I Like...Threads

About once every season, our church puts on an event called Threads. Essentially, it is a free clothing closet for families who need clothes for their children, but it's really so much more. All items are donated, but only high-quality, attractive, and lightly used (i.e. unstained) clothes are up for grabs. We set the space to look like a "store," a la Baby Gap or Gymboree. Cute Easter dresses are hung from the ceiling, shoes are arranged into adorable displays, bright swimsuits are arranged in the window, and upbeat music plays from the speakers. When people enter the store, they are greeted with refreshments and a card to fill out with their name, children's names, and sizes. They are then assigned a "co-shopper," who takes them around the store, helps them find sizes, makes the kids feel excited about their new clothes, and gets to know them on a different level. The idea is that families from the neighborhood, who probably think of clothes-shopping as stressful or as a reminder that they can't provide their kids with what so many other kids are obsessed with, can come shop for high-quality clothes in an environment where they are welcomed, paid attention to, and valued.

The faces of the kids who come to shop are priceless when they pick out their new polo shirt, bright pink tutu dress, or good-as-new Pumas. I think all the time how I put too much value on clothes and trying to look cute, but when these kids come in the store, it becomes the most important thing in the world to them, and I think that's okay. As they leave the store, smiling and proudly toting their crisp shopping bag full of basically brand new clothes, it's obvious that this is an experience they won't forget. The Threads concept is so simple, but revolutionary at the same time, and it has been amazing to watch how it has grown from serving 40 families to over 100, and how it went from Rachelle's idea to a full-service, community-focused organization that garners support from businesses and newspapers. Threads is inspiring, and so is the little boy who left yesterday jumping up and down, holding up his new shirt for all to see. "Mom, this is the best Spiderman shirt in my whole life!" Yay Spiderman.

Overwhelmed

The past month and a half has been absolutely crazy. Midterms, weddings, trips out of town, family events, birthdays, football games, and not to mention that little thing called graduate school, has me busy every minute of every day. 

However, I must admit that the sardine-packed schedule is not the only reason I haven't posted a real entry in about a month. There have been several times when I've sat down to write - mainly wanting to write about my practicum and the heavy things I come home with every day - but just haven't had the energy, or the desire to put these things into words. I think part of it is because putting it in words requires processing, and it requires me to sit here and not only talk about it, but really internalize it and think about it over and again. The reality is, when we're faced with problems that seem so incredibly large, it's much easier to "pretend" to process it and then resume our busy lives, rather than really let it take its full potential effect on our hearts.

Let me clarify - I LOVE my practicum. Love it. Love it so much that I think this might be the path I want to focus my career upon. But it's rough. So many of these children have to walk through life with none of the guidance or protection that children should have. No child of 11 should have to choose between buying a backpack or a shirt, joining a gang or getting beat to a pulp daily, or between playing outside or getting shot. They should not be able to speak matter-of-factly about the drug dealer who lives next door, their pregnancy scare, or the step-dad who abused them for years as a little girl. They should not have to think drunk parents, low expectations, dead siblings, or an education system that sets them up to fail are normal. They should not be walking through life undervalued, unwanted, or forgotten. But they are. 

It's so easy to forget that they are kids. It's too easy for society to label them "delinquents" or "hoodlums." But they're not, they're children. If I didn't have parents cheering me on every day, friends and family to tell me I could go to the moon if I wanted, or teachers who saw something and helped cultivate it, I wouldn't have succeeded. So why can we expect them to do the same? To just "get over" the obstacles that no child should even know exist? We can't. 

It's hard not to let these things get the best of us, to let ourselves think that there's no hope. These problems are big, and it's hard to think about them everyday, and I honestly don't know how people do it who don't have the promise of God's hope in mind every day when they go to work. But instead of pretending it doesn't affect us, we have to let it in, and we have to let it change us. And all we can do is pray, and all we can do is act, chipping away at the sadness and poking little holes in the darkness to let some light through for these kids. If enough of us do, maybe we can help, and maybe they can be kids again.

Ok, I had to go there sometime

I was a tiny bit surprised (but not completely) and hugely excited to hear that the author of one of my favorite books, and a person who truly lives his faith out in so many ways, had been chosen to give the benediction at the Democratic National Convention. I have become emotionally invested in this election, and it is so offensive and hurtful to me when I hear Christians say, "You can't be a true Christian and vote for a Democrat." That statement is hurtful because it directly puts my own faith into question, implying that my commitment to following Christ is somehow less authentic or "misguided." I fully believe that God is not a Republican...or a Democrat. He is not partisan, and he certainly would not support belittling others' beliefs or attacking a person's character in a very un-Christlike way, as so many politicians do. He does, however, demand that we love the unloved and hate injustice.

This particular election is crucial to these demands because, in the last 8 years, the gap in wealth and resources in the U.S. has become wider than it has EVER been in this country. That is injustice. A mother who is honestly working two minimum-wage jobs to feed her children but still struggles to make ends meet or obtain health insurance for them - that is injustice. A school in south Oklahoma City that is literally falling apart and struggling to teach algebra to its students because they are more concerned with not getting gunned down in a gang fight - that is injustice. I will get off my soap box, but I have posted Don Miller's benediction above. These words are not Republican, or Democratic - they are human.

Indifference is no longer an option.

I started classes last week, and while sitting in class for 8 hours twice a week is draining, the week was an incredibly affirming one. I realized that this IS where I should be right now, despite the bumps and difficulties this decision brought with it, and I began to think that social work, as a field, is much more fitting to my personality than academic research settings would ever be. I think I may have found my "people." Whatever that means.

My experience last week was somewhat defined by the "welcome to grad school" lecture one of our professors gave us on the first day of his class. His intent was to give us a broad explanation of how the values and objectives of social workers define our practice, and he did this in a way that won't leave me anytime soon. A lot of what he said was obvious, but the way he said it really woke me up a little bit (okay, a lot). He explained that, as social workers, we are primarily advocates. We are advocates for the poor, for the disabled, for the physically and mentally ill, for the oppressed. We are also advocates for the sex offenders, for the violent husbands or mothers, for the alcoholics, and for the criminals...because the primary, overwhelming goal of social work is to preserve and advance the dignity of human life. To see the dignity in every one who walks through our door. (Does this sound like what Christ meant about the least, the last, and the lost? I certainly think so).

He warned us that a lot of what we will discuss, research, and read will make us sad. It will make us angry. We'll feel guilty. We will want to throw in the towel and give up before we even start. But, he said, all of those reactions are good. "The reaction that terrifies me," he explained, "is indifference." He went on to say that the minute we decided to become social workers, the moment we set foot in that classroom, we had effectively promised that we would no longer be indifferent. The decision to enter his classroom, he said, was essentially a commitment to care, and to act on it. A commitment to not taking no for an answer when no one else will help these people. A commitment to no longer reading or hearing about a problem, saying, "how sad," and turning the page. Indifference is no longer an option. 

Ack. 

It made me think about how often I have been indifferent, and how easy it is to fall into that trap. It's sneaky, and it creeps into us slowly, without us knowing. But we can't let it stay there.

I know getting rid of the indifference disease is most likely a life-long process, but I'm excited, in an absolutely terrified way, to let it start now.

Back to school, back to school

Orientation for my grad school program was this past Friday, and I'm excited. I'm excited to feel like I'm making progress towards actually doing what I have wanted to do for a long time - there is a sense of accomplishment in taking a definitive step towards a goal, and I felt that on Friday. I'm also excited to meet my classmates and professors, although some of them define the stereotype of a bleeding-heart, granola-eating, meditating, dreadlock-wearing liberal hippie- but that's okay. I'm also VERY excited that I will not be sitting at my desk in my dull office 40 hours a week - I don't think I have fully processed the fact that I am now back in school and not relegated to staring at my computer every day. 

But most of all, I'm excited for the process. If you had approached me even one year ago and said, "Guess what, Ashley, next year you're going to decide you want to be a social worker!" I would have laughed at you and probably dismissed you as off your rocker. But over the past year, so many things have fallen into place (it's more accurate to say that they have been deliberately put into place, like puzzle pieces, but you get my drift), and this course of action seems to be the only thing that even makes sense. Funny what difference a year makes. I'm excited to see where God takes my heart, my goals, and my priorities as I'm exposed to people and circumstances that I've been blind to. 

I'm excited, but I'm also nervous, and a little scared. Scared of what God might show me, nervous about what He might ask me to do, and just a little bit petrified of what He might ask me to change. But fear is good - what would a first day of school be without a few butterflies? So here's to school supplies, crazy professors, and change.

Ask Me Where I Was

As I've mentioned before, we've had a lot of conversation lately about how we are called to love and serve the poor as Christ did, and wrestling with what exactly that might look like in our everyday lives. There's an incredible organization, Servants, that has sent people to the slums of urban Asia to live with and love the poorest of the poor. They literally live in the slums with these people, establish relationships with them, help determine their needs, and help enable them to resolve those needs as a community. What they are doing is incredibly inspiring, yet convicting at the same time, because they are truly serving the least of these. I was browsing on their website and came across this poem that was actually written after a Servants member's trip to Sudan - I was nearly in tears by the end, and all I could think about was those sweet children, how much they need, and how little I have done.

Ask me where I was.

And still I hear it
on and on
in the hidden corners of my mind
that eternal scream
which echoes
down the corridors of time,
refusing to be silenced
it accuses me
of passivity, thus
an accessory to crime.

And still I see it
that spreading stain
a wound that never heals
that bloodied mud
that asks me where I was
that asks me what I saw:
all the children dying
in the hidden corners
of a distant foreign famine,
in a small forgotten war.

So I pray my prayers
I pay my tithe
I read my Bible every day,
I live in plenty
I sleep in peace,
and offer praises to Our God:
that though you are there,
I am here,
and so your pain is far away,
a different world
I pray to never know;
for I hope to live a blessed life
where my hands are clean,
my heart stays pure,
and there'll be no stains on me.

And yet, and yet,
there are those awful moments
unguarded and unbidden
when your screams finally reach my ears
and you ask me if my Jesus
really is the same Jesus
that was tortured for his faith
crucified for his love,
and there are those awful moments
I finally see the terror in your eyes,
and you make me wonder
if He will one day ask me
where I was and what I saw
when His children were all dying
in a distant foreign corner
in a small forgotten war.

[Kristin Jack is the Asia Coordinator of Servants]

We Must Go

There has been a lot of discussion going on in recent weeks - in church, among friends, in my head - about what exactly it looks like to live out our responsibility to serve the least, last and the lost in our everyday. We have been wrestling with what it means to be truly present and available to a community of people whose needs are so tangible and whose struggles sit right on their doorstep (if they have a doorstep) for all to see every single day. What it means to live a life of service and compassion instead of acting it out one or two days a week. What it means to love without strings attached, without agenda, in word AND in deed.

Scott recently attended a conference in Nashville for people in the healthcare field who want to serve the poor and underserved in their respective communities. They talked a lot about community development and gave examples of communities that have been literally transformed and given a new start by people who cared enough to go there. Scott came back more excited and passionate than I think I've seen him, and as he enthusiastically explained their philosophy to me, I got excited as well. These doctors, social workers, nurses, public health workers, whoever, picked one of the most dangerous, poverty-stricken, gang- and drug-ridden neighborhoods in Memphis and established a huge clinic that now performs approximately 80,000 patient visits a year. That's great. But the truly remarkable part comes next: after several years of working in this area, establishing relationships with people, and making themselves available to people who needed them, a group of them got up and moved. Moved. To the ghetto. A bunch of white, formerly suburban, Ivy League-educated physicians got their wives and children together and moved to one of the most desperate and dangerous places in the United States.

Because they went there, they were able to get to know the people in the neighborhood, form real-life relationships, and show this broken, desperate community that they were going to live right alongside them. After a time, kids would stop by and hang out at the house with the doctors' kids. After-school programs were started, as well as skills classes for adults and teenagers. Gardens were planted. Parks and buildings were revitalized. Families were taught how to manage their money, take ownership of their careers and houses. People were taught that they mattered.

This all sounds amazing, doesn't it? To actually get up, stop just singing (see video in last post), and go? It's tricky, though. It's all well and good to sing every day about what we need to do or how to do it, but it's a whole different thing entirely when you are confronted with actually doing it. Going requires a complete renovation of priorities, ambitions, and thinking. I definitely believe that the willingness to make that kind of life change is only something that God can put in our hearts. And He can do that in so many different ways - I realize not everyone is called to move into gang territory and live next door to drug dealers. But what an amazing inspiration.

How do we know when, where, or how, we're supposed to go? I have no idea, but I'm praying that at least being aware of the need is a good start. It's a struggle, a process, that has to be cultivated and grown. We know that it has to happen - we know that we're not just supposed to sing. But just singing can be easy...Going is not.

Keep us from just singing

LOVE this song...it encompasses perfectly so much of what I've been wrestling with lately...more to come.

Heartbreak

Disaster doesn't even begin to describe it. These pictures speak for themselves. After we had watched the devastation unfold from Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar over the past couple of days, Scott and I went to visit our friend Mar, a Burmese woman who owns our favorite Thai restaurant with her husband, Issi (he is Thai). When we got to the restaurant, we were greeted by Issi and his 12 year old son, and they informed us that Mar had suffered a heart attack earlier in the week. Half of her family is still in Burma (as she still refers to it), and she has been unable to contact them because lines are down and the government is limiting access to telephones, so naturally when Mar found out about the extent of the damage, she reacted strongly. She came downstairs to say hi, and I've never seen such profound fear and pain in someone's eyes.

Over 100,000 people are dead, and the world watches helplessly as the death toll climbs and the government exists in its iron-fisted, heartless bubble. This really makes me take a step back from my "gigantic" (read: tiny) problems that look so trivial in light of the devastation that overwhelms these people's lives. My heart aches for Mar and her country, and I know God is weeping with us as we watch.