Oscar Romero and the importance of ice-cream.

I’ve been inspired by Oscar Romero since the 1970’s.? For those unfamiliar with Romero, he was the Archbishop of San Salvador from 1976 until 1980 during a time of ruthless oppression by the then right-wing military government.? As Archbishop he spoke out against social injustice and the violence - publicly listing each week, during mass, and simultaneously on radio, all those that had been murdered in the past week.? Despite countless death threats he continued to be a ‘voice for the voiceless’ until he was assassinated by a right-wing death squad while serving mass in 1980.? Significantly, Romero did not act aggressively or incite violent opposition.? Instead, he consistently spoke of the power of love, of peace, and ultimately of social justice.? Here’s a couple of famous quotes:

“Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”

and

“Peace is the product of justice and love.”

Of course, while this may be inspiring, you may be wondering what all this has to do with contemporary human service and social work practice.? So, let’s explain that. The connection lies in the way that Romero binds the principles of peace, social justice and love to generosity.? It’s this last principle that has implications for everyday human service practice.? This is because Romero is highlighting the dialectic relationship between embracing a generous disposition and the other three principles.? In other words, generosity is both the expression of social justice, peace and love, and the means to achieve it - especially in everyday practice.

We need only look at decision making in practice to fully appreciate the importance of these relationships. In this regard, Romero would encourage us to courageously embrace a spirit of generosity to those we serve.? A generosity that is defined by the curious question, “how might we”, rather than the declaration “we can’t do that because”.?

This is nowhere more apparent than when it comes to financial decision making. ?In this regard generosity refuses to force down the throats of the marginalised ‘budgeting skills’ as a ‘cure’ to financial hardship.? This is because this discursive practice of budgeting (that is, a practice arising from a particular ideological discourse - in this case neoliberalism), more often than not, in reality disguises inadequate resources (whose origin ironically lies within government budgeting) in a way that implicitly or explicitly blames the impoverished and oppressed (as if we don’t live in an society that is driven by, and requires, over consumption and debt) rather than drawing attention to the unjust social relations that both encourage inequity, over-consumption, and social recognition tied to consumption, and punishes the oppressed for consuming. ?For example, how often do we see children and younger people in out-of-home care (OOHC) refused or delayed objects and resources that are commonly taken for granted by other children and younger people, especially those in the dominate fractions of society, only to be told ‘there is no budget for that’ or ‘you need to save for that by yourself’.? Examples range from the case of a younger person who was prescribed glasses only to have to wait for six months to have the glasses approved.? Or the case of a younger First Nations man, who accidentally, and uncharacteristically, broke his mobile phone – a phone that was effectively his only means of communicating with his remote family – only to be told he needed to save up his own money to buy another one.?

On the other hand, refusing to be deluded by the neoliberal commonsense discourse of ‘budgeting’ neither denies the positive elements of self-reliance nor accepts consumption as the royal road to happiness.? Instead, embracing generosity in practice acts as a kind of sentinel against the judgemental mean-spiritedness reinforcing injustice and disharmony.? In practice, this is where the question of “how might we” comes into its own.? Especially when that question is tied to a curiosity about the people we are serving.? For example, a curiosity about what that requested object or goal signifies and consequently, how might we satisfy that desire in other ways regardless of ‘budgeting’ constraints. Alternatively, such curious questioning can drive our courageous advocacy where we ‘go out on a limb’ for the people we serve. Nor is it surprising that this practice of ‘going out on a limb’, a practice whose principle is generosity, has been consistently identified by younger people as one of the key principles defining good practitioner relationships (e.g. Doel, 2010)[1].

Of course, it pays in practice not to be blinded by the constraints of limited financial resources so that we forget the central importance of ‘time’.? The time we share with the people we serve is after all the necessary precondition for good relational practice.? Something which is obscured in a dominate culture privileging a struggle for recognition through individual competitive achievement, narcissism and acquisition, which then gets retranslated and legitimised in the field of human services, by authorising a particular concept of time manifest within managerialist discourse, as the call for ‘good time management’. In this sense, being generous with our time with the people we serve is both a condition for good relational practice and social justice, and simultaneously, an act of resistance.?

Oscar Romero’s call for generosity can therefore be understood as a kind of inspirational talisman for practice.? And just as Oscar Romero inspires, we too can inspire others with our ordinary acts of generosity in everyday practice.? As one younger person in care explained, ordinary acts of generosity should never be underestimated let alone be discounted.? That younger person, let’s call her Sharon, illustrated her point by telling me about the ‘best ‘case’ worker’ that she’d ever had’, let’s call him Tom. ??Sharon explained that:

?“I’ll never forget all the little things that Tom did for me.? These weren’t big things - just little things that showed how much he cared. For example, whenever I had to go to a school disciplinary meeting, Tom would go with me.? And because he knew that I was really nervous he’d stop on the way and buy me an ice cream that I really loved no matter how busy he was.? We used to just sit there and talk and eat our ice-creams and that would calm me down.? I’ll never forget Tom and those ice creams.”

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[1] Doel, M. (2010). ‘Service user perspectives on relationships. In G. Ruch, D. Turney and A. Ward (Eds), Relationship based social work: Getting to the heart of practice. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.