Reflection on Justice

Justice was the topic of our second Jesuit Volunteer retreat. A Mary knoll Lay missioner facilitated a wonderful retreat, and lead us in explorations of justice in our lives and our work, during a long weekend with all the JVs from the Cascade region. A few weeks before retreat, our area director asked if I would like to give a personal reflection after the gospel during mass that weekend. She suggested I reflect both on the reading for that week, which was Jesus explaining the Beatitudes, and my own experiences with justice at my work, a request I hesitantly accepted.

Rarely do I prepare such reflections, so I figured I might as well log it somewhere. The following is what I read during mass the few weeks back at the retreat. There’s much more to say. It was hard to share with such a large group; it was hard to share period. The tone seems a bit harsher when read and not heard; reading slowly might counteract that. But it is a glimpse at a few of the things I’ve struggled with these last few months, and what I’ve come to learn from it. . .

Feb 14th Reading: The Beatitutes, Luke 6:17-27

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6%3A17-26&version=NIV


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In thinking of the beatitudes, I tried to find where I , Christie, at times an oppressor, at times, the oppressed, a Jesuit volunteer for this one year, fit into this teaching. I don’t immediately identify as poor, hungry, or in despair. I may seek to understand these realities as my own, but I also recognize there are certain things in my life, like the ability to receive the education I have, or my support network, that will likely keep me from ever living hungry and on the streets.

At the same time, I can’t wholly identity as one who is rich, whose belly is always filled, or who is consoled in this life. I hold a place of privilege, and have more options open to me that most of the people in this world, yet, I’d like to believe I’ve learned to keep greed from influencing my actions; I do not laugh at the expense and suffering of others, I do not live a life content with where I am.

Maybe I see myself somewhere in the middle, able to grasp both ends of the spectrum, pulled in both directions by different motivations.

There is a challenge in being ale to harness both the power and privilege I possess, to afford distant travels, to have the ability to “take a year off,” to mostly be respect and listened to when I speak. It’s hard to harness this with the compassion I have for exploring how the next person’s suffering is connected to my own.

In this challenge, I suppose I can see myself as somewhat of a bridge between these two extremes. How to harness it precisely, accurately, justly, and find my place in it all is something I’m still a bit unsure of.

But what I do know is that I, that we, as JVs, are not going to wait for the next life to find the rewards promised from suffering. This life is short, this JV year even shorter. But we’ve committed one year of it to exploring the ends of the spectrum, and where we fit into it. And in the journey toward justice, its one incredible step.

It may be hard to see justice in our day to day work. We’ve acknowledged that so often, we feel frustration, despair, hopelessness. Though we also acknowledge we do have some agency in other’s lives, it still seems that much of the important, wide-reaching change is structural, long-term, and can’t be something we offer to those we work with each day. Service we can offer each day, justice is a bit harder.

I struggle to see much justice in the realm of domestic violence.

At the center of abuse is Power and Control, two desires that can motivate someone to punch, kick, choke, stalk, intimidate, isolate, belittle, threaten, rape and at times, murder another human being.

Violence is the product of this desire to exert power over another individual, and can be see to stem from a socialization that teaches there are specific roles for men and women; that certain human beings in society hold more of less dignity that others; a socialization that teaches the use of violence and force can get you what you want.

While domestic violence shelters can provide a safe space and a short but of time for someone to recover from abuse, get back on their feet, one can’t help but think of and mourn the fact that for each person who does get through he hoops of obtaining shelter space, there are 100s, 1000s of people who don’t.

The service we can offer may help someone on a new path, but God are we far from touching the problem that led to these women coming to shelter. How do you reverse socialization, and erase the desire to exert power over another, from our nation’s mind? From our world?

Is there justice in the reality that survivors of abuse are the ones that must leave homes, change routines, change jobs, and start over, when it was their abuser who committed the wrong in the first place? How is it just that a frequent response to survivors’ stories is for us as a society to blame them for “deserving” it, based on what they wear, how they act, or what work they do?

Why must we as advocates waste precious time writing endless case notes, why can’t we service more people by letting them sleep on our couches? Just so we can appease our funders?

I’d also like to know why our “batterer’s intervention program aren’t being studied and remodeled so as to actually support someone change their abusive behaviors. We know that a child who witnesses abuse at a young age is twice as likely to be abusive as an adult, so we see abusers too are often victims.

I struggle to head home, to leave one woman to her solitude in her room, as five o’clock rolls around each day. I wonder how one person can have such a dramatic affect on another. How her abuser, in one act of rape, can traumatize her for years. And how one child welfare worker, this woman’s year-old daughter’s worker, can keep this woman from sleep at night, just in the small action of allowing the rapist father to have unsupervised home visits with her daughter.


Despite just these few injustices, I have yet to be broken, to be slowed, or made inactive due the hopelessness. Because I, too, am one.


I doubt whatever positive affect I could possibly have on this one woman would stay on her mind like her abuser does, but I have been able to do something. Tell her she deserves better, maker her feel appreciates, challenger her case worker, be witness to her injustices.

And through these struggles, we’ve been able to hold on to the joy, we’ve been able to laugh, be vulnerable together, and teach each other a thing or two.


Our program director at work read poem just before we reopened shelter this spring, to help ring in a new and fresh start for our shelter. It’s something I connected with immediately. In the injustices described in the poem, we can imagine of the specific injustices each of us sees each day in each population we work with.

In knowing how to sustain ourselves, hold onto our joy, despite the suffering, it can also help to remember that we are not just one, but together, we are more than one.

The Low Road by Marge Piercy

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organisation. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

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