intersections and stereotypes

This past week has been one where my personal life has been directly effecting my views and attitude about FareStart. As a community we recently went through the loss of a potential house, which as dramatic as it sounds, was very difficult and painful. This has caused me to think about the importance of place in relationship to ministry and effectiveness. The building that FareStart occupies in fairly new and the spaces are remodeled and beautiful. Students walk around in culinary attire and the staff lugs around name badges to get into secured areas. The resturant is slightly upscale, with a very business lunch feel to it. I think that all of these elements create a distinct environment that directly contributes to the success of FareStart. The students are provided with a top-notch place to learn and practice, instilling in them a sense of value and professionality that would not be found in a dirtier, older building. The classrooms provide for a space where there isn't a 'get them through' mentality but small, localized attention paid to each student. I think that we cannot overlook the importance of place, which is far more than location. It is the interior and feel of a space, and this leans directly into the effectiveness of an organization.

On another note, I was dropping in at Star Life on the Oasis Cafe (my summer job) and told a regular about my internship on my way out. After informing him that it was a food training service for homeless individuals, he began to impersonate the people that he finds outside of his house on occasion. I cannot speak to whether his portrail of them was correct but it was amazingly offensive. I tried explaining to him that there were a gammot of people who find themselves homeless and that the people at FareStart where looking for a constructive way out. While this situation was happening it was shocking to me but reflecting on it now, it makes sense. It is so much easier and quicker to stereotype than to see individuals. Lumping people into categories allows you to form ideas about who they are and then simply dismiss them because you 'know' everything about them. Effective ministry might take trends from a groups of people but allows remains conseous of the individual. I wonder if the regular knows the man's name or the reason he is homeless? However, I dare not say that I refrain from stereotyping but it was a good reminder to me to see how distructive and simpleminded it is.

meaning in the numbers

For the last little while I have been struggling at my internship. I would have periodic thoughts of worthlessness while I plugged numbers into excel spreadsheets and made endless photocopies, searching in every corner of the building for something of meaning to do. After a conversation with a friend who is in a much more direct contact possition with people, I have come to the realization that there is incredible meaning in the numbers. Without an operations team, FareStart couldn't run. It requires keeping track of book and organizing lists and contacting people and doing a lot of unsexy number management. It's to easy to disregard this form of work, defaulting to the fact that it doesn't work directly with people and that there are no intimate life connections. The company's accountant isn't the first person that you would peg to be screaming the benefits of FareStart from a rooftop somewhere but their presence is essential. I think that what this ultimately comes down to is the makeup of the people inan organization. There are people who see intrensic value in keeping track of numbers and organizing events and to place them in a counseling situation with a student would be less than ideal. they would want to do more and see more results. There are other people that need faces in their equaitions, that could bear the thought of typing and computering all day long, with out a shread of human interaction. The beautiful potential is when all of these different types of pepole come together under strong and balanced leadership, working for the whole of the community through their specific gifts and talents. I don't know if I have found my nitch. I don't think that it is in operations but thats alright. The people that I work with are amazing and deeply love their jobs.

The number crunch might seem unglamours to some but it is a vital part of any organization, a part that cannot be overlooked in the running of a company or ministry.

I am currently working on a sexy numbers project though, something that I see amazing value in. I get to compile a list of the size of each individual serving of food for our childcare sites, linking them the the USDA's nutrional charts, and then reviewing the meals to ensure that they are balanced and healthy. I live the sense of purpose that I feel, knowing that through my contribution little tummies might be fuller and that potentially undernurished children can receive balanced meals.

stuck inbetween

This week has been rather slow at FareStart. We have been working on Guest Chef on the Waterfront and not really much else.

I have gotten a chance though to reflect on some different issues within homelessness and think about my own life. In the book I have been reading, Criminal of Poverty, Tiny outlines the story of her and her mother's journey into homelessness. The thing that has struck me the most about the book is the slide. From three generations of poverty and immigration, their family has no support network and have developed a very Darwinian method of survival. The pull of the poverty and the little by little decay of credit and financial stability are forces that grab at Tiny and her mother. Poverty for some is a state that must be stepped around and for others it is a riptide that cannot be avoided. The importance of financial decisions is that they do not only effect the immediate future, but for year and years to come. Instant gratification seems to be painless enough at the beginning but its after several years that the pain and consequences cripple an individual. I am facing the similar sliding slope of financial instability. With many of my hours being free and my job waining, I find myself cutting back and saying no to fun, but costly adventures. The biggest different I see between my situation and Tiny's is a history of stability and the hope that my parent's story gives me. Hearing tales of hungry nights and miracle checks in the mailbox has shown me the fingers of God delicately orchestrating their lives. Perhaps I am not slipping into poverty per se but slipping into forced simplicity.

The second point that has been powerful is my experience at the Farmers Market on Saturday. Its right across the street from my apartment this summer and I have had the chance to go around and shop a little. I was making dinner for Scum, which is quite a production now with upwards of 50 people coming in for dinner, and Raylene had given me food coupons from the food bank to get some veggies for a salad. It was the first time I had even used 'food stamp'esque reimbursements and the feeling was very strange. All throughout my childhood we were very able to receive food stamps but my parents refused to. I never really understood that until I had to go and do it myself. Having the inability to pay for your own food is slightly humiliating. Knowing that the little green piece of paper I received from the food bank implied so many half truths into my life was amazing. I paid and constantly wondered what the farmers thought of me. It was not just an exchange of paper for food, like cash that has a powerfully equalizing quality to it, but its was an exchange of social place, cementing the notion that I didn't have the means to provide for myself. I thought a lot about my reaction to the experience. Should I have cared less about what people thought of me? Is my perspective completely skewed on the event because it is something I do so rarely? What would it be like to have to use an EBT card for most of my groceries and experience this feeling multiple time a week? Is this a problem with the self esteem of the individual or is it a problem with the expectations and assumptions of the system and society?

boundaries

This last week has been the fourth of July week and it has been rather slow around here. On Tuesday I was able to attend a 'workshop' like thing, where we talked with a local psychologist on realistic boundaries between staff and students. While a lot of it was review and refining my thinking for a much more professional environment, I began to reflect on the importance of boundaries for the sustainability of one's engagement in a difficult work environment. While working with the homeless I think that there needs to be a keen understanding of ones own personal limits and comfort zones. I also think that being very self aware of your weaknesses and style of interaction is crucial to being helpful in any situation. Being naive about your own personal issues causes you to not deal with them and then unintentionally pass them along in the helping process.

The difficult place that I often find myself in is the line between boundaries and love. Sometimes the line gets very blurry and you don't know if a hug is very appropriate and needed or very unprofessional and boundary crossing. I think that it is also difficult when the people that you are working with are a part of your life. You cannot just leave their realities and their problems on your desk at night, but they travel with you back home. I haven't yet decided if those boundaries are needed. I think that it would be easy to say that boundaries are needed to help and protect the student but often I think that they are more for the staff. If there are boundaries that we must uphold, we don't have to let people in, 'its more professional that way' and its another level that our hearts are prevented from connecting on.

As Christians, what are our boundaries called to look like? Are we given the luxury of boundaries that create space in relationships? What did the boundaries of Jesus look like? Jesus was definitely not masochistic in his ministry, burning himself out or living in perpetual exhaustion. He fiercely protected his time alone with his Father but I get a sense of his bodily tiredness at moments throughout the gospel. To do what Jesus did, his strength could not have come from him, his simply had to allow himself to be a human through which the strength of God perfectly flowed through. Without his unsevered relationship with God, his work could not have been completed.

Allowing myself to live as a child of Christ, I need to have eyes that are open to boundaries. I need to allow God to set my boundaries because without the Holy Spirit guiding me I will set them at the extremes of everything or nothing, both of which are not loving responses.

the begining until now...

I started my internship at FareStart over 2 weeks ago today. It has been a fun journey so far, but I think that I am learning the importance of deeply relfecting on my experiences here, otherwise they will just pass through my life and I will not glean knowledge or wisdom from them. This is a quick sketch of what the last two weeks have been like here, from here on out I will be posting weekly, with my reflection and thoughts about the events.

When I first found out that I was given the opprotunity to work at FareStart, I felt completely privilaged and blessed. To know that this organization practices so many of the principles I desire to live my life by is an incredible feeling. I love that my heart smiles when I tell people about FareStart and I love that I have been trusted enough to be let into the process of it. This is a perspective that I must keep. It is easy to get bogged down in the details and the data entry, forgetting that the small onces of work I do on a computer do directly translate into transformed lives and a healthly helping model of change.

This idea of remembering is difficult to keep. My natural tendency is to inflate my position, judging my role in the company and my place on the totem pole as the parameters of service, rather than having the end goal in mind. Right now it is difficult for me to see a passion in the people that I am working with. There is a great deal of seperation from the students, many of the people in the office are just simply not physically around them, but I feel as though there is a subtle division in their brains as well. I have yet to hear a conversation about a student or about the joy that working at FareStart gives them and that is something that is really difficult.

I think that I am learning the importance of substainable passion. It seems like the most dangerous people in the world are the ones that attract people, engage them in their ideas, pursade them that they are nobel and worth supporting, and then expolde in a cloud of exhaustion and burnout. This is how things start and then fizzle out. If we are to be people of purpose and reflecting God's will here on earth, that is a will of substainability, resurrection, and eternity. There are situations in life that are here for a season and then gone, but the intimate connections to lives and livelihoods is something that requires consistancy and maturity. A wavering, mountiantop passion is great to start programs and organizations, but combining that passion with intellegent processes and realistic goals leaves people in a much better place in the end.

To achieve that substainable passion, it is essential to balance the now with the not yet. We must be dillegent and efficent now, with the grimey details and boring telephone calls because the not yet is so important. The not yet of graduates recieving diplomas and the not yet of moving from a men's shelter to a low-income housing apartment and the not yet of self-esteem that independent of damaging elements. The motivation for every action must be a greater good. Forgetting that greater good leads to passionless drudgery and that is no spirit with which to medel with someone else's life.

I have learned a little bit about equality while being here at FareStart. The term 'student' is regarded with high respect and there is a level of achievement to even hold that title. Having guidelines and prerequisits to be a student allow the staff to forget questions of character and competance that would hurt the helping relationship, and quantify both parties as compatable. There is also a fine line between discipline and grace that is flirted with very well here and I am excited to discover more of that.