Beyond us and them
Learning to be the difference by being together
By Marcus Mescher, Klingler College of Arts & Sciences ‘04
It’s been nearly 15 years since this photo was taken. I still have it at my desk.
I’m holding a little boy named Andrew who was born with HIV.
It’s a reminder to remember him.
The photo is from my senior year at Marquette on an IMAP trip to Kingston, Jamaica. We visited social service organizations, including Mustard Seed communities that provided care for children with special needs.
I was asked to sit down and visit with Andrew and another boy named Samuel who had hydrocephalus, a condition that made his head swell with fluid — so much so that his cranium was as large as a watermelon.
Samuel couldn’t move or speak, and he was positioned just to stare up and out toward a courtyard, filled with plants and flowers, where the other children played.
I spent a few minutes speaking with Samuel, but I found it difficult to look into his eyes without asking myself, “Why him and not me?”
The longer I sat there, the more uncomfortable I got. So I stood up and found one of the orderlies and asked what else I could do to help. She calmly reassured me that I was helping.
But I couldn’t stay there for longer than a few minutes. I was consumed by the awkwardness of his inability to say anything in return.
Even though I discovered a shared humanity with the characters in the books I read for class, I couldn’t see the shared humanity — and interpersonal connection — with the little boy right next to me.
I failed to recognize his full human dignity, I squirmed in my powerlessness to “fix” his ailment and “solve” the problem.
I wanted to run from his vulnerability. I was afraid of confronting my own.
When I was a student at Marquette, I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. I was envious of my classmates who were on pre-professional tracks like nursing, engineering or Marquette Business.
I changed my major a few times based on classes I really enjoyed. I ultimately found literature compelling because it opened doors to realities other than my own. I devoured Invisible Man, Passing and the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. Narrative connects us on a human level, cutting through stereotypes that divide us into categories of us and them.
This is what I’ve learned in Theology, too. Jesuit priest Father Greg Boyle reminds us that there is no us and them — only us. In working with former gang members, he calls for a compassion that leaves no one out. A compassion that replaces judgment with awe and practices vulnerability in order to make room for mutual respect and concern.
But this does not imply a unilateral doing for other people, which is how I understood service.
Boyle writes: “We are at our healthiest when we are most situated in awe, and at our least healthy when we engage in judgment.”
Judgment, Boyle tells us, creates distance that moves us away from each other.
“Judgment keeps us in the competitive game and is always self-aggrandizing. Standing at the margins with the broken reminds us not of our own superiority but of our own brokenness. Awe is the great leveler. The embrace of our own suffering helps us to land on a spiritual intimacy with ourselves and others. For if we don’t welcome our own wounds, we will be tempted to despise the wounded.”
Without knowing it, I was despising the wounded on my service trip.
I left Andrew and Samuel and looked for other ways I could help. I colored pictures with other children, played tag, and even sang a little karaoke with those who could endure my tone-deaf renditions.
But I wasn’t satisfied until I found a bucket of paint, a brush, and climbed a ladder so I could tackle the exposed wood on the ceiling of the dormitory. I painted the rest of my time there, just so I could prove that I had done something for this community by leaving a tangible impact.
I was so busy wanting to do something for this community that I missed a crucial opportunity to be with them. I was blind to the ways that service can create distance between “service provider” and “service recipient,” reinforcing categories of us and them.
I wanted to Be the Difference. What that actually meant was Be Together.
Boyle addresses this very concern, when he reflects, “We always seem to be faced with this choice: to save the world or savor it. I want to propose that savoring is better, and that when we seek to ‘save’ and ‘contribute’ and ‘give back’ and ‘rescue’ folks and EVEN ‘make a difference,’ then it is all about you … and the world stays stuck … The good news, of course, is that when we choose to ‘savor’ the world, it gets saved. Don’t set out to change the world. Set out to wonder how people are doing … stop trying to reach them. Can YOU be reached by THEM? Folks on the margins only ask us to receive them.”
When we seek to ‘save’ and ‘contribute’ and ‘give back’ and ‘rescue’ folks and EVEN ‘make a difference,’ then it is all about you
This strikes me as especially relevant in 2018, in a time of rising social, economic and political division. Many of us might be at a loss for how we can reach those on the other side.
Boyle suggests we first ask ourselves if we’re willing to be reached by them. This shifts the emphasis from doing for to being with. That takes vulnerability and humility, patience and trust, compassion and courage. It means asking ourselves if we can really imagine belonging to each other, even across real difference.
Literature can open our imagination, creating space for empathy and understanding to take root. It certainly did for me, in classes I took like The Works of Toni Morrison with Dr. Heather Hathaway.
But it’s not enough to read a book or listen to a podcast to be opened to a reality other than our own. It has to lead to lived experience and embodied relationships.
Not that long ago, a study found that three-quarters of white Americans didn’t have a single black friend and that two-thirds of African Americans didn’t have a single white friend. How can we build empathy and understanding across the color line — or the class line or party line — if we don’t know what it’s like to be something other than me?
Fifteen years ago, Marquette brought Archbishop Desmond Tutu to campus for Mission Week. He shared about his experiences fighting apartheid in the pursuit of peace and reconciliation.
He called on the Marquette community to be leaders in this work, saying, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Tutu explained, “If an elephant is standing on the tail of a mouse, your neutrality does nothing to help the mouse.”
“If an elephant is standing on the tail of a mouse, your neutrality does nothing to help the mouse.”
It seemed like a tall order to fight injustice all on your own, but he reassured us, saying that justice is like an orchestra: It takes many hands and each one of us has an instrument to play.
I remember being a little disheartened by the metaphor because I have no musical talent and the rhythm of a tree stump. But Tutu continued on, exhorting each one of us to figure out what role we have to play in the orchestra of justice.
He told us to find our passion and make that our instrument — even if it’s the triangle. Then play the hell out of the triangle for justice, he told us.
What makes an orchestra great is not just what each musician is doing on his or her own, but the effect produced by each member playing together. If someone were left out, the orchestra would be impoverished.
The image of the orchestra reminds us that not only do we need each other to do what we can’t on our own, but life is more beautiful when it is shared through the gifts each person has to bring.
I keep photos of Andrew and Samuel from that service trip at my desk at Xavier University, where today I teach Christian ethics and specialize in Catholic social teaching.
Their lives are a reminder to me.
Andrew died from complications due to HIV/AIDS. They didn’t have enough money for proper medication, so they gave him cold medicine, which wasn’t enough to protect his vulnerable immune system. Samuel, the boy with hydrocephalus, died during a hurricane, when they weren’t able to rescue him during the storm.
Heartbreaking.
Why them and not me — or our kids?
If we are going to heal our broken world, we must shatter the illusion that we are separate from each other.
This is what it means to be Jesuit educated. To be women and men for and with others, striving to live out our faith in the promotion of justice. We might talk about magis like generosity or excellence, but it’s really about bringing glory to God (AMDG) by embracing our inherent goodness, affirming the dignity of others, and building communities marked by shared flourishing, the common good.
If we can find more ways to share life together — not trying to save the world by doing things for others, but savoring the world by celebrating what each person contributes, just as Boyle would recommend — then we can more easily recognize the truth that we belong to each other.
It’s what I learned by being together.
What better way to Be the Difference.
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Marcus Mescher is a 2004 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences. He is assistant professor of Christian ethics at Xavier University, specializing in Catholic social teaching. His book, The Ethics of Encounter: Christian Neighbor Love as a Practice of Solidarity, will be published by Lexington-Fortress in 2019. He and his wife Anne (Nursing, ’04) are the proud parents of Noah, Benjamin, and Grace.
