Today's reflection

No offense to our friend Conor, who was an English major in college, I hated my literature classes. I’m a math-minded guy, and literature never was my thing. I could never really free my mind enough to get past the literal meaning of the words I was reading. Symbolism, foreshadowing, similes, metaphors. All that stuff escaped me. And a lot of times, Jesus does the same things in his preaching. He tells parables and stories to portray his message. A lot of the time, that stuff escapes me too.

Today is a totally different situation though. Today I get the symbolism, Jesus didn’t slip a fast one on me in these readings. He says woe to those who “cleanse the outside of cup and dish, and leave the inside filled with loot and lust.” First off all, it just doesn’t make sense. Imagine if we only cleaned the outside of our pots and pans in the kitchen here. Wednesday’s beans would be Saturday’s goulash and Sunday’s rice would be in Tuesday’s spaghetti. It just doesn’t work that way. It is the same way with us. It just doesn’t make sense to outwardly cleanse ourselves and make no effort to cleanse ourselves inwardly. Woe to the man who makes every effort to make others think he is holy or morally straight or ethically sound, but goes home at night and lives an alternate life and does exactly what he speaks out against or works against. It’s hypocritical. It’s just plain wrong. And as the Psalm reminds us, “you have searched me and you know me, Lord.” We may be able to fool each other by our actions, but God knows what our true motivations are. He knows us in a very intimate way.

Jesus says, “first cleanse the inside of the cup so that its outside may be clean.” This is again where Jesus can’t slip his symbolism by me. We must be inwardly holy, inwardly morally straight, inwardly ethically sound before we make an effort to be outwardly so. We must internalize the things we read about in the Bible, the things we reflect on. We must make an effort to first transform ourselves on the inside. There is an added bonus to all this. Once we truly and completely internalize the message of Jesus Christ, our actions will follow suit. If our actions to not follow, we have not truly internalized the message. If we believe we must work for peace but make no effort to do so, we do not truly believe in working for peace. This is where the true challenge in today’s Gospel comes. We can read about and talk about all sorts of great things that should be done in our world, but we must make an effort to bring those things to fruition. And I’m not calling anyone out here, because we are doing just that in our work here.

Gate

Last time I threw out a lot of the different jobs that I do on a weekly basis. One of those is what we call “gate.” I thought that I should write about it now since I had a really bad experience of it last night. I can’t imagine a worse night.

Basically, there are three people on the gate who help facilitate the traffic flow through the building during dinner time. To start off, usually two people head outside to the line of people waiting for dinner. We first straighten the line, making sure that now one is trying to save their spot and that everyone is sort of single file. Since it is so hot and we don’t want people to have to get out of line for water, we give everyone in line at the time a cold bottle of water. From here, one of these persons goes back inside to help the third gate person, who has since started cleaning the five bathrooms that we have available to the guests. There is often a mess in the bathrooms, and when I say “mess,” I mean crap on the walls (literal crap), so cleaning is a never ceasing adventure.

The person who stayed outside, known as the front gate person, has begun to hand out numbers for dinner. After numbers are given to everyone in line, the guests file into our parking lot and the benches there. They wait in the benches until 5:30 when we start serving. One of the inside gate people, called middle gate, will call the guests in one bench at a time (about 30-35 people). The middle gate person collects the numbers, making sure that no one has cut the line. The last person stands at the exit to the dining room to greet the guests as they leave and to ensure they don’t take out the Styrofoam cups we give them. This is to help control litter on the street.

Last night I was on front gate, and like I said it was terrible. To start off, there was one guy who thought he deserved a bottle of water more than anyone else in the line. He went in our volunteer entrance (which is off limits to guests) and started giving his pity story to some of the volunteers. So I had to go inside and argue with him about why he wasn’t going to get a bottle of water. It might seem like something insignificant, but as soon as we let one guy elbow his way into the building when it is closed to the guests and get a bottle of water, we will have many more people doing the same. It's almost a game with the guests, and I won that round.

The next incident was a woman dealing crack right outside our front gate. She is someone who is around quite a bit and I didn’t think she would be selling drugs. So I called the police and they took her away. She was back today, so I’m not sure what happened to her. While I was dealing with that, a car load of people (not kitchen volunteers) drove into our parking lot. The driver just happened to be drinking a cup of beer. We don’t allow alcohol on our property, so I had to chase them off. There is also one guest who has been giving us a lot of trouble lately, and he got really pissed at us last night. He threw a hissy fit to try and get his way, and we had to compromise with him. He was most likely high out of his mind at the time too, so we were worried he was going to hurt someone. Once I had walked away from that one, I had to convince another guy who was reeking of alcohol that he wasn’t welcome for dinner. I guess that it’s best to get one of these nights in early, because I don’t think they can get much worse than that.

Schedule

I wanted to give everyone idea of what I actually do on a weekly basis. When we were in Rocky Point, Mexico, we set a weekly schedule that we will follow for the entire year. Here is mine:

Monday: laundry, men's house
Tuesday: morning porter, gate
Wednesday: clothes closet, afternoon showers
Thursday: day off
Friday: foodbank, community day, women's house
Saturday: soupline
Sunday: men's house from 1100-1500, gate

I realize my above schedule doesn’t look like it’s too bad, but I assure you that my time management skills learned at school have come in handy. The average day starts at 0900 and our duties are done by 1930 or so. Some of the other things that we do on a regular basis, but are not on our schedule are: interviewing people to live in our transitional houses, serving as contacts for the guests in our transitional houses, sorting donations in our basement, helping in the kitchen even on days when we’re not assigned to, among other odd things. I have been given the additional duty to be in charge of the cars we own. As my brother put it, I am the Andre House motor pool officer, as we currently own 12 cars. The majority are old and junky, so it’s my job to make sure they are maintained and kept legal. I can talk about all the other duties in their own posts.

We also have our house that needs attention, so that takes time too. We need to do more of that because 1) the plants we do have growing are dying from a lack of water and 2) we just got a notice from the city that our yard is too far out of disrepair. Apparently one of our neighbors doesn’t like something (because the letter didn’t say exactly), so we need to do some lawn work. Yes, we actually do have some grass in our yard, despite the huge lack of rain here.

I also have to try and do personal things in my own time. I have been working on applications to get back into West Point, making appointments for my medical qualification, as well as Congressional nomination packets. If there is any time left after all of this, I try to motivate myself to work out. It’s so hot right now that we have to work out at night.

Bury the dead

In my time here at Andre House (less than four weeks), I have been very privileged to have been able to perform several of the Corporal Works of Mercy. The Corporal Works are:
1. Feed the hungry 2. Give drink to the thirsty 3. Clothe the naked 4. Shelter the homeless 5. Visit the imprisoned 6. Visit the sick 7. Bury the dead

The first four we do every day, it is at the very center of our ministry. We serve dinner every night. We hand out cold water frequently. We offer clothing to the guests. We operate two transitional houses for homeless people looking to get back onto their feet. Today I got the opportunity to perform the last Work, burying the dead.

Another staff member and I went to a cemetery west of the city to help with burials. The persons being buried were mostly homeless people that had died and have no family or church to perform a burial service for them. So we went out, along with a nun, and a few chain gangs of prisoners, and put six people into the ground. We read several prayers and a reading from the Bible for each of them. It was sad that these people had no one close to celebrate their lives.
There was one homeless man that we buried, Frank, who had two friends come to the service. While I was reading the prayers, four F-16 fighters from Luke Air Force Base flew over. I thought it was an annoyance because they were too loud for me to be heard. Afterwards, the one friend of the deceased mentioned to us that Frank was a pilot. Surely this was a sign from God, and a neat one at that.

Bike ride

I had a little adventure last night. In my feeble effort to stay in shape while I'm away from school, I went for a bike ride at about 7:30. You have go late in the evening because that's about the time the temperature gets to about 90 or so degrees (it's been about 110 during the day lately). The first issue I had was the tire pump in the house was broken, so I used someone else's personal bike. So I'm guessing I had rode maybe 3.5 miles and the front broke tire went flat on me. So I'm about 3 miles from home with a bike that doesn't work. Great. I found a place to stash it and ran home, then picked up our truck and went back and got the bike. So a bike ride turned into some cross training action.

Okay, so something about why I'm out here. Every Friday our hospitality center is closed. It is a day reserved for the community. We start the morning with our weekly meeting, where we talk about random things, mainly about operations at the building. We also talk about the guests that are staying in our transitional houses. After that, we have Mass, then lunch, and then some sort of activity. Today Margaret was in charge, and we went bowling. I think I had a lifetime high of 127. Next week I'm in charge of the activity, and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do.

"I'm trying to put myself out of work"

OK, so I might not have been real specific on certain details, so I want to clear up the muddy waters.

I grew up in Pennsylvania. In 2005 I was enrolled as a cadet at West Point. For various reasons, I quit after two years in order to, as the Blues Brothers would put it, go on a mission from God. I found out about this place called Andre House in Phoenix, and that's where I ended up. So during the days, I work at our hospitality center which provides showers, clothing, laundry, phones, and dinner to whoever, mainly homeless people in the area.

What I was originally going to write about today was the reflection I gave this morning at Mass (we have Catholic Mass Monday-Thursday in the parking lot of our building). Part of why I wanted to come here was to have a religious experience and become more comfortable in my faith. This morning I got the chance to come a little closer to that goal. Basically, the core staff takes turns reflecting on the readings from the Bible on each day (kind of like a sermon). Today was my first crack at this. I had the religious brother on staff, Richard, tutor me a little bit on the readings last Friday since this is the wild blue unknown for me. I'm going to have to work on my delivery, but I think I kind of got the point across. The biggest thing I tried to say was that we need to recognize and befriend the "aliens" that we encounter in life. This is something that Moses talked about to the Israelites, and something Jesus talked about as well.

I was also in charge of organizing our noon time prayer session for the staff. I often get asked various questions by the people that receive our services. A popular one is, "why are you here?” I think it's a little late for me to be thinking about that one, but here's another one that got to me, "what do you want to get out of this experience?" I had to think about that one, and so I had the staff think about it as well today at prayer. One of the guys who comes and volunteers with us regularly was there, Carlos. He is also a counselor for a lot of people in the area. What he said to answer my question was very unique. He said, "every day I'm trying to put myself out of work." Every day here, we're trying to solve the problems of this little corner of the world. I think it might be naive to think that we can actually exterminate hunger, poverty, homelessness, and addiction, but we sure are trying. We are called to befriend these “aliens” and give them whatever we can to help them move on and build a better life.

Can you say that in your line of work? Are you trying to put yourself out of business?

Soupline

So here I am on Saturday morning- the soupline preparations begin. Today is my day to be in charge of feeding anywhere from 300-400 people. It started yesterday with a trip to the local food bank. Basically we get whatever we can there, and anything we get out of the fridge area (except for meats) we don't have to pay for. We look for fruits, veggies, desserts, yougurt, milk, or anything else that could be usefull back here in the kitchen. I serve yogurt on my nights, but since they didn't have any we got chocolate milk instead.

Now I need to start preparing for the day's volunteers, numbering 26 today. Basically they come in around 3 o'clock and do whatever needs done to prepare for serving time. They'll cut and butter bread, cut lettuce and veggies for salad, cut veggies for the goulash, transfer the chocolate milk from the coolers to useable containers, prepare mop buckets, prepare the dining room, wash dishes, and whatever else needs done. I don't do a whole lot of the work, I just manage the volunteers and ensure that everything else is ready for the meal. Last week we served about 450 meals, so this week I'm hoping we serve even more.

Someone call 911

Today there was a little adventure here at the center. Following mass this morning, a few of us were unloading the order that came in from Sysco when there arose some commotion outside. "Someone needs to call 911," I was told. A woman had been stabbed on the street- a great way to start your morning. The police were there before I got off the phone with 911, and the fire department and ambulance were there not long after. The woman was taken away in the ambulance, and the police had some people in handcuffs and were questioning them. Sometimes its hard to get people to give the police any information because they then have to watch out for the perpertrator's friends. I saw that at least one person was giving the police information, so hopefully some sort of justice is done.

Not too much later, one of the police officers (there were 8 cars there at one point) brought me a guy who had lost all but his shoes and underwear somehow. Fortunately I was able to get this guy some clothing, because no one was enjoying the sight.

This is all part of my duties as the "porter," which is kind of an outside guard for the building. Normally (or so I've been told), there isn't that much excitement in the morning. I guess I just got lucky.

What's going on

I realized I haven't really written about what I've been doing out here in Phoenix. On Friday (3AUG) we got back from our retreat in Rocky Point, Mexico. We stayed at a friend's house that sat along a private piece of beach on the Gulf of California. When we got back, the new Core Community took over the jobs right away. Saturday is my day to manage the soupline, and that is a subject of its own to write about later on. Sunday I am assigned at the men's transitional house from 1100-1500, then I come back to the Hospitality Center to help with dinner stuff. Monday I am the laundry guy, then I'm back at the men's house for the overnight shift. I realize that none of this makes much sense to anyone, but I can devote a post to each of these things at a later time.

Welcome to the neighborhood

This morning I had my official welcoming party into my new neighborhood. I was walking back from my overnight stay at the women’s transitional house to the staff house, which is a walk of two short blocks. Things don’t happen to people in the broad daylight- right? Well, it turns out that some of the neighbors, about 4 houses away from ours, owns two large pit bulls. And they don’t always tie them up. So at 0800 this morning, I found myself fighting two angry dogs. Nothing terrible happened, fortunately one of them was only able to get his teeth on my shirt. They lost interest when I started yelling at them, but I came pretty close to either kicking one in the teeth or pulling out my knife and skinning the dumb things. For sure next time I will call the police.