Last weekend was our mid-year retreat for JVC. Called "Re-Orientation", the retreat was an opportunity for us to gather with all of the JV's serving on the East Coast for the first time since August, to reflect on our experiences from the past five months, and to refocus ourselves mentally and spiritually for the remainder of the year. A good deal of the retreat focused on Catholic Social Teaching - an amazing body of teachings that I'll have to reflect on here at some point.

For now, though, all I've got is a reflection on my work in the shelter. With five months of case management experience under my belt, I'm at least slightly more competent than I was back in August! But I've also realized how little I truly know about the nuances and subtleties of social services work.

In one sense, my job is very simple. I help my clients to assess their needs, refer them to local resources for employment, welfare benefits, and mental health support, and assist them in finding safe housing for after they leave the shelter. The daily reality of my work, however, is much more complex and has far less defined measures of success than such tasks suggest.

One of the greatest challenges of my placement has been coming to the realization that “success” in this line of work cannot be measured by results, nor can it be achieved by following a simple checklist of tasks. It often does not matter how hard I work to complete housing applications on time, to locate the right referrals for a particular client, or to create goal plans designed to lead that client to self-sufficiency. A family may be placed on a waiting list for transitional housing months longer than the full extent of their stay at the shelter. A client’s mental health issues may prevent her from following through with the very referrals intended to offer her relief. The lasting effects of trauma may prevent another client, who has spent her entire life surviving one crisis after another, from prioritizing her long-term self-sufficiency over the apparent needs of the moment.

When first confronted with these realities, I was tempted to question the value of my work. Yet I have slowly learned that none of these realities lessen in any way the vital importance of the services our shelter provides every day to women and children in need, nor do they offer an excuse for inaction in the face of my clients’ suffering. I have learned to respect the depth of my clients’ brokenness and pain by accepting that their path to wholeness may not be as quick or direct as I would like it to be. I have learned that my role is not to create a path for the women I work with, but to accompany and support them on the path they are making for themselves.

I still work just as hard to get housing applications in on time, to locate the right referrals, and to challenge my clients to plan for the future – but I also strive to understand that the most important work I do for my clients may lie not in these concrete tasks, but in the time I spend listening to their pain and affirming their worth. My more experienced colleagues are quick to remind me that the average survivor of domestic violence leaves and returns to her abuser seven times before she leaves for good. I often do not know at what point in a woman’s journey I am encountering her. Yet I am learning to rely on the hope that my ministry of compassion and presence may provide a small but important witness to her right to a better life.

The film captures scenes of children as young as eight speaking in tongues, sobbing as they contemplate the magnitude of sin, and writhing on the ground in the supposed grip of the Holy Spirit. They are shown smashing ceramic mugs intended to represent "corrupt government", praying fervently to God to end abortion in America, and poking holes in the argument for global warming. And they are also shown speaking openly and honestly about the all-powerful love of God and their ardent faith in Christ.

It is a film that is at times disturbing, at times laughable, at all times thought-provoking - and I think that it left us all more than a little unsettled. I, for one, found myself uncomfortable because I actually agreed with some of the positions being advocated by the children and the adults who minister to them. The sanctity of life? Check. Faith in Jesus Christ? Check. Global warming as a political conspiracy and creationism as the only possible explanation for life on Earth - not so much... But, I started thinking, if they got the big stuff right, why quibble about the details? What could be so wrong about indoctrinating kids, if they were being told the right things?

And that's just the problem, of course - the indoctrination part. There's no room for questioning within that camp, no room for spiritual exploration. No room for the love of Christ to blossom naturally, in God's time, in those children's hearts. There's only the saved and the not-saved, us vs. them, those who are within the circle and those who are outside of it. I tremble to think of what would happen to one of those bright, Spirit-filled children if she one day started to question her faith, started to wrestle with the more nuanced aspects of belief. Would her struggle be accepted as a normal part of spiritual growth? Or would she be stigmatized and burdened with guilt, made to feel as though she had stepped outside the sacred circle into the darkness of damnation?

I don't know enough about charismatic evangelical Christianity, or those children's particular faith communities, to have the answers to those questions. But at the very least, I was reminded tonight of the vital importance of respecting each individual's personal journey to God, regardless of the valleys of doubt and disbelief he might venture into. I have faith that God loves us all tenderly and unconditionally, even if we get it wrong on some of the political questions of our day, even if we struggle with some aspects of our faith, even if sometimes we can't believe at all.

And honestly, what good is it to have all of the right answers, to vote in all of the right ways, to believe all of the right things, if we forget how we are to treat one another? As a kind priest once said to me, after I had confessed to him my persistent struggles with certain aspects of Church teaching: the first law is love. Love of God and love of neighbor. A love that is to permeate all aspects of our beings - hearts, minds, bodies, souls.