What You Do for the Least Among You

I have to stop reading the comments after reading a well thought out article on any subject, I am starting to lose my faith in humanity. I don't know if it's just sport for some people in the US, or if comments are a fair representation of how Americans think, but if I read an article on reforming our prison system, or on transgender rights, or racial profiling, or gay marriage or anything about Muslims or Islam, inevitably the majority of comments are so hateful, so bigoted and more importantly so callous. I use to think these comments were from trolls trying to get a rise, but when so many are saying the same thing and having a conversation among themselves, I fear the worst. I like to read these comments and articles from many sources as I don't want to be in a bubble where people aren't racist, homophobic or transphobic, have Muslim friends, see women as human beings, and can imagine that even though someone may have committed a heinous crime and should be imprisoned it is not the job of the state to torture them in perpetuity. I am not a Christian, in fact I am atheist, but I try to live by two quote from the Bible, and I wish, if America is going to call itself a Christian nation, it too would live by these passages.

Do to others as you would have them do to you. Luke 6:31

But I love this one even more, as it's a duty to humanity, a call to action that guides me in my live and the work I try to do and is an important quality that I admire in others.

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'" Matthew 25:41-45

The easiest impulse of an individual is to treat those most like them with compassion, empathy and understanding and those most different with disdain and as less human, those who everyone treats that way, those who appear flawed and thus deserving of our contempt and ill treatment. That's easy, and we all do it. But let's be better. Let's be better than that natural impulse, let's do the hard work of stepping outside of ourselves, our comfort zone and imagine what it's would be like if you were a teenager being followed on a dark and stormy night by an armed stranger, even if you were black, black people get scared too, or what it would be like to be imprisoned and to not have seen the sky or another person in 10 years, or to be a man who knows deep down you are a woman and puts on a dress and goes to a party and ends up brutally murdered by a mob. Or positively, to find out that you just got the right to marry in your state.

What touches me in these examples, and they are varied, is the idea of justice, whether the lack there of or its realization. And the opportunity, if only on paper, to step out of myself and my comfort zone. To learn that there are so many ways to be whole and fully human in this world, and that variety is what makes life so fascinating and exciting. But it seems that so many people cannot even do that. On comment on the prison piece stood out to me, a lone voice in a sea of callous indifference, one person noted that being in prison is the punishment, the physical and psychological torture and abuse by guards and other inmates is not suppose to be apart of that punishment. To say that criminals should be punished and treated humanely are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in a just society both are required. I am still encouraged by the people I know and read about who are reaching out the least among us and doing Jesus's work, they go to places both physically and mentally that are difficult places to be and sometimes even access and they struggle and are tested, but they keep at it, and that gives me hope and motivates me. I cannot say much about Jesus's many fan clubs, but I for one will do my best to always stand with the least among us.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to City Hall

Funny thing happened to me at city hall (la prefecture) this afternoon.

So I decided that I would go down to the foreign office and find out whatever happened to my residency permit, seeing how I applied for it in August and had received two letters asking for additional documents. After standing in line for almost an hour I finally made it to a window and informed the lady behind the glass that I had not received a notification letter, or any other letters asking for more documents, as is their wont. She checked on her computer to see if my card was ready, and sadly, and she did genuinely look sad, informed me that it still was not ready, and in fact they were waiting for just one more document, apparently Mika's birth certificate, the long form, showing that we are still civilly unioned (PACSed).

So I was quite pissed that they wanted more documents and I had not received the letter stating that. The lady behind the glass said, "well I will at least renew your temporary paper (récipissé)"; which was nice, because I heard another woman tell people they would have to come back the following day and would need a photo ID. So she gets up to get the blank paper and comes back to her seat and starts entering my details into her computer to print out the new temporary ID. But then looks blankly at her screen for a moment, and then looks up at me and says "I can't do anything for you". I was really not in the mood to hear that, I asked "what do you mean?". Then she asked me if I had submitted a naturalization application, to which I responded yes, thinking, every little thing trips you up. The lady behind the glass said "well the computer says that your application is invalid, I can't give you a temporary ID, in fact, I don't even need your partner’s birth certificate". I was becoming perplexed, so she showed me the screen which said in bold letters at the bottom of the screen, THIS APPLICATION IS INVALID, YOU CANNOT PROCEED.

So I asked her the obvious question, "Why not?" To which she responded in a typically bureaucratic way, but with a smile in her voice, “Because you’re French, I can’t issue a foreign residency card to a French citizen”. I stood there slack-jawed, and she asked, “didn’t you receive a letter informing you of the decision, which I had, but the language was so legalistic I was not exactly sure what it meant, and even if I had a strong hunch, I was not entirely sure when it would be “official” official. I told her that I was still waiting for the official announcement to appear in the French government journal (Journal Officiel) and in fact, I had sent an email to the Journal to find out when my announcement would appear and make it official. To which she replied, “it’s official, you’re French, I don’t know when you will receive your French ID, so be on the lookout for the announcement, they’re going to want to have a little ceremony”. And that is the story of how I found out it is official. I’m French.