Tag: poverty

100 Ways to Be Pro-Life

I am pro-life. I’m not just pro-birth or anti-abortion. I’m pro-life. That means I’m pro-babies and pro-elderly and pro-immigrant and pro-disabled and pro-peace. I’m anti-poverty and anti-discrimination and anti-hatred. I vote against abortion and against capital punishment and against toxic waste. I offer help to pregnant women, single mothers, overworked fathers, depressed teenagers, homeless veterans, middle-class suburbanites, undocumented immigrants, uneducated children, struggling students, lonely old men, and frightened refugees. I don’t think your life is worth any more because you’re white or American or intelligent or born. I don’t think it’s enough to be pro-life and not do anything about it. And while we may each be drawn to focus on a different pro-life issue, I’m not convinced that you can really be pro-life if you’re not whole-life–conception to natural death, no exceptions.

We can’t all pray outside clinics or write legislation or teach the next generation to value the dignity of each life. But we can all fight for life. We can love the lives around us and reach out to those far away. We can sacrifice for those who need it and refuse to be silenced. We can question and weep and rage and pray. We can fight.

  1. Adopt a cute little baby.
  2. Adopt a belligerent teenager.
  3. Adopt a child with a cleft palate, spina bifida, or multiple sclerosis.
  4. Thank a birth mother.
  5. Be a foster parent.
  6. Take a meal to a family that’s struggling.
  7. Start awkward conversations about hard issues.
  8. Take a pay cut to do something meaningful.
  9. Stop by your local crisis pregnancy center. Do whatever they need done.
  10. Write to your Grandmother.
  11. Have a picnic in the park for the homeless.
  12. Where's the supportThrow a baby shower for a teen mother.
  13. Offer to babysit for that frazzled couple you know–for free.
  14. Read up on immigration reform.
  15. Don’t buy clothes made in sweatshops.
  16. Show your children pictures of unborn babies.
  17. Spiritually adopt a prisoner on death row.
  18. Love your children.
  19. Love other people’s children.
  20. Share this article about what a blessing an autistic child can be.
  21. When a couple suffers a miscarriage, mourn with them.
  22. Get involved with your local Catholic Worker House.
  23. Buy generics–give the difference to Catholic Relief Services.
  24. Recognize that mental illness is an illness.
  25. Go through your closet once a year–give anything you haven’t worn to the St. Vincent de Paul society.
  26. Stop judging people because their ancestors immigrated after yours did.
  27. Support businesses that are taking a risk in order to fight for our first amendment rights.
  28. Give up your seat to an elderly/handicapped/pregnant/world-weary person.
  29. Give blood.
  30. Give a kidney.
  31. Give bottles of water to day laborers waiting for work.
  32. When an unmarried woman tells you she’s pregnant, figure out a way to tell her how proud you are. If your life is transparent, telling her she’s your hero won’t make her think extramarital sex is okay in your book.
  33. Read Dead Man Walking and all the footnotes.1
  34. Invite a woman dealing with a crisis pregnancy to live in your home.
  35. Grandmother JPTake your baby to a nursing home and hand her around.
  36. Advocate for women’s health without advocating for killing unborn women.
  37. Buy a homeless man dinner.
  38. Watch this movie and tell me if it’s as cute as the trailers made it look.
  39. Watch Bella in a group and then discuss. Is abortion ever necessary? Would you have gone to the clinic with her?
  40. Watch Million Dollar Baby in a group and then discuss.2 Was there another way out? What value does suffering have?
  41. Teach your kids to tithe from their allowances; meet quarterly to pick a charity to give to.
  42. Study Just War Theory before you support a war.
  43. Study Just War Theory before you support pulling out.
  44. Have babies.
  45. Smile at them in public.
  46. Smile at them in private.
  47. Write your senator.
  48. Thank your priest after he preaches on any controversial topic.
  49. Give to people who need it–no questions asked.
  50. Give until it hurts.
    I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc. is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say that they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditures excludes them.–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
  51. Pay a fair wage.
  52. Tell your local crisis pregnancy center you’ll babysit for their clients–free.
  53. Tell your story.
  54. Andrea BocelliInvite your aging parents to live with you.
  55. Keep blessing bags in your car for the homeless.
  56. Talk–gently–about abortion with those who support it.
  57. Love post-abortive women (and men) extra hard.
  58. PRAY!
  59. Thank a veteran.
  60. Stand up to a bully.
  61. Don’t waste food/clothing/energy/an opportunity to help.
  62. Stay informed.
  63. Choose to believe that people generally have good intentions.
  64. Give your time, talent, and treasure to a soup kitchen, a battered women’s shelter, an assisted living facility, Habitat for Humanity, legal aid, prison ministry, a home for teen moms, a camp for the disabled…anywhere that helps anyone.
  65. Talk about atrocities being perpetrated in other countries.
  66. Sign the Declaration of Life and give a copy to your family members. It may not be legally binding, but it’s a powerful statement.
  67. Recognize beauty in every human face. And every body type. And every ability level. And every set of problems and addictions and anxieties.
  68. Figure out why research done on adult stem cells is better than on embryonic stem cells–on every level.
  69. Question Guantanamo Bay, nuclear proliferation, gun laws, and international debt.
  70. 100_0099Spend some time in Palestine and begin questioning that wall.
  71. Befriend the outcast.
  72. Share the Gospel with someone.
  73. Buy locally.
  74. Take a risk on someone handicapped/uneducated/foreign when you’re hiring.
  75. Learn the facts about human embryology. Share them.
  76. Recognize that poverty is not synonymous with laziness.
  77. Live on minimum wage for a month.
  78. Smile more.
  79. Don’t use hormonal contraceptives.3
  80. Bake cookies for prisoners.
  81. Educate people about human trafficking.
  82. Don’t assume all homeless people are on drugs.
  83. Talk to a friend about her alcohol problem.
  84. Go to the March for Life.
  85. Blog about pro-life issues.
  86. Realize that war, poverty, capital punishment, education, discrimination, euthanasia, health care, immigration, affordable housing, fair trade, prostitution, and sweatshops are also pro-life issues.
  87. grinning FelicityTake your kids to the Special Olympics.
  88. Pray for those who go hungry every time you eat. Eat accordingly.
  89. Talk to a theologian when dealing with end-of-life issues.
  90. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
  91. Mentor at-risk youth.
  92. Stop yelling at your kids.
  93. Walk more, drive less.
  94. Look for a need in your community. Meet it.
  95. Teach ESL for free.
  96. Befriend someone who disagrees with you.
  97. Listen more than you talk.
  98. Don’t give up on people.
  99. Forgive.
  100. Love everybody. No exceptions.

Your whole life can be a battle for life–every life. What would you add to the list?

  1. They’re out of date but little has changed besides inflation as far as I know. [↩]
  2. Warning: rated morally offensive by the USCCB reviews for violence and the obvious moral quandary. I had no qualms about showing it to mature teenagers. [↩]
  3. Or any, for that matter. [↩]

Why I Don’t Volunteer at Soup Kitchens

When I was a teenager and even more obnoxious than I am now, if you can believe that, I was obsessed with the poor. Actually, that might be too generous. I was obsessed with what everyone else was doing to help the poor.

Righting wrongs that are none of my business since 1984.

I was born with a violently strong sense of justice1 and raised without much money. Even though we didn’t have much when I was very little, I have distinct memories from childhood of giving to the poor and even volunteering as a family to feed the poor. So I suppose it’s no wonder that with the advent of a more significant allowance came a sense of obligation to help those in need. Which would have been a good thing had I not felt the need to beat people over the head with it.

I distinctly remember sitting in my car after youth group one night sobbing because the people–even the adults–didn’t understand that they had to help the poor. I had even broken it down for them, making it as simple as I could: “If you have two blenders, you should give one away. Nobody needs two blenders.” No, they said, yours might break, and then you’ll need the other one. “Then you can buy another one! Why would you hoard extra things on the off chance that you’ll need them in the future??” But they didn’t care. All I was trying to say was that that they ought to give some of their excess away. But they couldn’t hear it.

In college, I got more extreme. I wouldn’t pay more than $20 for anything but a plane ticket and I judged those who did.2 I didn’t chill out until my wise roommate pointed out to me, “Meg, someone has to minister to the country club.” Oh, I thought, well if it’s wealth for the sake of ministry, I guess that’s okay. But I still brought up the plight of the poor with regularity. After all, as St. Ambrose says, “The rich man who gives to the poor does not bestow alms but pays a debt.” Giving to the poor, he says, is not optional.

But despite my absolute conviction that all Christians have an obligation to serve the poor, I can’t remember the last time I was in a soup kitchen. Or a food pantry. Or a homeless shelter. Or really any place devoted to serving the poor.

I realized my first year of teaching that for all I was telling people to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, I wasn’t doing a lick of it myself. So I resolved to get more involved, do more, be more available to serve the poor.

First year teaching kind of looks like this–overwhelming chaos that you can’t do anything about. Definitely adding another activity was the way to fix that.

You read that right: I decided during my first year of teaching that I wasn’t doing enough for Christ and his people. Somehow, I thought that 14 hours of ministry a day wasn’t enough. I decided that my weekends shouldn’t be spent recharging3 but doing more.

Praise the Lord, he stepped in and stopped me before I drove myself to a nervous breakdown. And I had to realize, in all humility, that I can’t do it all. I can’t sing in the choir and lector and be an EM–I have to choose.4 I couldn’t be a first-year teacher and spend my weekends at the soup kitchen. At a certain point, I had to recognize where my gifts lay and where God was calling me and let the rest go.

There will always be more good work to be done for the Kingdom, but you don’t have to do it all. What you have to do is the work that the Lord has put before you today. And the beauty of the Body of Christ is that when you put us all together, we do all the work that must be done. Some of us feed the poor directly, others by tithing. Some of us catechize directly, others through the witness of our lives. Some of us are missionaries, others pray for missionaries, take missionaries into their homes, comment on missionaries’ blogs.5

The gift of this messy, beautiful, holy, fallen Church we’re in is that we don’t all have to be elbows or noses or pinky toes.6 At this point in my life, the Lord has called me to evangelize day in and day out. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for slinging hash. But I can’t be holier than the Lord has called me to be–if he wants me on the front lines for faith and working the supply chain for works, I can do that. Insisting on being in the trenches for every cause that matters is just pride–and stupidity.

Which book do I read? I’ll never read them all! My life is so hard!!!

One of the great temptations when you start getting serious about following the Lord is comparison. You start looking at how people around you are serving Christ and you take your eyes off him. But God doesn’t want cookie-cutter Christians! He wants you to be you and to do the particular work he’s given you. And when we look at all the work we’re not doing or the prayers we’re not praying or the books we’re not reading, it’s easy either to get discouraged or burnt-out. If you’re anything like me, the result of comparing yourself to holy people–not prayerfully emulating Saints but analyzing their resumes–is sin.

There is great humility in saying, “I love the poor but God hasn’t called me to that ministry.” You’re acknowledging your limitations and avoiding the Messiah complex that I’m so prone to. If it’s honest, if it’s truly a result of prayer and prudence, if you’re giving of yourself through some other work or ministry or relationship, it’s a blessing to be able to say no.

My friends, the freedom of being saved by grace is that we don’t have to do everything. We have to do something, certainly (faith and works), but we don’t have to do anything but the work that the Lord has set before us. So stop letting the image of other people’s holiness stress you out. Just because she has 10 kids doesn’t mean you’re a bad mom because you’re struggling with 3. Just because he reads the Bible every day doesn’t mean that has to be your devotion. If you’ve got your hands full with prison ministry, you don’t have to volunteer with the youth group, too.

If this picture doesn’t make you want to do something, you might need an attitude check. But the something you do might not be as obvious as ladling soup.

Now, if our Church weren’t serving the poor, we wouldn’t be the Church of Christ. And if the way you live isn’t informed by the plight of the poor, if you’re not conscious of fair wages and living simply and giving to the poor, then you’re ignoring the Gospel. But each of us is called to serve the poor–and the doubtful and the lonely and the imprisoned and the ill and the sinner–in our own particular way. Sometimes being at peace with that limitation is harder than any mission trip or morning at the shelter.

I’m still kind of obsessed with the poor–Jesus told us we had to be. But I’m not so judgmental any more, and I don’t feel so guilty that my work isn’t directly focused on the poor. Because holiness isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing what you’re called to do.

So what about you? What are you called to do? And what other ministry do you have to sacrifice to do it?

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While you’re wandering the internet wasting time, why don’t you head over to see Bonnie and vote on your favorite Catholic blogs for the Sheenazing Blogger Awards?7 See, I got nominated–twice! Coolest blogger8 and most inspiring, can you believe it? I’m kind of floored. But anyway, you can go vote for me (or somebody else) if you want to and then whoever wins gets to put a cool meme of Fulton Sheen on his or her blog. At least go scroll through the ballot and find some awesome new blogs to read. Because you didn’t have enough going on.

And make sure to check out Bonnie’s miracle baby while you’re there. Stillborn, with no pulse or respirations for 61 minutes, he came back to life and is a normal, healthy little boy today. Incredible!

  1. Particularly as it relates to how other people treat me, but that’s a matter for another post. [↩]
  2. Ironically, I was shelling out a gazillion dollars a year on my education…. [↩]
  3. Or, more likely, grading. [↩]
  4. Or have the choir chosen for me, as often happens. Once, I was passing through a town on Good Friday and stopped in at a church for the liturgy. I literally stashed my suitcase under a pew, I was so transient there. Within 5 minutes, I was standing at the front of the church in a choir robe. Another time, I went to a church I’d only been to once or twice before. I started Mass in the pew. By the offertory, I was cantoring. How do these things happen to a person??? [↩]
  5. Thanks for all the blog love, by the way. I pray for y’all daily! [↩]
  6. You caught the reference, right? 1 Corinthians 12? [↩]
  7. It’s Sheen–Fulton, not Charlie–plus amazing. Get it? It took me four or five times, too. Don’t be ashamed. [↩]
  8. These people have clearly never met me. [↩]