Restoring Promise to the Land

When I first came to Orange County in 1975, having graduated the month previous from the USC School of Social Work and looking forward to my new job as executive director of the Orange County branch of Catholic Charities, there was not much visible poverty here. Yes, there were poor people living in Orange County, but they were well hidden. Orange County was known for its wealth, beauty, yachts and sailing ships. It truly had become the “Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey.”

The entire budget for Catholic Charities at that time was $212,000. United Way contributed $70,000 to our services. We were basically a middle-class family counseling agency. We did some outreach to the poor through food and clothing distribution and rental assistance. Our budget for that was $12,000.

What a difference 15 years have made. Now our entire budget is $403,000. We are still providing individual and family counseling, but now we also have refugee resettlement, classes in English as a second language, employment services, deaf outreach services, immigration and citizenship services, respite care for developmentally disabled children, drug and alcohol abuse education, volunteer training in bereavement ministry and respite care for the sick and elderly and summer camp. Our outreach services to poor and homeless people provides $356,000 in direct financial assistance.

What has become of our Promised Land? Many people have come here to become a part of the American/Orange County dream. Some are victims of the severe recession the whole country had some years ago. We have seen the skyrocketing cost of housing, the increased air pollution and the clogging of our freeways as more and more people moved farther away from their work.

The reality is that Orange County’s 1990 poor are no longer hidden. They are on our streets, in our neighborhoods. Many want them to become invisible again. Just the other day, The Times featured an article on Share Our Selves winning approval from the Costa Mesa City Council to move to a new site. Many people do not want SOS anywhere. They think this charity has grown too large for any residential or commercial neighborhood. This charity, like Catholic Charities, has grown to meet the needs of this time, this age, this reality.

My concern is a creeping attitude of isolationism here in the Promised Land. We in Orange County must not turn our backs on our brothers and sisters who happen to be poor. The frustration for me, and for many others who are genuinely concerned about the gradual decline in the quality of life for everyone in Orange County, is to know that, by ourselves, we are unable to achieve solutions to our problems. An even more disquieting thought is to consider whether anyone has a right to a Promised Land if there is hunger or homelessness left unattended somewhere else in the world.

The last 15 years have brought other changes. The general population understands in a way it never did before that we are living on a very fragile planet of very fragile people. Even if we wanted to, there is no way we can live our privileged lives in this land of many blessings without being affected by the realities of life faced by our neighbors. The poor and homeless people who live on the streets of our county shout at us of the dysfunction of an American society that ignores the basic human needs of its citizens. They scream out at us of the abject poverty existing in our hemisphere that compels people to leave their homes and loved ones to live a “less awful” life illegally in our Promised Land.

Where we need courage and hope is in facing the fact that, to change the realities here in Orange County, we must begin the difficult task of reimaging our world. We must care as much about the people of Mexico or Indonesia or Bangladesh as we do about Orange County, because what happens in other parts of the world affects us as surely as what happens in our own neighborhood. The world of 1990 has truly become a global village.

What happened to the Promised Land? I wish my answer could be that the citizens of this land are maturing. They are finding fulfillment not just in realizing their own dreams, but in building systems that will ensure that others may dream as well; that their efforts at solving unemployment in a service-centered economy, their attempt to recycle and restore this beautiful part of the Earth, their successes as multicultural society can be replicated in other parts of the world.

I want to be able to say that the Promised Land is growing. Is spreading. That in other parts of the world, peoples of all races and cultures are living in a “land of milk and honey,” those adjectives that express nourishment and sweetness in life.

Each age of humankind is judged by succeeding ages on the merits of its works, either good or bad. We have now the potential of this judgment in our hands in how we react and reach out to the poor and homeless, the abused and afflicted, the immigrant and refugee. I hope that the future will not judge us as “me-first” people.

I hope that we can learn from the generations that have gone before us, who cared for the less fortunate, that care for the poor is the true mark of humanity, the measurement of the integrity of a people.

In ancient days, the Israelite king was elected by the elders of the community. The people of Isaiah’s time saw the care of the widows, orphans, strangers and the poor as the test of Israel’s faith. The king could be deposed for failing in his duty to care for them. This is still a valid test, a test for all of us who hold God as our creator and giver of all good gifts.

We cannot and must not in Orange County turn our backs on our brothers and sisters who happen to be poor. We must not try to make them invisible again by refusing to acknowledge their presence. If we are blessed by God with possessions and wealth, time and talent, we must be involved with those in need.

Each of us has a responsibility for the common good and welfare of all. We must not let an attitude of “me-first” or “let them take care of themselves” become a part of our community attitude. Let us try to be truly a people filled with the Judeo-Muslim-Confucian-Christian message of “love your neighbor as you love yourself for the love of God.”

And we will not tolerate poverty but actively look for ways to eradicate it and make it possible for all people, not only to dream dreams, but also to possess the American/Orange County dream that is such a part of each of our lives.

Whatever happened to the Promised Land? The place to look for the answer is within. Our attitude, our involvement, can make the difference.