Just Because I'm Losing, Doesn't Mean I'm Lost

Write a page for your portfolio, addressing the following questions, and any other questions you may have:

• In your community / parish / town / country who are the “lost”?
• What can be done for the “lost”?
• What is your association with them?

In my community the “lost” are any sisters who have spent many long, hard years working incredibly hard to do good work for others without also taking the necessary appropriate care of their own personal needs, and now find themselves in a place of burnout where they are experiencing “compassion fatigue” that impels them to withdraw from relationships within and outside of the community. While this withdrawal might seem on the surface to save them energy that they don’t feel they are able to give away anymore, it also isolates them and keeps them from receiving energy and love from others: so they are trapped in a downward spiral. What can be done for these “lost” ones is that members of the community can be sensitive to their predicament and continue to reach out to them and draw them into community activities, even when these attempts seem to be unwelcome. As a novice, I am probably a real challenge to anyone in this predicament… but I can try to be as gentle and as kind as possible, and hold the conscious intention of being a conduit of God’s love and energy for such a person when I am with them. Especially when they are cranky.

In my parish the “lost” are those youth and divorced people who would like to be active members of the church but don’t feel welcome because they aren’t shown understanding and compassion. The youth are intrinsically good and have a lot of potential to grow into people who do wonderful things in the community, but because they are exploring their identity and trying to find their place in the world they are often dismissed as being rowdy, difficult and unreliable. What can be done for the youth is that adults in the parish can recognise that these young people are at a normal stage of human development, adjust their expectations accordingly, and do whatever they can (especially by involving the youth in activities and ministries) to support and encourage the youth as they struggle out of their adolescent cocoons and metamorphose into the responsible adults that God is calling them to be. The divorced have experienced a great deal of suffering as a result of their marriage failing (particularly those whose spouses struggled with addictions or were physically or emotionally abusive towards their partner or the children), and it would help enormously if ‘good Catholics’ could be less judgemental of their brothers and sisters and at least try to be understanding of the dire situation someone would be in before they acknowledged that their marriage was irretrievably broken and go through the trauma of getting a divorce (and an annulment where possible). My association with the youth and the divorced in our parish is fairly low-key, but I do try to encourage them by engaging in casual conversation and by being an affirming presence that says “God knows you’re great, we’re glad you’re here”.

In my town the “lost” are the homeless people who have nowhere to call their own, no way of earning a decent living, and no prospects for a better future. What can be done for them … is a really good question! In theory, the government is supposed to be doing something. In practice there are a lot of people getting help with filling in paperwork for disability grants (many of the homeless have some disability – physical or mental – that prevents them from working), but I’m not sure what the success rate is, or how able someone might be to put such a grant to good use to improve their lot. My personal association is in making coffee and sandwiches for those who come to our convent door, and I try to be cheerful and friendly and honour their dignity by being respectful towards them – even when I have to explain that it’s not appropriate for them to sleep on our doorstep! I wish there was more I could do!

In my country the “lost” are the refugees from other countries, the AIDS infected, the victims of gender violence and discrimination, the children whose schools are ill-equipped to provide a good education and are badly administered which makes matters even worse, and the desperately in-debt super-consumers who gate themselves into high-walled security complexes in a bid to keep the bad guys out… only to find that the bad guys are within: hayi shame! [I could write a thesis…]