{"id":1183,"date":"2013-11-18T12:25:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T19:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2016-05-02T10:55:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T16:55:07","slug":"the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html","title":{"rendered":"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor lawyer Daniel Kovalik\u2019s September op-ed<\/strong><\/a> in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/em>), attention focused on the harsh treatment of adjuncts by universities in general, and the supposed Grinchishly unChristian treatment of this adjunct by Catholic Duquesne in particular. Beyond tweeting #IAmMargaretMary in righteous solidarity, very few saw Madame Vojtko as anything more than an elderly poster child for unionization.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I am so grateful to read (H\/T to my friend Jean-Francois) L.V. Anderson\u2019s long, nuanced and compassionate Slate<\/em> profile of Margaret Mary Vojtko, \u201cDeath of a Professor.\u201d<\/a><\/strong> I recommend it to your reading and your prayers.<\/p>\n

I took a bit of flack for suggesting, in my reflection<\/strong><\/a> on Madame Vojtko\u2019s story, that she showed classic signs of hoarding disorder. I didn\u2019t make that speculation out of thin air, or as a distraction from the very real vicissitudes of the adjunct\u2019s life and livelihood. I wasn\u2019t being, as some claimed, viciously uncharitable by defaming the memory of a brilliant woman who fell on hard times. There were parts of her story that simply set my hoardy-senses tingling. #IWas<\/em>MargaretMary. I\u2019ve been there, and there but for the grace of God went I.<\/p>\n

Madame Vojtko lived in the house in which she had been born\u2014to a Steelworkers\u2019 Union hero. She had an intense devotion to (obsession with) her home town\u2019s role in the battle for union rights. Anderson highlights the thin line between historian and hoarder.<\/p>\n

\n

Once she had possession of an artifact\u2014a billy club used in the Battle of Homestead, or scrap metal from the mill\u2014she refused to part with it. \u201cShe would say she had them in her home, and we\u2019d say, \u2018Margaret, they really shouldn\u2019t be in your home. I mean, there\u2019s an insurance issue, and they need to be catalogued in, and they need to be public property,\u2019 \u201d said Jan Carr, one of the founding members of the Homestead Historical Society. \u201cShe wouldn\u2019t surrender them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

At one meeting, Vojtko held up the billy club and refused to let anyone touch it. When other local historians tried to talk about moving her collection to a local museum, she always rebuffed them. The Homestead Historical Society stopped meeting in the early \u201990s, in part because of other members\u2019 frustration with Vojtko. Around the same time, she stopped letting anyone enter her house.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Houses, actually. Vojtko lived with her sister and brother, Anne and Eddie, in their two-story, yellow-brick childhood home, on Sylvan Avenue, until Anne died in 1980. At that point, Eddie (who, like Anne and Margaret, never married or had children) bought the house next door so he and Margaret could use it for storage. When Eddie died in 1993, Margaret inherited both houses and continued filling them with her belongings, piling boxes against the walls and windows. Along with her artifacts and historical documents, she kept newspapers, magazines, photographs, books, and much more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

L.V. Anderson details the larger context that hoarding disorder gives to Madame Vojtko\u2019s story: the lifelong pattern of accumulating objects and investing them with the emotional resonance ordinarily reserved for interpersonal relationships; the inability to carry out the basic financial, health and organization tasks of everyday living, even while functioning on a high level intellectually and creatively; the essential secretiveness that gradually becomes pathological; the deterioration of home and health and finances due to chronic neglect patched over with a veneer of vehement denial.<\/p>\n

Duquesne was not, as Anderson makes clear, responsible for Margaret Mary Vojtko\u2019s death, or for the series of calamitous events that preceded and most assuredly precipitated it. Yes, this Catholic university and all institutions of higher education must look squarely at the injustices of the adjunct system, and make changes. But it was not true that Madame Vojtko had no help, no options, no support from the university community and the many people who knew and cared for her. What she lacked was not the grace of charitable outreach, but the hard grace to receive. Hoarders who have managed to live with their disorder as long as Margaret Mary did lose the ability to trust, to accept, to let go. The prognosis is rarely hopeful.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I took issue from the start with Daniel Kovalik\u2019s conclusion that resorting to prayer for Margaret Mary, when she refused care or intervention, was an inadequate response. Some demons, we know\u2014and hoarding disorder is a devil of a mental illness\u2014require prayer, fervent intercessory prayer, to make room for grace to enter. A year ago, I was trudging in Margaret Mary\u2019s footsteps, uphill to dying on a sidewalk. Because people who did not know what the problem was, but knew there was a problem, prayed very hard for me, something loosened inside. I received the grace to the open the door, to trust, to let go.<\/p>\n

Those prayers came from people whose numerous attempts to help I had taken advantage of and then dismissed or blocked or refused to follow up with over decades. The help was never withdrawn, no matter how frustratingly ungrateful and stubborn I remained. But it was the prayer that made the difference, that wedged a crack in the armor to let grace in.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why Margaret Mary Vojtko resisted to the end. I only know her story is more than an illustration of employment injustice. It\u2019s a strong reminder to pray without ceasing. Pray for greater understanding of mental illness, and better options for identifying and helping the Margaret Marys in the classroom, in the pew, on the job, down the street. Pray in thanksgiving, as I do every day, for those who persist in reaching out, who shine a light of compassion into the dark hoarded hallways, who take no shit and give only love.<\/p>\n

Pray for the hard grace of receiving in each of our lives, for we are Margaret Marys, all.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor lawyer Daniel Kovalik\u2019s September op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), attention focused on the harsh treatment of adjuncts by universities in general, and the supposed Grinchishly unChristian treatment of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[416,225,397],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","tag-church-and-mental-illness","tag-hoarding-disorder","tag-margaret-mary-vojtko"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Egregious Twaddle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-11-18T19:25:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-05-02T16:55:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joanne McPortland\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Joanne McPortland\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html\",\"name\":\"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-11-18T19:25:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-05-02T16:55:07+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#\/schema\/person\/988428e355d44143e36a5215d7f0a071\"},\"description\":\"When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/\",\"name\":\"Egregious Twaddle\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#\/schema\/person\/988428e355d44143e36a5215d7f0a071\",\"name\":\"Joanne McPortland\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/32f1d9bc6c1a69b90e3b6e9f40141056?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/32f1d9bc6c1a69b90e3b6e9f40141056?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Joanne McPortland\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/author\/joannemcportland\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All","description":"When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All","og_description":"When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html","og_site_name":"Egregious Twaddle","article_published_time":"2013-11-18T19:25:04+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-05-02T16:55:07+00:00","author":"Joanne McPortland","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Joanne McPortland","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html","name":"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-11-18T19:25:04+00:00","dateModified":"2016-05-02T16:55:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#\/schema\/person\/988428e355d44143e36a5215d7f0a071"},"description":"When the story of the hard life and lonely death of former Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko first lit up the Internet (prompted by labor","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2013\/11\/the-hard-grace-of-receiving-prayers-for-the-margaret-marys-all.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Hard Grace of Receiving: Prayers for the Margaret Marys, All"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/","name":"Egregious Twaddle","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#\/schema\/person\/988428e355d44143e36a5215d7f0a071","name":"Joanne McPortland","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/32f1d9bc6c1a69b90e3b6e9f40141056?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/32f1d9bc6c1a69b90e3b6e9f40141056?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Joanne McPortland"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/author\/joannemcportland"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}