A week in Mosses

A forewarning: this is a longer entry.

Mosses is a small town located about 45-50 minutes southeast of Selma. It has a population of about 1,100 people, roughly 43% of whom live below the poverty line. Most of the houses are rundown trailers that are rusted out, with caving-in roofs, sinking floors, and broken (or no) windows, and are covered in mildew, mold, and dirt. The mayor of the town lives in a small house, no more than 40' x 40', that is in terrible shape. The town clerk lives in an even worse situation. There are only two “businesses” in town: the Mosses Meat Market, which does not actually sell meat and is a common spot for drug use and trafficking, and the water company, which is holed up in a tiny, rusted out building probably built in the 1940s or 1950s. The only other buildings that aren't residences are the elementary, vocational, and high schools. The high school has a graduation rate of 25%. Most of the girls drop out from getting pregnant. Most everyone else who goes through cannot pass the state graduation exams due to the deplorable education system. There is no sewage/ septic system for the town, so all waste is just piped underneath peoples' yards.  When it rains a lot, the raw sewage will often bubble up through the grass, creating a terrible stench.  It is an impoverished place.

All of the residents of Mosses are black, except for two: Franciscan sisters Rosemary and Kathy, who run the Good Shepherd Catholic Center. The sisters run programming that includes senior citizen education and socials, after school and summer programming for elementary and middle school children, a thrift shop, and a food pantry that acts as a local grocery store (the nearest anything is in Selma or Montgomery, both equidistant from Mosses and virtually unreachable by most of the population, who cannot afford cars). The sisters also visit adult and senior citizen day care centers (based out of church halls) in surrounding towns that provide daily programs for low-functioning adults. This is where my week began.

On the first day, we shipped off to a day care facility in White Hall (about half an hour from Mosses). Over half the people there had pretty serious mental conditions while the others were simply too old to be left alone all day. We had a brief Bible devotion, then played bean bag toss for 45 minutes, and concluded with an hour of working on puzzles.

In the afternoon I visited some home-bound folks. The first was the former superintendent of Lowndes County (Mosses is part of this), who, besides the Franciscan sisters, was the most educated person in the county. She has her bachelor's degree in home economics from Tuskegee University. A brief side note: a handful of the teachers at the high school in Mosses have only a high school degree. Anyways, this lady, who was in her early 90s, was still sharp as a tack. She fondly recalled memories of Bro. Frank Hagerty, SSE, a few other Edmundites, and the sisters. Her legs no longer work so she has been home-bound for the past few years and simply loved having visitors.

The second person was a fellow in his mid-60s who suffered from Alzheimer's. His wife let Sr. Rosemary know that he always loved music, so I brought along my guitar and played for about an hour or so. He would sit there absolutely beaming, his foot tapping away, and then even started to dance a little in his chair. Whenever a song would be finished he'd always say, “That was good. That was real good.” After I left, his wife told Sr. Rosemary that he had not paid attention to any one thing for that long in years. Sr. Kathy, who spent many of her years as a hospital chaplain and director of clinical pastoral education (CPE), said that you have to have a bag of tricks for connecting into the world of someone with dimentia. For this guy that was music.

Tuesday we headed into Montgomery to the food bank where we picked up 3,000 (yes, three thousand) pounds of food. Most of this was for the food pantry they run, which is often the only food source for many of the people of Mosses. A handful of helpers from another food pantry helped load, unload, and pack all the food items. They were all such joyful people.

Wednesday I did some chores around the Catholic Center (nothing that would get you too excited to read about) and had more home visits. Those ones were tough. The first lady was the kindest woman. She had 14 children and, she said, more grandchildren and great grandchildren than she could ever count. She was thrilled to have a visitor. What was difficult about this is that her mind is starting to slip, so she'd repeat herself over and over and again. So often I'd find myself just smiling and saying, “Yes, tell me more,” or asking about the son or daughter whose name she kept repeating. The second house was in the projects: a feisty 86 year old woman who lived with her daughter, grandson and nephew. Her room was covered with pictures of her family and friends, all of whose stories she was absolutely thrilled to share with me. At one point her daughter, who runs the house, tearfully told me of how difficult it was living in government housing and trying to raise her young boy who had to share a room with his mid-20s uncle, and with basically no way out of the rut they are in. She said that really it was her family and faith that kept her going. “I keep fallin' down [spiritually, emotionally], and let me tell you: it hurts. It really do. But the good Lord, he keep picking me right back on up and he say, 'You gone fight 'nother day and get through this'. And I know we will. We will make it out of here someday.”

The last lady I visited lived in a trailer off of a dirt road, a similar setting to most of the residents living in a town with only two streets. It was one of the hardest things I've seen. I don't even really know how to describe it: dirty, broken, old, rundown are just a start. It's like something you'd see in an old movie about far reaches of the South and never really think existed in reality. She comes from a family of singers and loves music, particularly Gospel. Her daughter and young great granddaughter, who live in a trailer just next to hers, came over. I played some guitar and we talked a bit. At one point she mentioned how so many young people at her church don't even know the song “Amazing Grace” anymore. That was enough of a hint. We played and quietly sang through it for probably ten minutes. It was one of those grace-filled moments you'd never see coming.

Today we visited another adult day care center.  The people in this program have autism, significant debilitation from strokes, or other severe mental handicaps.  They were some of the happiest people I've ever met though.  We played ladder ball (I'm terrible at this, though apparently with my eyes closed I'm decent.  I don't know what that says.), colored giant bus cut-outs for awhile, and then Sr. Rosemary read them a story.  On most days those in the program just sit in one of two rooms all day, where there are just some couches and a TV.  They get breakfast and lunch.  You could see how happy they were to have visitors and activities to engage in, even things that we'd so often take for granted.  There is so much blessing in seeing the joy that people from all nooks and crannies of life exhibit.

Tomorrow is my last day in Mosses. We will be running the "Mobile Food Pantry" which is where we hand out grocery bags of food to people who have signed up and been pre-approved to receive assistance.  The sisters have the folks pay a small amount of money for the food 1) in an attempt to establish a basic sense of responsibility, and just as importantly, 2) to help the people have a sense of ownership in the food that they bring home, helping restore the basic sense of dignity of being able to provide for their families.  Apparently the whole of Main Street is lined with people coming in from all the surrounding towns.  A huge truck comes in from the food bank in Montgomery for this once-a-month event.  Some folks from the Edmundite Southern Missions office will also be volunteering.  It should be good.

I know that so much of this is still sifting around in my heart and mind and that I won't be able to process a lot of it now or even in the immediate future.  Fr. Joe McLaughlin told me that he didn't really grasp the significance of his first summer in Selma until years later.  That is all for now.