Living Simply So All May Simply Live

In our most recent blog post, 2012-13 Dominican Volunteer Megan Rupp reflects on the importance of community. Megan currently serves on the DVUSA Board and as program director for the Franciscan Outreach Association.

My name is Megan Rupp. I was a Dominican Volunteer from 2012-2013. I lived at St. Edward’s Convent on the north side of Chicago with five Dominican Sisters of Springfield and one Dominican Sister of Peace. I had the honor of accompanying refugees and immigrants with Heartland Alliance where I taught ESL and pre-GED courses to adult English language learners. Following my year of service, I was hired on with Heartland Alliance and spent several wonderful years working with youth who had been detained at the border for entering the United States illegally.

My year of service afforded me so many transformative opportunities that have served invaluable to me and my work. The fulfillment that I find working with those who reside on our societal margins has been overflowing. Our society loves to sell idea of scarcity; never enough. One can never have enough wealth or capital or power- the list goes on. Community is completely contradictory to that idea. Community forces one to consider the call of living simply so all may simply live. Also, learning to love and serve those in community that are particularly challenging, expands our ability to love and serve those sisters and brothers we encounter on the street and at work. Community isn’t all sunshine and rainbows; and it shouldn’t be. I recently had a brilliant peace teacher who said, “We all need friction to round us out.” That’s exactly what community does- it transforms the consciousness of “me” and flips it on its head to “we.” (The DVs from my year that remember our opening retreat will love that ambigram) Imagine a world where a common, basic value of society was “we” focused.  I have been so impacted by my time as a Dominican Volunteer that it has led me to a deeper commitment to the organization and the volunteer experience.

More than a year ago, I decided to extend my commitment to DVUSA and applied to serve on the Board of Trustees. In my year as a trustee member, I have learned a great deal about all that it takes to run a program with so many moving parts. It has also been wonderful to be serving within the Dominican family again; especially with so many sisters, associates, laity, and alumni that I deeply respect.

Additionally, since January, I have had the honor of serving as the full-time volunteer program director at Franciscan Outreach Association (FOA). FOA serves women and men in the city of Chicago who are experiencing homelessness. Our volunteers serve within the organization at our overnight shelter and soup kitchen. I find myself ever reminded and thankful that St. Dominic and St. Francis were contemporaries and friends, as I find myself at home with FOA. My work with the Franciscans is built on a foundation of Dominican life. DVUSA taught me the values of a simple, common life of service rooted in prayer and study. I can only pray that my mentorship with Franciscan Outreach Volunteers serves as fractionally impactful as that mentorship of the Dominican Sisters who have formed me.        

Giving Thanks by Showing Thanks!

Kate Kirbie served as a Dominican Volunteer from 2012 to 2013 at the Racine Dominican Eco-Justice Center in Racine, WI. After serving she was hired as the Assistant to the Director of the Eco-Justice Center where she continues to minister, leading environmental education programs and helping to care for the farm.

Is it just me or has November gone by fast? Maybe it is the cold quickly confronting us, making the outdoors feel more like the frigid weather after Christmas, or maybe it is me overly occupying my days with fall events. Either way, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Thanksgiving is a time to make a point to acknowledge the relationships we have, appreciate our health and the experiences we’ve had, and maybe even acknowledge the simple blessings, like food, water, and clean air. 

On Thanksgiving, no matter if you have a large turkey for twenty family members, or spend a small meal together with few, we can easily recognize our thanks for food. Living and working at the Eco-Justice Center, I’ve grown accustomed to praying in thanksgiving for “the hands that worked to prepare and grow the food we eat.” For Thanksgiving on the farm, we gather the squash and potatoes from the root cellar, defrost beans and fruit from the freezer, open cans jarred last year, and prepare the turkey that recently left the farm. We, as do many, become closer to our food as we cook and eat our Thanksgiving meal.

But there are many gifts in our lives that we can easily overlook. The fact that the food is safe enough for us to eat is a great blessing. Most of us probably also pay little attention to the water that fills our drinking glasses. Along the same line, I only think of the cleanliness of the air I breathe when I drive by the Oak Creek coal power plant just north of Racine. Still, many others are living with the health consequences of drinking contaminated water or breathing in air pollutants.

On Thanksgiving we can make a simple verbal acknowledgment of what we are thankful for, but how do we show our thanks? For example, if we spend one day in the year thanking our family but don’t regularly call, lend an ear, or see what we can do for them, then how else do we show our appreciation? How can we show our thanks for our air, our water, or our food? Certainly not by continuing to pollute, destroy, and ignore the environment.

To mark the 10^th anniversary of the Eco-Justice Center, a small group from the community went to the Lake Michigan shoreline, just a mile away, to pick up trash. As we were approaching the site, I mentioned to the group that only two months ago fifteen high school students and I visited the same difficult-to-reach beach front and picked up loads of Styrofoam, plastic and glass. After hearing that, the group I was traveling with expected a minute amount of refuse. Instead we were greeted with a shoreline covered in trash. While some of the garbage was left by people having late night bonfires, much of the Styrofoam surely washed in from the lake after blowing from someone’s possession on land.

It’s not just this beach front. There are few places now that you can drive, bike, or walk without spotting litter. If it was just an eyesore, I wouldn’t be so worried. Many of us know that animals can get trapped in litter. When I recently watched the documentary Bag It, I was shocked to find that there are 40 times more plastic particles in the oceans than there are plankton! Plankton – the organisms that provide a crucial amount of food for fish and whales. There are more plastic particles in the oceans than plankton!

Kate (kneeling in front) gathers with volunteers to clean up Racine's shoreline.

Recently, while meeting with a group of LaSallian Volunteers to discuss “peace” in our weekly “Spiritual Literacy,” I had a realization: entropy. I’ve always compared the second law of thermodynamics to my bed room. In the morning, it is easy to throw my pajamas over my chair and leave my bed unmade. I have to use energy to tidy my room. This seems to be true with most worldly issues. It takes effort to make a peaceful world, it takes effort to educate, it takes effort to have a healthy, clean environment, and it takes effort to think of new alternatives. If we continue to live our lives saying we are thankful, but not really showing it, what will our futures look like?

The Water Conflict Chronology sites nearly 100 attacks on water or conflicts over water around the world in the last four years. These numbers are sure to grow as our population continues to increase, as we carry on polluting the environment, and as we delay reducing our unnecessary use of water. There are a lot of challenges to caring for the Earth. Many Americans feel entitled. Cheap food, cheap electricity, cheap oil, and cheap water are expectations without acknowledging the actual cost of health or the cost to clean up the land. Doing nothing and accepting what we currently have will lead to a future generation making even harder decisions.

Still there is hope. Communities are joining together to learn, educate, and find solutions. On September 21, over 300,000 people marched in New York to advocate against climate change and to promote positive action. Close to home the Racine Dominicans, like many other religious communities, are paying attention to the companies in which they are investing their finances and working to leave a lighter footprint. There is even an Eco-Justice Committee within the Dominican Alliance, which includes representatives from the Racine Dominicans, Sinsinawa Dominicans, Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Dominican Sisters of Houston, Dominican Sisters of Kenosha, and Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids. As individuals we can work to make small changes: buy local (reducing the amount of fossil fuels used to transport food), be conscious of your water use, properly dispose of trash if items can’t be reused or recycled, reduce your use of plastics, write to politicians and support those in favor of protecting the environment.

However you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I push you to stretch your mind. We are blessed. I personally feel blessed to have had the opportunity to serve as a Dominican Volunteer, to still have a number of sisters as close friends and mentors, and to live in a safe environment with access to organic produce and clean water. Now, this November, let’s not only give thanks, but show thanks for these many blessings.

Raising the Minimum Wage

By Luke Sullivan

Within my first few weeks at Arise Chicago, I remember distinctly speaking with a worker who came in to our worker center who made minimum wage. Our conversation eventually turned to how stressful her life had become. She worked full time and just could not afford clothes, food, schooling and many other necessities for her children. Because of this, she was forced to begin the process of moving to another city to live with her brother. Her children had only known living in Chicago and she was so saddened and downtrodden that she would have to move her children away from the only life they had ever known.

This conversation has remained with me and I think is a powerful example of why the current minimum wage is unfair and unjust. How can someone working full time not be able to afford life’s basic necessities? This is one of many reasons why I was so excited when I was first introduced to the Raise Illinois coalition, a campaign to raise the minimum wage in Illinois. This group hopes to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. One of the many statistics that is used to support this raise is if the minimum wage had risen with the cost of living over the past 40 years, it would be $10.39 per hour today. The coalition wishes to raise it to $10.65 per hour over a four year span and tie it to inflation thereafter. It is not about a handout so all workers can live in great luxury, but about fairness and justice. Plus it makes economic sense: the more money workers have, the more money they are able to spend; if these wages were to increase, the economy will be strengthened.

The Raise Illinois campaign aims to give all families the fundamental necessities to sustain a fulfilling life and to raise a family. It is unjust for members of our community and our state to work full-time and still live in poverty. This is why I was so excited to travel to Springfield, Illinois on December 5th with five Worker Center members, on behalf of Raise Illinois, to educate lawmakers on the need to increase the state minimum wage.

The five workers made the trip in order to share their stories about how, even when working full-time, the minimum wage is so low that it is keeping working families like theirs in poverty. One of the workers, Maria Winnie Gonzalez, while speaking to one state representative who was undecided on the issue, pleaded that being a minimum wage worker did not allow her to “buy clothes, food, and so many other things that my children and entire family need.”

The workers wanted all lawmakers, even those unavailable that day, to hear their voice, so they also left a note in Sen. John Mulroe’s office, which was signed by all the workers, asking him to do God’s Justice and raise the minimum wage to a living wage. It is true that their families and the families of so many of their friends and co-workers need this raise.

As a Dominican Volunteer, my faith is very important to me. Jesus says it succinctly when he is speaking to God, saying, “That they may be one, just as we are one.” I think Jesus is telling us to stand in kinship and solidarity, as one, with all people. In this case, we must stand as one so all workers may be treated fairly and not be left behind. For though we may come from different backgrounds and experiences, we are all children of God; and in that, we share a common humanity.

Throughout these past few months at Arise, there have been several campaigns that also work to demand dignity and respect for all workers. I have seen this through working with the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Committee, the Arise Chicago Car Wash campaign, the Fight For Fifteen coalition, and so many other movements throughout the city. It has never been about gaining great luxuries and wealth, but instead about making sure everyone in society can earn a decent living. For me, these campaigns are all really asking the same question: “Instead of worrying about the bottom line, shouldn’t we be more concerned about the people who line the bottom?”

In January 2011, Senate Bill 1565 was first introduced into the legislature to progressively increase the minimum wage to $10.65 per hour and tie it to the cost of living thereafter. Currently, we are hoping the bill will be passed in the lame duck session of Congress in early January 2013. The coalition is asking for your time and your prayers to see to it that God’s Justice is done, and that this bill is signed into law.

Luke Sullivan is the Religious Organizer for Arise Chicago.  This blog post originally appeared on the Arise Chicago blog, Dignity At Work.

Advent is the Season of Waiting

This reflection was written by current volunteer Rachel Mustain.  Rachel serves in San Francisco, California, in the Corporate Work Study Program office at Immaculate Conception Academy, a Cristo Rey high school sponsored by the Mission San Jose Dominicans.

Advent is the season of waiting. These four weeks are a season of waiting for the feast of Christmas. The waiting can be eager anticipation for Christmas day, budding excitement in the traditions of putting up lights, decorating a tree, and guessing what presents this year will bring or it can be waiting with groaning and frustration that there are still more than two weeks before we have a break from school. Either way, we wait.

When I was growing up, Advent was not the beginning of Christmas; it was its own season. My elementary school did not have a Christmas concert; we had an Advent program. My family did not put up decorations until after school was out, and we did not buy a Christmas tree until the last minute.We did have an Advent wreath that we placed in the center of our dinner table and lit every night (which meant candle one had to be replaced half way through the season).

Our Advent wreath was not a typical wreath of green ferns. It was made of wood and on it were carved symbols of the Christian faith. There was an image of a lamb, a fish, an anchor, the tree of Jesse, the star of David. These images are symbols of our history, symbols for Jesus that were painted in the catacombs of early Christians, symbols with meanings that are rooted in scripture and many from our Hebrew ancestors. These ancient symbols remind me now in this Advent season of how the Israelites waited. The thousands of years from the time of Abraham to the coming of the promised Messiah makes the four weeks of Advent seem pretty short.

Still it is not just during Advent that we wait for Christ’s coming. Today’s reading in Isaiah promises, “the LORD will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. He will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations. He will destroy death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces.” We are still waiting for this day, the day when there will be no more hunger, when there will be no more death from sickness or war, when there will be no more sadness but only joy. Our world is not yet like this, but we have this hope in Jesus.

Unlike the Israelites, we no longer wait for the coming of the Messiah. We celebrate on Christmas that he has come. Jesus said, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it." We have heard Jesus’ message of redemption, and we can see his work being done in and through our lives. We still wait for the full coming of God’s kingdom, but we can build up his kingdom here on earth by the way that we wait for this second coming.

In our society, waiting is not something we like to do. We are used to instant gratification. We want to decide what we want to eat and then get it immediately at a fast food restaurant. We want to lose weight in a crash diet. We want to know all the answers as soon as we ask them by having the internet at our fingertips at all times. We get angry when there is a line at a convenience store or traffic on the interstate. We just can’t stand to wait. We even say “We can’t wait.” This instant satisfaction is contrary to God’s way. He took thousands of years to come to earth as the promised Messiah. It has been thousands of years since he came and the end of times the disciples expected in their lifetimes still has not come. God does not work instantly. He knows that we get true satisfaction when we take time. When we spend time to get fresh ingredients and cook a meal at home, when we make lasting changes to our lifestyle, we are healthier and feel better. When we research our questions, we find the true answer. When we spend more time in a line at the store we can have meaningful conversations with those around us. Good things come to those who wait.

The readings at Mass during Advent tell us how to wait. We hear the message to be watchful and ready. We must be aware to be able to see the coming of what we are waiting for. Again in our culture, we are constantly tuned in through media and internet, but are we really aware? Are we conscious of our surroundings, of the people physically present around us? We must be aware to see Jesus’ coming because he is here, now, and we will only find him if we are aware to his presence in each other. We must also be aware of ourselves. During Advent we are given the opportunity to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament, this sign of God’s grace, is meant to bring us to greater self awareness. Through reconciliation we take a long, loving look at ourselves and become aware of Jesus’ presence in us and then bring our weaknesses to the light to burn away the darkness that can get trapped within us.

Advent is a season of waiting, but it does not mean we do nothing. It is a time set aside for us to prepare for Christ’s coming. We become more aware of ourselves and our world and we see that the light of Christ is present here even amidst the growing darkness of these winter days. Each week as we light another candle in the wreath, Jesus’ light gets brighter. If each of us lets that light penetrate our own darkness- our fears, anxieties, worries, shortcomings- and at every opportunity shed that light on another, St. Dominic’s vision to set the world on fire for Christ will come true. A Dominican friar in the thirteenth century Meister Eckhart said , “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture?  We are all meant to be Mothers of God." For the remainder of Advent, we are waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus into world. Let us not wait in vain, but let us be living in a way that brings Jesus and his promises for joy and fulfillment into our own world and the world of those around us.