Welcome back to another episode of the Awakened Heart! In this episode Bill de la Cruz and Guadalupe Guajardo bring in a special guest to talk about his experience with religion and biases. If you enjoy the episode, please like share it with your friends!

 

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The Awakened Heart Ep. #3

This is a show that we started a number of years ago to create connections between people, hear people’s stories, talk about the issues in our country and our world and connect on a very human level. As we all experience this craziness and divisiveness in our world and our country, I don’t think there’s a better time for us to reconnect and re-humanize ourselves to each other.

As we’ve been sharing in the show, we’ve been talking about how everything that we experience as adults is connected somewhere to our growing up, somewhere to a message that we got or somewhere to an experience that we had. It’s connecting that origination point to how we experience each other as adults and do our best to move beyond. We are seeing each other through the lens of stereotypes, judgments and biases, which is a very inauthentic way to interact with each other.

Along the journey, I’ve made many friends and had the pleasure of being in touch with a diverse group of people. One of those folks reached out to me and said, “I want to do this show. I want to do it around White people who are doing things that are connected to being allies to other people in our community.” I thought that was an interesting idea because I do a lot of work with White men. The challenge in being a White man is, 1) Either you’re looked at as a racist or, 2) You’re looked at as somebody who can’t do anything to affect change in other people’s lives rooted in their identity.

What we found in this show is both White men and White women are doing a lot of great things and not sharing them because of the way that we are a society. We look at it from these false narratives of, “They’re trying to show off or elevate themselves about other people. They’re racist and want to be good White people.” What we found in our stories is that they are great people who want to make a difference like you and I want to make a difference.

We started this series. It’s called The Awakened Heart: Re-humanizing Our Connections. We don’t have to look very far to see how far away we are from each other and the things that are happening as a result of that. My heart is heavy because this is past the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I can’t get that out of my spirit because it’s reflective of why this work is so important and why it’s so important for us to connect.

I think about the children. If we can’t take care of our children, then I don’t know what’s going to be. All I know is that these conversations help me to ground myself and re-center. I hope that they help you to think about what is your role. As little or as big as it might be, we all play a role. The idea of the awakened heart and re-humanizing our connections take on a lot of meaning, especially for me and, I’m sure, for my co-host, Guadalupe, who brought this idea to me. I said, “I have a show. Let’s do it,” so we’ve been doing it. I’m going to introduce my co-host, Guadalupe and then she will introduce Scott, our guest. Guadalupe, how are you?

I am good. It’s during these painful, heartbreaking times that it feels even better to reach out to each other, not isolate and feel alone. I was so grateful that we are having this episode so that we could connect, re-awaken our hearts and re-humanize our connection when so much harm and damage are being done in the world. We are here to bring some sparks of light and enlightenment. I’m going to take a moment to introduce a new friend. Scott is such a new friend that I don’t even know his last name.

My last name is Shurtleff.

Thank you. I met Scott during Passover. I can’t remember if that was in April 2022. Scott’s wife, Harriet Cooke, is my dear friend. She and I both belong to the synagogue. She was having an intimate four-person Passover in her home. She and Scott live a couple of blocks from me. Scott, I can never remember how religion enters a conversation besides it. It was Passover. You said, “I don’t call myself a Christian anymore. I call myself a follower of Jesus.” My heart instantly warmed up more to you than it already had.

I’m a religious woman. I’m with the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Spirituality and religiosity when it’s done well and properly are a big part of my life. When I meet someone like yourself and make a new friend who talks about being a follower of Rabbi Jesus and then I heard more about your story that I’m going to allow you to tell, I had to reach out to you to ask you if you would be a guest on this show.

I’m going to let you tell your story and some of the questions to help prompt your story. Bill and I will dialogue with you. Rewind the tape to how it is that you were going to be intentional about a particular group that you belong to, look and recognize the demographic you belong to and with great intentionality, do something about that. Take it away, Scott.

Thank you, Guadalupe, for inviting me here. It’s a pleasure to be with you and Bill. Bill, thank you for hosting. I’ll start with my life transition in 2016. I was working on Wall Street in what I’ll call the heart of the capitalist machine. I was in a place where I was in great pain from the overwork of my workplace, the expectations of my workplace and the recognition of what I’ll call moral vacuity. There is no social contract between businesses and the society that Corporate America is in.

I needed to retire and I did. I retired early. I had the privilege to do that and I recognized that. I wanted and needed to work to make a change in my life. It was a big change. At the time, I was living in Connecticut and decided I would move to a new place. Through many different coincidences and guidance of the spirit, I found that Portland would be the place. I’m happy being here. I don’t look back. I don’t regret my time in Connecticut but I also love it here in Portland, Oregon for many reasons.

As I retired and came here, I was sharing it with my family. I shared with my son-in-law’s parents that I had retired. My son-in-law’s mother asked me, “What do you think you’re going to do now?” I said, “I don’t know. I’m going to move to Portland and figure it out.” I didn’t know a soul here in Portland. I came here to establish a new community and new friends. To find a way to awaken my heart to the world is so appropriate because when I look back on it, that’s what I’ve been doing. I came out of a place of a deadened heart and a place that didn’t feed my heart to find things that would feed my heart.

The only way to come out of the place of a deadened heart is to look for other things that would reawaken and feed your heart. Share on X

Back to my son-in-law’s mother, she said, “I do this volunteer tax preparation that I do here and find it worthwhile. You have a financial background. You spent time with financials. You’d probably be good at this.” When I came to Portland after getting established, I went ahead and signed up with the CASH Oregon program to get training.

I also found out about the program through, at the time, El Programa Hispano Católico, out in Gresham which was serving the Latinx community in Gresham. I did that without knowing what I was getting myself into. I thought it was a great opportunity to continue developing my Spanish and also be serving the community and helping prepare and complete their tax returns and submit their tax returns.

I’ve been doing it for several years, volunteering with this community. I’ve focused my volunteer time during tax season with El Programa, which is called Impuestos Comunitarios, serving the Latinx community and preparing the taxes for them. I have come to treasure working for this community. Working isn’t the right word. I’m serving this community and giving back to this community.

If we think back to November 2016, it was such a shock to me. I remember going to a friend’s home to watch the election results. I was expecting that Hillary would come away with a narrow victory and lead that night knowing that that was wrong. I was feeling crushed. We all saw the oppression, increased discrimination and increased oppression of immigrants through the Trump administration.

The call to me to serve this community that was being so greatly distressed and oppressed by that administration was even deeper to give back. It has been a beautiful service for me. I feel like the service gives as much to me as I give to it. We can think, “You’re preparing people’s taxes.” There is one story that sticks with me.

We spend a lot of time on education expenses because there are various ways the tax law allows us to do it. We look for the ways that we provide the most benefit to the family as a whole and how should we go about accounting for the education expenses, the scholarships and the various types of scholarships on the parents and the young adults’ tax returns. We spend a good 90 minutes on that, which is a lot when we have people lined up to do their taxes that evening. We came to the end of it.

At that point, I was closing up with the family. The mother asked me, “Can you tell me what is the amount that we got as a refund because of the work that you’ve done here and you’ve done the best you can with the tax return?” We told her, “It’s a substantial amount in the thousands.” She said, “Thank you.” That money is going to her savings account so that she can use it for her college tuition.

Right there, it’s not about the numbers. We’re making a difference in a young adult’s life. This young adult is doing the same thing my kids are, which is going to school, getting an education, finding a career and being part of society in the US. When I talk to the kids who are doing this, their greatest wish is that mom and dad don’t have to work so hard in the fields. I can feel it in my heart and how rewarding that is.

That’s powerful to see how your volunteer work is a win-win-win on so many levels. Is it mostly farm workers that you file taxes for?

Yes. A lot of the families and parents are undocumented and working on farms. They usually bring in anywhere from 4 to 8 W-2s because they’re working on different farms seasonally. It’s amazing how hard they are working and how the parents provide for their kids so their kids can get the opportunity to go to school, do what they want, progress right and achieve their dreams. Let’s put it that way.

 

With tax season, you start in January and end towards the end of April.

We start in early December because we have to go through a training program, be certified, take several exams that the IRS creates and have to pass those exams to demonstrate that we understand the material and tax law so that we’re qualified and certified to perform the task accurately. That is paramount to us that we complete the tax return accurately and according to the regulations.

You were telling me an interesting story about how you had gone home to finish the tax of one woman and then you needed to call her to get more information. Do you remember what you said to me? You said she was working in the field.

That’s right. She said, “I don’t have that now. I can get it but I need to walk over to the bodega first to get better reception.” We stayed on the phone while she walked through the fields over to the bodega. She was able to connect to her data and get the piece of information we needed. I’ve experienced this too when I share that I’m doing this work. People say, “You’re doing taxes for undocumented people. How is that? They pay taxes?” I’m like, “Absolutely.”

It’s fascinating to me that the IRS was able to document people easily. The way I think about it is here, we have a person or a mother who has come to the US. They are working in the fields. They are frankly harvesting the food that comes to my table first. They are doing work that I’m frankly not capable of. It’s hard work. They pay taxes on whatever they earn and that includes social security and Medicare tax. They will never see that money. That’s paying for my retirement. That’s a big well-kept secret, I will call it that.

 

It’s an injustice.

Thank you for pointing that out. It calls me to serve this community. I do it with humility and joy.

We call them essential workers. We don’t quite care for them the same way but we know that they are essential. Bill, do you have anything you want to ask or say before I go on?

Yeah. The whole immigrant journey in this country has been so fascinating from the time people were coming over here and having their names changed because whoever was documenting them couldn’t pronounce their names. They’re like, “We’re going to call you this.” They have been facing discrimination in all types of ways and being marginalized for a long time. I say that because the things that we’re seeing in our immigrant community aren’t new. They had a spotlight put on them.

It’s a challenge for me as I think, “Something’s off. If the government can figure out how to tax somebody who doesn’t have papers, why can’t we figure out how to make sure they have papers?” We figured out the whole piece because we can take their money from them and yet, we can’t figure out how to provide them with the papers they need to live without fear of deportation or some other things happening to them or their children. I appreciate that you’ve chosen to support these folks and help them to get refunds.

It’s a mind twist for me about how we can take their taxes but we can’t figure out how to make them citizens. The whole immigration system has been broken for such a long time. My question, Scott, is what drives you to do that? What drives you to support them? The context I’ll put into it is Guadalupe and I hear a lot from especially White folks who don’t want to tell their stories because they don’t want people to think that they’re elevating themselves or they’re better than other people. I’m curious. You said that story of the refund that was gotten by this family is going to help the daughter to get to college. In your heart, what drives you to do this?

I’ll go to my faith story. Rabbi Jesus calls me to be a service in this world. One of Jesus’ teachings is whatever you do to the least of these, you also do to me. That grounding in my faith calls me to be of service to the world. The next question becomes, “Why serve here? Why do this service?” There are several reasons. One is because I have a background in financials. I’ve always loved math and numbers ever since I was in grade school. This work suits me at least in that sense.

Seeing the injustice in our society and the unfairness with which we are treating immigrants in this country motivates me to do this particular work. At the time that I chose to get involved with El Programa, I was also volunteering with the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice as well. All of that tied in. It all was connected to serving immigrant populations, particularly when people were being apprehended and deported for no particular reason. It was because we could. I can’t remember who said it in the Obama administration but I was putting my thumb on the scale to try to tip it toward justice. The more of us put our thumbs on the scale toward justice, the more likely we are to achieve justice in this world. That’s why, Bill. Thanks.

The more people who put their thumbs on the scale toward justice, the more likely justice can be achieved in this world. Share on X

Thank you, Scott. I appreciate you sharing your story. It’s important for people who are reading to realize that a lot of what we’re talking about doesn’t take magnanimous acts to make a change. It takes a lot of people to do small things. Doing what they believe in, what they love and what resonates with them makes a change. You putting your finger on the scale, me putting my finger in Guadalupe and ten other people, hopefully, we can start to push that scale towards a more just society.

I was wondering, Scott, for the benefit of those reading. Were there stereotypes that you may have picked up growing up that got dispelled doing this work? Were there moments of awakening or insights where you thought, “Oh?” It’s the same way that people I talk to say, “Farmers pay taxes?” I’m wondering if there’s a deeper inner journey as well for you.

One of the things that people ask me is, “Isn’t it hard doing the taxes, doing taxes for people and working with all those tax rolls?” I tell them, “No.” Doing the numbers themselves is not very challenging. What’s challenging about this work with this particular population is that the family structure is so different from mine. I grew up in a traditional White nuclear family. It is children and parents in the house.

This population is very different. It’s multi-generational. We’re dealing with multi-generational households. There are uncles and aunts in the house sometime. It depends. That is where it gets challenging for me. It’s to try to figure out who’s in the household, who’s supporting whom or this year, who is head of household and who’s not. I try to sort through those relationships. How that links into the tax law becomes one of the challenges.

That made me reflect upon this ideal of the nuclear family here in the US versus the multi-generational family. My conclusion is that we’ve got it exactly wrong with the nuclear family. My parents would not choose to live with me. They would see that as almost a failure that they had to live with me. If I had to live with them, that would be a failure.

We lose so much with that attitude toward things. We lose the relationship. We create these barriers between each other. We don’t lose the relationship but the relationship is not as rich. Are there challenges with the multi-generational family? There are, but to me, there’s a lot of wisdom to the multi-generational family. Even if we look back many years ago, in the US, we’d find that the multi-generational family was a lot more common.

 

It’s great that you’ve become aware of that cultural nuance and you’re having to adapt to it rather than having them adapt to you, which is what people do. That is especially what our immigrant populations tend to do all the time. They’re like, “How do I adapt? How do I fit in? How do I make this work?” It’s interesting.

I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve got the nuclear family wrong. I would say, “What’s the impact of individualism in our society that doesn’t give us the rich benefits that are available in a lot of multi-generational families?” It’s understanding that regardless of whether you are multi-generational or not, all families have their stuff. There’s no perfection in this.

As you’ve experienced, you might have to talk to 2 or 3 different people to get the answer that you want because that’s where the knowledge is. Rather than saying, “Let me talk to the person who’s in charge,” we’re a family or a community. We all have a voice. To me, a lot of what we’re talking about is how we reconnect ourselves to each other.

I remember when I was young and I got home after a day out playing, my mom knew everything I did before I got home. It’s because the neighbors would call her and talk to her. That was my extended family. Sometimes, I didn’t like that they were reporting on me. Other times, it was probably okay. It’s something to think about all of the great nuances in a culture that our immigrant community can show us if we were to open our eyes to it. What you’re doing based on what I’ve heard is opening your eyes to a culture that’s different from yours. You’re thinking, “What could be if I decided to do this or I chose to have these conversations that we’re having?”

A communitarian lifestyle is what we’re talking about. Scott, you have a number of communities you belong to, Bill and me also but it starts in that multi-generational family that recognizes we’re able to make it because we live in a communitarian way. I want to take that one step further. For those of us that believe that we were on the verge of a social collapse that is around the corner, we’re going to need each other so much more. The more we’re able to live, be connected to a range of communities and recognize the value and the importance of a communitarian lifestyle, those families and communities are going to survive best. When and if society as we know it is crumbling, those will be the ones that will be showing us the way.

Scott, if you were to share a couple of your nuggets for other people in terms of stepping out of their comfort zone. I’m presuming that working with a group of immigrants as a White Wall Street guy is out of your comfort zone. That sounds like doing your best to pick up some Spanish so you can talk to them in their language as well. What advice or things would you share with other people about stepping out of their comfort zone?

Follow your heart. It is the case that serving this community feeds me perhaps more than the service that I’m providing to this community. It’s important to find something that feeds you as well. Stepping outside of our comfort zone takes energy and courage. Sometimes, we’ll trip up. I experienced this in 2022. There were a couple of times I did a return without an interpreter. It was usually with young folks. The returns were simple. Their personal situation was simple so the conversations were simple. Perhaps, I got overconfident. I had a case where one didn’t go well and the client wasn’t comfortable. I tripped up a little bit there but I was able to forgive myself for that and move on. Following your heart is a key thing there.

Follow your heart and step out of your comfort zone. This requires energy and courage. Sometimes, you have to trip up. Share on X

Guadalupe, do you have any last words as we wind up our talk together?

Scott, you have been a wonderful guest. Thank you for opening your heart and rewinding the tape to the start of your story. You are a great source of inspiration, not just for me but for many who will be reading this episode. I want to say mil gracias for giving us your tape and sharing your story.

De nada.

Thank you both. You’ve been reading a new series called The Awakened Heart. It’s rooted around a book that Lisa Miller wrote called The Awakened Brain. There are four pillars of the awakened brain. They are altruism, love of neighbor, the oneness of humanity and moral code. As we continue to journey forward as a society, we have to start to think about the awakened heart. How do we awaken our hearts? How do we reconnect to our humanity? How do we re-humanize ourselves to each other in a way that shows that we care?

We can say it all we want. What resonates are the actions that we take. I’m going to ask everybody who’s reading to take an act of courage and selflessness. Step out of your comfort zone and get to know somebody different. It could be your neighbor who looks like you that you said hi to for ten years but you still don’t know their name. It could be somebody at work that you see eight hours a day and know nothing about them. Those things happen all the time to all of us. Take an act of courage, follow your heart and do your best to reconnect and re-awaken yourselves with each other. Scott, thank you for being with us on our talk. If you resonate with this content, please share it. Follow us. Give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Most importantly, keep growing.

Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Scott.

Thank you.

 

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