St. Mary's - Quad City Interfaith - Sam. . .stuff

I'm the president of the Parish Council of St. Mary's. I also represent St. Mary's on the board of Quad City Interfaith. One of my favorite ways to communicate is e-mail, and I periodically send messages to our council and some folks, and here's one I sent tonight (trust me, there's nothing confidential or proprietary or even a little gossipy in this. But who knows? there might be something you'd find interesting or helpful or. . .something.)

"Hello, all, and God's blessings be with you.

Quad City Interfaith will be holding a Trivia Night this Saturday, March 2. It will be at the K. of C., 1111 W. 35th, downstairs. $10/person. Doors open at 6:30, trivia starts at 7:00. Bring your own food, beverages must be purchased on-site. We are sincerely really and truly hoping to fill at least one table from St. Mary's. Come one, come all for a night of fun and fellowship and trivia!

Oh - and baskets. My wife is among those who have put together baskets for this. Now if she would only let me see what's in one. . .

We took a survey at last weekend's Masses. In conjunction with Quad City Interfaith and some other area congregations St. Mary's is participating in Rekindling Our Congregations. The survey was to get a sense of what matters most to our members, and what we would have a Core Group do to help out. The actions wanted may be within our parish, or neighborhood, or larger community. A Core Group can be a wonderful instrument for good. Let's make it such.

Speaking of. . .We recently had a Saturday workshop of some QCI board members with Sam Finkelstein from Gamaliel of Illinois. One of the topics was 1x1 conversations. One-on-ones are a foundation of community organizing. Toward the end of the discussion we were asked how many 1x1s we could have toward building our Core Team. People would say eight or ten from their congregations. Sam said he has ten a day. (From anyone else that would be unbelievable. You should meet Sam. Really big bundle of energy in a really small package. He just might do ten a day.) I guess I might have stood out for my answer: "One." We at St. Mary's have the advantage of already having a Core Group, and what I'd like to see accomplished: every person involved with our Core Group to talk about our work, and invite one person to join us. Just one. Do I have anyone in mind? I cheated. I have two or three in mind. If any or all of the ones I have in mind do get involved, I plan to do a little mentoring, but not too much. The ones I have in mind need no handholding. They're smart, tough, and independent. Ask their opinion, and you're liable to get it. Once involved, they each will have a voice to be heard. I am so hoping. . .

So, God bless. . .have a great night. . .see you Saturday!"

Thanks for hanging out for a few!

On Wednesdays during Lent, except for Ash Wednesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, St. Mary's has a soup supper. The soup's good, the fellowship is better.

I'm a St. Mary's guy. I live about 5 minutes in one direction from St. John Vianney in Bettendorf, and about the same distance in the other direction from Our Lady of Lourdes (yes, Bettendorf does seem to have had a thing about French saints.) On my way to weekend Mass, in order to get to St. Mary's I drive past two other parishes: Sacred Heart Cathedral (east side of Davenport, above the hill), and St. Anthony's (downtown.) I like St. Mary's for several reasons. More on that some other time.

I have a headache now. I've had a couple of episodes of pretty severe and long-lasting vertigo recently. I recently had an MRI in connection, and I'm told there is evidence of an old stroke. It affected the left side of my brain. What I don't know is how old, and what the damage was. Was that what was going on in those episodes of vertigo? I don't know for sure, but it would seem reasonable to think so. Anyway, neurologist on March 18.

Headache and tired. 'Nuff for today. Thanks for the company!

I am really really tired tonight.

Tonight was the fourth Tuesday of the month. Almost all of my Tuesday nights are taken up with something. The fourth Tuesday is the night of the meeting of the Quad City Interfaith immigrant task force. Only tonight, what with the winter storm, only Cindy and I showed up. And Cheryl. And Meri. And Kaitlin.

Kaitlin is a wonderful young lady. She must be; she gets my jokes. When we moved into the building we're in now, she and her family lived across the hall. The families drew close, and Kaitlin adopted us as her grandparents. Then, last weekend, Kaitlin and Cindy were looking through some of Cindy's family photos, when Kaitlin asked, "What's my grandma doing in your scrapbook?" and Cindy replied, "That's my aunt!" Small world - she really is family. And we're glad of it.

My interest in human trafficking - especially in areas of domestic servitude and agricultural labor- was a byproduct of my interest in immigration, and my concern with the horrors of the sex trade arose largely from the proximity of one of the larger centers of the trade to where we live. Whether you know it or not it's also close to where you are. Even in the placest that people think is least likely. Got a truck stop in Boise? Massage parlor in Salt Lake? Trust me - it's under your nose.

A second area of concern for me is wage theft. It happens all over the place. Immigrants are shipped in to work under slave conditions, then two days before payday ICE shows up. The timing is coincidence, I'm sure. Workers are paid below minimum wage. Or, they are told, "No overtime, under any circumstances." Then they are given a pile of work that would take 50 hours to do, and told to have it done within the week. The expectation is that the worker will "donate" the other 10 hours. I have worked in a situation in which I was expected to take work home, but it was not allowed that anyone would claim overtime. "Donation" was expected. The more appropriate term was never used: "Theft." Wal-Mart workers are forced to work through their breaks, but don't single out Wal-Mart. I doubt that Target or K-Mart or any ot the other retailers are different.

What can we do about this? I've discussed (I think!) our adventure of our prayer vigil at Wal-Mart on Black Friday. I guess those nuns just scared the bejezus out of Wal-Mart!

Every year St. Ambrose University awards the Pacem in Terris award. Last year's recipient was Kim Bobo, from International Worker Justice. We met her, and I've got a copy of a book she wrote, autographed by her. Wage theft is a big issue to them. So, I've been on a Black Friday prayer vigil at a Wal-Mart. I've met a founder of International Worker Justice, and sent them a check. IWJ is starting an office in Iowa City, and may be doing some work in the QCA. We'll see.

Did you know Iowa is a "right-to-work" state? (Translation: right to work underpaid.)

'Nuff for tonight. Thanks for hanging out!

Tired.

Our fourth grandkid - third granddaughter - Livvy tuned 11 today. We are so very proud of her. Love you, Livvy!

I read the papers daily. I don't often read a lot of it in depth. I skim, and if an article catches my attention, I may spend more time on it. Today was one of those rare days when nothing caught my attention.

Sleep well, all. I'll try to do likewise.

Thanks for coming by!

My week - Saturday

Saturday is a day of semi-rest. I'm not very active physically. This morning I drove daughter 3 to her boyfriend's house, dropping her off about 6:40. After I came home I surfed the web, listened to music, watched TV, in no particular order. Whatever I felt like doing at any given time.

I start to think through the Sunday school lesson for Sunday on Friday night. This week we'll be talking about the Holy Spirit, the beginning of the Church on Pentecost, apostles, and martyrs. The word "apostle" is often taken to refer to one of the twelve orginals, but it was a Greek word long before there was a church or a Twelve. "Apostle" simply means "one sent on a mission." When President Obama sent Hillary Clinton on an overseas mission, she was an apostle for him. The word "epistle" means "letter", so if Ms. Clinton sent a foreign dignitary a letter rather than making the trip, it was an epistle from an apostle. If that person sent a letter in reply, it was an epistle from that apostle. It had no connection with a church at all. In the Nicene Creed that the Roman Catholics and most Protestants (but not the Eastern Orthodox) subscribe to, we refer to "one holy catholic and apostolic church" (Roman Catholics capitalize the "Catholic".) The phrase means "one holy universal church with a mission."

We'll talk about martyrs. The martyrs we'll be focusing on will be associated with the violence in El Salvador in the early 1980s: Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in March, 1980, and four American church women, three of them nuns, who were beaten, raped and murdered by five Salvadoran soldiers in December of that same year. We talked a while ago about Pedro Calungsod, a Filipino 18-year-old martyred in Guam a few centuries ago. The question: what is it that would motivate someone to surrender their very lives for something, as these people did?

On Friday night I work through some preliminary thoughts. During the early part of Saturday I fill out the subject matter. Later Saturday I start to consider the methodology. I have a catechists' guide (why say "teacher" when you can say "Catechist"?) and sometimes I adhere pretty closely, and sometimes not at all. Tomorrow will be a bit of a hybrid.

It's 10:42 now, and this is about the time I'm usually wrapping up, but after the 5 PM Mass Cindy and I and a couple of family members went out to a movie so things are a bit delayed. Cindy and I would notice if the plot was believable and well-developed, if the acting performances were good, if the screenplay was well-written. The family members we had with us are of such an age that they only notice if the actors are hot.

So, back to finishing up the prep. If a teacher shows up for a class unprepared, trust me, junior high kids will pick up on that quicklike and in a hurry.

Thanks for hanging out!

What I do all week. . .

I am such a creature of habit. I could tell you what I'll be doing all week in October. It will be pretty much the same thing I'm doing all week now.

SUNDAY: Mass at 9 AM, if I didn't go to the 5 PM on Saturday. I have one or another liturgical role at the 5:00 Mass seven months of the year, so most weekends it's the 5:00 Mass. Then I teach a Sunday school class, mostly junior-high age; class starts at 10:00 or whenever time everyone gets there, until 11:10, or whenever we're done.

I'm not terribly rule-bound. A denomination that I used to belong to was all about rules. Rules written. Rules unwritten. Rules made by anyone who confused his/her own opinion for rules. I think that one of the reasons I connect well with junior high kids is that I'm not a legalistic sort. Thus, no assigned seating. Sit wherever there's room and wherever your mood prompts you to sit. And I refuse to be the Cell Phone Gestapo. Just shut them off and don't make me compete with them. My lessons have not been about rules nearly as much as they've been about relationships. If you get through a year with me without knowing a lot more about rules and customs and suchlike, I'm OK with that. There's a time for that. But if you get through a year with me and are no closer to establishing your relationship with Jesus than you were at the start, then you have not failed. I have.

We're not afraid of experimentation in methods. So, the class session before a Christmas pageant was all music, and stories. We're experimenting with adding music and some closed-book-open-discussion time. I'm not sure that's working out so great.

I think that these kids and I connect well with each other. There's the rules-unbound thing (and, no, these youngsters have not abused that). But most people who know me well know that I've got a lot of junior high kid left in me. Both the good and the bad. Odd, because I remember the junior high years as being two of the toughest years of my life. I don't get it. But these young people and our class are one of the highlights of my week.

Then the rest of Sunday I think about no meetings, no organizations. I sit in a chair or lay on the couch looking for all the world like I'm stoned. "Rick - you in there?" "Huh?" If my boss ever saw that she'd send me for a random drug test the next day. (Hint: I'd pass.)

Long enough for one day. Thanks for hanging out.

Trafficking Tres

A young lady in a village in Nicaragua, or maybe Haiti, or Mexico, sees a notice on a billboard. A job! She hasn't had a lot of school, and job opportunities in her part of the world are rare indeed. And - could it be - "It's in the U.S.! El Norte!" She gets on a plane with visions of making enough to live on, having something left to send home, maybe go to school, get educated. . .

She arrives at her destination, gets off the plane, and is met by her charming host/employer and is driven to the same closet that the girl from our last installment found herself in. Her getting any money to live on is up to the mercy of her captor (they usually have none). School? Well, in a manner of speaking. She's now in The Life.

Why, you ask, don't they just walk away from all the garbage? For those trafficked within their home country, there's the threat of harm to them or to their families. Since among the first things the slavers do is take away any form of I.D., it can be devilishly hard to even prove who you are. Sometimes you even lose track of who you are. If you are taken into slavery by an organization you will almost certainly not be plying the trade in your hometown. The organization (more properly, The Organization) has a kind of circuit that they use. A girl works in Atlanta for about two weeks, then gets moved to - L.A.? Omaha? - before anyone makes a real connection, not a sexual connection, but a real, human connection. A connection that connects with heart and mind and spirit, not body. Slavers want none of that. Besides, one of the holds that the slaver has on the girl is, "So if you leave, where would you go? You don't know anybody here."

About the use of terms like "slavers", "slavery", a short and simple defense. If you are not free to leave without fear of harm, and if you are not paid for what you do, is that not slavery? Is there a better term for it? The myth has grown that, if a girl makes some money, she has a split with the pimp. No, she doesn't. She very probably gets to keep none of it.

It's in the field of slaves being brought from overseas that the domestic servitude and the sex slaves bear some resemblance. Often - almost always - when people are trafficked for domestic service, sexual favors for the employer is part of the package. Gee, when I answered that ad, no one told me. .

And, if you're sold into sex slavery from overseas, not only do you not know anyone, not only do you not know where to go, you don't even speak the language. The saddest thing of all is, almost anywhere in the U.S., help is only a phone call away, maybe even right next door. Yes, for Spanish speakers. If they only knew. . .

We need to discuss solutions. It might help to think in terms of not going after the prostitute without going after the pimp (it probably wasn't her idea); in terms of more uniformity of state laws, and stronger federal laws. More training for law enforcement. More caring, involved groups like the one St. Alban's in Davenport has working. TVPRA (Google it, then contact your Congresssional representatives. That's where we take up the next time we're on the topic.

Thanks for hanging out.