, despite everything she has going on, she manages to smile and greet everyone in our office, give them her full attention during a conversation, answer numerous questions from me and the other new employee, and keep track of more things than I even realize she’s organizing. Today, right before lunch, she asked me where I was going to eat (since I usually go home or go to a park bench). I told her I thought I’d go check out the soup selection at a bagel shop nearby. “I have soup at my house! Have you had posole?” she asked me. I told her I had no idea what it was. “If you want to try it, grab your jacket. Let’s go. I got a new truck. I’ll show you my tomato plants. You’ll like posole.” I was caught off-guard but I grabbed my coat and left for lunch with her. Posole, as it turns out, is delicious—it’s a recipe from Jalisco, Mexico (where she’s from) that’s usually made with pig but is commonly made with chicken instead. I liked it a lot, and I enjoyed having lunch and chatting with her. She’s extremely approachable and supportive and has been an amazing mentor for me so far. Plus, her tomato plants really are something!

Another person at our office, Karen, is a weekly volunteer. She’s retired but commits to two afternoons each week at our office, helping with things like I do—translating, notarizing, energy intake, phone calls, etc. She’s a really hip 58-year-old who knows all about hiking and biking and live music in Portland. This week, she brought in a book called “100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon” and said, “This is for you and your housemates. And I’d love to have you all over to my house for dinner sometime soon.” We’re officially invited to have dinner at her house next month, and I think it’s so sweet that she wants to meet all of my community members. As further proof that the world is a very small place, I should mention that we recently discovered that Karen’s best friend, who lives in New Zealand, is the aunt of Colleen, who lives in my house!

Also this week, I went to a meeting about Youth Ministry, which is going to be my Wednesday night commitment from here on out. I’ll be working mostly with 8^th-graders, and the educational portions of each evening that I will help facilitate focus on topics such as social justice, making decisions, and personal spirituality, topics I’m pretty excited to discuss with kids who are at such an interesting point in their development. I will say, though, that it will be a unique and challenging situation; I’m leading the 8^th grade sessions with two retired folks, one extremely animated lady named Mary and another very serious, very professional man called Dean. The three of us are meeting next week to make a game-plan for October.

Mary’s goals include turning these children into “soldiers for Christ.” I would like to remind her that Jesus was nonviolent. Anyway, we’ll see how our generational differences mesh. Dean was mostly concerned with how to evaluate whether or not we are successfully getting the information into the kids’ heads, something I assured him that we will fail at for the most part (I remember nothing from 8^th grade). The most important thing, for me, is that these kids feel like church is a community that they will continue to come home to, get involved in, and depend on in times of joy and in times of sorrow. I want to see them making relationships with one another and with God. And I want to be a good mentor for them because I can tell you for certain that what kept me coming back to my own youth group was a combination of spiritual inspiration and faith sharing AND my wonderful youth ministers, many of whom are still very important people in my life. I think it’s a good experience for me to have to work with two people who are a bit older and who come from a different era, but I know that it’ll be a challenge at times. In college, I got used to a faith community that included mostly young adults. Eighth-graders and retirees are two new populations for me, but I think it’ll be refreshing.

In other spiritual news, I have found a potential spiritual director named Joyce Ann who sounds positively awesome. We’re meeting next Monday in Portland, so we’ll see how the pairing feels. One of our spirituality nights the other evening was watching a movie together, a film called “Religulous,” which was mostly about the craziness of fundamentalists of all sorts and the violence, hate, and exclusion that has been the result of perverted and extremist sects. It was incredibly biased against institutionalized religion, calling it something that we create only to make ourselves feel better, something that we would turn away from if we had any sense, something that makes us feel powerful because we pretend that we have a sense of certainty about things that any “reasonable person” would doubt.

I think that it’s possible to have faith and have doubt in the very same moment, and I didn’t appreciate the very narrow view of religions, although I do recognize that religious extremists have indeed caused immense hurt in the name of their Gods. Anyway, my community continues to give me food for thought, and I think it’s good; people of faith SHOULD ask themselves, “Why IS faith good? What does my faith do for me and for others? Why DO I believe what I believe” However, I have no plans to convert to atheism, and I am excited to be able to share my faith in a slightly less critical context when I meet with Joyce Ann. 

One more thing (because this post is a bit long): I must leave you with a small immigration rant. Let me tell you something about how our system works. When someone gets arrested and put in jail for something and when that someone has no “papers,” the criminal charges get taken care of first via the usual series of hearings. Then, he gets taken away by immigration, at which point he is given an alien registration number (A-number) that is akin to a social security number in that it’s kept fairly confidential. According to the immigration officer that I politely interrogated this past week, every detainee is given an opportunity to make a three-minute phone call to a family member or a friend. During that call, he can tell them where he’s being taken (which detention facility) and he can give them his A-number so that, from that point on, family and friends can track him as he is thrown around the system and they can leave messages for him. Without that A-number, it’s very hard to find out any information about detainees in custody. When the detainee makes the phone call, he has to write down who he called and sign a piece of paper. If he opts not to make a phone call, he also has to sign some sort of document. If he speaks Spanish, this is supposedly done in Spanish.

Well. Why do I get so many wives and sisters and cousins coming in and asking me to help them find out where their loved ones are being detained, when they have court, etc.? I asked the man on the phone how this system is failing my clients. Something is clearly not being communicated appropriately because I simply don’t buy the argument that all of these detainees have opted not to call the women in their lives and give them their A-numbers. I tried to help one such wife this past week, but we really couldn’t get anywhere. The one time I got lucky and got that guy on the phone to tell me someone’s A-number was a huge fluke, I’m realizing, because most immigration officials will not dispense that information—no matter how cute your voice sounds on the phone. So, we hit an all-too-familiar dead end when I asked for information about this lady’s wife and was asked if I had his A-number, which I didn’t because his wife doesn’t have it and hasn’t heard from him. She happened to come in a few days after he’d been moved from jail to immigration, but I had to figure out which center he was at. Something just seems so messed up to me, and it breaks my heart. I know we have a lot to work on when it comes to our immigration system.

I don’t think we should just “let in” everyone and anyone who wants to come to this country. I don’t think that building a wall is the best way to go about it, and I don’t think that streamlined deportation hearings are very humane or are serving as a deterrent for the desperate people who are risking everything they have—including their lives—to get to the United States. Something needs to happen so that the process of coming to this country is safer, is more regulated, and is perhaps less sought out not because we treat all those who attempt it with complete disregard but because we have worked to make their OWN countries better places to live. Furthermore, once these people are here, I would like to see their life chances improve. I would like to see 18-year-olds who came here as children and have completed their schooling here have a reasonable path to citizenship to pursue so that they can go to college as citizens of the only country they’ve ever known. I’d like to see people whose husbands and brothers are arrested because of legitimate wrong-doing tried humanely and given rights throughout the process. I’d like to see information better communicated and people in detention centers being treated with dignity. I understand that we need to secure our borders, protect American jobs, and take care of “our people” as well, for there is plenty of poverty across all ethnic lines. But isn’t there a balance?

My community members and I were talking about what would happen if someone told Americans they had to give up some of their creature comforts and relinquish some of their luxuries because the United States has decided to step down from our position as Superpower and try to level the playing field by allowing some other countries to rise a bit. I feel like this wouldn’t go over well. We’re part of a global community and until we realize it, I fear we’ll just keep messing up other parts of the world and then, when people flee those parts and come to our country to pursue the American dream, they’ll be met with a reality that is just another variety of harsh.

That’s your weekly rant from me. Thanks for tuning in. This experience is accompanied by a plethora of emotions, ranging from outrage to awe-struck joy. I enjoy sharing it with you, and it helps me process, and I thank you for your feedback and your support. Please keep the updates coming, too! I love hearing what’s going on with all of you, and I hope that your weekend is wonderful and rejuvenating.

Molly: HAVE SO MUCH FUN at the wedding! And on Mackinac Island. So jealous.

Thank you to all of you who donated to my Race for the Cure cause. The walk is Sunday, and I am honored to be a part of it and to contribute all of your support.

Sharon: My prayers are with you and “your vet” on your Stars and Stripes flight!

Chile: Happy Independence Day.

Love,

Amanda