We need faith for the same reasons that it's so hard to find. --Josh Ritter

Hello, all.

What happened to February?! My prediction at the end of the last post was accurate: this month flew by so quickly. Anthony’s Area Visit went smoothly, followed quickly by retreat, which was restful but not as intellectually stimulating as I had hoped. The topic was social justice, and the presenter, Kathleen Myers, is a teacher at Jesuit High School. She pretty much has my dream job (well, one of them) because she teaches Prayer and Sacraments and Justice and Peace, two classes that sound pretty amazing. She spoke to us about charity and justice, and the necessity of doing work that falls into both categories, and she encouraged us to think about our ideas about the people we work with. Do we really see our clients/guests/patients as “other,” “lesser,” or “powerless”? She pushed us to be honest and to address any problems that those subconscious thoughts pose in terms of solidarity and collaboration.

It wasn’t anything that I hadn’t already thought about, especially in Fr. Massingale’s class last semester, but it was still a worthwhile topic. I had hoped we would hone in on a few social justice issues in particular rather than remaining so vague about “social justice” as a whole, but I think that retreat for me turned out to be the weekend I needed rather than the weekend I was anticipating. I got a lot of rest, I got to catch up with Beth and see Lizzie, go for a beautiful run and a really refreshing hike, and spend some quality time with my community. In those ways, it was really worthwhile.

The top of Angel's Rest, a nice 5-mile hike up to this vista.

Unfortunately, like many of my housemates and coworkers, I’ve been battling a pretty nasty cold. We had Presidents’ Day off, which I really appreciated as I needed so badly to rest and recover. I actually went to Urgent Care that weekend and found out I had bronchitis and an ear infection—great. The antibiotics have definitely helped, and I really took it easy this past week as much as possible. I mustered up some energy to do a hike on my day off, though, and the view at the top of Angel's Rest was gorgeous!

This weekend, though, has been a blast! A quick run-down: On Wednesday, I went to the Josh Ritter concert with a new friend, Jose. It was such a wonderful evening. I’d been looking forward to the concert for months and it’s always such a good show; Josh is incredible. I had planned on going alone until I met Jose at a JOIN fundraiser (that’s where Colleen, Daniel, and Linds work) and found out that he likes Josh Ritter too. It was much nicer to go with someone, and it was great to share my excitement about Josh with another person! Due to the quarter-inch of snow that lightly dusted the streets of Portland, cancelling school and delaying my workday one hour, we had no Youth Ministry that evening, so it worked out nicely because I didn’t have to miss out on anything. On Thursday, Jillian and I made a delicious quinoa casserole with spinach, broccoli, and mozzarella. Yum!

On Friday, we went to the Art Museum again because it was free (every fourth Friday). After that, I had a beer at Deschutes Brewery, one of Portland’s many microbreweries, and hung out with Daniel, Jenna, and Jose before seeing “Hood to Coast,” a documentary that follows four teams completing Oregon’s epic Mt. Hood-to-Seaside relay race (12-person teams with each member running three legs ranging from 3-7 miles or so, traversing various terrains in daylight and in pitch black). It only made me want to participate even more; too bad it’s at the end of August and I most likely will not be here! Last night, we saw some jazz and hung out downtown again. It has been a pretty eventful weekend, and I’m enjoying a chill Sunday afternoon in Southeast right now with Jenna at a coffee shop.

This week will probably be another busy week at work. I’m in the process of organizing an energy assistance outreach event at our office, and we also have a Dental Van day coming up and a Legal Aid clinic, both of which I am responsible for facilitating and overseeing in some capacity. Sandra, who has been in Mexico for the past three months, is FINALLY coming back (yay!), so that will be exciting and refreshing because I’ve had to take on a lot of responsibility in her absence. I’m grateful for it, actually, as I’ve been able to get a better grasp on the “big picture” at our agency and I’ve had to push myself to figure out the answers to questions on my own. There are still things that surprise me and stump me on a daily basis; on the whole, I really do enjoy my job, although sometimes it gets pretty stressful and/or emotionally heavy.

The other day, I found myself in an efficient rhythm as I helped a client with an energy assistance application. The final step of the process is to have her sign her name, so as I made copies and flitted about, I tossed the paper across my desk, made her an X and said, “sign here.” When I came back a few minutes later, she was still writing her name, moving her pen so painstakingly slowly. I was a bit shocked that this could possibly be taking so long…until I saw that she had pulled out a small piece of paper and she was copying her name based on that. She had to look at each letter to remember the order of the letters and how to write each one. I just watched her hand moving so slowly across the paper, and I stopped moving for a few moments, stopped processing her application and shuffling papers and stapling things together. What must it be like to go through life without even knowing how to write your name? I see clients all the time who can barely sign papers. They write slowly, like this woman, and the result is a kindergarten-level, printed signature that bounces all over the line. Think of how quickly you slap your John Hancock on a paper without a thought. Sometimes, I just have to stop and remember that I take so much for granted.

Last week, I actually did cry at work. I had been helping a lady named Dolores who was being evicted from her apartment because she couldn’t make her rental payments. The wait list for low-income housing is so long that we had no chance of getting her in anywhere affordable in time (she only had two weeks to find a new living situation). I called everywhere and there was nothing she could afford. Last week, we helped her communicate with some distant relatives in Seattle, and she left on a train (we bought her ticket) to go live with them for awhile. But she was so sad. Even though it seems like this is a good turn-out, she was still so upset that she had lost her apartment, and she and her husband took what little belongings they have (a few duffel bags) and reluctantly got into the car to head to the train station with my coworker. He is so proud and does not feel right about living with these relatives, and she is just so heartbroken. I couldn’t help but feel awful that, in the end, there was nothing much I could do for them. I hope to see them again. I hope they stay at their family’s house long enough to figure out their next move, though I can totally imagine them leaving, feeling guilty, and living on the streets. There’s no way I can make their decisions for them or “fix” their situation either, and sometimes that realization is too much for me to handle.

This constitutes a snow day in OR.

Look at our snow! Pretty funny.

Insert theological brainstorm: The priest at St. Ignatius last weekend (I went with Bruce, my friend from Youth Ministry—it was his first experience of the Contemplative Mass although he has lived in Portland for thirty years!) gave a beautiful homily. He spoke directly to me, it seemed, reminding me of what grounds my spirituality and how I am seeing that lived out everywhere this year. He talked about the phrase “the way,” as in Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” I had never really understood what this meant until he said that Jesus is “the word God speaks to us, the hand God outstretches to us,” a manner in which God can communicate to us. Jesus is the bridge, then, that helps us connect to a God who sometimes, perhaps because we’ve wandered, seems so far away. And how do we travel on this “way”? How do we move back to God, to our center, to something that holds, to holiness?

The priest, supported by Matthew 25 (my favorite!) said that, in working for justice—in small and in grandiose ways—we also work toward holiness. Jesus’ example was that of someone who aligns himself with those who have been rendered voiceless or those who have been ignored or oppressed. If we follow that example, if we try to love not only our friends and family but our enemies and those whom we perceive as “other,” we move along that “way” and we find ourselves working for justice, traveling closer to closer to God and to holiness, a perfection that we can never achieve but are nevertheless called to strive for. I don’t know why this made sense to me in a new way this time, but it’s so helpful for me. It grounds me. Even if I can’t explain it in logical terms.

Jose and I were talking about religion, and he told me that he can’t accept it, not with all the unanswered questions and the seemingly illogical nature of it all. I can’t argue against that; it is inherently irrational in a lot of ways, which is where faith comes in. He didn’t disagree; faith is the “crux of it all,” he told me. Having faith is not easy when I look around and see so much hopelessness, when God (whoever God is) seems so far away. But I think there’s a reason why I keep asking certain questions, why I am still so moved by the example of Jesus and the idea of Jesus’ example as a blueprint for finding my way to some center, that center being God for me, a God who is limitless in all ways—Father AND Mother, Creator, Connection, Compassion.

Snow on the flowers. So pretty!

Molly and I, as she prepared for her Finding God in All Things retreat that was this weekend, talked extensively about where she finds God. She was able to put something together that I hadn’t been able to articulate. I often say, “I see Christ in that person,” and it’s true. But Molly pointed out that she finds God not only in people but in that common humanity, that nearly inexplicable, intangible yet palpable sense of kinship that we feel with one another. Sometimes it’s easier to feel it than other times, and it’s true that our ideas about others (do we think we’re smarter? that we can know what’s best for someone else? that we can fix their problems for them?) can cause us to miss out on that moment of connection, but there is definitely something Divine in that current that runs between two human beings, however different, and Molly wisely called that God, something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit since our conversation. Jesus, The Way, is that connection between us and others. Between me and Molly. Between me and all of you, my friends and family. Between me and my clients. Between me and my housemtaes. I see Christ in all of the above individuals, but I also see God present in the spaces between us, the silences, the thing that I can’t touch but can feel, which causes me to desire closeness with others and to keep working toward a reality that recognizes the dignity of every human being and the way in which we are all linked. If we tune in to that, how will that change how we treat one another? The planet? Our bodies? Etc.

Once again, thank you all for putting in the effort to keep up with me. A belated birthday to Kelly, a happy birthday to Peg, an early birthday to Terese, and a Happy March to all of you.

Dad, see you in two weeks!

Love,

Amanda