The Place: Lola Savanah

The Cup: Iced Coffee for Amanda and herbal tea for me, as I’d already consumed more than the legal limit of caffeine for the day.

Background: Where to begin. Amanda is one of those people who was on my radar for some time. I first became aware of her when she presented at BlogathonATX last year. After that, I followed her on Twitter. Most recently, Cup 29, Kristin Sheppard, told me about a homelessness project Amanda had participated in and tweeted about recently that was rather interesting. Kristin let me know that Amanda is someone she has admired from afar, but she really didn’t actually know her.

That idea was in my head when I popped on Twitter for some updates. Amanda (@ImTheQ) tweeted that her birthday was coming up in 6 days and she was hoping to meet Rachel Maddow the day after. A quick bit of finger math and I’d figured out that Amanda and I were born on the same day. Fate! In lieu of the typical intro, I opted for the very modern Tweet request. I sent her a note and bam!, she said “yes”.

Can you imagine how it must have felt to have played dolls with a young Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, later know as Mother Teresa?  Or to have grown up and played baseball with Martin Luther King, Jr.? What would it have been like to sit in a coffee shop with John Lennon as he wrote the lyrics to Come Together or Imagine and shared his idealistic views on peace and love being the answer to everything?

You have to imagine that even as a young girl, Anjezë was concerned about and taking care of those with less than she. She probably found stray kittens and brought them milk; found people struggling to get by and offered bread, a smile or some other gesture of kindess. Martin would have been that kid on the team who rallied everyone toward the common goal of victory, but who was also quick to remind the team that even in defeat, there were lessons to be learned. Sitting with John and hearing his ideas, you’d have been hard pressed to find an argument against loving one another. Such a simple truth, you’d think to yourself, and then wonder, why isn’t it easier?

Obviously, I wasn’t there with these three incredible human beings at these moments just described. I was, however, in the presence of someone as passionate and committed to activism and social justice as anyone could be. More on that in a moment. But first…drumroll please…

Common Grounds

1. How did you make your first buck? In 4th grade I made little doll pillows and sold them to kids at school.
2. What is the best place to eat in Austin? Anywhere with tacos. I recently went vegan, so am not sure I can say who has the best vegan taco just yet.
3. What was the last thing you fixed? My website. It got hacked.
4. What is your favorite movie? Either Serpico or The Big Lebowski.
5. What is your best feature? My sense of humor. It diffuses situations, helps me cope with stress and serves to open people’s minds.
6. What is the best gift you ever received? Star Trek: The Next Generation Anniversary Edition Pez dispenser set.

   

7. If you could swap lives with someone for a day, who would you choose? The President. So few people get a chance to be the President, I’d like the chance to see what it’s like to live in the White House.
8. Where do you go when you want to get away? The ocean. Any ocean will do.
   
9. What would be the worst job for you? Working at the IRS. (By the way, most people have to think about that for a bit. Not Amanda. That answer rolled off her tongue like she knew it was coming.)

I ask Amanda what growing up was like for her, and she tells me they moved around a lot. She was raised in an evangelical Christian household and was not encouraged to speak out or challenge the beliefs of the church. At 19, Amanda says, “I was done with that shit. I took off and did everything I wasn’t supposed to do. And I was miserable. At 25, I settled down and realized I was missing God. I began shopping for a religion.”

She examined and researched many faiths; Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism. None felt exactly right for her. When she found Islam, something resonated deep within her and she knew she was meant to be a Muslim. She says of her choice, “It is a simple, practical faith tradition with a very strong social justice aspect.”

Coming to terms with her faith was not without struggle. At first, perhaps because she didn’t look like a typical Muslim, Amanda tried very hard to be, as she calls it, “a culturally acceptable Muslim woman.” She worked hard at emulating other Muslims, until she had to face the fact that she was unhappy and felt more disconnected from God than ever.

Everything changed when, as Amanda says, “I  decided to reclaim my white American-ness and to define Muslim on my own terms. For me, becoming Muslim wasn’t a rejection of who I was before.” When she connected these dots, she found peace and joy. And, she reconnected to God.

Amanda moved to Austin in 1998. She’s married and has 10 year old twins. She works in Social Media, and how she got there is an interesting story.

When the twins were born, Amanda took a few years off to be home with them. Her mother and her mother-in-law were both living far away and Amanda found a community and much needed support in “mommy forums” online. “On the internet – that’s a wonderful environment for me,” she adds.

When the kids were three or four, she decided it was time to get back to work. She took her new internet knowledge and went to work for a start-up, running their social media marketing. The people were great, but she wasn’t feeling fulfilled. “I wished I had a job that made me feel good,” she says.

Her pal Ilene had just redone her resume for her, so one day when Amanda was home sick from work, she decided to do a little job search and take her new resume for a spin. She found a job posting with Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a non-profit providing support and outreach to the homeless. She sent off her shiny new resume and within an hour she got a call.

Now, almost two years later, she says of the job she was clearly meant to do, “It’s the single, greatest, job of my life. I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire adult life for this. I feel so blessed to have the job. The people are really, really awesome. I respect them, love them and care about them. I feel appreciated and we have autonomy and the freedom and creative license to do things beyond our job descriptions.” Of the president and founding member, Alan Graham, Amanda tells me that he has an incredible Christian faith. He believes that we’re doing God’s work, and so there is no ego. He doesn’t worry that his people are going to make a mistake and mess everything up. He encourages people to take risks. Amanda points out the philosophy is similar to what’s reportedly written on the walls at Facebook – Move fast and break things. Amanda adds, “The only way we can ever really learn and grow, is to fail. As long as we do it quickly, learn from it and move on, it’s ok. Failing is healthy. People like the idea but when it comes to practice, most people don’t want that kind of risk in their lives.”

While we’re on the subject of risk, Amanda recently took to the streets, in an event called Street Retreat, to experience a small taste of homelessness for herself. To paint the picture: one very cold Friday in January, Amanda and several others were dropped off in downtown Austin with no money, no food and no water and told they’d be picked up again Sunday afternoon.

Amanda admits that the experience is far from the reality of actually being homeless. But just the same, she walked away with a greater appreciation of the pain, fear, uncertainty, isolation and discomfort that people whose lives are spent on the streets live with every moment. “The thing I was most struck by,” she says, “was the feeling of embarrassment I had. I’d spent over a year advocating for the homeless without ever doing it myself. You don’t know. You don’t understand. It’s not an easy life. Some people say the homeless are lazy. They can’t afford to be lazy. They are in perpetual motion; trying to get what they need to survive.”

I ask her a big question, not really expecting her to have an answer. “What is the solution to homelessness in this country?” She does have an answer, but first she defines the problem. “The root cause of homelessness, is loss of family. If you were down on your luck and needed help, where would you turn? Your family. The homeless don’t have that option, for any number of reasons. Maybe they don’t have family or their family doesn’t care. Maybe they burned bridges or because of mental illness or dependency issues, they can’t reach out to their family.”

“At Mobile Loaves and Fishes, we become their surrogate family. We help them find jobs; we get calls when they’ve been thrown in jail; we’ve helped them set up Facebook pages, or try to reach out to their families,” Amanda tells me. And that is part of her answer. The other part is what she says next. “We aren’t about feeding people. Our trucks are driven by volunteers who go out into the streets and hand out food to people, face to face. THAT is our ministry. The food is just the tool. You can’t tell people, you have to show them.”

Service is the answer, not just to homelessness but to a whole host of social justice issues.

Interfaith activism is a huge part of Amanda’s identity and her purpose. She says, “The key to interfaith understanding is not dialogue. Service based interfaith activism is the key to truly creating understanding and building genuine affinity for other people. When people come together around a project, it forces people out of their bubbles. When they get dirty, they’re sweating, working together, smelling bad together, they look at each other at the end of the day, with dirt under their fingernails, sharing a Gatorade and say, ‘That was great! We did this together.’ That’s where the most profound appreciation for another person comes from. You don’t have to have a conversation about faith. You’re watching their faith in action. They’re there serving, with compassion and the highest ideals of their religion or beliefs. Actions always speak lounder than words. And we’re never going to change people’s minds with words.”

“I’ve never not seen it work. I’ve never seen a diverse group of people come together and work for a good, common purpose and not walk away feeling like something amazing just happened,” Amanda says. She tells me about an initiative she wants to create, The Institue for Interfaith Activism, where opportunities for these types of expereinces are created and documented. “I want to facilitate that movement.”

Make no mistake, Amanda’s utopian vision is not one where we get everyone on the same page and all agree to march to the same drum. “Diversity is good,” she asserts, adding that we all need the freedom to believe what we want to believe. These differences in opinion need not keep us from coming together to do great things. How you feel about abortion, or gun control, or where you go to church or who you share a bed with – these are irrelevant when what we’re talking about is a common goal. Abolishing slavery, granting equal right for both sexes, finding a solution to homelessness – we do these things because it’s the right thing to do. “Most of us need to worry more about ourselves. What we’re doing, and what we can do within our own sphere of influence, rather than trying to ‘change the world’.” Amanda says. Because, isn’t that how real change happens? One person at a time?

Amanda tells me if given 30 seconds to address the world she’d say, “Follow the golden rule. It’s the only way forward. Practice that as often as you can.” We look at one another and I say, “That’s it?” She smiles and says, “That’s it. It’s that simple.”

As much as I would have loved to have known little Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, or to have played ball with Martin Luther King Jr.; as amazing as it would have been to share a cup of coffee with John Lennon as he penned the lyrics,

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

I can tell you, with the deepest sincerity, I sat with greatness today. This generation is in need of a voice, a movement, a leader. Amanda has the kindness, the leadership qualities and the belief in peace that others before her have shared with the world. Never before have we needed someone like Amanda to remind us that we are all in this thing together. That we can all keep our own beliefs and still come together, and do something not because its easy, but because it’s right.

You may say, she’s a dreamer. But she’s not the only one.

To learn more about Amanda, check out her website or follow her on Twitter. And if you know Rachel Maddow, can you please let her know that Amanda is her BIGGEST fan. No, really!  And recently she showed up to hear her speak, toting her book along for an autograph after, and Rachel had to scoot off for another event. Total bummer! After jumping out of a plane for her 40th birthday and taking a sabbatical to India, meeting Rachel is #3 on her bucket list. Let’s make it happen!