BTG Reflections: See, Judge, Act

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Greg Baker, Vice President for Mission at Mercyhurst University, reflects on the importance of service through the Mercy tradition of 'See, Judge, Act'. This informal method of social analysis helps address critical societal needs by encouraging individuals to venture beyond their comfort zones, engage with different realities, and listen to personal stories. The process emphasizes compassion, understanding, and humility in making informed judgments about social actions. Ultimately, it inspires hope and commitment to personal and community transformation, emphasizing service as an experience of solidarity and mutual growth.

Highlights

The Mercy tradition emphasizes 'See, Judge, Act' for effective social action. 🔄
Going beyond personal comfort zones can lead to profound social change. 🌱
Listening to personal stories fosters deeper understanding and compassion. 💞
Judging involves empathy and analyzing social conditions, not making moral judgments. 🔍
Service extends beyond charity to uncover systemic issues through justice. ✊

Key Takeaways

Embrace discomfort and venture beyond your comfort zone to understand real-world issues. 🌍
Listening is key; true compassion begins with understanding someone's story. 👂
Judging isn't about moral judgments; it's about empathy and understanding social realities. 💭
Charity meets immediate needs, but social justice analyzes and addresses systemic issues. ⚖️
Service is 'love with sleeves rolled up' – proactive, impactful, and grounded in community. 💪

Overview

In Greg Baker's video, he explores the significance of service through the 'See, Judge, Act' methodology rooted in the Catholic Mercy tradition. This approach is crucial in learning and serving beyond personal comfort zones and immersing oneself in unfamiliar realities to foster genuine change.

Baker shares poignant stories of service, underscoring the importance of listening and understanding the deeper aspects of social issues. Through encounters and personal narratives, he highlights that true compassion and effective service arise from recognizing the complexities of human stories and the realities they encapsulate.

The emphasis on action as a culmination of empathy-driven judgment is central to transforming both individual lives and societal structures. Baker conveys that service should transcend simple charity, demanding engagement with systemic injustices to ensure meaningful, lasting impact on communities while fostering personal spiritual growth.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview of BTG Program This chapter, titled 'Introduction and Overview of BTG Program,' begins with Greg Baker, the Vice President for Mission at Mercyhurst University, addressing the audience. He acknowledges their participation in one of the university's significant traditions—learning and serving beyond the gates, often referred to as the BTG program. Baker intends to share stories and reflections on the importance of service and its appearance through the Mercy tradition. The chapter sets the stage by connecting the reader to the long-standing Catholic tradition of utilizing a cyclical method for programmatic engagement.
00:30 - 05:00: See, Judge, Act Method The chapter discusses the 'See, Judge, Act' method, which is crucial for social analysis and addressing the world's critical needs. This method is particularly valuable for communities in Central and South America facing challenges such as poverty and violence. The chapter delves into the significance of understanding and implementing each part of this cycle in our lives, emphasizing its role in various experiences, including those in BTG.
05:00 - 10:00: Importance of Listening and Understanding In this chapter, the emphasis is on the significance of stepping outside of one's comfort zone to truly understand and connect with diverse individuals and communities. It stresses the need to encounter new realities and circumstances to foster genuine change. By engaging with people in various environments, such as after-school programs, assisted living centers, and local refugee families, individuals can develop a deeper understanding and foster meaningful relationships.
10:00 - 15:00: Judging: Compassion and Social Analysis The chapter explores the significance of proximity in understanding and addressing social issues, drawing on the historical example of the mercy tradition. It highlights how being near to those in need, such as the poor or the hungry, helps foster compassion and awareness among those with resources. The founding of the Sisters of Mercy by Catherine McCauley in Dublin serves as a focal point, illustrating her belief in situating aid close to wealthier areas so the affluent can directly witness the plight of the less fortunate.
15:00 - 25:00: Action: Taking Concrete Steps Catherine emphasizes the importance of mutual understanding between different social classes, stating that both the wealthy and the poor need each other. She highlights the necessity of stepping out of our comfort zones to genuinely connect with others' realities. Listening is key to understanding their true needs and stories.
25:00 - 30:30: The Power of Solidarity and Common Good The chapter opens with the narrator recounting their experience as a full-time volunteer at a soup kitchen in Rochester, New York. They initially believed they understood the needs of the 200 daily visitors to the soup kitchen. The narrator observes Rick, a fellow volunteer who uses a wheelchair and is responsible for serving soup, noting that Rick moves slowly. They approach the director of the soup kitchen to discuss whether Rick might be more effective in a different role.
30:30 - 37:00: Conclusion: Hope and Continuous Improvement In the conclusion titled 'Hope and Continuous Improvement', the author shares an insightful observation about Rick, a slow yet compassionate worker. Rick, known to delay the line, actually invests time in connecting with people by learning their names and checking in on their well-being. This simple act of kindness and mindfulness teaches a powerful lesson on the importance of human connection and attentiveness amidst the hustle, emphasizing hope and the potential for continuous personal growth through small, meaningful interactions.

BTG Reflections: See, Judge, Act Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hi I'm Greg Baker vice president for Mission if you're watching this video you have been participating in one of Mercyhurst University's most important traditions in academic components learning and serving beyond the gates today I'm going to share some stories and offer a few Reflections about why service matters and what service looks like through the lens of this Mercy tradition for decades now the Catholic tradition has used a simple cyclical method for
00:30 - 01:00 social analysis and for engaging with the critical needs of the world see judge Act this method has been especially important for communities in Central and South America amidst very challenging social issues like poverty and violence I want to spend some time with each of these three words to try to show why each aspect of this cycle is so important throughout our lives one of the things you have experienced in btg is that we ask you to go off
01:00 - 01:30 campus literally beyond our gates to encounter people in realities that are in some ways new to you you are likely to be in neighborhoods and situations that will stretch you places where you are not likely to feel comfortable all the time we cannot make real change in the world unless we leave our own spaces of comfort to know what it is like to be the youth at an after-school program the elderly person at an assisted living center the local Refugee family
01:30 - 02:00 acclimating to the city or the hungry person looking for a hot meal from its Beginnings the mercy tradition has understood why proximity being near to the situations of those in need matters so much it is a reason that the founders of the Sisters of Mercy Catherine McCauley built her original House of Mercy in a neighborhood in Dublin next to wealthier parts of the city she believed that those with wealth and resources needed to see the poor so that
02:00 - 02:30 they could recognize and have compassion for the challenges they face in her wisdom Catherine knew that the wealthy and the poor need one another once we leave our comfort zones to come closer to other people's realities it is so important to listen we cannot know what people really need unless we spend some time hearing their stories allowing people to tell us about their own hopes needs and fears
02:30 - 03:00 I was once a full-time volunteer at a soup kitchen in Rochester New York about a week or so after I began helping out there I thought I understood what the 200 people who came for lunch every day really needed there was a volunteer at the kitchen named Rick was in a wheelchair and they had him pouring the soup and Rick moved fairly slowly I went to the director of the soup kitchen I said Rick seems like a really nice guy but I wonder what would happen if we moved him to a different part of
03:00 - 03:30 the line because he seems to be slowing things up where he is the director gently nudged me to go and see an extra reckon he said today I just want you to stand near Rick and see what he does and what I saw taught me a great lesson one by one as people went by Rick knew almost all of them by name yes he was slowly pouring a bowl of soup but he was also talking with them and noticing them by name he was asking them how they were doing hey Fred how are things going with
03:30 - 04:00 that 12-step group you're a part of hey Sue how are things going with that job you've been looking for Rick taught me that a large part of what was feeding people at that soup kitchen was the experience of being seen and mattering individually for a moment in a world in which most people avoid even looking at the poor it is difficult to know what is really going on with social realities unless we hear the deeper truths of others through
04:00 - 04:30 their stories recently I joined a group of Mercyhurst students for a trip to the southern U.S border in Texas with immigration being such a controversial political political topic everyone in our group acknowledged before the trip we just wanted to know what the realities were at the border for those seeking asylum in the U.S our trip was an immersion experience in the sense that we were just there to listen and learn we didn't do much traditional service just because we didn't do service like feeding the hungry it doesn't mean that
04:30 - 05:00 it wasn't transformational for the students and for me I think all of us were surprised by how our most powerful learning came from the personal testimonies of the women we met in various agencies they told deeply personal stories of hardships and triumphs in their lives they told us about their struggles with basic daily needs like physical Safety and Security and health care their personal stories taught us more
05:00 - 05:30 and exposed us to more truth in reality than any academic article possibly could no matter what agency you are serving at now or in the future I hope you have the chance to hear people's stories about their own lives and circumstances and as you spend time with people wrestling with various social needs and as you hear their stories you are likely to come to see the situations are not as simple as they would seem
05:30 - 06:00 none of our lives are that simple however when people look at big social issues like hunger poverty racism and so on they often like to make broad assumptions about groups of people who they are and what they really need when we see and hear the stories and truths of others we allow them to be real humans with complicated but Amazing Stories and you might find that amidst serving others what is right and wrong is not as
06:00 - 06:30 clear as you might wish think of the single mother with children who has to work multiple jobs just to support her family even though working these multiple jobs might mean she has to pay for expensive child care and lead a stressful life where she doesn't get to spend enough time with her children or how do you relate and talk with an elderly person with dementia when it is unclear whether they even recognize who you are at that moment encountering social reality shows us
06:30 - 07:00 that situations are often messy and ambiguous they don't point to clear right or wrong or any Clear Solutions sometimes but we can still be present to these situations one of the best ways for understanding the mercy tradition is a quote you see here to act with Mercy is simply to be willing to enter into the chaos of another person's life just to be there and be present to another person is sometimes enough
07:00 - 07:30 after seeing the next aspect in this cycle is judging please don't misinterpret this word judge because it does not mean making personal or moral judgments about other people who they are and what they need to do as you will see judging is about using the best available information to begin analyzing social realities a word that might go alongside this judging aspect is compassion the Latin root of this word is passio to
07:30 - 08:00 suffer and with so to have compassion is to allow yourself to experience enough empathy to relate to another situation to in a sense suffer alongside them and to begin seeking new possible ways of giving them the supports they might need for a happier and Fuller life as Pope Francis has famously said on many occasions who am I to judge in his close work to help gang members
08:00 - 08:30 learn job skills and set their lives in productive directions father Greg Boyle has had so many opportunities to cast judgments about the young people he has encountered who at first present themselves as angry defensive and violent people seemingly lacking in education or social skills in his listening to their stories and in his belief and their inherent goodness father Greg has come to realize that what is most overwhelming is how much
08:30 - 09:00 the poor are already carrying I cannot tell you how many times I've encountered people and missed my service work who are simply inspiring they navigate challenge challenges that I cannot even begin to understand they Inspire and teach me so much about what truly matters in life the judging part of the cycle really begins with an unwavering belief in human dignity
09:00 - 09:30 regardless of someone's circumstances in life their age gender gender identity sexuality race ethnicity religion physical or mental ability all people have inherent dignity for all moral judgments and in your personal service placements the foundational question becomes what sort of actions or responses will do the most to uphold the Dignity of the people involved The Sisters of Mercy also give us
09:30 - 10:00 helpful categories for social analysis nearly 20 years ago the sisters gathered nationally to prayerfully consider where they needed to focus their best energies at this point in history 20 years later they continue to urge their Affiliated institutions like Mercyhurst to creatively address these five major social issues Earth non-violence women anti-racism and immigration in a special way you might recognize
10:00 - 10:30 some of the critical concerns at work in the inequalities you might encounter at agencies where you serve or in future service opportunities are people treated differently based on their identifying factors which people are in situations of power and and who holds the decision-making power do they truly understand the stories and the needs of the people they are trying to serve who soon seems to be the most disempowered and voiceless in the places
10:30 - 11:00 where you serve this points to what Catholic Social teaching calls the two arms of its social Outreach one is Charity responding to people's immediate needs through things like The Works of Mercy which I will talk about in a couple minutes the other arm is social justice looking at the structures policies and practices the systemic issues that make people poor in the first place or hungry or marginalized or unsafe
11:00 - 11:30 you are a college student ideally everything you do during these years is about learning and connecting that learning to the real world the last thing I will say about judging is that you have a unique opportunity during your college Years to critically investigate various social issues you can seek the most reliable sources for research and Analysis here's a hint we can do better than social media or
11:30 - 12:00 looking at Wikipedia to understand these Social Challenges I would urge you to think about an image given to us by Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr the ideal Mercy graduate goes out into the world prepared to bring a tough mind to their analysis and work but they are also prepared to ensure that their heart stays open and tender the last part of the cycle is action while action is the goal I hope by now
12:00 - 12:30 you understand why it is important to see and to make reason judgments on social realities before acting too impulsively at Mercyhurst our core values point to the fact that we are very action-centered just like the Sisters of Mercy these first three values socially merciful globally responsible and cut compassionately hospitable along with the overarching theme of ambassadors of service all point to strong components
12:30 - 13:00 of concrete action in this world of Mercy have a specialty focused on the left side of this list you see the seven traditional Corporal or bodily Works of Mercy when people are hungry or thirsty when they are sick and in misery they are an urgent need of care and resources as Catherine McCauley once said the poor need our help today not next week on a college campus where we spend a lot
13:00 - 13:30 of time analyzing reading and thinking this simple reminder is important there are people around us in our community whose basic human needs are going unmet today I remember once working with youth at an after-school program I commented to one of the young women that it bothered me how much litter there was in the streets in the neighborhood and I thought they deserved better Services there
13:30 - 14:00 I said whose job is it in this city to clean up these streets without skipping a beat she said it's our job today she smiled grabbed some work gloves and several trash bags the next thing I knew we were walking down the street filling these bags with all the litter I was complaining about I think of this young woman often many of us want to be the people who complain about problems in our society what is holding us back from being proactive from being the one who acts
14:00 - 14:30 today even to do the simplest thing like cleaning up garbage I once heard a great definition for service is love with sleeves rolled up I had a chance to do a service trip in Kentucky once where there was tremendous rural poverty they were introducing us to the work we would be doing alongside the wonderful and buried down-to-earth people in the Appalachian Mountains
14:30 - 15:00 they told us the story of a missionary group that had visited the trailer of a very poor man the year before they had come to the house planning to do fix it up projects around the trailer and they came and they found a small bathroom with an old shower that wasn't functioning well and a small toilet in there and it was filled with boxes and junk and they decided it would be a good idea to try to fix that up so they spent the week tearing things out rebuilding
15:00 - 15:30 that room re-plumbing it putting in a nice new standing shower and they wished him well and left and a year later that group came back and they visited him to see how he was doing and to their dismay they walked through and they saw the bathroom they had fixed up the year before and once again that same shower was filled with boxes and junk he had never used it they asked him if there was something wrong if the shower didn't work he said no it's fine I just didn't need that
15:30 - 16:00 shower I've got a tub in the toilet next to my bathroom that I use my bedroom that I use and I didn't need that fixed up so they learned an important moral even when we are ready to act we still need to have humility and we need to listen we often don't know what is best for others we don't know what they really need or want only they can tell us that this man in Kentucky he really just wanted people to sit and visit with him
16:00 - 16:30 he was lonely he didn't need to have his shower fixed at the end of the day serving others is an experience of solidarity when I was younger I thought this service meant someone like me who had extra time or skill or resources giving things to someone else who needs something with time I recognize more and more that serving others is just about being with them and connecting to them I might have something to teach and they
16:30 - 17:00 might have something to teach me there are things I can give and receive and there are things they can give and receive there's something wonderfully human about this process of solidarity the story is told of a group of missionaries who came to do service work in an Aboriginal Village in South Africa they were greeted by a woman who said these words on the screen if you have come to help me you are wasting your time but if you have come because your
17:00 - 17:30 Liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together needs we begin to find that there are deeper meanings to be found when we work alongside people for something bigger than ourselves we call this the common good recognizing that something of our own happiness and flourishing can only be found by lifting up those around us for example an athlete might Begin by simply loving their Sport and seeking individual accomplishments but as they grow they're likely to find
17:30 - 18:00 that there is even more meaning to be found in contributing to a team to achieving something together as a group of committed athletes and as they continue to grow they might find that it is even more meaningful to teach and to coach others to help other people to succeed this process of making the goal about something more than myself is a good way of understanding what we mean by the common good
18:00 - 18:30 and here's perhaps The Greatest Secret at the core of service because being present to and serving others helps to open us up to a world outside of ourselves a fancy word for this is self-transcendence it can be for us a tremendous source of joy and happiness many of my most gratifying memories involve being with groups of people in various service and immersion experiences in these times I've been
18:30 - 19:00 invited to get Beyond worrying about myself and my own needs for a while and there is a freedom and lightness to these experiences all of us have had opportunities throughout our lives to get Beyond ourselves here is an old picture of my youngest boy Xavier I love being a dad but if I'm honest at first I really struggled with the idea that my day could not be about my own needs I liked my own patterns I wanted to sleep when I wanted to I
19:00 - 19:30 wanted to wake up when I wanted to I wanted to hang out with my friends when I wanted to suddenly I had these darling little ones who had their own schedules and their own needs and their timing wasn't very convenient suddenly I was woken up every day rather than waking up when I chose to do so but with time something started to shift inside of me I began to experience tremendous Liberation in waking up every day to the realization that life is about more than
19:30 - 20:00 just me that is the gift of self-transcendence and you don't need to be a parent to discover it in life My Hope for each of you is that you will have frequent invitations throughout your life to know how liberating and joyful it is to spend generous portions of your life considering the needs of other people lastly the process of seeing judging and acting should be a process that gives
20:00 - 20:30 hope it truly is a cycle we don't stop with action action leads back to more time being present to and understanding realities we act we reflect we listen we change assumptions we act again we learn we change again we act again in all of the systems you have encountered and Beyond the gates and that you might encounter in the future systems like education criminal justice and Social Services you will find that
20:30 - 21:00 many of these systems are not working as well as they should and here's the good news these broken and imperfect systems are made by humans and therefore they can be changed and remade there is reason to Hope you as an educated person who cares about others will be perfectly situated to one day graduate from Mercyhurst and bring better ideas to bring your tough minds and Tender Hearts to a world with so many needs
21:00 - 21:30 Lakers make the most of your opportunities to serve during these college Years and during and after you're beyond the gates experience as I love to remind people when we say Carpe Diem it is not about seizing the day in the sense of doing whatever will make me happy as an individual that will not Foster lasting happiness to seize the day is to make the most of opportunities to connect with others to serve to love and to be opened up to the
21:30 - 22:00 possibilities of this amazing life carpe diem