loving your HIV+ neighbor

My understanding of the AIDS crisis is starting to become more fully realized. Campolo’s Aids Crisis 25 Years podcast was full of overwhelming information. I listened to it last Wednesday and then Saturday I had my final training session at Columbus AIDS Task Force. By the time Saturday night came around I was very ready to teach about the subject of loving your neighbor. Hopefully soon I will be assigned to a “buddy”, an HIV+ person, by the CATF. CATF’s “buddy program” places a volunteer with an individual client. It’s a good way to create relationships instead of acquaintances. We heard stories about volunteers learning how to garden with their buddy and some that go to movies. I’m guessing I will have a buddy who likes to smoke and watch soap operas, either way I’m looking forward to getting started after only being able to do things here and there over the last year. We had to do a group exercise where we answered some questions and share them with our group. I answered that I strongly agreed that in general people were losing respect for one another. I have noticed that people in these place tend to be socially optimistic, so I wasn’t surprised when my answer was challenged. It led to a good discussion.

Saturday night I felt like I was pretty blunt about Christ calling us to reach out to the poor, the sick and the oppressed. During a discussion time a person in our group asked about the idea of giving your tithe and trusting that the church will use it for noble purposes. I said that I think our current tithing system is an excuse to not serve. We hand over our money and we don’t have to get our hands dirty. Another guy in the group challenged that and said, essentially, that I was throwing the institution under the bus. I was so happy that he said that because it means that people are really thinking hard about what we are talking about and it is hitting some nerves. On a side note Campolo has another podcast dealing with the way Christians use money and our idea of what tithing means, I’ll save that for another time.
Back to the topic, that I strayed from, AIDS. After worship I was talking to a friend and he said that it is amazing that we still know so little about HIV/AIDS. For obvious reasons the disease still has a debilitating stigma that inhibits important information to be disseminated to everyone, because everyone needs to be informed. We watched a video about the disease on Saturday at CATF that chronicled the stories of several HIV+ people who contracted the disease at a young age, many in their early teens, through drug use, unprotected sex and blood transfusions. One of the men said that it seems like no one pays attention to the disease “until it bites you in the ass”. One of the women in the video said that since she contracted the disease no one she knows will touch her and another said that her family makes her use special plates, utensils, toiletries and bedding and I heard of yet another whose family followed her with a bottle of bleach disinfecting everything with which she came in contact.

We were all asked why we were volunteering at CATF. I said that in all honesty it was my faith that compels me to volunteer. I was also clear that I don’t view this as a venue to try to push my faith on anyone. I just hope that what I do will be for the kingdom whether I am educating people about HIV/AIDS or proclaiming the kingdom through service to my “buddy”.


hearing: Out of Time, Split Lip Rayfield (crack cocaine banjo, thanks to Scott)