This began as a way for me to say you guys should read leonardo boff...and it all came pouring out.

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The next two blogs cover a span of experiences, taking place over the past week. I'll post the next one soon, but I didn't want to overload you all.

We had snow here Friday (about a 1/4inch. The entire city shut down.)

Cheers,
AS


I have many thoughts that are mulling around in my head. Several address the issues of poverty, the idea of power, and how we as individuals operating in society relate to others. I do not think it is an overly complex idea that because people occupy differing sectors in society relate through those. Yet how that is done, and how these social systems impact and inform our relationships is something that is very interesting to me.

I once heard someone say that they have an easier time relating to those in the same class over ethnicity and culture. I think this is true for many of us. If we look at our friends, how many might we place in completely different classes than our own? This is a troubling and agitating thought for me. Even more so than class, however, is the idea that these social structures inform how we relate in more minute ways: Gender and sexual orientation for example.

But I have been trying recently, to not be stuck in the theory. I have been trying to put my feet on the ground and walk with these thoughts. Yet again, and again, I come to the quandary of how we relate to others. My YAV orientation placed an emphasis on "Being," and not "Doing." But the biggest question I have yet to really figure out is, how do I be in a way that is equitable, just, and right.

Maybe these are easy questions. Just be good. Be just. Treat people like people. But I think it is more complex than that.

I am unsure as to why I am inspired by the quote below. But as I was reading today I felt that this statement rings true with where I am in life. It is a development. And it is composed of many disjointed steps that seem to move simultaneously in differing directions.

It is hard to keep your feet under you when the boards holding you up above a sea of doubt seem to be drifting apart. Eventually, I'll have to learn the splits.

Here's the quote. Its by Leonardo Boff, a liberation theologian.

Taking a quick look back at these past twenty-five years, I can see that my life has taken a particular direction: my first enthusiasm was for the Franciscan order, and for the priesthood, and then for theology; from theology I went on to the church, and from the church to the people; from the people to the poor, from the poor to humankind; from humankind to the mystery of creation. As things opened up and my horizon broadened, I experienced growth in interior authenticity and genuine freedom. My opportunities to be more human and therefore to feel united to the fate of all humankind and everything created became deeper within me. Today it is clear to me that the priesthood, religious life, and theology have radical meaning only if they bring us more directly in contact with other human beings, the men and women who are our traveling companions.

Yes! I thought. The idea of development struck me as true. This is where I am. I am finding myself in this fuller system as not more individual but more connected, more responsible and sometimes more disgusted.

I took the GRE this past Wednesday. And after I left the ambience of quiet, computer, and tension, I had a feeling that even if I had failed the GRE everything would be okay; that I could still go and find a job. That if I was down on my luck, I could ask my parents for $50, and that would get me to the next paycheck. I complained to myself a bit about the "test" culture, about how I don't believe in that idea of testing knowledge through a marking of bubbles. Instantly, however, I felt a rush of red shame come over my face. How dare I think that I shouldn't have to take a single test to get into Graduate school. Students all over the world take much more intense and competitive tests to simply reach college or high school. I have no right to complain. And so I reacted in disgust to my lackadaisical, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude towards the tests. What gave me the right to be so confident, so crass in my attitude toward this process? My thoughts rushed towards anger and the desire to quit this $50 safety net: "If I fail, I feel like I should fail completely like everyone else. Or that it should be that everyone has this safety net."

This safety net has manifested itself in a number of ways throughout the past week. Most especially during a health care training COPS/Metro and Methodist Healthcare Ministries put on this past Tuesday. It was an amazing seminar. It was educational in that it was the first time I had come across the Health Care bill in such a concise and clear form. It was interesting in that it created space for new conversation amongst members of the San Antonio community. It was honest: parents, students, single adults all had the chance to share stories about how the current economic, medical, political climate is stifling their well-being.

At the end of the seminar we sat in house meetings. Circles of ten or fifteen people filled the room. Stories were exchanged. One mother explained how she had just lost health care for her 5 and 7 year old children. It wasn’t because she had lost her job and thus her coverage as well. In fact, both she and her husband work full time. Recently she received a raise. And because the Texas Children Health care Insurance Plan (CHIP) coverage must be renewed every 2-3months she was found as out of the coverage pay-range. Not because she had gotten fired: but because she had received a raise. Her children have been without coverage for 9months now. “All I can do now is hope that God will keep my children from getting sick,” she said.

Several other individuals stood and shared their stories. A mother whose daughter received open-heart surgery as an infant had just lost coverage due to budget cutbacks. Along with health care cuts, Texas is looking to cut near 100,000 jobs in education . All of these cuts toward public services occur because Texas must have a balanced budget: it is the first action done by Austin. A member of my congregation stood up then. “ I just don’t know,” she said, “whether to throw up or cry.” A single 30something, she works for a city health care provider, and comes across these stories daily. Yet her employer has notified her that the grant that pays her salary has run out. And so she is left to search for a job and health care. She too is left searching.

What is bizarre is to think that these citizens of Texas have understood their state government as an industry that might provide for them. Yet it seems, as the NyTimes columnist Gail Collins recently penned: Gov. Rick Perry and other ideologues seem to be most concerned with sidelines issues.


Here in San Antonio, this idea of a $50 safety net is troubling to me. I believe this safety net pushes issues above issues. It is easier, to place this conversation in a political or partisan schema. Yet, it is better, I think to face the issues as more important than my ideologies or values. I am curious to where the work on providing youth with a proper education and families with adequate health care lies in our communities.

It is true then, I think, as Boff guides, that we ought to work with those in mentalities that we are all connected and journeying together. The mother who shared her story about getting a raise is a Mexican immigrant to San Antonio, speaking only Spanish. The single woman is Mexican America, yet speaks no Spanish. And the final mother, is Caucasian, and born and bred Texan. Yet these women left the meeting joined in hands, arms, and anger toward a reality that is getting worse for their children. Their bonds went beyond class, beyond ethnicity. I believe our work finds its space in the commonality that rings true for all of us: the desire to live well. And so here in San Antonio, that means working with the cultural, ethnic, and class “other.” How we move with or without our safety net requires an interaction with other human beings and to see them as such.

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