Victoria: "See You Next Monday"

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You just show up and you just like, work really hard and then you leave. You don't draw attention to yourself. Why not? [00:00:13] Speaker B: I don't like it. [00:00:14] Speaker A: You don't like the attention? [00:00:16] Speaker B: I like just kind of coming in, doing my thing and just. It's a group effort, you know, so I work with the team, so I don't want to take all the credit for like something that is of a group, you know, so when my name is like, oh, Victoria, you know, it's like it's a group. I couldn't do this without, you know, people donating items to me to have supplemental items for the pantry guests, you know, so it's like a whole community coming together. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Welcome back to the collective table podcast. This is Jason and I'll be your host today. So, you know, by now, this season we're making the case for empathy. We're visiting different stories from different people just like you to see how those stories encapsulate the story of empathy and how it works so incredibly effectively in our lives. This is Victoria's story. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Cassie. I work here at the pantry. And the words that spring to mind when I would describe Victoria, I would have to say service oriented person. [00:01:42] Speaker A: Victoria is the manager of our food pantry at the Oceanside Sanctuary for a relatively small church. It's not a small operation. The pantry provides shelf, stable food produce, meat and dairy to over 400 food insecure neighbors every month from all across north San Diego county. To make this happen, Victoria manages dozens of volunteers and coordinates with a network of local food banks, grocery stores, and social service agencies all over the county. Other than Janelle and myself, Victoria is the longest tenured staff member here. She joined the staff in 2022, but before this interview, I didn't realize that she actually started volunteering nearly eight years ago. [00:02:27] Speaker B: I've been here eight years. [00:02:29] Speaker A: No, wait. What? [00:02:31] Speaker B: Eight years. [00:02:32] Speaker A: So eight years. In what capacity? [00:02:34] Speaker B: So I started as a volunteer in 2018, but that wasn't part of her. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Plan at the time. When she first walked into the pantry in 2018, she just left her job at a local community clinic where she managed an h HIV support program. When the grant funding ran out, the clinic shut down the program. [00:02:57] Speaker B: So at that point I decided I was going to take a break of about a year and just figure out what I wanted to do because I've always worked in social services. So I just, I was going to take a mental health break for a year. [00:03:10] Speaker A: But after working with her HIV clients for 10 years, this wasn't an Easy transition. And Victoria wasn't the only one to notice that she needed a break. [00:03:19] Speaker B: While I welcomed the break, it was also a little nerve wracking because I thought, what am I going to do? And my husband said, just rest. You cannot volunteer anywhere. Just rest. So that was the deal. [00:03:37] Speaker A: At least that was the plan. But first, she decided to donate all the leftover client supplies from the HIV program to our food pantry. Mostly toiletries and personal supplies, so all that stuff would go to good use. But when she arrived, she had an encounter that changed her trajectory. [00:03:56] Speaker B: As I was bringing in the boxes, he said, hey, we need help. We got a lot of food today. And I said, oh, I'm not a volunteer. I'm just bringing in some donations. And he said, but we need help. So I was like, okay. So I helped them unload, I helped them stock. And then when I was leaving, Juicy Mars said, I'll see you next Monday. And I said, I'm not a volunteer, I just came to donate some items. And he said, I'll see you next Monday. And I've been coming back. [00:04:28] Speaker A: So that moment, that brief interaction, just perfectly illustrates exactly how powerful empathy can be. But it also illustrates precisely why some people critique empathy. Psychological research overwhelmingly correlates empathy with what is called pro social behavior. This means that the more empathy you feel, the more likely you are to be socially connected to others. And this is important because social connection is a really strong predictor of good long term health and happiness outcomes. However, research has also shown that empathy is highly dependent on proximity. We mentioned this in episode one. Empathy essentially establishes connection, and that connection is easier to make with people you are close to, both physically and emotionally already for some reason. Some people limit their empathy, however, to their family, their friends, basically to their tribe. Researchers call this in group empathy or parochial empathy. This is generally considered a bad thing because it's tends to reinforce our biases. It's really important to understand that parochial empathy is not what right wing conservatives are warning about when they use the term toxic empathy. In fact, they seem to mean the opposite. They're concerned about how empathy can lead us to embrace differences. Researchers call this inter group empathy, and it's generally considered a good thing because it builds bridges of understanding between people with differences. So to understand how this works, we need to visit some early research on empathy and altruism conducted by Dan Batson at the University of Kansas. Batson was interested in finding out if we help other people out of genuine altruism or if we actually only help out of self interest. Now, to test this, Batson conducted experiments where people were given the opportunity to help someone with something relatively simple. But first, the experimenters would induce greater or lesser feelings of empathy for the person in need. And what they found, unsurprisingly, is that empathy is a very powerful motivator for helping. More powerful, in fact, than abstract moral principles. And they were able to find that out because when they tweaked the experiment so that the help being offered was a violation of the helper's own stated rules of fair play, they found that those increased feelings of empathy actually led people to help out anyway. In other words, empathy is so powerful a motivator that it can actually compel us to break our own rules. And that is exactly what conservative Christians are so worried about. The crux of the issue isn't empathy, it's morality. Different kinds of people, including different kinds of Christians, have very different ideas about what is right and what is wrong. And conservatives don't want you to question those boundaries, much less cross those borders of difference. [00:08:24] Speaker C: Hello Collective Table listeners, it's CJ again. A lot of people out there might not realize that this podcast is part of a real life faith community. The Collective Table podcast is a production of the Oceanside Sanctuary, a progressive Christian community whose mission is to foster collective expressions of inclusive, inspiring and impactful Christian spirituality wherever it is needed. And as a 501 non profit organization, that mission is only possible because of the generosity of people just like you. So if you believe in what we are doing, if you benefit from this mission, please Visit [email protected] Give to become a supporter today. Together we can keep building communities of love and liberation. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Bill, I'm a pantry volunteer and I would describe Victoria as compassionate. She really feels for our clients. She's also extremely organized. When the food comes in, it's really chaotic and she just masters the situation. And then also giving. I don't know that I've ever met a more giving person than Victoria. She's constantly volunteering and wanting to help others. Now obviously Victoria wasn't violating her moral principles when she agreed to help out that day in the pantry, but she was breaking a promise both to herself and to her husband that she would take time off. And when faced with that dilemma between self care and helping others, she chose to help. And this raises another concern that some folks have with empathy because it's such a powerful motivator that some argue feeling too much for others can lead us to burnout. I Imagine you were stretched pretty thin after 10 years of doing that. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I was tired. [00:10:42] Speaker A: The research on this is nuanced. High rates of compassion fatigue are correlated with what is called self oriented empathy. And basically what that means is you become so preoccupied with the pain you experience from observing suffering with that, you yourself become overwhelmed. But the same research shows that when affective empathy, that's the ability to emotionally understand another person's experiences, is paired with cognitive empathy, that's the ability to logically understand another person's experiences. And when both are combined with the ability to self regulate, the result is a strong motivation to help. That is what we call compassion. So empathy is a key ingredient in compassion. And here's the kicker. This potent combination of emotional motivation, intellectual understanding, and self regulation actually seems to protect against compassion fatigue. So empathy is not just a key ingredient in compassion. It's also a key ingredient in the ability to persevere in doing good. It turns out the whole toxic empathy discourse is based on a shallow understanding of empathy and leans heavily on the false notion that emotions are bad. But the problem isn't that we feel deeply. That's a good thing. As we've seen, empathy is a key ingredient in both compassion and resilience. Rather, the problem arises when we're lacking two key ingredients. The ability to manage our emotions on the one hand, and an understanding of what genuinely causes suffering on the other. The good news is we can learn both of these things without disconnecting ourselves emotionally from others. So where did Victoria learn that? [00:12:58] Speaker B: I've worked in social service all my life. And I know, just like sometimes you're teetering and just one little random act of kindness can make all the difference in the world. You know which way you go forward or you go backwards. So I learned that from my parents. [00:13:18] Speaker A: Because they were kind to you? [00:13:21] Speaker B: Because they were kind to others. They were kind to others. And they were kind to others even when they didn't really have the resources to do so. You know, they were barely able to feed their kids, but yet they're taking in people and feeding others. I don't think most people would do that. [00:13:41] Speaker A: Victoria's parents immigrated to the United states in the 1970s. Her dad from Costa Rica, her mom from Guatemala. Like many Latin American immigrants, they left much of their families behind to escape crushing poverty and escalating violence in their communities. But life as the daughter of immigrants in the US Wasn't always easy. I'm intrigued by one of the other answers on the questionnaire, and it was if your story had A soundtrack or mood, what would it be? Your answer was sad and quiet, but always hopeful. And so I want to ask you about those three things. First, why would the soundtrack of your life be sad? [00:14:30] Speaker B: So my sister and I have. We have these conversations a lot. So as adults now, you know, we can look back and think, wow, you know, that really wasn't. I mean, it makes us feel sad to look at ourselves, like as teenagers in high score at 20, you know, but back then, that was just our life. [00:14:54] Speaker A: Her mother especially carried the scars of those hardships. [00:14:59] Speaker B: My mom, you know, because she came from very poor village and she had like eight siblings, so she had to go to work at a very young. She didn't get through school. She probably had to drop out. Like, I think it was like sixth or seventh grade. It's almost like she was very young when it came to mothering. Even though she wasn't like a teenager, it was almost like she was a teenager because everything in this country was different for her, and she was almost like, fearful of it. [00:15:31] Speaker A: As immigrants, her parents worked hard to make ends meet, and they didn't have a lot of. But in spite of that hardship, they were constantly helping others. [00:15:40] Speaker B: My dad helped hundreds of people, but he wouldn't come home and tell us about it. He would just kind of do it. So, you know, if he took me to work with him one day, and because he was a cab driver, so he'd be driving around, so sometimes he'd say on a Saturday, hey, you're gonna go with me and drive around. So if he would pick somebody up who seemed like down and out, he would swing by McDonald's and buy them lunch or give them like $20. But he wouldn't explain what he was doing. He would just do it. [00:16:11] Speaker A: But her parents example of compassion and mercy didn't stop there. It turns out Victoria's childhood home was always full of people getting back on their feet. [00:16:22] Speaker B: Because my parents were immigrants, they helped a lot of people. Like, there was always someone living in my house, and it was always like a friend of a friend of a friend, kind of like getting on their feet. They just got to this country. They have nowhere to go. So they would live in our home. And it wasn't like it was a big home, but when that person was knocking on the door, it's like, okay, you're gonna bunk with your sister. This person's gonna stay with us until they find a job and they get their own place. So that was just the norm. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Growing up, Victoria also traveled with her mom back to Guatemala for regular trips. She can't even remember her first trip because she went so often and was so young. She joined her mom on these trips until she became a young adult and they left a big impression on her. [00:17:13] Speaker B: So we would, you know, meet. We knew her family and we knew, you know, we stayed in very, you know, places that didn't have hot water. And if you wanted hot water, you had to boil it to take a shower. So when we would visit, you know, they were doing these things for us because, you know, they wanted us to be comfortable. So I got that as a young child, like these are people that needed help. [00:17:38] Speaker A: That contrast between life back at home in the United States and the way people lived in her mother's poor village in Guatemala really sharpened Victoria's awareness of inequality. [00:17:50] Speaker B: And I remember someone made a comment about like, we were spoiled Americans and it just, yeah, that comment, like I never forgot that comment because we didn't see ourselves as spoiled. [00:18:08] Speaker A: What's remarkable about this story is that between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala was in the grip of a brutal civil war. The government routinely violated the rights of their own citizens and the military carried out 626 massacres of indigenous Mayan people in a decades long genocide. The peak of this violence was between 1975 and 1982, right when Victoria, her sisters and her mother were traveling back to visit their family. These weren't just family vacations. Her mom was worried about her family, checking on them, helping them. During this time, over a million Guatemalans were displaced from their homes and hundreds of thousands of them fled into the arms of America. Immigration from Guatemala to the US tripled during those three decades. It reshaped entire communities across Southern California. [00:19:16] Speaker B: I feel very fortunate, you know, that my parents, you know, they made the decisions that they made to come here and get a better life for themselves. You know, my mom tells me stories about her childhood and they're just, they're just really sad. And I just feel very blessed and fortunate that, you know, I had a different life. So if I can do one tiny little thing to change somebody's life even in that moment, that that makes me happy. [00:19:54] Speaker C: Hey everyone, it's cj. We hope you're enjoying the collective table and finding something meaningful here, something that connects with your heart and your journey. If you are, we'd love for you to help others find it too. The best way to do that is simple rate and follow the collective table. Wherever you listen to podcasts, when you follow, you'll never miss a new episode, and when you leave a rating or a short review, it helps more people discover this community of love, liberation and faith in action. And while you're at it, share an episode with a friend, someone you think might find encouragement, hope or inspiration in these conversations. It only takes a moment, but it makes a big difference. So go ahead, tap that follow button, leave us a quick review and share the Collective table with someone who could use it today. Thanks for listening and for being a part of the collective table. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Brenda and I work with Victoria in the food pantry. I just think, first of all, just how dedicated she is. She just has a huge ability and heart for the community and she's just really consistent. She helps all of us show up and we just don't know what we would do without her. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Jesus tells a story in Luke chapter 10 about a Jewish man who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite come by. They're careful to cross to the opposite side of the road to avoid becoming ritually unclean. But a Samaritan man comes along and is moved with compassion to help. There are layers of irony here, but the greatest irony is that the two holiest classes in Jewish society, a priest and a Levite, were led astray by their moral principles. But the empathy and compassion of a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jewish people, made him righteous. In John chapter eight, the scribes and Pharisees drag a woman in front of Jesus. She'd been caught in adultery. They ask, should she be executed for her sin, as the law requires in Leviticus chapter 20. Now if he says yes, they are vindicated in holding the law above all else. If he says no, he'll be condemned as a lawbreaker. But Jesus puts the ball back in their court with his famous response, whoever among you is without sin, cast the first stone. This is not a legal argument based on moral principles. It's a direct appeal to their empathy, and they're persuaded by it. One by one, they each choose to violate their moral commitments and walk away. Why? Because Jesus provoked empathy in them with his question. These examples are not rare. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus violates established moral principles in order to meet human needs. He heals unclean lepers, risking his own ritual uncleanliness. Jesus even heals on the Sabbath, breaking the prohibition of working on the most holy day of the week. These skirmishes between Jesus and the Pharisees are a reenactment of the same skirmishes between priests and prophets in the Hebrew Bible priests are perpetually stressing faithfulness to the law. Prophets are forever pointing out that the law can be used to oppress people. Learning when it's right to break the law and wrong to obey the law is one of the main recurring themes in Scripture. Over and over again, moral principles in the form of laws and social norms are violated when someone is moved by empathy or compassion in the face of human suffering. And that is a good thing. Jesus explained it this way once he and his disciples were hungry, so they began to glean from the wheat fields, which was their right under Jewish law as poor people. But it also happened to be the Sabbath. Therefore, they were breaking the law not only by harvesting, but also by preparing food on the day of rest. When he was condemned for this, Jesus said, man was not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man. In other words, laws exist to serve human needs, not the other way around. They make good servants, but terrible masters. The witness of Scripture is that when our moral principles are used to oppress others, or when they're no longer adequate to meet changing circumstances, we often need empathy to muster the courage necessary to disobey them. So one clue for determining whether our empathetic rule breaking is good or not is to simply ask, is this about serving people's needs or is it about protecting power? But there's another clue, I think. Remember earlier we learned that people who haven't learned emotional self regulation or lack understanding about the suffering that they witness can sometimes be driven inward by those powerful emotions. So a second question I think we can ask is, are you using your empathy to build bridges or build walls? When we are at our best, our empathy isn't parochial. It helps us build bridges of understanding with people who are different than we are. And this is one of the things that impresses me most about Victoria's work in the sanctuary pantry. [00:26:00] Speaker B: I had one of our pantry guests reach out, and it was so random. She reached out where she had this situation with her son who has autism, where a social worker was going to visit, and she sent me a text and she's like, what do I do? What do I do? Please help. And to me, like, that's so random, right? Like, you're going to reach out to a pantry. So they were sending somebody and she was scared. And she's also a Spanish speaker, so she didn't know, like, what should I expect? What should I do? But lo and behold, I worked in foster care with Department of Children and family services for 10 years, so I was able to Kind of give her some advice. And it just worked out. In that moment, it was a blessing to be able to kind of help calm her and give her some information, you know, relax. They have to do this. This is part of their job. A report was made. Just be honest. Make sure you have food in your fridge. So it all worked out, you know, but it made me sad because obviously, if she sent that text to a pantry, she has no one else. [00:27:12] Speaker A: Victoria isn't just building a program. She's building a community. On any given day in the pantry, you'll hear guests and volunteers speaking English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Farsi, Russian, Portuguese, or Ukrainian. There are Christians of every kind, but also Jewish people, Muslims, universalists, atheists, and agnostics. In spite of these differences, they're all learning to know each other, to meet each other's needs, even in small ways. [00:27:45] Speaker B: And I get a lot of calls like that that are not pantry related. You know, they have to do with, you know, friends that ice picked up and what should I do? Or medical issues. Somebody just lost somebody who used to also come to the pantry, and he's just kind of feeling a little bit lost. So it's nice, you know, because we're. We're friends, so they know they can reach out and, you know, get a hug through the phone, feel supported, definitely. As a community, I have pantry guests that will bring me things and say, can you find a home for this among the pantry people? I don't need it anymore. [00:28:28] Speaker A: This is how we know that empathy, the emotional and cognitive engine that gives us courage to feed hungry people, cross difficult borders, and disrupt unjust norms, is anything but, but toxic because the outcome is undeniably good. [00:28:50] Speaker B: I love what I do. [00:28:51] Speaker A: Why do you love it? [00:28:54] Speaker B: You know, when I lost my job, it was very scary, and I didn't know what I was going to do. And it's just interesting how God worked in that plan, because I ended up here without even realizing this is where I was supposed to end up. So when I was wondering, what am I going to do? Or what kind of work am I going to look for? You know, here's Juicy Marr saying, come back, come back. I didn't see it in that moment, but I'm like, okay, I'll come back because I need something to do. And I just kept coming back, and then it just turned into, like, sort of became the lead volunteer, and then I was bringing other things into the pantry, like clothing and toiletries, and just like that. That's what I do. And I had community partners that I worked with at the clinic. So those relationships continued. They just transferred over to the work that we do here in the pantry. [00:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So that makes me happy. The day after we recorded this interview, Victoria sent me an email. Hey Jason, you mentioned if I had anything to add or wanted something not added to shoot you an email. Well, I do have something to add. In preparing for my interview, I thought about what I wanted to share and in regards to my soundtrack, I wanted to share something but but decided not to at the last minute. I thought if I heard myself say the words, it would make me break down in that moment and I wouldn't be able to continue speaking. So I didn't share. But if possible, I would like it included. Maybe you could share it for me. So I said my soundtrack would be quiet, sad and hopeful. Quiet because I'm a quiet person. Sad because in 2020 I lost my only child and the pain that it brought me is something I live with every day. Hopeful because I put one foot in front of the other every day and continue moving forward in spite of that. PA Foreign S thank you for joining us here at the Collective Table podcast. The Collective Table is a production of the Oceanside Sanctuary Church in Oceanside, California. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please consider sharing it with your friends on social media, at your church, at the grocery store, wherever you connect with people. If you really like what we're doing, please please consider leaving us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this podcast. It really helps us spread the word. The Collective Table is created by Jason Coke and Janelle Coker and directed by Nico Butler. Editing is done by Nico Butler. Theme music composed by, you guessed it, Nico Butler. From all of us here, may the peace of God be with you. We'll see you next time.