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September 17, 2021Part 3
Okay. So this is happening; a 90-day tithing challenge. In my first week, I sent my first $73.00 weekly donation to MQOA, and started to look around for where to send the other half.
I decided to send it to the Morningstar Collaborative's fund drive for Haiti. I knew that this parish in nearby Chelsea/Everett would put the funds to good use; their parish has run missions to Haiti for a long time and was fully invested in a particular community there. They work with the church in L'Aisle, which has been devastated by the earthquake and, since then, rains from a hurricane. I felt confident that my first donation would be used well, by people I trusted, for people in direct need.
I mentioned last week that I’d decided to give half my weekly tithe to MQOA, my own parish, a 192% increase over what I was giving (which I know because there are calculators online for such thing, thank God). $73.00 a week makes me GULP, but honestly, we spent have spent that much on dinner recently, in one sitting. And, with our refinancing complete, our mortgage payment will be going down a few hundred dollars a month! So, we have some room.
In a way, increasing my parish donation is not as sexy as I expect it will be to choose some need weekly and send money. But of course, I know the money I give to MQOA will be used for good, including, ironically, my own salary. When the shutdowns started, some of our staff were laid off, and others got pay cuts… everyone but me. Fr. Murray essentially stopped accepting a salary for several months, to keep us all going. I felt some guilt.
On one hand, I earned my salary those months; working harder than ever, it felt like, more, and longer and hard. I wanted to be paid according to my value to the parish, and I was working twice as hard to be valuable. It felt like a battle between two important personal values; on one hand, how staff (particularly women) should be justly paid for our work in the Church, and on the other, wanting to contribute to the survival of the parish at a time when that was unsure. It was at that time that I did start giving regularly to the parish, effectively giving myself a small pay cut. It felt like something, anyway.
Giving to the parish who pays my salary is a mind-bending thing, no matter what, but hey- this is a 90 day challenge. I've heard people saying "start tithing, and see what happens" and so, I will.
