To Show Up is to Dignify

 Been a while since the last post.  Partly I've been busy and tired, partly just lazy in writing (I'm working on 3 summer classes this month all while volunteering all day at Homeboy).  But here's a bit of my experiences and reflections so far.

              The Ability to Show Up

 Since I began working with Curriculum, primarily fixing mistakes on class roll spreadsheets—there were more mistakes than correct entries overall—I have shown up every morning, worked into the afternoon, and kept at my job as best as I could.  One day Luis, Director of Curriculum, called me out on that.

 Our office is typically busy, either with workers going in and out, Homies dropping in to chat, members of classes coming with questions, and the like.  On Monday just before lunch, everything slowed down, leaving only Luis and myself in the room.  Luis, all of his own accord, says to me, “Man look at all those classes we have covered.  I came in on Sunday to work on them, and I saw how many you had already knocked out.  You are without a doubt one of the best volunteers we’ve ever had.”

 “Really?” I ask incredulously.  It had only been a couple of weeks at this point.

 “Oh yeah, man.  See, most volunteers, when they see how things work here and how crazy it gets, they check out.  But I saw you walk into Morning Meeting today, and when I did, I just smiled.”

 I already knew that anyone wanting to join Homeboy is first and foremost encouraged just to “show up.”    Quite often, young people or those fresh out of a correctional facility have never had a job.  They've never learned the importance of being "on-time."  When C. S. Lewis breaks down the types of human love in The Four Loves, the first is affection, which comes primarily by familiarity.  To show up everyday, to make it a habit, because that’s the only way this place becomes a community to that person.  On this day I found that not only are Homies “measured” by that standard here, but I am, too.

  Luis encouraged me that day because I keep showing up.  He made me want to keep showing up more.

  And he told me that he himself felt encouraged because I showed up.

  This ability, this desire, to show up is really the only foundation upon which things like compassion or charity can really work. 

              Toxic Charity: Developing Dignity

 I read a book last week called Toxic Charity: How the Church Hurts Those They Help and How to Reverse It by Robert Lupton.  This man has spent decades in the Atlanta area, and traveling around the world, focused on aiding those who are unable to help themselves.

  “Compassion is a dangerous thing,” Lupton says early on in Toxic Charity.  And he is correct.  This book displays for America and the West to see their misunderstanding of the word “compassion.”  It means ”to suffer with"—from Latin cum, "with," and passio, "to suffer."  Not “to look down and have pity and give handouts to,” but suffer with.  So yes, America’s compassion, the West's compassion, the Church's compassion, are all dangerous things; but any thing is dangerous when it is not itself.

  I especially love this quote he gives of Jacque Ellul:  “It is important that giving be truly free. It must never degenerate into charity. Almsgiving is Mammon’s perversion of giving. It affirms the superiority of the giver, who thus gains a point on the recipient, binds him, demands gratitude, humiliates him and reduces him to a lower state than he had before."

  Lupton’s key word for bringing this toxic compassion back to itself is “development.”  Telling anecdote after anecdote after statistic in which charitable people moved by compassion were “turning [Nicaragua’s] people into beggars," or in which the American government’s aid to Africa is doing less aid to Africa’s poor and more funding of despots, he concludes that this is primarily because there is no system of development for the recipients. 

 “When relief does not transition to development in a timely way, compassion becomes toxic." 

 If the people who find themselves in a place where they cannot stand alone are not strengthened to stand (see Acts 3), then “dignity is eroded as people come to view themselves as charity cases for wealthy visitors."  This “creates unhealthy dependency,” “erodes the work ethic, and “cannot elevate people out of poverty." 

  Good intentions are like clean water poured into a trough so people can drink for a day; but without a fresh well of their own, that water will stagnate and bring them all kinds of disease.  And worse, in my mind—mosquitoes.  This is precisely the light in which I view companies like TOMS shoes, or mission trips to unload hundreds of t-shirts.

  To avoid this, Lupton offers a device and a code.  The device: relationship—“There is no simple or immediate way to discern the right response without relationship."  The code, which must follow through that device:  "Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.

"Limit one way giving to emergency situations.

"Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.

"Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served.

"Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said—unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.

"Above all, do no harm."

  Through relationship, the giver will know better when which response is appropriate, and therefore will be better situated to “do no harm.”

              To Show Up is to Dignify

  I found this book particularly pertinent to my summer at Homeboy Industries.  In short, this organization creates community to trump gang, primarily focusing on job development and placement of former gang members, inmates, or drug users.  They sell T-shirts that say “Nothing stops a bullet like a job;”—much like Lupton’s time with teens in which he notes that, as they got older, “Bible studies did not get them jobs."

  Homeboy is a picture of Lupton’s dream of “geographically focused vision with measurable goals over extended time” because it first came out of the Dolores Mission, located in the “gang capital of the world,” and subsequently built a headquarters in the middle of many, many gang-controlled neighborhoods.  Their goals are to get jobs for, and change lives of, former gangbangers, and they’ve been doing it for 25 years.  I have had before my eyes a successful picture of what Lupton describes, which is more persuasive evidence than all of his stats.

  This geographical nature seems paramount to us Christians in developing those who are undeveloped (especially those undeveloped by the Church’s own toxic charity), because “our memory is short when recovery is long."  Homeboy is at the mercy of wealthy people miles away from the neighborhood to stay open.  It laid off everyone (even the Father had to file for unemployment) in 2011; the community of people there, however, kept the doors open, hoping for more charity to meet the budget (which happened).  Homeboy hopes to be as self-sustaining as best it can be, but for now it is hamstrung by relying on charity.

  When people walk in the door and take a tour of the facility, they really do stop seeing the tattoo-covered Other and find the tour leader (always a homie) to be a real person.  As Lupton describes from his experience, “When [any people in need] have the opportunity to tell their stories... the [compassionate person’s] ‘pity factor’ diminishes, replaced by respect and emerging understanding."

  This happens on a one-hour tour of the Homeboy facility.  How much more respect and emerging understanding could we privileged Christians find for the poor or undeveloped Other if we were to show up everyday?

  If we show up, we will inevitably form relationship.  If we show up, our memory will not be short for those who need most to be remembered.  If we show up, we find real people instead of possibly trumped-up stories or scary-looking Other people.  If we show up, we dignify that person to whom we show up.  If we show up, we can help educe the God-given graces, words, capacities, and desires of those who have never known they had them.  If we show up, we can help someone become not a beggar but a developing child of God, empowered by all the trappings of such a status once it is accepted.

  And just so, if we do choose show up, and keep showing up, we may even find dignity within ourselves—because make no mistake, to see someone find their own dignity will inevitably make us see our own.