Coming to ESC, Margaret's Story

I first heard of Episcopal Service Corps a little over two years ago, and told myself I'd apply if I didn't hear back from a different program that I'd already applied for.

That program was Young Adult Service Corps, or YASC for short. Like ESC, YASC is a service program run by the Episcopal Church, only a YASC year is spent serving abroad.  Think of it sort of as the difference between Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. 

In order to do YASC, I had to go to a two-week training before I would go on to my host site.  That training was spent with my fellow YASC volunteers, and with several older adult missioners from around the church, including a man from the Diocese of Maryland, Dan Tootle. 

With YASC, I served one year teaching at an Episcopal school in the northern Philippines.  I knew, midway through my year there that I wanted to continue doing service work, and if possible, to do it with the Episcopal Church.  I also knew I wanted to be somewhat closer than half the world away from my home.  So I applied for ESC.  When asked to list my top programs, I added Maryland's Gilead House because Dan Tootle asked me to do so. 

The interviewing process was a bit interesting (for interesting, read sleep-deprivation, 12 hour time differences are not fun), but I knew after my first few conversations with ESC MD that I should be here. 

Coming to ESC MD, each of us works with a host site during the work week, a place where we do service work focused on various poverty and justice issues in Baltimore city.  I in particular work with House of Ruth Maryland, the primary domestic and intimate partner violence agency serving Baltimore city.  In particular I work in the Client Service Coordination department.  Basically, Client Service Ccoordination is the department that focuses on helping people leaving domestically violent situations to rebuild their lives.  We connect clients to resources, help them plan their next steps, and act as an advocate for them both within our agency and while making contact with outside agencies they call for support or resources. 

When I start to describe my work, people respond by saying something about how hard it must be to do this job.  And they're right.  It is hard.  Daily there's a struggle to connect people to resources that are often full up, or that require resources that they don't have.  It's hard talking to the clients, mostly women, as they tell their stories, as they speak about violence and threats, betrayals of trust and insults, about the daily ways they were terrorized and controlled by people they should have been able to count on.  I hear women and men calling in, telling me that they were so stupid, asking me what they did wrong to deserve this.  As if anyone could ever do something to deserve abuse.  it is hard. 

But what makes it worth it is that we are here.  Day by day, the people at House of Ruth show up again.  I go to work surrounded by healers and warriors.  I work with people who go to bat every day for our clients, who dig out every possible resource, who counsel and support our clients.  I work with people who help these women and men find their own worth and strength again. 

ESC gave me that same opportunity to stand up.  It gave me a chance to push myself beyond my limits, to see myself as strong enough to give this kind of help and support.  That wasn't something I was sure I could do before this year.  For that, I am grateful. 

And I'm also grateful for the community that I am part of.  Gilead House is filled with people who all care about the world, about giving back to the people who surround us.  One thing I craved when I was doing YASC was a sense of local community, as my YASC support community was spread across the globe, often with very poor internet connections. 


We interns don't always see eye to eye.  We've had lots of discussions over different meanings behind words and expectations, and the precise definition of clean is still up in the air seven months in.  We've had arguments that nearly shook the house, rapprochements, tense quiet, and times where we have just shoved an argument under the rug because it was useless to discuss it any further.  There have been days where I've sworn that being in community was harder than my day job at my host site.


And that's what it is.  Being in an intentional community like ours is hard work.  Combining seven very opinionated, strong-willed individuals who mostly did not know each other at all before the year began is never an easy thing. 


But just like my job, the hard work is good, is necessary.  We learn from one another, from our stress and arguments and the times we want to throw each other off of a seven-story building.   But we also learn from each other in the quiet moments.  We learn that when someone's had a truly hard day, someone else will cover their dinner, or take on their choir.  If someone's feeling sick, there will always be at least one person checking in to see if there's a need for a ginger-ale or tea run.  We learn to care about one another's interests.  We've learned that while getting all seven of us to do anything is like herding cats, but less productive, we can normally get three or four people going someplace and having a great time. 


I know that Jarred will always get it when I rant about homelessness in Baltimore, because his work overlaps a lot with mine and he has the same frustrations and joys. 


I know that Kelly will always have the best stories about the goats at her farm, and that she's always interested in going out and doing things as a group, so if I have something I want to try she'll be in for it if she can. 


I know that Sarah will have a kind word for everyone, and that she will listen to everybody's day first. I know that she puts her heart and soul into her work with ESC and her work with her own charity, Hearts for People.


I know that Matthew and I can geek out a lot, and that even if we have very different takes on the same interests, we have that common pool of references to play with.  And yes, bagpipes are still one of the best instruments known to man.


I know that Dan is always up for pizza, that he'll be the one to try and lighten the mood with a joke, and that he and I can do our science geek practically in unison. 


 I know that I lucked out in getting Clara as my roommate for half the year, that our complimentary tastes in music means that now approximately 3/4ths of our music libraries overlap, and that she will pull me out dancing every few months to remind me how much I love it. 


I know that they know things like this about me now, both silly and serious, and that years on I will begin to understand how much they have shaped my life.

Coming to ESC Maryland, Kelly's Story

Several of us were recently asked to present at a church about what led us to Episcopal Service Corps Maryland, and how that has affected us.  First up telling her story is Kelly, working with Great Kids Farm.

Hi, my name is Kelly Crabtree, I am here today with Jarred Ervin and Margaret Clinch and we are members of the Episcopal Service Corps-Maryland this year. We are here today to share our stories. Sharing, listening and understanding personal narratives are key for communities, especially church communities. After all we read stories every Sunday, so why shouldn’t also share our own with one another? To share, listen and understand these stories allows us to deepen in our relationships with one another and grow together as a community. Our service corps community has definitely experienced this so far within our year and hope to illustrate some of this to you with our own personal narratives we are going to describe today. We are each going to tell you how we came to the Service Corps as well as how this year of our lives has played out thus far. We hope that this propels all of us to share, listen, and understand with all our hearts of what our Church is really capable of doing in our world today.

 

So, I am originally from NW Washington, DC, born and raised. I was baptized Methodist, but my family did not stay long in the Methodist church. Eventually my parents no longer wanted to deal with the weekly Sunday struggle of getting my brother and I to Sunday School, and my parents did not have a strong connection to the Methodist parish at the time, so we took a break from the church. A couple years later, when I was about 12, my parents decided on instead of choosing based on denomination, we were going to look in terms of geography!

 

So exactly one block away from our house is St. Columba’s Episcopal Church and that is where we went! 

 

St. C’s quickly became the right home for my family. I entered the Rite 13 program, with instead of a mom pushing me to go no matter what, to an approach that put it more into my hands. I was to give it a try for a month or so and then decide whether or not I was going keep going. I didn’t realize this until now, but my mom put my spiritual journey into my own hands at that point, and this is what allowed me to claim my faith for my own. I finished Rite 13, continued onto to J2A going on the life-changing Pilgrimage and then finishing with YAC. Throughout my time in the youth program I learned about myself in a way that was completely new to me. Some of most important teachings that came out of this time for me was the following:

-My faith is personal, there is no right or wrong. It’s mine to own to claim and no one else can do that for me.

-Acting my faith had the deepest meaning to me in service. We are God’s hands and feet in the world.

and lastly,

-I am meant to be in community. This is how I deepen my faith, strengthen my core and find the most support in my life.

 

These lessons were both learned inside and outside the Sunday school classroom. I could go on and on about all the experiences I had, but I want to highlight one of them.

 

This is the first Mission Trip I went on with St. C’s. I went to North Dakota, with six other young persons and four adult leaders, to an Indian Reservation. We spent a week in community with one another and another community from Pennsylvania. There we helped with home repairs for two families on the reservation. I entered this trip completely unsure of my capabilities, and myself but found that the strength of my faith community I was with and the importance of our service for this week to overcame all of my insecurities. Therefore, I went away from this week knowing truly where I am called to in the church. After this experience, I continued to go on service trips every summer, and now I lead them. I have gone to the Gulf Coast doing hurricane Katrina and Ike relief, revisited North Dakota, and now the past four years have been going to West Virginia on St. Columba’s Appalachian project.  On all of these trips, we build a week-long community of worship, service to others and developing relationships. And this was one of the foundations that I brought with me into this year with me.

 

So the two main reasons I felt as though the Episcopal Service Corps was the path I was called to after college, was because of faith community you build for a year coupled with the dedication to service, which I felt mirrored the mission trips I went on. While, these still remain true for the year, they have been changed and transformed into ways that I had never anticipated.

 

The start of my year was rough; I lost a beloved pet, was very ill in the beginning, lost my grandmother and had various family affairs going on. I was not present in the community and my beginning experiences really tested me in terms of allowing a new group of people into my life, when I was feeling so raw. Though eventually I was able to open up and come to appreciate what we were constructing with one another. Our community definitely has not had the easiest time coming together, but in reality no community is perfect. It is a constant roller coaster ride, with twists and turns you never expect. But with these surprises and changes comes growth and that is something I have cherished from my time in the Episcopal Service Corps. I have grown to understand myself in an enlightening way, I have grown deeper into my faith journey- I have actually just completed the course to become confirmed in the Epsicopal Church and then I have grown professionally-really finding my cause in this world.

 

I am serving at Great Kids Farm in Catonsville- where I am the Assistant Farmer. Great Kids Farm is a Baltimore City Public School campus, that is a fully functioning production farm as well as an educational farm. We work to get fresh organic produce grown by city school students into city school cafeterias. We also work to educate students on healthy eating, living and growing their own food. I have learned a lot more than how to grow food from this job that I can’t even begin to describe. This place has brought me so much joy, light and love into my life that I will cherish with me every day after this year is completed.

 

This year has allowed me to find a way to live out my faith with the gifts given to me by God. And this is what I am truly grateful for. As Romans chapter 12 says, “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, we who are many are one body in Christ and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace give to us.” Find your gifts, cherish them and act of them because no one else, but you can.

 

Thank you for listening to my story.

Garden Summit, aka Dance Off

This post was written by Kelly Crabtree, interning with Great Kids Farm, a Baltimore City Schools campus which also serves as a working farm supplying vegetables in school lunchrooms throughout Baltimore City.  

 

Great Kids Farm has two summits in the school year. The first being the Good Food Day on National Good Food day in the fall. At this summit students come and learn about healthy eating and are given samples of healthy snacks and meals from Baltimore City School high school students that are in culinary programs. During this summit, I was given the role of leading a group of students from the tasting sessions and around the farm, which was eye-opening to really the vast knowledge the farm exposes students to during their brief time there. 

 

The second summit is in the spring and is the Garden Summit, which is a multitude of workshops highlighting the important elements of outdoor education in gardens. Due to the popularity of this summit and the frequent returning schools, the Garden Summit this year, was broken into two days: Beginner and Advanced. The beginner level was for students and teachers who have not been to the farm yet, or do not have a bunch of experience utilizing the outdoor education space of a garden, so workshops included seasonality: planting within the school year, transplanting herbs and planting from seed, taking tour a of the farm, and planting trees. I led the tree planting workshop, where we planted 8 pear trees! 

 

The second day, we had a pruning workshop, a tour of alternative growing spaces, planting in alternative growing spaces and then all the students learned the Gimme Five Dance. The Gimme Five Dance is a dance choreographed to a snippet of the popular song Uptown Funk. It is part of the Gimme Five Challenge Michelle Obama created for the fifth anniversary of her Let’s Move Campaign. She is challenging people to show her five ways to live a healthy life, so what better way than to dance? 

 

Below is the video taken after all the students learned it, we all danced together at the end of the Summit celebrating living healthy lives with healthy food! 

http://www.friendsofgreatkidsfarm.org/news/video-students-perform-gimmefive-dance-garden-summit

Visitation

This post was originally posted March 9th on the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services site: http://blog.lirs.org/lirs-offers-funding-for-visitation-ministries-apply-to-give-hope-to-the-34000-migrants-in-detention/ 

Posted with permission from Sarah Harrs

Immigration detention separates migrants from their families and isolates those who desperately need security and to feel hope for their future. Breaking down this isolation is a core part of LIRS’s mission to welcome the stranger. And through the help of LIRS’s Visitation Ministry funding, hundreds around the country walk alongside detainees and offer critical compassion and encouragement.

LIRS Program Fellow Sarah Harrs recently visited one man held in a detention facility in Georgia. She shares her experience in this blog post. 

Sarah writes:

I followed a small family and two other volunteers into the tiny, fluorescent-lit visitor’s room. I clung to the back wall and watched as the family gathered at one window, cradling the phone as they stared through the glass at their loved one. Three men stood on the other side of the window and we three visitors hesitantly looked across at them. With only a name and an A-number [the nine digit number issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify immigrants], finding my detainee was a game of chance.

The other two volunteers sat down at the counter and I followed suit. A Latino man sat across from me. I nervously picked up the heavy black telephone attached to the wall.  Would the conversation be awkward? What would two strangers talk about for an hour? “Alex?” I hesitantly asked. He smiled and nodded.

As we began talking, the guards in the room, the barbed wire, and the airport-like security suddenly melted away. We spoke about everything from Clive Cussler books to our dreams for the future. But mostly, we talked about our families. He has five sons, the eldest of whom is seven, the youngest is six months old. He hasn’t seen them in four months. Later, I pondered how quickly a baby grows. Alex has missed seeing his son roll over, sit up, and grab his first toy. His youngest son doesn’t know who he is.

Alex told me that he was brought to the United States when he was two years old. All of his siblings were born on U.S. soil, as were his children. He is the only non-citizen in his immediate family. If he is deported, he will be sent to a country he has never known and separated from his siblings, his wife, and his children for a decade or more.

Alex’s heartbreaking story is, sadly, not unusual. Every day, 34,000 immigrants are held in detention facilities around the country. LIRS partners like Lutheran Services of Georgia and El Refugio, two visitation ministries in Georgia, organize volunteers to visit with individuals in detention each week or month. They bring a little bit of hope, a little bit of the outside world, into one of the darkest and most hopeless places in this country.

Alex lived less than thirty minutes from where I went to school. We may have crossed paths years ago and never even known it. I think of that when I sit next to strangers on the bus or when I see a family crossing the street near my house. Immigrants who end up in detention facilities are not distant far away strangers. They are our neighbors. They are right in our backyard. They are the ones who bear the weight of a devastating immigration detention system.

FROM CITY GIRL TO FARMER

         My name is Kelly. I was born and raised in Washington, DC. Then moved to Chicago for school. Now currently living in Baltimore. I have claimed that I will always and forever be a city girl, but despite this fact I have become a farmer. Yes you read it right, a farmer. I am currently working as the farmhand/farm assistant at Great Kids Farm in Catonsville, MD.  I have always been passionate about food policy and food justice after my first college course entitled Discover Chicago: Food, which turned out to be about the food issues in our society (not trying all the amazing restaurants Chicago has to offer). In this change of coursework I found my true calling in my life. –Connecting people to their food-

            After much studying, discussions and readings, I felt that I could only go so far with what I have read in a book and talked about with fellow classmates. Learning how to actually grow my own food is what I needed to know before I could progress any further on solving the issues I see in our Food System today. Episcopal Service Corps-MD gave me the unique opportunity to allow me to explore this new knowledge I hoped to gain through a year of discernment in an intentional community.

            Now I have been the farm assistant for five months and boy how my life changed-in both the daily happenings as well as what my role is meant to be in fight for Food Justice. In terms of my daily life, I have transitioned from waking up, going to Starbucks, reading my coursework and bumming around on Pintrest to waking up, drinking tea out of one of many mason jars I have accumulated, arriving to the farm and checking on Goats, watering micro greens, checking on our seedlings and other vegetables on the farm, dumping compost into the pile, checking temperatures of our compost and recording them and so much more that I could have never even anticipated. After five months as a farmer, I think I have done more different tasks each day than I have ever done my whole life. Who would’ve thought I would be able to help repair a deer fence? Or deliver 255 bags of soils to different schools? Carry an 80lbs bag of cement? Haul produce in and out of coolers to be washed then processed? Coordinate garden deliveries to schools? Work with high school students to get produce into their cafeterias? And I could keep going on and on.

As you can see my life has become quite different than I am used to, but this dramatic shift has allowed me to grow as a person, deepen my understanding of my true passion in life and truly help me define the role I am meant to play in the fight Food Justice and Great Kids Farm has done all of this for me. This place has not only taught me how to grow food, they have shown me how integral our students are in the way we are changing the way we see food in their cafeterias. Being able to have not only fresh produce on BCPS salad bars, but also organic and grown by BCPS students is what truly makes the impact. Our food is so much more than something on our plate; it has the power to connect students that might never actually meet, by connecting them through the carrots, beets and cabbages on another student’s plate. Great Kids knows the importance of this essential relationship and has been illustrating this every day to me and those students at lunchtime. I now know and understand that I must strive to be more connected to building that relationship between students and the farm and I thank the Great Kids Farm staff and volunteers for helping me discern this for myself.

            

            

                     

Connecting Home Parish to my Year of Service

I recently was interviewed by the priest and youth minister at my home Parish of St. Columba's about my journey through the church and how I came to be in the Episcopal Service Corps. He, Jason Cox, was the one who first introduced me to the program, so I consider him a mentor throughout this year of service, discernment and living in intentional community.  Below is the link to the interview which is on page 6! Enjoy!

-Kelly Crabtree

St. Columba's Newsletter October 2014

The face of homelessness

    If you Google search the best way to know a city you’ll come up with a variety of answers. Most of the answers are probably things such as guided Segway tours and double-decker buses around the city to major tourist sites. I'm sure those tours are the greatest and you'll get to see all of the fun and exciting things like Edgar Allan Poe's house and Oriole Park. Yeah, you’ll pass people begging for spare change but you go on with having an awesome experience. That’s the kind the Baltimore I knew growing up. I only knew it on the surface.

    I grew up 20 minutes outside of the city in Reisterstown. I was in and out of the city for various events and outings. Going to the Inner Harbor on cool summer days was and is still one of my favorite things. I just despised the trek from the metro to the Inner Harbor. I’d always pass the same homeless man who had the stereotypical “Please Help, Godbless” cardboard signs. He would rattle his empty McDonald’s cup at people who would pass by. You could hear a few nickels and quarters jingle at the bottom of his empty cup. I always felt wildly uncomfortable walking by him. Because 1) I was a broke high school student, 2) I didn’t want to be bothered, and 3) I had the assumption that he’ll turn around and spend the money on drugs or booze. At this point, a high school student, I would treat every homeless person like this. It’s what’s easiest, pretend that they don’t exist and continue on your way.

    Going off to college and living in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh I came to understand homelessness more. It wasn’t as much of a problem in Pittsburgh since it's a smaller city but it still existed. I met a homeless Vietnam veteran who changed my outlook completely. He called himself Kung Fu Joe, I never fully understood why since his name wasn’t actually Joe and he didn’t know Kung Fu or any type of martial arts. He slept around the South Side of Pittsburgh and would go around at night telling jokes that were so bad they were funny and war stories. I loved listening to his jokes. One in particular I remember was “what kind of tea is hard to swallow”. Kung Fu Joe hit me with the realization that theres a face to homelessness. Maybe that was his Kung Fu…

Being homeless isn't always the dude or lady with the smelly overcoat, long beard, and cardboard sign. That’s something that was confirmed moving into Baltimore city. Anyone can be homeless and they are people who have stories like anyone else. The person sitting next to you on the bus or at your job could be struggling with homelessness.

    Going back to the best way to know a city the answer is getting to know ALL of the people of the city. To use a metaphor; It’s great getting to know the gardener and looking at the plants and the trees, but you need not to forget about the soil and the dirt. The foundation. Homelessness has and still is a huge problem in Baltimore. It has affected several of the people in this city. Ignoring it is not going to solve it.

    Running has been my means to get to know Baltimore. I can encounter variety of people on my 10 mile run. I’ll start at 2015 St.Paul and run across North Ave. A block down there is a group of men who sit outside their house playing poker and jamming to Al Green. As I come to Penn Station there’s a line of taxi drivers and people rushing to catch the next train or bus. Turning down Fallsway I’ll pass people walking their dogs and even the occasional catwalker. As I continue southward I pass HealthCare for Homeless. People are usually camped out around this area and on the building’s steps. Some of them smile as I cross, others will give me a dirty look. I run past St. Vincent de Paul church, which is a powerful site. There is a community of homeless people living on the grounds. Some days you’ll see people handing out blankets and on other days bags of food. It’s nice seeing people taking the time on a Saturday morning to help others. Shortly after I reach the Inner Harbor, where I usually see all kinds of people. I usually turn around there and head back home the same way.

    Along with running, working in a homeless shelter, Project PLASE, has provided me with the chance to meet and help my neighbors in Baltimore. Each and everyday I’m always reminded of Psalm 23:5, especially the verse “You have anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows”. I believe my calling is to help those with empty McDonald’s cups and give them the tools and hope to begin to fill it. 

    This first month within the Episcopal Service Corps Maryland and Project PLASE, I have begun to learn what goes into everyone’s McDonald’s cup. Sometimes it’s just a simple “How’s life?” or giving them a blanket. Each day I hope to continue to learn and love something new about this city and about the people who make Baltimore.

-Jarred Ervin