Part Two: Justification

 Don't miss Part One or Part Two makes not sense

          As time passed, I recently voiced my hurt one Sunday afternoon, probably in anger, to a friend, “No one wants to tote around poor folk,” overwhelmed by so many opportunities that were atop a glass ceiling I felt so tired of explaining. Overwhelmed by how small and outnumbered I feel almost everywhere I go for endless reasons, and misunderstood for lack of patience to listen, or simply lack of time or ability, and my own lack of energy and stamina to tell my whole life story to ask for a hand, I was falling apart and hid myself behind a fake smile again, as I have done many times before, to avoid tears that would also need to be explained. Maybe God was showing me, how the poor always feel they have to be justified, as if not having a good enough explanation for need makes one less human, and therefore less lovable. In my anger that utterance which was, shamefully, mostly sarcasm felt like a lungful of precious oxygen that my body longed to take in.

          Maybe it was something I always knew in my heart, when I saw the words “homeless please help” or “lost job, anything helps” or “single mom, in need,” or “struggling family ice cold water $1” and the times my friend has told me she can’t make rent again, and has to go into detail of all the things she fights throughout the day just to fearfully make it home, in one piece and feed her son, see her son and yet still cannot put together the bits of her wages to know her family will have a roof over their head the next day, week, month… As she tearfully explains how losing her car means losing her job, and how her job, which feels like a jail or slave labor is never enough in wages, she tells me how all her life all she’s known are struggles and she dreams of helping people with less than her, of opening a homeless shelter and giving others a worry free life very much unlike hers and her mother’s life. Her nights are of exhaustion, first mental and emotional, then physical simply because her body is scantily fueled, and spiritually she is holding on to the bit of hope that a God of love gives, knowing He sees and endures her pain alongside her. When things like these come to mind, “the least of these” giving justifications in order to inspire compassion seems wrong, it seems diabolical and evil to say the least.

          I wonder if this is something God planted in my heart years ago, long before I knew what something like social justice even means, I think God always showed me how wrong it is to ask those we are helping, “why.” What if I am not gifted in debate? What if you think I’m too stupid to speak your language, and barely listen to what I’m saying to you and humiliate me with your broken two words of my language because you’re somehow more intelligent than I am, because well you just are? What if I don’t know why, and I just need? What if I took a wrong turn and need a chance to redeem that mistake? What if it’s not your left hand’s job to ask what your right hand is doing, and why it’s doing what it’s doing? What if real compassion seeks out the lesser, has eyes wide open searching the horizon instead of continuing on their one track mind, and asks what need exists, not why it’s there and fulfills the need fully entrusting God to their own needs. I know I don’t do this either, I hate how I don’t, but maybe it’s because even when I ask I am denied or pointed elsewhere without even help in getting there, and I’m scared and weak in faith as time passes.

          Even when we’re not asking something for ourselves, the poor have to deal with the explaining, the shame, the justifying, the mistrust, the assumption that we are unintelligent because we are poor or rather we are poor because we are unintelligent. We have to face all the rejection, all the incommodity, all the sacrifice, all the risk and most of the time alone, and we have even more to lose than what it would take to help even for a little bit, more than time, more than convenience, more than comfort, we are losing our human dignity. The poor are seen as subhuman, just as immigrants or minorities are seen as less than human or any other people group that is not in privilege. Yet, I don’t have to explain why I am Latina. I don’t have to explain why I am a woman. I don’t have to explain why I am an immigrant. Yet, while all these aren’t seen and needing justification, or explanation no one seems to stop to think that they all have potential to contribute to the explanation of my financial class. The assumption is I am irresponsible, frivolous, that I don’t know the value of money, that I can’t control my spending, that I can’t add two and two and know that it’s more than the three dollars in my checking account, that I just forgot where I put that twenty dollar bill, that I am over committing myself, that I have a substance abuse problem, that I have an addiction, that I can’t decide what food is best for my family, that I don’t know how to be thrifty, that I waste money, or that I’m lying to get something for nothing. What hurts me more than anything is that I am more comfortable, less afraid and most confident to ask the government or perfect strangers for help through charities than I am to ask for even a simple prayer about these things from my Christ following community who (I used to assume) remembers the command of Jesus to love one another as He loved us. I always wondered why, and it’s because many ask me to justify my need only when it comes to finances, and yes government programs and charities do the same, but because they are complete strangers and don’t know who they can trust, but more so because I EXPECT these people to do so, and I used to EXPECT my body, whose head is Christ, to be different, the light and salt of the earth, but it’s not. If anything, they have been more ruthless in their asking and probing of my life and income. So, I remain, in silence, while I would only expect their yes to be yes, and their no to be no, it’s easier to hear nothing.

This is part two of a series of three related blogs; please see my next post to read on…

Part One: Draw Bridge

          A year ago I was challenged to love when I feel unloved, hidden, or forgotten, I think that’s why I spent a year looking for a place to do so, yet after a year of no growth, still being stuck in that same feeling, and failure (which is okay, it happens) I believe I know not how to love others. Maybe it’s just my current situation what feels like a sea of physical limitations that I cannot begin to document here, physical freedom-sucking limitations that seem to be making deep emotional and spiritual manifestations. I know, most would say it’s the other way around that the spiritual ill births the physical ill, but these limitations are very much outside of me, and they are bleeding my insides dry. I am aware that most of the things affected are existing hurts, and I am also aware that God may very well be fortifying me, and cleaning me of those hurts through this time. As some would say, we all have times in the desert. A few months ago I committed myself to a community of people, most of whom are strangers to me, and I have failed. I cannot commit to them and I am mourning the day I uttered such false words. Deep in my heart I think I knew it, I would have to swallow those words after speaking them like a dog returns to vomit, but the thought at the forefront of my mind then was “only time can tell.”

          I never knew how intensely I cherished the thought of being a person who can keep her word, even if they are little ones, and this has cut me deeply. I know, like I said already, failure is not the end all and be all of life, but I think there is a certain level of mourning I cannot even grasp enough with words when one fails at something held closet to one’s core. Everything I do, and everything I want to be, in Christ, for me is based around this, knowing who He is, who He made me and is making me, and being who I say I am to others, this is the way I know how to love; honesty, consistency, perseverance, fighting until the bitter end to engage the other and giving my life away as best I can therefore showing others a piece of who He is through my imperfect fragment of light. I know I’m not perfect, I know I fail at this in little ways every day and big ways too, but to outright lie knowing, somewhere, that my words could not be, I feel my edges fraying, and my insides raw and deteriorating. I feel I have betrayed the very one I love most.

          Ironically, I wondered for weeks if I could keep my word if I were able to become self-reliant and therefore able enough to even try to commit. If I could make all the stars align, shape the face of the world, change racism, classism, poverty, sexism, egotism, unfair wages, privilege the unprivileged, repair the image of family and what it is and does then, and only then I could go, let my yes, be yes, and my no, be no and not have to think about everything I face every time I wake. I thought, maybe then I could find a community, plant my roots, learn how to love others and not God, alone, far off, not out of sight and therefore not out of mind, not out of my mind.

          I haven’t been completely cut off; I am not a hermit by any means. Yet, the thought was crippling, when I was most desperate to find a bridge out of my lonely world, it became a draw bridge and it was only let down at the hands of others, and at their whim. Yes, you can have a friend today, because she needs to talk, the draw bridge lowered. No, not today, the bridge is raised, even though you are distraught with your pain, it is incommoding me. Sure, you can come to gather with others like you, lowered again, because we need you to fill a roll that is convenient for us. No, not this time, I can’t (or don’t want to) help you the bridge is raised, and though I have plenty of more resources than you, you need to take initiative and find your own way; I am not your keeper. Come be a part of planning who we are, and what we want to do together this year, oh but figure out how to travel 12 miles in limited time, with a limited income all on your own, don’t be late. Those who had privilege and power over me planned my dreams, contained my wishes, left me to burn in this desert…

          I’ve said it many times. I know I have God love and commune with and to communicate, and I know He loves me, hears me, and speaks to me. In my darkest moments, it is the only thing I can cling to, and know I am not insane. However, this God I love, with all I know to give, which never feels like enough and always fails to be given fully, also asked, begged, pleaded and bled in so many ways, for me to love not only Him, but to love others, and every time I fail I am spitting in His face. I am leaving Him cold, hungry, lonely, sick, desperate for human contact of any sort, and I ask myself, does anyone else feel the weight of this charge? Each time that bridge was drawn against me, and my family more so, I felt less than human, less than what He made me to be, less than living. After trying to find ways to cross that bridge and be able to come back, because I have a home here I am committed to not out of obligation but out of love and duty, maybe, and a calling I felt Him give me, after trying to find ways and failing attempt after attempt I couldn’t even commit myself to keep trying. I gave up. In the end, as lonely as it is, it’s easier to not ask, to remain out of sight and out of mind, and not be a burden to anyone else. I said to myself, “Until I find a way to be a gift to anyone without having to take from them first, I will remain. I trust that God will show me, in time, a way that the working poor can give and be a blessing without being a project or a parasite because God made beautiful symbiotic relationships, even where one is stronger and the other weaker, yet they coexist without one always taking and never giving, and the other always giving but never taking.”

This is part one of a series of three related blogs, please see my next post to read on…

Do people comment on blogs anymore? I wish I had more time to sit and write and solidify my thoughts. I do my best thinking at work and can't write a thing. I'm at lunch wondering, wishing my heart was settled enough to say half the things I've been feeling needed to be said to anyone. I was told once, maybe more, that sometimes we need to be heard... I wonder why, since God always hears us, why do we have that longing, and that need? I feel it's related to how Christ called us to love one another, and I feel like when we are unknown and do not know others that's when it's hardest to love... I have more thoughts on this, but have not the time to write them all down. But soon I will, I hope to keep my word on the soon, or the ever... Kid's Church was beautiful, as always God tells me my deepest weaknesses through the least of these, and I love them... so I don't want to say "I promise" unless I really mean it because I taught my little ones to make their "yes mean yes" and "no mean no" something I have always felt is important, but have cluelessly failed at more than I realized... So I will try to post, soon, soon.