Sunday To Sunday Attentive Heart

Welcome to the “Attentive Heart” podcast, where we explore how an integration of mind, body, and spirit makes us whole and enables us to become more compassionate to ourselves and to others. I’m your host John Grobowich and today my guest is Samatha. How about you first tell us a little bit about your background and what occupies most of your time these days.

Thanks for having me. So, my background, let's see. So I studied special education and after I graduated from college, I went abroad to Bolivia to spend a year volunteering as a missionary at an orphanage. And so my intention in doing that was really to seek, you know, about my faith is my question was, is my faith really true? Is it real? Is there really anything to prayer and love? What is that? So I said, “Hey, I'm gonna go test it out and see what happens.” So I went to Bolivia, and I had a really profound experience of the faith there. I know a lot of that was kind of through my suffering there like I got sick a lot and just kind of I learned what it means to really be present and to love.

So it was just really beautiful. So I came back to the United States and I taught for a year in Newark, and after that, I really felt like the experience from Bolivia was still in my heart and it was something that I felt like I could bring to the U.S. and I was always passionate about the inner city. So I moved to Philadelphia. And I really desired to live in a community with people, to live in particular in or near a church and just kind of reach out to the local neighborhood and just be present. There wasn't any specific intention that I wanted to do this or that, I just kind of wanted to love the way that I learned to love in Bolivia. And in particular, I moved into a really struggling neighborhood in Philly. You know and really reached out, you know, just worked with our neighbors, community gardens, summer camp, all that. Beautiful experience.

I came back up to where my family was in New Jersey. Met up with another community, similar, similar kind of the community in Newark, and randomly decided to go back to graduate school to study psychology. Went to Rutgers Newark. So I got, ended up getting a graduate degree in psychology with a concentration in neuroscience. Also encountered God so much there in the study of the human person. And now I, in, during that time I also got married. Now I have three kids and am married and I'm teaching psychology at Felician University in New Jersey.

Wow. Sorry. There's so much to unpack there. That Yeah. No, that's great. No, I mean, you gave us a lot to really, sink our teeth into. So, I mean, this whole Bolivia experience, I mean, before you even get to Bolivia, I mean, what made you want to actually think, as you said, you know, is my faith real? I mean, what were you raised in? How did you understand the faith before you went to Bolivia? And what was it about specifically going to Bolivia that was like, okay, this is where I gotta really kind of test the waters as to what, what the faith life is all about?

Yeah. Great questions. So I was raised Catholic. I went to a small Catholic school. And, you know, there was definitely, there was definitely something positive there. I felt like it was good. It wasn't complete, I didn't feel like it was the complete experience or picture of the faith. Then I went into a very liberal, very diverse, very kind of challenging, but amazing public high school

in Maplewood. And it was an incredible experience. People were really, you know, at that age, high school students are really asking questions. So people walk into homeroom and people would say, “How do you believe the Pope? Why would you possibly believe one person?”And I'm like, “Hey, you know, very good question.” I don't have the answer. So I just had my questions kind of building up and building up. And then, you know, one of my cousins had a missionary trip in Haiti and that just always kind of stood out to me. And I don't know really what it was about doing this mission trip, but I guess I was like, “Hey, I'm just gonna go, kind of go out, go away from my family, away from my hometown. Experience something and just ask that question and see what happens.” So as soon as I got on the plane, I was a little scared of leaving my family, leaving my country. And I grabbed my rosary beads and I was like, this is it. I'm gonna try this. And I just started praying the rosary.

And, when you got there, what was the type of work that you were involved in? So I lived and helped at an orphanage. So the work was actually pretty minimal. I helped at the new library in the orphanage. I helped with the meals with the girls. There were like over a hundred girls that lived there. I sometimes brought some of the girls to the medical clinic, helped with parties and celebrations and just kind of was present. That was the thing, kind of just really being present to the girls. So somebody who they could come to when they needed comfort or whatever it was.

And so in this whole process of being present, and then as you said, you start to, I guess, really pray the rosary, so to speak. I mean, how did this make the whole God thing real for you at this point? Or the whole faith life real? Yeah, so when I got there, I thought, you know, our faith tells us to help, so I'm here to help. I'm, you know I'm from the United States and I can help, you know, these orphans who've come from kind of really difficult backgrounds. And what I found was that you know, I'm like physically I have always struggled with asthma and eczema.
So I found that when I got there, I got sick a lot. And so I got bronchitis and then bronchitis again, and then I got pneumonia. And I was kind of sick one day in my room and, you know, feeling really lousy and I didn't have my usual comfort. So I didn't have like, Hey, go talk to my mom and have some tea and watch a show.

So it's like, you know, okay, here I am again. Grab my rosary beads. Okay, I'm praying the rosary. And I had a few books also that were really key at the time. I had, I think it, I had a book by Charles de Faulk actually. That was the one that I definitely know that I read at that time. So just really connecting with some of that literature. And then I had one experience where there was jelly one day for breakfast and I didn't make it to breakfast because I was sick with bronchitis. And the girls from my table, they actually saved some jelly for me and brought it to me in my room.

And for some reason that was a profound moment. And I didn't really want the jelly, but what it was that jelly was so valuable to them. There usually wasn't jelly. It was usually just bread. They had jelly this morning for breakfast and they tried to save me some, even though there was a limited amount of jelly per table.

So the fact that they had thought of me, saved that jelly that was so precious to them, and came, you know, to kind of share that with me. It was this experience of love and I realized that love is so powerful, yet it's so, it comes in the smallest and the most simple ways.

I mean that's, that, that right there is a profound statement. I mean right there. Yeah, okay so great. So fast forward to this whole coming back to the States and meeting this community or seeking community and having that somehow connected to wanting to be in, I guess we would say challenging areas in cities, which have lots of different things going on. I live in a city now and I’ve lived in cities most of my life. There's so much that they have to offer and yet they always remind us that there’s a lot of brokenness right in our midst. So, how was the community in an urban area for you? What really brought that about?

That’s a great question. I actually, I really, I kind of felt a call, I think at that point. I felt a desire to move to Philadelphia. I had always been interested in the inner city, so I grew up in South LaRange and we were surrounded by lots of inner city areas, so just any which way we drove, you know what I mean? You just kind of observed life that was just very different. And you just see that there was a difference, you know, just physically in the neighborhood. Broken down buildings and trash on the streets and like there is a suffering there. I was just kind of fascinated by that. I really wanted to kind of get closer and understand that experience more. So I didn't wanna be an outsider, somebody who just drives by the city and is interested, but I want to know what it’s that like, how does that affect you to live in that kind of environment? And then along with that, just kind of bringing that, again, I'm gonna keep probably going back to Bolivia. But in Bolivia what I saw was that children had, would come to the orphanage after experiencing all kinds of trauma, really severe trauma, it was just so extreme. They would come into the orphanage, skinny and with sores on their bodies and really distraught and crying.

And what I witnessed was an incredible kind of a miracle. Every time the girls came into the orphanage, it was literally within two weeks their skin had cleared up, they had gained weight, they were smiling, walking around, hugging, and actually sharing love with others. So that was just incredible for me to see. And I said, “Hey, I wanna see this in the United States. I wanna see it in the inner cities.” And I had, you know, this desire for the church to really be an instrument of that peace and beauty. So in Bolivia, the orphanage was kind of like this oasis where surrounding the orphanage on the outside there's mostly dirt, just picture, you know, dirt streets. And then you walk into the orphanage and you see mango trees and cows in the back and the girls are running around laughing and very joyful. There's just this oasis in this kind of a peace, and beauty and love in the orphanage, and I really desired to see that in the inner city as well.

I always find that, that, that that's something that I think a lot of times we really underestimate the power of beauty in the midst of something that's ugly. You know, out here in California, there's all these missions and that's how the whole state was essentially founded, with all these missions out here. And it’s often wondered like, why did people who were nomadic people, the native people, the population of California, why did they decide to follow these missionaries? I mean, of course, there's lots of controversies I guess, that's talked about with all this but one thing that is definitely was the big enigma for in the indigenous people out here in California is that they, they never saw a group of people who were curating beauty. Like just having gardens for the sake of having gardens, like intentionally placing this flower here and having, you know, Ivy grow up a wall here and having a certain type of sense. Like that fascinated people and that kind of made them think that maybe there's something they should, they could follow here to learn something about just how life is.

I mean, so. This sense of beauty is clearly I think a big thing that we underestimate, like we wanna kind of go right to, you know, maybe helping the person by having the right food or the right medicine and all that. And clearly, all that's needed, but, the environment can be equally as healing sometimes because it just, it's reflecting upon the whole person. It’s not just actually going to a particular type of ailment or particular type of symptom. It's bringing the person into a certain type of sanctuary.

I hope you enjoyed Fr. John Grovowich. He will be back as a contributing podcaster. Please share the Sunday to Sunday Witness Podcast with your friends, and if you have comments send them to me annmary@sundaytosunday.com. As always this is Ann Mary Mullane from Kearny, New Jersey for Sunday to Sunday Productions.