Life Together fellows step up as "prayerful and prophetic" leaders in time of COVID-19 pandemic

MANNA COVID-19 Courtesy Photo Members of the MANNA team at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul are working through the COVID-19 pandemic to provide masks as well as food and other resources to members of the homeless community in downtown Boston.

One of the core components of the Life Together fellowship program in this diocese is community, and--as with all communities during the COVID-19 pandemic--the program and its fellows are adapting to new ways of being together and being of service.

Life Together fellowships give young adults the opportunity to live together in intentional community and work at site placements to discern vocations in ministry, nonprofit management and education.  Fellows also engage together in spiritual practice, social justice and leadership training and community building. 

“As we live into this time, I'm so grateful to be part of a community where the work of birthing the new is already happening,” Life Together's executive director, Kelsey Rice-Bogdan, said in the March 25 Life Together newsletter. “Our fellows are currently offering direct support to those on the margins: distributing food, supporting parish mutual aid networks, helping congregations and communities to connect from home and more.”

Eva Dalzell is a Life Together fellow serving in the diocesan Office of Youth Ministry and has been helping to support faith formation and spiritual connection among youth and youth workers of the diocese. Dalzell works with the Diocesan Youth Council (DYC) to host two pre-Confirmation retreats, typically held in-person at the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center in Greenfield, N.H. Dalzell helped to rework them as virtual retreats online via Zoom, and helped the DYC organize a weekly online service of Compline, open to all.

DYC ZOOM Courtesy Photo With the help of Life Together fellow Eva Dalzell, members of the Diocesan Youth Council stay connected via a recent Zoom meeting.

In addition, Dalzell has been working with the diocesan youth missioner, the Rev. H. Mark Smith, and the missioner for networking and formation on the diocesan staff, Martha Gardner, to host weekly alternating youth workers and children’s formation Zoom meetings.

In a phone interview, Dalzell explained how this has been a beneficial way for people to exchange ideas about what is and isn’t working, as well as an inspiring experience for her to see the various ways in which faith communities are dealing with this crisis.

“I think that something that a lot of people are struggling with is that this is not something that we as individuals can just fix,” Dalzell said. “It’s hard to admit that you don’t have a lot of control over the situation, and I think that faith spaces give a certain amount of vocabulary for that.”

Dalzell expressed her gratitude for the Life Together program’s continuation during the pandemic.

“We’re still keeping a lot of the programming--even if it’s all virtual now--to still have those spaces for us to be checking in with each other, engaging in our own spiritual practices and continuing to learn, and I’m glad that that’s still part of it,” Dalzell said. “I just really appreciate the commitment that Life Together has made to us, which is helping us do the work that we’re doing. That’s been really lovely.”

St. Mary's Dorchester Courtesy Photo Life Together fellow Natalia Marques (left) and other volunteers from the food pantry at St. Mary's Church in Dorchester load up food to be delivered to members of the wider community.

Life Together fellow Natalia Marques serves at St. Mary's Church in Dorchester, which is continuing its regular Tuesday morning food pantry for the community and working to establish a mutual aid network.

Marques and other members of St. Mary’s used the church directory to make calls and establish a spreadsheet of what people need, as well as what people have to offer. According to Marques, the food pantry has been giving out more food than ever before, and in an effort to reach out to the wider Dorchester community, the food pantry team from St. Mary’s teamed up with another Dorchester mutual aid network to organize food deliveries.

In a phone interview, Marques said that this work is important because the spread of the coronavirus has put a lot of people in positions where they no longer have access to basic resources like food.

“I’ve always believed in people’s dignity, and a lot of people are very much in very undignified circumstances because of this virus and because our system has failed us in so many ways,” Marques said. “The fact that people are starving is just contrary to every value that I hold, and I think that for me, it’s important to meet those needs because people have them, and then it’s also important to do some real deep reflection about why this even needs to happen in the first place, and how we could organize our system in a way that this doesn’t need to happen.”

Marques and the food pantry team at St. Mary’s have been working hard to keep their communities fed, and amidst the fear and uncertainty, Marques is filled with gratitude for those who are stepping up to help.

“I just want to say I’m very grateful for the people that I’ve worked with at St. Mary’s...I could never have done any of this on my own,” Marques said.

East Boston Neighborhood Health Center Courtesy photo via Facebook Life Together fellow Calvin Swindal is providing essential remote support to the many frontline workers at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, shown here.

“Every single sort of organizing thing that you do, you have to do it with people, and the people that I’ve been lucky to work with, they’ve been so helpful and it’s been incredible to see. I think we share the same values in that we all think that people deserve this food, and it’s amazing to see how hard people at St. Mary’s are working to make sure that people get that food.”

Another Life Together fellow, Calvin Swindal, works with East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, providing aid to patients who are in need of financial resources or who are food insecure.

According to Swindal, the office has been getting on average 50-100 calls a day from patients right now, and they are working to find ways to provide people with the resources they need.

“COVID surely has been showing me every day the cracks in the societal system,” Swindal said in an e-mail. “I remember coming into work early in the crisis--scared about what was to come--and realizing the problems up until this point are not going to go away, but [are] only going to get worse. I had some sort of weird hope that in a pandemic things would be fixed by the government, and how privileged I am to have that hope...it’s really woken me up to how deep the injustice goes.”

Allison Lewis is a Life Together fellow who serves as communications and outreach coordinator for The Family Van, an organization working to increase access to health care and improve the health of residents in Boston’s most underserved communities.  Its van brings curbside screenings, health coaching and referrals for health and social services to different communities. Lewis has been helping The Family Van to reach out to the communities it serves through sharing multilingual community resources and safety guidelines, hosting call-in hours and calling clients directly.

The Family Van Courtesy Photo The Family Van, though not currently able to make its usual rounds, is continuing to work remotely, providing essential services and support to communities in need.

“It’s been incredible to see just how committed The Family Van is to caring for our clients,” Lewis said in an e-mail. “I'm very grateful to be part of such a close-knit team that's so full of love, and I can't wait until the van can get back on the road.”

Eva Ortez is a Life Together fellow serving the MANNA community at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston--a ministry of and with the homeless community in downtown Boston. The MANNA team has been working since the crisis began to continue providing essential services for a community that can’t “stay home.” The team has been providing food, a place for people to rest and recharge, and bathroom facilities, and it is now doing basic screening of community members.

In a phone interview, Ortez explained that there is a lot of need in this already vulnerable community, since a lot of the places from which its people normally get resources or services have been forced to close due to the pandemic; resources--both material and pastoral--that the community is getting from MANNA right now are vital, if even just to show the people served that they are not alone.

“That community in general is so marginalized and so isolated from the world normally, let alone now when they’re the only ones on the street,” Ortez said. “Knowing that they’re not alone, that there is a group showing up and loving them and being there, and that there are other people in their situation--unstably housed people, unhoused people--that are coming together and being together, even if it’s just in silence, that’s just so important emotionally for them.”

Ortez said that through all of the fear and anxiety, there have been fleeting moments of joy in the community, and these moments--together with her personal faith in God--are getting her through this time.

“Honestly, it’s such an honor to be able to serve them and be with them and witness their pain and their joy, especially during this time. Seeing joy in the midst of this horrible crisis is God, right? To me, it’s God--it’s resurrection,” Ortez said. “Every day when I wake up, I’m grateful to be alive and every day when I go to work, I know that God is the one giving me the courage and strength and compassion and patience to be there.”

The associate director of training and recruitment for Life Together, Lindsey Hepler, said in a phone interview that though Life Together often talks about its mission in terms of equipping fellows to be prayerful and prophetic leaders when they leave the program, these fellows are already living into those identities as leaders right now.

“To see how they are leaning into that call and so deeply committed to the communities that they serve--even amidst their own fears and anxieties and confusion--the way that they are stepping up and leaning in and just showing the depths of their commitment to the communities that they’re connected to, it’s really beautiful to see,” Hepler said. “It’s just a time of so much need and our fellows really are standing in their identities as prayerful and prophetic leaders to answer that need.”

--Bridget K. Wood

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April 15, 2020