Family, Friends, And Neighbors

When this interview appeared, Barb and Jim Tamialis and their two sons, Michael (7) and Nathan (6), had been part of Sojourners Fellowship since 1975, when the community moved to inner-city Washington, D.C. Both Barb and Jim were involved in work with the people of our neighborhood, Barb as director of a day care center for low-income families and Jim as a tenant organizer. They talked with us about their experiences as a family.

For more than six years now you have chosen to live with your family in a poor, inner-city neighborhood. How did you come to that decision?

Barb Tamialis: The same time we decided to have children we decided where and how we should live. At Michigan State University we had started a food distribution program primarily for migrant families. But we wanted more involvement with the poor, and so when the community of people that became Sojourners Fellowship decided to move to Washington, D.C, we decided to move with them and raise our family in the inner city.

Jim Tamialis: I've realized that moving into the inner city was a step of faith rather than a strategy. It involved taking a risk, following Christ in his experience of the discrepancy between poor and well-to-do people. It's faithful struggling, the risks we take as parents--having faith in God's protection and God's granting of wisdom we need to deal with things.

How has your decision affected your children?

Barb: This neighborhood is home for Michael and Nathan. It's the only place they know. They haven't come from somewhere else and had to adjust. I think this has been to their advantage, because they have always been the only white children in the neighborhood (except for the other children in Sojourners Fellowship), and the only white children in their schools.

For a long time, I don't think they even noticed that they were different. They have been raised in a community and a culture that is white, where people are educated and accustomed to having control over their lives. That's been in stark contrast to many of the children they have gone to school with. Their playmates have been children whose parents have been uneducated and whose culture has been very different. Michael and Nathan have come to see the difference in the two cultures, and they operate well in both of them.

It's interesting to hear Michael playing in the alley with his friends, because he has a street dialect that he turns on. As an adopted, racially mixed child, he identifies with the part of the blackness in him, although if you asked him, he would say he was white.

Nathan sees himself as being more different from the other children around because he is very white, with very blonde, curly hair. When new children came to the daycare center they would inevitably walk up to Nathan and feel his hair, because he was different. Nathan got used to people doing that. And he is very accepted by his friends.

Jim: The thing that causes me the most joy is what some people would call the most difficult: that our children have grown up in a situation of contrast, rather than a situation in which everybody is the same and there are no conflicts, differences, or questions.

Michael and Nathan are growing up and have gone to school with kids from the neighborhood. They have seen the local school as their school, the children as their friends, and they have had a range of experience with those friends: they have seen sadness, poverty, violence. And they have done fine.

In fact, we felt that they were becoming too comfortable with the rowdy atmosphere at the school, lack of discipline, and the tough talk and activities. The values we held at home and those at school were just too much for them to shift in and out of. Finally, after Michael had gone to the neighborhood school for a year and a half, and Nathan for half a year, we looked for other schools nearby and were able to get them transferred to another public school that has more of a racial and economic mix.

Now, rather than being the more privileged and educated kids in their setting, they are down at the other end. They don't have the free access to money that a lot of their classmates have. And so now they deal with that contrast. They ask questions like, "Why is my friend Thornton so poor and why does Sarah, my friend at the new school, have special food in her lunch box and travel to this and that place for vacation? Why can't I be more like Sarah?" And we have to deal with the limitations we have chosen.

Money is still pretty attractive to them. But they aren't pining or upset.

Barb: Just in the past year they have gotten to the ages where they are dealing with why life is the way it is. It's made us realize how important it has been for them to have had the experiences they have, because now they are questioning everything.

We were stuck in a traffic jam downtown the other day, by all the big office buildings, and Michael turned to me and said, "Why don't you and Daddy get jobs that make more money?" And I said, "Well, because we want to work in our neighborhood." And Michael said, "But look at all these office buildings. They're really close to our neighborhood. You could get a job here and make lots of money." I said, "Well, yes, but I want to work with poor people in our neighborhood, and when you work with poor people, you don't make much money."

With all the things that Jim and I are part of--our work in the neighborhood, at the shelters for homeless street people, demonstrations--we always do things as a family. The children know the people we work with. If Jim has to go over to one of the buildings where he is helping the tenants to organize, and it's after school or in the evening, he will often take the kids. So they know what we're involved in. I guess I've always hoped that that's part of what living in the city would do; it would give them a chance to see that everything isn't just okay.

When we were trying to decide where we should live and what we should do, the choices we faced were whether to live in a protected, small town where Jim was teaching, or to move with the community of people in Chicago here to the inner city. We weighed those choices for a while, knowing that we wanted to have children, and we realized that we just didn't want to isolate them.

I think it's really paid off now. When they go to bed at night, and it's winter, and cold, they pray for the street people, that they won't die in the cold night. And they know because they've been to the shelters and with street people.

Jim: They are praying for something they know, rather than something they've just heard about. Michael and Nathan know the experiences of poor people, and they know the poor as people. They know them as Naomi, Miss Glover, and Thornton, not as some abstraction.

They know our neighbors in a way that's more than just rhetorical. They are not just oppressed people, they are our friends, and they are good people, like the woman who, as poor as she is, always has a piece of candy to offer them.

They have experienced and know both sides, and they can make choices and judgments with integrity because they have seen both sides.

On Thanksgiving, we spent the day at a church that was serving Thanksgiving dinner to street people. They really enjoyed it. They weren't wide-eyed or withdrawn. They talked to people. They are really grappling with the questions of why some people are poor, and are coming to understand it in an elementary but substantial way.

Barb: They have friends who live in a decaying apartment building at the end of the block, and often they run in and out and around that building playing with their friends. I don't like to go inside that building as a white woman walking in alone, but if I'm with the kids, I don't feel threatened. There is a respect in the neighborhood for children and family, for motherhood. And the children feel very valued.

Living here has helped them get a picture of life that otherwise they wouldn't have had, but yet they don't seem to be insecure because of it. They just seem to be a little wiser.

How do you respond to Michael and Nathan when they ask the questions of why some people are poor and others not?

Jim: We draw a connection with the fact that some people are poor because others are wealthy and won't share. But it's also gratifying to know that we are not instilling in them a hatred for people who are wealthy.

We talk about the contrasts in the world in general. During the last election, Nathan, who sometimes likes being playfully contrary, was going around with a little devilish grin on his face saying that he was for Reagan. But at the time of the inauguration, he asked if he could go down to see the parade.

We told him we couldn't because the people who had places along the parade route had paid a lot of money to get them, and we didn't have the money to pay for something like that. His opinion of Ronald Reagan changed instantly. He was really upset because you had to have money to be a friend of Ronald Reagan. He realized that there was a contrast set up between rich and poor, and he experienced himself on the poor side and didn't like it.

Barb: When we talk about rich and poor, we always connect it with the fact that we are Christians, and that God does not want people to suffer or for some to have money and not share it. We tell them that we do what we do because we are Christians. It will be interesting to see what they do with this, especially in their teenage years.

Jim: Some years ago Danny Collum, who was living in our household at the time, and Michael and Nathan and I were driving downtown. We had gotten just half a block or so from our house, and a woman who had been standing on the corner passed out, fell down, and hit her head. She was very drunk and could not get up or walk.

We stopped, and Michael and Nathan were uneasy. I got out of the car and asked them if they wanted to get out or wait in the car. They said they wanted to wait. I helped the woman get to where she lived.

It had been about 20 minutes by the time I was back at the car, and the kids were really interested in what had gone on. Earlier in the week before supper we had read the story of the Good Samaritan, so I made a concrete connection with that story. They really knew what I was talking about, and they talked about the woman. We were her neighbors.

Sometimes people say, "Don't you feel a little hesitant or guilty about the choices you are making for your children?" It's important to understand that parents are always making choices that have implications for their children, whether they live in a poor, inner-city neighborhood or a wealthy, suburban neighborhood.

Some say that we're making a choice to divest ourselves of security and living a lifestyle that is hurting or depriving our children. But I think that when people choose to divest themselves of risk and uncertainty, or of an environment in which moral choices have to be made, they are also depriving their children and protecting them from things that in our experience we've seen they don't need to be protected from.

Barb: All parents want to protect their children. We certainly do. But there's a subtle prejudice that gets instilled in children when you isolate them from differences.

Even in this neighborhood, people watch out for children and stop them if they're doing something they shouldn't be. Adults will break up the fights. Everybody wants to protect children, but what we don't realize is that we need to think about what it is we want to protect them from.

What about your involvement in things beyond the neighborhood?

Jim: For the past several months we've been very concerned about the things going on in El Salvador. Michael and Nathan have struggled to understand it, but it's been very difficult for them. One day, Michael and I were talking about El Salvador in preparation for a massive rally that was to take place that weekend protesting our government's involvement there. Just like a light bulb clicked on above him, Michael said, "I know, it's just like Star Wars!" And I asked, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, there's the empire and the rebels, and the empire is mean and nasty and wants to kill people and blow things up. And the rebels are just trying to live and not have the people in the empire tell them what to do."

We try to talk to Michael and Nathan about issues of peace and justice in a way that is more than just reducing the rhetoric to a child's scale. It was good to have Michael in a moment of reflection draw it all together in an example that he knew so well and could understand.

Barb: On Michael's first day of kindergarten, the community was involved in a protest at the Sheraton Washington Hotel against an "arms bazaar" being held there in which manufacturers were displaying nuclear weapons. At school his teacher asked Michael to draw a picture. Michael drew the symbol that had been on his "No Nukes" T-shirt. She asked what it was, and he explained it to her. When I picked him up from school, his teacher told me how surprised she had been that he had drawn such a picture and could explain it to her.

They still love going to demonstrations, if they don't get too long. They always ask a lot of questions, and enjoy making their own posters and carrying them. Candlelight vigils are their favorite. It used to be because they liked holding a candle, but now I think it's because they enjoy the spirit of worship and prayer at those vigils.

They've also had to learn how to cope with reporters.

Jim: We were at a demonstration not too long ago for the D.C. Coalition to Fight the Budget Cuts. As we were walking around in a picket line a reporter came up to Nathan and fell in beside him. Nathan was walking along with a very somber face, very serious about his mission. He said it was important because he knew a lot of people who were poor and losing a lot of money they needed because we were building weapons and bombs instead.

It feels good to see Michael and Nathan developing a response that shows understanding on their level. But we also have sensitivity about their involvement in these things and don't overdo it.

What sort of effect has all this had on the way Michael and Nathan look at the world?

Barb: They have learned that our government isn't always right, that it is oppressive to people in other countries just like it is oppressive to people in our neighborhood. But they don't feel insecure or fearful, because there is a real faith in our community that is important to them. If we weren't in a Christian community, the things that we are doing would be fairly devastating to them, because the situations they see often are pretty hopeless. They see that everything isn't the way it's taught to them at school.

They have a sense of hope that they pick up in the community and that they also experience in the neighborhood. When we go to demonstrations they know that it is a protest of hopefulness.

Jim: The commitment Michael and Nathan experience from other people in our community is rich. They know that they are valued, protected, nurtured, and educated by other people than just their Mom and Dad. That's allowed them to grow up with a confidence that's not arrogant. They're comfortable with themselves and with their ability to relate to people and be cared for by them.

A few months ago, Michael's teacher asked everyone in the class to draw a picture of his or her best friend. Michael drew a picture of Ed Spivey. He brought it home, very proud, and Ed was proud of it too and has it hung up in his office at Sojourners now.

Those significant friendships with adults expand the horizons of their world beyond Mom and Dad and the kids. Michael and Nathan call the other children in the community their brothers and sisters, because they feel so close to them and very attached to their parents.

How extraordinary do you think you are in your choices and family?

Barb: One thing Jim and I feel very fortunate in is that we have always felt together in what we wanted to do. I know it is a problem in some marriages, when people don't feel the same call. When the community moved to D.C, both of us wanted specifically to work in the neighborhood. Both of us working there does bring a real cohesiveness to our life as a family.

On the other hand, I don't think there is anything really extraordinary about our life. Within the framework of community, there are always people dealing with the same insecurities we are. I don't think we would do what we do aside from Christian community. There is a security and hope in the community that enables us to do it.

When I look at my life, I think that I actually feel less scared, like it's less of a risk living where we do than if we were opting to be part of a church and have a job that wasn't related to that church and raise our family on our own. I think that would have felt much more alone, confused, and fearful than the situation we're in now.

Jim: Our life has been a series of little faithful steps rather than drastic leaps. I would like to encourage people for whom this sort of thing seems threatening or extraordinary. Everything is relative, and I would like to continue in our life as a family to take more faithful steps, rather than sitting back complacently and saying, "Look what we've done."

We don't feel particularly special or that what we've done is such an incredible experience. We can see the grace that has been ours. If people will take the risk of making those steps and following the gospel call and feeling that tug, then more and more steps will present themselves, as well as the grace with which to take them.