Toy Box

The holiday season begins early at the City Mission. Churches and businesses, individuals and families, each call in asking, “What can we do? What can we buy? What do you need?”

We have an answer for all these questions, as there is always something to do, something to buy and someone in need. And for those who instinctively know, year after year, they just come, with cars full, bags full and hearts full, filling in the gaps where it matters the most.

In early November we had a particularly busy day of deliveries at the Family Life Center, anything from baby diapers and blankets, to children’s toys and personal care items. Staff members pawed through the items and put aside what could be used by the women and children.

A few guests from the men’s shelter volunteered to pile the remaining donations on a metal card and wheel it over to the City Mission Thrift Store.

Unbeknownst to any of the staff or residents at the FLC, a large toy box was placed on the cart, along with bags of sweaters, shoes and kitchen items. An old blue wooden box with a tattered canvas top looked no different than the collection of odds and ends to be sold at the thrift store.

No one suspected that what was inside the box might be the contents of someone else’s past and the bridge into their future. However, a young woman at the Family Life Center had been anxiously awaiting the delivery of the toy box, a remnant of her childhood filled with personal effects that had been in storage for several years.

Prior to entering the FLC, the young woman was serving a two-year prison sentence, separated from her two small children and asking herself every question that an incarcerated nineteen year-old single mother might ask, “What has become of my life? How will I ever change my future? Is it possible?”

Fortunately, this young woman decided it was possible - to start a new life and begin again. Having now graduated from the City Mission’s Freedom Academy program, this young woman is a caring and compassionate friend and mother, holding down her first paying job and reconnecting with her family. Her future will be challenging, but she has support.

One person who has supported her is a close family friend and also the godmother of her five-year old daughter. The friend had offered to retrieve the young woman’s belongings from storage, including a dusty toy box, and also provide several gifts for her children for the holidays.

The recovery of a rather tattered toy chest meant the world to this young woman, as it symbolized her own personal recovery and also the encouragement and generosity of her family and friends.

To some, a toy box filled with children’s shoes, toy trucks, books and some old jewelry, may not be incredibly significant. But to this young woman, these items were priceless.

The box included Christmas gifts that she would wrap and personalize for her children, showing them that people care about their family. In the toy box, she also awaited a small rhinestone ring from her childhood that she looked forward to giving her daughter.

When the box arrived, the young woman was out of the building and it was placed in the front lobby of the FLC until she returned. When she entered the building, she asked excitedly whether the box had arrived. However, in the rush of morning activity, no one had seen the box, what was in it, or where it was taken, much less what it represented to this young woman.

After several phone calls and a great deal of anxious waiting, it was discovered that the toy box had been accidentally brought to the storage room of the City Mission thrift store.

The young woman sat slumped in the FLC lobby, waiting for any news on whether the box had been identified in the donation warehouse. After scouring the warehouse and viewing footage from the overhead surveillance camera, it was ultimately determined that the box was loaded unto the truck carrying unsellable items to the dump.

“How could this have happened?” the young woman pleaded. “There were brand new boots, toys and even a jewelry box with a ring for my daughter.”

It was an innocent mistake, but one that hurt deeply to someone for which pain and loss is a recurring event.

After much deliberation and sheer disappointment, the young woman accepted that the toy box was gone and with it the special items that her friend had collected, items from her past, gifts for her children, each meaningful and significant to a woman who had painstakingly rebuilt her life.

The young woman was unmistakably upset, however not once did she blame anyone who was involved. She was deeply saddened but did not express any anger or resentment. Remarkably, by the end of the day, she had accepted the loss, moving forward and thinking of all the ways she felt grateful for what she did have.

This young woman responded to this unfortunate loss with such maturity and emotional balance. Having witnessed only the ending result, it caused me to pause and ask myself, how would I have reacted if I was in her shoes.

Imagine your most significant personal belongings, each collected by a loved one, placed in a box and delivered to you, after being held for years in storage. Imagine the anticipation of being reacquainted with photos, old journals, diplomas, keepsakes, each one with a story and a memory, and waiting for their arrival.

Imagine learning that the box had arrived at your doorstep but was taken out with the trash just before you came home. Imagine how you might feel learning that the items were gone, even before you had a chance to grasp them in your hands. I would be devastated.

I would be even more distraught if what I was reconnecting with were objects that symbolized how far I had come in my life, especially if that journey meant starting from scratch and searching for the self I never knew.

For this young woman, such a reality was a hard lesson. She was asked to let go of the material items that connected her to the few positive aspects of her past. It was also a painful spiritual lesson, reminding her of what G-d asks us to let go of in order to draw closer to Him.

Maybe offering that ring to her daughter was a way of making up for the fact that she was in jail when her daughter was a baby. Maybe the new toys were a hopeful attempt to show her children that she could provide for them, especially during the holidays.

It is not wrong that she desperately wanted the items in that toy box. But in their absence, what she was able to recognize were the gifts that had already been provided, spiritual gifts that cannot be contained in a box nor can they be discarded or destroyed.

It is a testament to this young woman’s personal growth that she was able to recognize what she already has in a moment that spoke only of loss. And while this young woman may continue to attach valuable memories to those objects and keepsakes, maybe this Christmas she will be able to create new memories for her and her children.

Maybe this Christmas, she will turn more wholeheartedly to G-d to heal the wounds between her and her family. Maybe this Christmas she will recognize in a more profound way that G-d is the true provider.

And maybe, hopefully, this unfortunate experience will remind her that G-d is the redeemer for herself and her past, rather than a box of toys whether lost or found.

Up Down Places

Shared on August 22nd, 2010 at Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church
Based on 2 Samuel 21:8-14 and Revelation 22:1-3

I chose this morning’s Scriptures because to me they represent the absolute extremes in life. One describes a devastated mother isolated on a mountain top, as she mourns the loss of her sons. The other describes a river of life, whose surrounding trees yield an endless supply of fruit and whose leaves provide healing to the nations.

It’s difficult to reconcile these two realities, much less understand how G-d could permit such a dichotomy in His world. Each and every one of us has experienced highs and lows in life. And it’s hard to grasp that the same loving G-d could produce such an extreme range of experience.

During the past two years I’ve witnessed intense heartache, both in Peru and at the City Mission of Schenectady. However, I have also seen concrete examples of change, progress and healing. I have met people in various stages of recovery, receiving therapy after a history of sexual abuse and domestic violence, reintegrating society after years of incarceration or entering a treatment program to overcome addiction.

As I continue to navigate this roller-coaster of human experience, I’m beginning to learn that G-d doesn’t necessarily permit the lows nor does he prefer the highs. But He is present and alive in both. And it is up to us to recognize His loving presence whether we are digging up bones on a mountain top or harvesting healing fruit from the tree of life.

The Old Testament reading from the Second Book of Samuel describes the heart-breaking story of Rizpah, one of King Saul’s concubines, whose sons were brutally murdered. During his reign, Saul sought to wipe out the entire population of Gibeonites in Israel.

When King David took power, he offered retribution, thinking that it might end the famine that had plagued Israel for three years. In response to the genocide, the surviving Gibeonites requested that King David capture Saul’s seven sons. The King agreed, and the sons were murdered on a mountain top, with their unburied bodies left to decay.

It’s difficult to imagine G-d having first allowed Saul’s genocide to occur, and then to endorse the response of the Gibeonites who sought revenge by murdering the King’s sons. But maybe we are not meant to ask whether G-d allowed those events, but instead to ask how God responded to them, how He revealed himself during times of hardship and who He used to heal the wounds.

G-d’s presence is overwhelmingly evident in the aftermath of this story of bloodshed. G-d chooses to reveal himself through the figure of Rizpah, a woman who had experienced a life of luxury as Saul’s concubine, but had now lost everything, including her family. She had fallen from a place of recognition and esteem into a place sheer desperation.

However, rather than respond with rage or defeat, Rizpah stands vigil on a mountain top, presiding over the heap of bones of Saul’s sons, so they would not be eaten by vultures. Scripture says that Rizpah kept watch on that summit, day and night, from the beginning of the barley harvest until the season of rain. For six months, Rizpah endured the harsh elements of that cruel environment, surrounded by wild animals and dead bodies – an act of protection, mourning, and prayer.

Although I pay special attention to the women of the Bible, I had never heard of Rizpah until last year. While in Peru, I encountered her story several times, including the sermon which was shared on Mother’s Day, in a small church I visited in the city of Trujillo.

However, my first introduction to this brave and stoic woman was during our usual Monday morning devotional at Paz y Esperanza, the organization where I worked while in Peru. My host father, who directs the pastoral counseling program, chose to use the story of Rizpah to reflect on a similar story happening in present-day Peru.

In May of 2008, just before I arrived in Peru, the bones of 60 innocent men, women and children were excavated from a mass grave in the small village of Putis in Peru’s highlands. A massacre led by government officials had taken place in 1984, killing 123 innocent villagers. The officials claimed that the families had ties to the Shining Path, the extremist group who terrorized the country between 1980 and the year 2000.

During the twenty year period of violence, 163,000 innocent people were killed by either the Shining Path guerillas or the government militia. The recovery of the bones in Putis did not simply serve as a ritual of healing for the small mountain town, but a poignant experience in Peru’s collective mourning.

Just like the Biblical heroine Rizpah, a team of archeologists took care to guard the remains and restore the bones to a proper burial, bringing some sense of closure to an incredibly upsetting chapter in Peru’s history.

With the sense of utter despair evident in both Rizpah’s experience and the excavation in Putis, it seems like the images in our New Testament reading are some kind of a fairy tale. The Book of Revelation describes a river bringing forth life-giving water, trees flanked on either side bearing fruit that will bring healing to the nations. I doubt that many of us have ever experienced that kind of instant reversal or cleansing, making all that is wrong with the world right again.

But maybe we are simply looking for the wrong thing. Maybe the sweeping changes we are looking for are not the real changes we need. Maybe the cry for perfect peace and harmony overlooks all the gradual change that is occurring on a daily basis.

While the bone diggers in Putis could not undo the past, they could honor and respect the lives that were lost and dignify their existence with a proper burial.
Similarly, Rizpah’s act of remembrance toward the men who were murdered was recognized by King David, who ordered that the bones be collected and placed in the formal burial site of Saul’s ancestors.

The Scripture from the Book of Revelation was another part of the Bible that I had never read until recently. The verse shared today was the Biblical theme of a Presbyterian Women’s gathering in Hamilton, New York, which I attended in early August. The conference was called “Gathering at the River,” and discussed the promise of God’s healing in a broken world.

The keynote speaker was Rev. Patricia Raube, a pastor from Endicott, New York, who gave a very thoughtful analysis on the Scripture. What struck me most about this description of the river of life was the closing statement, “Nothing accursed will be found there anymore.” Nothing accursed will be found there any more.

Rev. Raube explained that the Greek translation of the word “accursed” literally means “up down places.” Meaning, what was accursed was something that had flourished and was held high but was thrown down, discarded, or buried - much like the sons of Rizpah and the women and children of Putis.

Up down places… we all experiences them. Having moved along just fine, feeling energized and empowered, with a sense of meaning and direction, we are often derailed by any number of reasons – illness, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, or feeling generally overwhelmed. We experience some form of devastation that leaves us unable to hear G-d’s voice. And in many cases, we assume that He just isn’t there.

I experience these “up down places” just about every day at the City Mission, where one person’s success and progress is always met with the devastating fall of another. I saw this during Christmas time, where the overwhelming joy and generosity of volunteers and donors was met with feelings of depression and loneliness in the men and women who live at the City Mission.

For residents, Christmas-time is a cold reminder of all they have lost. It is no wonder that during this season of joy, three women at the Family Life Center relapsed in their addiction recovery.

During the past year my most difficult struggle has been how to maintain my own sense of balance when others are in the process of burying the bones of their past, like Rizpah. In short, their “up down places” become my own. Since starting to work at the City Mission I have felt so elated on certain days, celebrating the changing attitudes and behaviors of some of the woman, while confronting resistance and despair in others.

I come home feeling so inspired by how G-d is working in the women’s lives and how grateful I am to participate in their recovery. Yet there are many days that I come home feeling numb, burdened by the needs of the women we serve and frustrated by the repeating patterns that prevent them from positive change.

I discussed this dynamic with a co-worker one day, feeling that I had had enough of these “up down” places. Having endured the ebb and flow of ministry for over twenty years, he explained that I was experiencing the pendulum effect. He described a large pendulum on a grandfather clock, noting that when one first enters into direct-line ministry, one experiences huge swings.

The pendulum starts high, and swoops down during times of struggle and frustration. Then it inevitably picks back up again and one feels reinvigorated.

However, as the pendulum keeps moving, the swing becomes less dramatic, less divergent. It’s not that the highs are less wonderful and the lows less devastating, but we respond to them with more clarity, more consistency. As the pendulum slows its swing, it rocks back and forth along the middle line, eventually steadying itself, anchoring itself with gravity.

We are the pendulums, ministry is field where the swing occurs, life circumstances are the various points on the arch and of course, G-d is the gravity which anchors us. G-d anchors us in times of difficulty and does not abandon us on a mountain top. G-d also grounds us during times of prosperity, when life pours out healing fruit.

If we can accept that life does include all of the extremes, then maybe we can begin to focus on where and how G-d is working in even the most dire of circumstances. And I think what we may find is that the tree of life and its healing fruit is not just an image found in the last chapter of the Bible, but a possibility at any point on the pendulum’s swing.

Near the Pines

A young woman recently shared with me, “Did you know that Schenectady means 'where the road ends'?" Puzzled by her question, I wondered who her source was but more importantly, whether she believed it.

Always in search of language roots and local history, I responded, “I could be wrong, but I think Schenectady is a Native American term meaning ‘near the pines.’” Sure enough, Wikipedia verified my hunch, making me feel proud of my growing nickel knowledge base, but still concerned about this young woman’s perception.

I asked her if she feels that Schenectady is in fact where the road ends, or more directly, where her road ends. She paused in removed thought and finally answered, “It’s just that whenever I come up here, I seem to have back luck,” her latest stroke of “luck” causing her to lose her recently replaced phone, which is her life line and most legitimate means to secure a job.

A 19 year-old single mother, she moved from the Bronx to Schenectady earlier this year in order to escape a life of drug dealing and to create a better future for her and her one-year old son. She regularly makes trips downstate to visit family and to scrounge up baby clothing and extra diapers, but she always returns, end of the road or not, to Schenectady.

It is here that she has an apartment, albeit no crib for the baby or an air conditioner and several flights of stairs to endure with a heavy stroller and a bad knee. But she has a place of her own, thanks to the Department of Social Services and a local job training agency.

In early summer, her career counselor arranged for her to complete her job training as a receptionist at the City Mission. On her first day, she entered with her shoulders bent forward and a downward gaze, wearing old jeans and a faded t-shirt.

Before starting at the front desk, she was invited to visit Phoebe’s Closet, the second-hand clothing ministry at the City Mission, which provides professional clothing for employment seekers. She hesitantly tried on a few outfits and soon the transformation was evident.

She came out of the fitting room, looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror and exclaimed, “I feel like a completely different person! I look so professional!” The young woman straightened her shoulders, adjusted the collar of the suit jacket she had tried on and said “My friends would never recognize me. I’ll tell them it’s really me, and that I have a job!”

After four months, this frustrated, lonely and overwhelmed young woman has secured a job at Macy’s department store, although child care may cost her much needed hours. She has also become more confident and articulate, able to assist volunteers, visitors and guests of the City Mission.

While she is a far cry from the dangerously illegal activity of her peers, her life in Schenectady is not the idyllic depiction given by Native Americans as the “place beyond the pine plains.” In fact, her story is fraught with prickers, thorns and on some days a glaringly bold “Dead End” sign.

With a litany of health concerns and a broken-hearted expression, one can’t help but want to support her, empower her, or at the very least, listen to her. And that’s exactly what I did, on my first day back at the Mission.

Fresh off of a week of vacation and happy be back home, I felt rather disappointed when she declared Schenectady as a land of lost opportunity. However, rather than discount her comment altogether, I simply asked, “What makes you feel that way?”

She described her difficulty getting a job, her piece-meal child care options and her constant pull to the city, where she seems to have more access to services, or can at least get away with securing more food and money. Returning to Schenectady brings ridicule from her family and friends, who are unwilling to accept her independent decision making and self motivation, traits which will be necessary if she is to achieve a promising future.

In the few words I was able to offer, amidst her therapeutic outpouring of grievances, I noted that her decision to move to Schenectady shows a great deal of courage, vision and determination. I also expressed that her main concerns about Schenectady, including job availability, childcare and lack of family support, are realities which are likely to exist in just about every city, big or small, whether they are filled with pine trees or sky scrapers.

I also reminded her that the opportunities available to us are often based on how we perceive our surroundings. In Schenectady, she has a safe place to live and a temporary job at the City Mission where she has an array of physical and spiritual resources, whether they are in the form of size-5 diapers and extra baby wipes, or the support of a community of women interested in her well-being.

And as this young woman realized, her most valuable resources are the women who reside at the City Mission, who are in the midst of rebuilding their own lives and can share their own experiences of doubt and despair, restoration and resilience.

Before this young woman left for the day, she peered into my office with a fully stretched smile and said, “Thank you! Thank you for letting me vent this morning. I spoke to some of the ladies during lunch, and they said to just keep moving forward, even when it’s tough.”

And she really believed them, hopefully more than the storyteller who shared the urban myth of Schenectady being an ending point, rather than a place of beginnings.

Stay a While - Seattle Edition

There’s something very appealing about this place.

Maybe it’s the proximity to several bodies of water, scattered within and around the city, which prevent one from feeling trapped in a cement kingdom. Maybe it’s the vast presence of highly original businesses and small boutiques, which beg onlookers and clientele to define their own dreams.

Or maybe I am enjoying my visit to this damp coastal land, some 2,500 miles away from home, because it allows me to reflect on the changing currents and returning tides of my own life.

There was no doubt in my mind that I had arrived in Seattle when I exited the airport into a chilly gust of wind and spitting rain. Completely overcast skies revealed no evidence of the two majestic mountain ranges that surround the city.

I followed a group of newly-arrived students through the damp parking garage to the “Light Rail,” a cheap alternative to a private taxi and a reminder of Seattle’s eco-conscious sensibility.

What made the entrance into downtown Seattle so comforting, was the fact that I could phone home to my family without a cryptic calling card and could ask for directions in English, a far cry from the blatant disorientation I’ve felt arriving in European cities with a tattered guide book and some emergency phrases penned on my forearm.

But everything else about the adventure and wonder of exploring Paris, Vienna or Krakow, has been evident in my wanderings through the Emerald City.

Last minute hotel reservations (i.e. from the airport baggage claim), landed me in a charming sunny room at the Moore Hotel, a 103 year-old vintage style pension overlooking the Puget Sound. After unloading my luggage and peering out my window at the breathtaking view, I made my way to the quintessential slice of Seattle’s sea-faring lifestyle – Pike Place Market.

The covered market overlooking Elliot Bay invigorates all of the senses. Florist designers waived long stalks of dahlias and sunflowers, while fruit vendors offered freshly cut samples of pluots and pears. Crafters sat patiently behind their wares knitting or carving a new creation, while I enjoyed the indie-folk harmonies of busking musicians like “The Faded Optimists.”

If one stays long enough, proper rain gear becomes an absolute necessity. Locals were donned in winter parkas and knee-high galoshes, while children passed with yellow rubber rain suits and snow hats. Yet rainy as it was, no gathering spot could have been more warm, cheery and full of life.

The large presence of Native American and Asian culture was evident in the market stalls as well as surrounding restaurants, art galleries and community events – a reminder of the diversity of Seattle’s population. However, one sector of the population which is just as prevalent, yet more controversial to acknowledge, is Seattle’s significant number of homeless men and women.

I’m particularly attuned to the exhausted expression and crouched posture of someone who has spent the night on the street. I encounter their heavily burdened gaze every day at the City Mission of Schenectady. And as I soon learned, the need is just as immediate on the opposite coastline.

On my first morning in Seattle, I observed a tired unshaven gentleman sitting alone at the table across from me at a diner in the University District- a cane propped up against his table and a crumpled fatigue jacket slung behind his chair.

At one point, his head hung uncomfortably low and still, his hand waving a piece of toast just below his mouth. He had fallen asleep over his unfinished omelets and cold coffee.

Despite the glaring presence of homelessness, there is a diligent network of shelters, community centers and recovery programs scattered throughout the city. There is even a local newspaper titled “REAL CHANGE,” whose sole contributors are homeless and low-income men and women who aim to raise awareness about their circumstances. Yet, many continue to find their home on park benches and in empty parking lots.

One such parking lot is owned by the Congregational United Church of Christ, located in the heart of the University of Washington. I passed by the church the same morning and saw a patchwork of multi-colored plastic tarps strung together over what appeared to be a slew of camping tents. I later picked up a copy of the UW Daily and saw the same image on the front page.

With the church’s approval, sixty members of a mobile community have settled in the parking lot for three months. The community calls itself Nicklesville, a group of socially conscious individuals who are homeless, yet who have cultivated sustainable inter-dependence as a means of survival.

Residents hold various leadership positions, including head of security and liaison for Veterans for Peace, as well as tent master and head kitchen coordinator. Nicklesville hopes to one day find a permanent place of residence but for now, members are working with Seattle’s mayor to secure a location that will at least carry them through the winter.

While standing at a bus stop in Fremont, a trendy neighborhood north of the Space Needle, I was asked by a local news reporter if I had any questions for the mayor. "I'm from out of town," I said, "but I do have a question." And with that I asked the camera (and the mayor) what his thoughts were on the tented community of Nickleville and how he plans to address the need for increased housing in downtown Seattle.

It is eye-opening, to stay the least, to find myself on the opposite side of the country from my life, my work and my family, and to see the same challenges and opportunities for community development. While the streets of Seattle appear pleasantly clean and inviting, I was given a glimpse of the enduring grief and grime that exists in even the most promising of city landscapes.

After viewing a hazy sunset over the Puget Sound from the recently opened Olympic Sculpture Park, I imagined the rough expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the other side. And as the day ended, I wondered what new observations the tides would bring tomorrow.

One Year Later

Exactly one year ago, I left a bustling Peruvian town in the central Andes and returned to my friends and family in New York, where life had bustled along without me for eleven months. I threw myself back into life in the States, eager to be on my own again in an apartment, with a new job, a car and even my own shopping list.

I had relinquished certain freedoms while living in Peru. My host mother cooked all my meals and I was at home every night before sundown. I only went so far on my Saturday morning walks, realizing that the unpaved streets past the central market become exceedingly unfriendly. My weekend entertainment was often hand washing my clothes and reading one of the few English books I brought with me. I stayed in and stayed close.

In many ways, this past year in Schenectady has not been much different. While I enjoy more personal space and less awkward stares, I find that I have continued to stay in and stay close.

I enjoy a quiet twenty-minute walk to work, just as I did in Peru, needing the meditative buffer zone between the women’s shelter where I spend my days and my own quite corner of the world in the Stockade. I still prefer farmer’s markets to grocery stores and continue to write letters to my friends, even though they are now just a phone call away.

However, what is most strikingly similar to life in Peru are the faces I encounter during the day at the inner-city rescue mission where I work. Whether a nineteen year-old single mother or a fifty-three year old recovering alcoholic, the women who enter our doors express the same underlying needs as the women and children I worked with in Huánuco – safe shelter, acknowledgement and dignity.

Initially, I didn’t see the connection between Huánuco and Schenectady. One is a largely agrarian supported economy with a large presence of indigenous culture, which resembles life well before Spanish influence. Schenectady, on the other hand, has a history of technological discovery and industry with a large immigrant population and a social service agency at every corner.

With obvious differences in terms of history, culture and access to resources, what then makes these towns similar? What draws these two communities, some 3,635 miles apart, nearer than say, Schenectady and Saratoga?

What seems to be the unifying factor is the extent of human need and the sincerity of community response. Whether through spiritual guidance and shelter for families at the City Mission or psychological counseling for survivors of sexual abuse at Paz y Experanza (Peace and Hope), the Andes meets upstate New York in surprisingly personal ways.

In early November, a young woman moved into the shelter where I work. She arrived by bus from Queens with her two month-old daughter hidden beneath a fleece blanket draped over her stroller. She was quite unsure where she had arrived, but knew instinctively that this was a better place than what she had left behind.

The young woman, barely twenty years old, had recently lost her aunt, who had raised her in her parents’ absence. Just weeks before she relocated to Schenectady, her cousin was shot and killed on the streets in Queens.

The young woman hid her grief well, through a wide smile and edgy sarcasm. I was unaware of her deep sense of loss until a week after her arrival, sitting beside her in her apartment at the shelter.

“What were your growing up years like?” I asked, as we went through the shelter’s welcome packet called “Tilling the Soil.” She said she spent most of her youth on the streets, getting into trouble and having little guidance. She had her first child at age fifteen and her second a year later. Both are in the custody of a relative while her newborn daughter came with her to Schenectady.

“What good things happened to you?” I continued. She said she was never without friends and found herself always part of a group. “What sad or hurtful things happened to you?” She paused and read from what she wrote on the page. “Everyone around me is dying,” she spoke stoically. She began to cry and I didn’t attempt to say anything. I placed one hand against her back and the other on her shoulder.

In the moment of silence that passed between us I remembered a young woman named Rosa, who I had met in Huánuco, Peru. Like the new resident from Queens, Rosa became a mother at age fifteen. In the tradition of her village, after her mother died she assumed the role of wife for her father and grandfather. Her one year old son is the product of incest, yet Rosa is unsure with which relative he was conceived.

While the experiences of these women are markedly different, for both, the streets of their upbringing ended their childhood prematurely. These two girls became women and mothers before they were given the chance to ask themselves, “What do I want out of life.”

I met Rosa and her son at a small shelter on a farm outside of Huánuco. A modest cinder-block room with three beds and a playpen is called La Casa de Buen Trato (The House of Good Treatment), and provides a home for three teenage mothers and their babies. Now, a year later, the House of Good Treatment has grown into a fifty-bed facility built on an adjacent alfalfa field, where cows used to roam and graze.

In that same year, Rosa has learned to knit blankets and make chocolate, which she sells at the local market to support herself and her son. At the same time, the young woman from Queens is taking parenting classes at the City Mission and has been reunited with her older daughter for the summer.

Now, a year later, I am finding that I am continually shocked by the realities of today’s women but also more equipped to come alongside of them. I find that my time spent in Peru prepared me to be more directly involved in the process of women’s recovery and less likely to feel overwhelmed and defeated.

Now, a year later, I remember the women I met in Peru and find that their stories continue in the lives of the families I work with at the City Mission. And if the women in Schenectady, myself included, could gain something from Rosa and countless others like her, it would be their courage, their resilience and their prevailing gratitude.

Meet and Greet

A table of homemade vegetarian food, fresh picked berries and upside down cakes. Folding chairs laid out in the living room with guests holding cups of iced tea and lemon seltzer. A stack of business cards with the campaign slogan "The Change We Need," casually spread across the coffee table.

And the candidate, Susan Savage, standing nonchalantly among a small crowd of Schenectady residents who were gathered to meet and greet the future State Senator of the 44th Senate District.

The informal gathering, held at a local home near Schenectady’s Central Park, included AARP community organizers, public policy researchers, small business owners, a local pastor, human services and mental health advocates, school board members and students from Schenectady County Community College.

The conversation was relaxed and causal yet hardly what you’d expect at a mid-summer after work dinner party: the dangers of political incumbency, the prospects of job creation and economic revitalization, the role of media in shaping public discourse, the state of health care, the extent of homelessness and overall, the need for positive change.

“I’ve encountered many people whose main reason for avoiding change is that it’s never been done before,” Savage shared when describing the stalemate which has plagued State government for years.

Decision making takes on an all together different approach with Savage, the current Chair of the Schenectady County Legislature. She seeks out all sides of the equation, is willing to change her position when confronted with new information and is prepared to stand up to falsehoods where they exist.

And this is all done with a sense of grace and joviality which makes her accessible and trustworthy. Savage’s former child care provider even notes that “She is one of those people who, when you meet her, you swear you’ve known her all your life.”

Although her Senate campaign has only just begun, Savage is confident that it will be a successful race. With long time Republicans vowing to vote for her instead of re-electing Senator Hugh Farley for a 19th consecutive term, it’s clear that the public is ready for a new face. And at 48, Savage says it feels good to be considered young again.

With no challenger in the Democratic primary and a growing mass of die-hard supporters, not to mention the backing of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, Savage has a promising race ahead of her.

As the mid-week “Meet and Greet” drew to an end, it seemed appropriate that one of the guests called attention to the six glass candle holders resting on the window sill in the host’s kitchen. Each had a golf-ball-sized avocado seed resting in water. Tooth picks poked into the surface and rested on the rim of each glass, allowing only the base of the seed to be submerged.

Eventually, from that base, roots will emerge and the seed can be planted in the earth, in order to support the growth of a sturdy and enduring tree.

And while Schenectady may not be accustomed to growing avocado trees, or seeing a new face in the district’s Senate seat, it seems to be a necessary and exciting change for those who care deeply about this community.

Heat Wave

On Friday afternoons at the City Mission a weekly Chapel service is held in the back of the community dining center. With the recent increase in temperature, the doors are held wide open, inviting in as much breeze as possible.

However, it is not just hot air and the occasional gust of wind that passes through the doorway. Recently, there has been the steady and buoyant movement of song and melody, a sound that is nothing short of uplifting and transformative in this dry and overheated season.

The music comes from the residents of both the men’s shelter and the women’s Family Life Center, both housed on the City Mission campus in downtown Schenectady. This past Friday the Chapel service featured the women, with a selection of songs, which they share every morning during their devotional time “Cultivating Community.”

Community was surely cultivated during the afternoon service, with not a single empty seat or frowning face evident in the crowd. As the women sang, hands clapped to the rhythm of older Gospel tunes claiming “Victory is Mine” and more contemporary Christian music like Britt Nicole’s “Walk on the Water.”

“You look around and everywhere you turn, another wave of doubt will pull you under. You wonder, what if I’m overtaken? What if I never make it? What if there’s no one there? Will you hear my prayer?”

These are the questions that the residents of the City Mission ask each and every day. Regardless of whether it’s a one night emergency stay or a year-long commitment to the Mission’s Freedom Academy discipleship program, there is overwhelming doubt and insecurity in the minds and hearts of those that enter the City Mission doors.

But then there are the stories of women like Stephanie*, who spoke at Friday’s Chapel service. During her testimony, Stephanie shared that she experienced a great deal of loss during her childhood, including her mother leaving her for prison bars when Stephanie was ten years old. It’s hard to blame her for turning to alcohol to numb the pain of having been left behind, time and again.

But Stephanie doesn’t turn to alcohol anymore. In fact, she just graduated from St. Peter’s Addiction Recovery Center, having been sober for the better part of a year. Stephanie acknowledges that she is still a work in progress, but she also knows that with a growing relationship with God, she doesn’t have to endure life’s hardships alone.

Friday ended with a Fourth of July picnic at the Misson’s Davis Pavilion on Hamilton Street. Watermelon, hamburgers, and hotdogs were passed around as staff and residents mingled in the shade. If Thanksgiving were a summer holiday, this would be the day to celebrate.

*Name has been changed to protect the privacy of the individual.