Barbara Calvin

Beatitudes Society Fellow, 2007: Children's Defense Fund

As I sit and reflect on my summer 2007 Fellowship experiences, I am reminded as to why I applied for the Beatitudes Fellowship and what I learned.

I am considered a non-traditional student at my school. What this really means is that the degree plan was not designed with me in mind. I have been out of school for quite some time and was not looking to return. I am an African-American female whose background is financial banking systems, not religion. I was comfortable with my friends, my finances, and a home of my own. Yet God decided the next phase of my life would be full-time ministry accompanied by a vow of poverty. To say that I had to be convinced that the Creator of the universe was not playing a joke is an understatement. When I prayed to God to be used, this was definitely not what I meant! Yet I am more content than I have been in a very long time.

What does this have to do with my summer Fellowship with the Children’s Defense Fund? The Children's Defense Fund’s Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. I learned that it’s not enough to have a mission statement without doing the work to support it. You cannot want a just society without challenging those who are benefiting from the status quo. Living out the meaning of the Beatitudes means ensuring the “least of these” have the same access to resources as those who are the most powerful. Above anything else, I was reminded that the “least of these” is according to how society values people, not how God values them. The people we are helping have as much to offer us as we have to offer them.

It is amazing how much God can teach you in a short 2 months! My internship this school year is to do a year-long CPE course at the Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital. I am sure that the lessons I learned this summer will apply there as well.

Strengthening the progressive Christian network for justice, compassion, & peace