"Only connect" - EM Forster

It was a busy weekend. On Saturday, I got my fill of sun, sweat, and Ozarks roller coasters at Six Flags to celebrate Tennessee and Pittsburgh Volunteers' upcoming birthdays. Then I was up early the next day. to give mission appeal talks for the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service. At every Sunday Mass at College Church. Yes, I went to church three times yesterday.

CNVS is a membership organization of over 2oo different Catholic lay volunteer and missionary programs. If you or someone you know is interested in long-term service, definitely check out cnvs.org. Their extensive and easily searched directory is how many of us found VSC.

My mission on Sunday was to give a short spiel after Communion about CNVS, ask people to donate in the second collection, and then stay after Mass to hand out brochures and answer questions. It was actually pretty easy since CNVS had made all the arrangements with the parish, sent in the brochures, and given me a sample speech. The long day notwithstanding, it was interesting to see the different demographics of every Mass and hear three different homilies on the same readings. The Epistle mentioned a very Vincentian motto - "The love of Christ impels us."

I was also amazed at the unexpected connections I made with people, who was interested in what I had to say. For instance, I met the man who is starting a L'Arche home for the handicapped in St. Louis, and wants to get on the directory. My favorite connection was the soon-to-retire high school Spanish teacher who wants to work with immigrants for a year or two. She's also interested in getting her LPN license so she can do medical screening. Despite all these great ideas, she had no idea where to start. I hope my advice was helpful and that she really does achieve her plan.

It was random encounters such as these that inspired my own year of service. A priest on a retreat advised that I "go do something radical for God." A week later, I ran into a former dorm neighbor on my way to Mass. She told me all about her work with immigrants in New Mexico, and gave a lot of encouragement that a service year was indeed practical. I haven't had contact with those people since, but their affect on my life has been profound.

Some Vincentian Shout-outs

A big Thank You to Cathy, the VSC secretary for her encouragement about my blogging. She's put links to Sojourn in St. Louis on both the VSC and Daughters of Charity websites. You can click to both those sites on the pictures to the right.

Cathy is not a Daughter, but she helps keep things running smoothly at their Provincial Office. Her biggest help to us VSCs is managing all the paperwork for Americorps, so we get money for student loans when we're done. It's all part of the red tape that comes with non-profit work.

This is a nice surprise

The VSC secretary just informed me that yesterday's post on the Vincentian Family Gathering has been quoted on FamVin, the international Vincentian family website. Wow! Frankly, I'm flattered that Fr. John and his team found me and thought I was worth mentioning.

If you are visiting from there, welcome! This started out as a private blog of sorts, but now I write for a more general audience. I always like to see more visitors to my little corner of the Catholic blogosphere :D Please feel free to leave comments and/or visit me again!

One Big Moter City Family

This weekend the VSC girls made our long-awaited road trip to the Vincentian Family Gathering conference in Detroit. It was a busy and enlightening weekend. We sat through 3.5 days of talks and met Daughters of Charity, Congregation of the Mission priests, and Society of St. Vincent De Paul (SVDP) volunteers from all over the country. Our West Coast VSC counterparts were also there.
Hearing about the work other people do is always a great shot in the arm. Here's a sample:

• The Hispanic parish in Charlotte, NC that offers a monthly free medical clinic
• Sr. Elizabeth, who shares her sweet smile with incarcerated teens on an Arizona Reservation. She visits them, encourages them to hang onto Native traditions, and fights for the detention centers to offer more job training and rehabilitation
• The Samaritan Center, a former Detroit hospital that is now a collaborative social service center. The huge facility houses an urgent care center, job search facility, assisted living home, dialysis center, small businesses, and a future mental health facility. Keeping the place clean and bright is a central component of respect for their clients. The staff is also great - we met a nurse decked out in gold jewelry who is possibly the most loving dialysis nurse on the planet. She cheerily greeted every elderly patient like they were her relatives.
  
• On the Rise Bakery, a joint effort of Capuchin monks and the released prisoners and recovering addicts they mentor. Fr. Ray nearly broke down and wept as he told us about the men who started the business and their determination to build better lives for themselves.

I used to think the abundance of non-profits was a depressing sign of the state of the world. I could never donate to every single one, and they clearly hadn't succeeded in completely changing the world. Now I see the hope and encouragement in so many efforts to reverse poverty. A dozen impassioned, closely-knit local groups can be more specialized and effective than one government agency wrapped in red tape.

Meeting other non-profits is also good for getting ideas and forming potential partnerships. We did a lot of VSC publicity this weekend, since our program is pretty obscure even in the Vincentian world. (If the Jesuit Volunteer Corps is Diet Coke, VSC is RC Cola.) Once we had explained the year-long service in community concept, people loved it. They all seemed to be thinking "Where I can get one of these?" Could there be a VSC-Detroit one day?

The whole VFG gave me a lot to consider, not just about social justice but also the future of the Church and my own calling. This is probably going to be a multi-poster - tune in tomorrow!

Landmarks

Today is the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, aka when God literally knocked Saul of Tarsus on his butt on the road to Damascus. Caravaggio's depiction of this scene is one of my favorite paintings.
(I should point out that the horse is never mentioned in the Bible account, despite being a popular element of most artistic depictions. Poor steed is merely one of those lovely historical myths that look nice but are only figments of our collective imaginations. Doesn't Caravaggio paint a nice figment, though?)

I learned at Mass today that it's also the anniversary of St. Vincent de Paul's founding of the Congregation of the Mission aka Vincentian priests in 1617. Apparently the pulpit he preached from on that day is still preserved in a little French church. I never really had much desire to visit France before - Rome and London and Prague are much more alluring - but now I would love to visit all the Vincentian landmarks that dot the country. The Daughters of Charity love to talk about Vincent's villages and Louise de Marillac's group of charitable French ladies and the convent where Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal appeared to St. Catherine Laboure.


Even if I can't make it across the pond, I should at least re-visit a Vincentian landmark in my backyard. Up the road in Emmitsburg, MD is where St. Elizabeth Ann Seton founded the American version of St. Vincent's Daughters of Charity. This summer there is a big celebration of the order's 200th aniiversary. If I can't pay my respects to the place where American Catholic education was born, I might as well turn in my religious historican card now.

My high school, Seton School, always has this St. Elizabeth quotation on letterhead "Let his will of the present moment be the first rule of our daily life and work." That's an important lesson, and one that will likely take me a lifetime to master. As the priest said at this morning, there is no "How to be a saint" manual. Instead, you live in the present moment, doing what God wants in the here and now. As Paul knocked to the ground so aptly illustrates, we cannot control the future. Accepting the grace of the moment will help us respond to what does happen in a Christlike way.