SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

Will You Let Me Be Your Servant?

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He relied to him, “You have answered correctly, do this and you will live.” But because he wanted to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:27-29 If you’re a regular attendee of the Five, you’ve probably heard the choir sing one of our favorite songs, the Servant Song. In part, it goes like this: “Will you let me be your servant?/ Let me be as Christ to you,/Pray that I may have the strength to/Let you be my servant, too.” It’s a song that’s mostly about serving the people around us from day to day, but every now and then, we have a chance to go out of our way to serve others. This fall break, SMU Catholic will once again go on an urban plunge into Vickery Meadow. Vickery is a neighborhood of Dallas with a high refugee and immigrant population, where most of our social justice efforts are focused. More than just a traditional community service trip, the focus of Urban Plunge is not so much on volunteer work as it is on simply getting to know the residents of the neighborhood, so that we can better serve them in the future. Just like in the song, the trip is a chance to serve others as well as be served. In the end, we learn just as much (probably more!) from the people we encounter than they learn from us. The four days include helping a newly arrived refugee family settle in to their new surroundings, volunteering at a local school, and attending mass at a local parish. We sleep in an apartment in Vickery owned by Catholic Charities, and don’t return to the SMU campus until the four days are over. It’s easy to forget while we’re there that we’re only a few miles down the road from ‘home’, and when we stop to remember this, it makes everything we experience that more powerful. If you’re interested in joining us this year, come to the info session tonight after Sunday supper to find out more.

Think Global, Act Local

Last week I used the phrase “Think global, act local.” It’s a fairly common catchphrase used by activists in all different areas, and I’m always surprised when someone hasn’t heard it before—- usually the response is something along the lines of, “that makes so much sense!” Like a lot of catchphrases that end up overused and on bumper stickers, it sometimes loses its punch and ends up seeming like a platitude. But just because it’s a common phrase doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold true. On one level, it means that we have the responsibility to both stay aware of global issues while we try to create positive change in the community we live in. It’s a hard balancing act: in a bubble like SMU, or any college community, it’s easy to forget that there’s a larger world where things are happening. But it takes a certain amount of dedication to keep up with global events, just like it takes time to dedicate ourselves to inciting change in the world around us. There’s an art to dividing our time between doing both, especially when things become overwhelming—- sometimes it seems like there’s so much that’s wrong with the world, it’s impossible to keep track of it all.

On a deeper level, “think global, act local,” is also a call to maintaining a constant ethic, which essentially translates to avoiding hypocrisy. Without thinking about it, we can easily aware of global issues and condemn the wrongdoings of people and countries elsewhere in the world while overlooking the fact that similar injustices are happening just down the road. If we condemn the actions of those globally, we also have to hold ourselves accountable for the wrongdoings that occur locally. Even if we’re not directly to blame, we hold responsibility as people who are capable of doing something to change it.

Global Hunger

For all of us, figuring out where our next meal comes from isn’t that big of a deal—a lot of us have the meal plan, and if we get sick of that, we can go just across the street to a restaurant and buy our dinner. Every Sunday after Mass, there’s Sunday Supper. Most of us are already aware, though, that this isn’t the case for people the world over, and even for many people in the United States. I was always kept aware of the issue by food drives held my elementary school, and later, by opportunities to volunteer at the local food bank and food pantries. But even when we’re aware of the issue in general, it’s easy to overlook the details. ‘Hunger’ refers to more than the simple lack of food, but also the lack of the nutrients needed to be healthy, which can result in stunted growth and higher rates of illness. About 850 million people around the world are malnourished. Children are the most vulnerable to this, and almost 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes.

How can we help? By continuing to donate our time and food and money to soup kitchens and food pantries, but also by raising our own awareness and understanding of the epidemic of hunger; to read and learn more, and to do our best to put faces with the statistics that we hear.

Human Dignity

Human Dignity In discussion on social justice in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the emphasis is on human dignity. Pope John Paul II is quoted in the Catechism as saying: What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt.

What does this mean? It means that while seeking Social Justice, we aim for justice throughout all of society, but we reach this goal by focusing on each person at a time and upholding their dignity. This is an easy goal for us to aspire to, but as we encounter different people in our lives, it can become hard to remember, especially when we meet others who have lives very different from our own.

As we prepare to leave SMU for whatever our summer destinations may be, it’s a good thing to keep in mind. When we escape the SMU bubble, spending our summers in different places in the country and even around the world, we are bound to encounter different types of people—different cultures, different religions, or even just different points of view. It’s important to remember that the core of Catholic Social Justice teaching is that there is dignity to every human person.

Solidarity

Solidarity In our Catechism, solidarity is described as a fundamental element of Christian brotherhood. It can be described in different ways, but at the core of solidarity’s meaning is friendship. It’s obvious that we don’t use the word ‘solidarity’ to describe a typical friendship, but more often a relationship in which a person reaches out to someone in need. The important thing to remember is that this show of solidarity can be just as much of a friendship as that between two traditional peers.

Yesterday, a group from the SMU Catholic community spent the afternoon with a group of children from Vickery Meadow. This was a time spent in solidarity, by which I truly use as the word friendship. It’s easy to get along with these children, who have had childhoods (literally) worlds apart from our own, and learn so much from them. Thank you to all who came out for our Field Day! To those who haven’t had a chance to spend time with the Vickery Meadow kids but would like to, tutoring is over for the semester, but we will be tutoring again next fall. Look out for more information on how you can help when we return to school after summer break.

Refugees

By now, you’ve probably read or heard us talking about how refugees live just down the street from us in Vickery Meadow. But what exactly is a refugee, and how is being a refugee different from being an immigrant?

A refugee is a person who comes to a new country (not always the U.S.) to escape persecution, war, or other extreme hardship. Refugees are granted asylum in their new country, which is different from simply immigrating, either legally or illegally. They are given aid from their new government, and helped in getting to their country of asylum. The end goal of asylum is to return refugees to their country of origin when it is safe for them to return, but this isn’t always a realizable goal.

Even though refugees receive aid from the government, their lives are still extremely difficult. Most of them have spent around ten years living in a refugee camp, a place of temporary resettlement where refugees live in hopes that they can return soon to their home country, or because there is no third country available for them to go. Many of the refugee children were born in these camps, and never knew their home country or life outside of a camp before coming to the U.S.The U.S. is also a completely different place from the countries refugees arrive from. Imagine moving to a new home where a different language is spoken, where using things that you’ve never seen before are considered second nature, like indoor plumbing, washing machines, stoves and ovens. If you had a rough time adjusting to college, or were ever homesick for some reason, this is just the very tip of what refugees experience when trying to assimilate.

How can we help, then? By befriending our refugee neighbors and being compassionate towards their difficulties in coming to a new country. By trying to understand, but knowing that unless we experience what they have gone through, we never fully will. And by praying for peace throughout the world, especially in places like Sudan and the Middle East, so that “refugee” will no longer  be a term needed for anyone.

The Social Justice Spot is written by Laura Arellano-Weddleton ‘10, Student minister of Social Justice

Poverty In Dallas

Just as there is poverty across the United States, there is poverty right here in Dallas. Texas has a higher rate of poverty compared to the rest of the US—15.8%, compared to 12.6% overall. You might hear us talk a lot about the Vickery Meadow neighborhood, just north of SMU. In addition to being the most densely populated neighborhood of Dallas, the residents represent many racial backgrounds, and the area has the highest refugee population in Dallas. At the same time, the average household income is just over $34,000.

As SMU Catholic, we’re working to get involved in the community, to get to know the people who live there, and to volunteer our time to help as much as we can. Every Wednesday, we tutor at two locations: 3111, which is run by Catholic Charities, and Heart House, an after school program. You’re always welcome to join us!

Poverty In The U.S.

While global poverty is an issue, there is also poverty right here in the US. In the 1960’s, when the War on Poverty was declared, an official “poverty line” was established—but this is not necessarily a number that allows a family to live comfortably. Also, many families rise and fall above and below the poverty line, and even when not “officially” impoverished, still struggle. The Census bureau estimates 37 million poor in the US as of 2005, a rate 12.6 percent. 15.6 million people live in extreme poverty, which is considered living on an income under half of the current poverty line.

We can all do our part, and donating money to the poor is just the beginning. We can pray for those in poverty, and reach out to the poor in our area—get to know them, so that we can show them compassion and learn in what ways our help is really needed.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Social Justice Spot! Social Justice is a huge component of our Catholic faith, and it a huge and all-encompassing concept. Although it does mean spending Saturdays at a soup kitchen or donating to the poor, it is much larger than that: it also means giving more time or money than we feel comfortable giving, befriending a marginalized person we would rather ignore, or working to understand the suffering of someone far different from ourselves, whether here in Dallas or on the other side of the world. Practicing Social Justice is, in essence, continuing the work Jesus began during his time on Earth. To help you better understand just how big Social Justice is, each week I’m going to introduce a new Social Justice issue. If you feel moved to do or learn more, check the SMU Catholic blog for a prayer over the issue and links to places where you can volunteer, donate, or simply educate yourself further.

Global Poverty

UNDERSTAND We already understand that most of us are blessed financially, and that the majority of the world lives on far less money than we do. But it’s easy to forget (or ignore) exactly what this means, and the realities of the lives of so many people on the same Earth that we live on. Half the world’s population-- that’s 3 billion people—live on less than the equivalent of two US dollars a day. Think about all of the things that this means they go without—necessities like food and clothing, to begin with, but also an education, which is the first step in many cases towards moving out of poverty. Thankfully, organizations all over the world are working to help those living in poverty, but we all need to do our part. Help out by making donations, educating yourself about the conditions of those living in poverty, praying for the impoverished, and encouraging others to do the same.
This Lent, consider giving through Catholic Relief Service’s Rice Bowls. When you have spare change, make a point of putting it in your rice bowl. Or, take it a step further and make conscious efforts to live more simply—such as eating a less expensive meal—and then putting the money you’ve saved in the rice bowl.

PRAY for those living in poverty: that they may find inner strength through God. Pray also for those who have the means to give, that they reach out and help however they can. Use your own words, or pray the following:

Christ our Lord,
your light shines into the shadows,
and shows us
where the obstacles to change lie.
We know that often
they are in our own hearts,
in the way we live,
and in our daily choices and actions.

We pray that we may accept
the light of your love
as a challenge to change
ourselves and our world.

We pray that, each day,
we make the choices and
take the actions
that will bring an end to poverty and hunger,
and lead us all
towards a fairer world.

Be with us, Lord,
as we face your challenge
and learn how to live
our lives in love.
Amen

DO AND LEARN:
-       Learn more about where poverty is the greatest, and see this illustrated visually, at http://www.povertymap.net/
-       Give through Catholic Relief Service’s Rice Bowls during the season of Lent. http://orb.crs.org/
-       Listen to the Christian Aid Podcast, a podcast from a UK organization that works to alleviate poverty around the world. http://nightingalesangatwcc.typepad.com/podcast/