Extra Christmas

This December the Advent and Christmas season have been filled with more pain than I anticipated.  Without a doubt, the inhabitants of this planet feel a lot of psychological, emotional, and physical pain.  Delving into these topics on an intellectual level is disturbing, because it's pleasant and easy to trust that Justice is commonplace.  This December I’ve began to experience a whopping amount of grief regarding the deaths of marginalized populations, and it’s become much more personal and emotionally geared.   

Early this December a man on my caseload died.  It’s something I always knew to be a possibility working with the homeless, but receiving that email from the director of my shelter while waiting for a flight in the Chicago Midway airport really kicked my ass.  It stole my words, and I was left feeling completely blank and white washed.  It’s something I am still sorting out internally, and am so mixed up about I’m not sure where to begin. 

This December as I’ve been maintaining contact with co-workers at my previous job, I learned about the death of someone on site, as well as a slew of overdoses.  And I feel with my former co-workers; I feel their pain, shock, fear, and unsteadiness.  More than anything I wish I could be in St. Paul working with them, and supporting them in tangible ways, especially at a site that seems to be perpetually short staffed and walking the fine line of burn out.

Yesterday I received news that a former client of mine was murdered by another client in her apartment.  I felt so far away from the grief people were experiencing.  Again I just want to be in that place that truly needs extra hands, where people are hurting and feeling this loss.  If I’ve found one thing to be true, it’s that sitting with people in their suffering is crucial, and right now a whole group of people I have walked with is hurting in a very real and emotionally trying way.  I feel powerless. 

Right now the world at large and the world I interface with daily appear so incredibly dark and twisted.  What frightens me most is how hardened I feel, and how capable I am of allowing this to roll off me.  I want to give these events the emotional energy and prayer they deserve. I need some extra Christmas, because I need to focus on Hope in what feels like a very dark and sad place.  This is a heavy December, and I need some extra Hope to walk through it and effectively accompany the people in my life.

Emotional Erosion

 

“…Some of you will be so changed
by weathers and wanderings
that even your closest friends
will have to learn your features
as though for the first time…”

 

I’ve been revisiting this stanza from the poem, Passover Remembered (Bozarth, Alla) a lot lately.  I’ve been considering my experiences as a JV and how I am worried that I’ve shifted too much.  This is in the forefront of my mind this month especially as I prepare to be reunited with some college friends at Fairfield’s Alumni Weekend. 

When I examine how I am living my life today compared to how I envisioned my life as a senior in college there isn’t much overlap.  What sticks out to me in this stanza is the word weathers.  It took me back to 4^th grade, when I learned about weathering and erosion.  Initially when considering erosion in nature I come up with negative connotations surrounding destruction, but I have started to rationalize the necessity of the process and the beauty that can accompany the altered landscape.  While perusing the internet I found an article discussing the duo of river erosion and landslides’ role in maintaining some of the world’s most iconic mountain ranges.  This cycle is credited with maintaining mountains, but erosion itself proves the malleability of the Earth’s surface.  I think our minds, hearts, and thoughts are malleable like the Earth.  My one-year-plus of JVC has eroded the exterior layers of my metaphorical heart. 

And this makes me nervous, because it makes me think I feel too much now.   I am nervous because I am not sure what landscape my heart is taking.  I wonder how the men I work with will continue to erode the crust of my heart, and transform it into something unrecognizable.  I am the most nervous about not being recognized by myself and by my family and friends.  I am afraid of becoming a stranger in the lives of those I value from my past. 

There are these conflicting moments of dual clarity and confusion regarding my emotional and intellectual erosion.  As I walked home from the subway after work, I was thinking about the physical property of volume.  All of the sudden it hit me:  I can't remember how to solve for volume.  I was seriously shocked, and as I walked down Girard Avenue my mind was without an answer as it feverishly searched for a formula.  All I could think was, "Holy shit!  I've lost all of my knowledge and all I have are feelings!"  As I turned onto 18th Street I came up with a solution. 

D = m/v

Just manipulate that equation.  During that final stretch home, I gained a new appreciation for the saying, "if you don't use it you lose it."  I use my empathy regularly at Bethesda Project.  So I suppose that this consistent use of empathy and compassion are the two rivers that I feed, and are responsible for the erosion of my heart, and the reshaping of my life.   

 

 

This I Believe

I am grateful for technology.  I am thankful that while I am physically in Philadelphia I am able to have pieces of myself scattered throughout America.  I am grateful for funny people.  And for people who gently remind me to put God first through their own thoughts and actions.  I am grateful for snapchat.  

I saw my Twin Cities community the other day through a snapchat from my former PC who is in MN for his Fall area visit.  I saw the three of them together smiling at me through my phone, and I was reminded of how much I love them.  Upon seeing those three people, there was some unnecessary happy shouting.   

The Fall area visit for Philadelphia is in full swing, and last night was Spirituality Night in the Thomas Merton House.  We discussed beliefs.  I think the 6 of us melted a little while listening to this child’s list of 100 beliefs. 

http://www.npr.org/about/press/2009/011509.SevenYearOldTIB.html 

I've been keeping this in the back of my mind while at work today, and a few more thoughts popped into my head.  I believe in being present to the people I am with.  I believe that pieces of me are scattered across the country, tied up with the people I have come to appreciate and love.  I believe that sometimes all you can have with people are small moments through technology.  I am beginning to believe that technology may have some value for maintaining relationships, instead of being a distraction from the people I am with.  I believe this because I know I must have both feet on the ground in Philadelphia literally and metaphorically.  I believe people from my past experiences are important to keep with me.  As a result I've accepted the small sense of defeat  that has accompanied the reintroduction of my iPhone into my life.  I believe smartphones might not be as destructive as I previously thought.  However, I believe that people are capable of maintaining connections through more than just phones.  

I believe in the strength of letters.  I am certain I will continue to have circular, conflicting thoughts regarding my iPhone use.  I believe technology can be constructive.  But sometimes it's best to kick it old school.

Twin Cities:  keep checking your mail.   

I Found Love at Bottom Dollar

I’ve come to realize this about myself:  I make decisions using my brain, and then as my soul starts to catch up no amount of rationalization can completely deflect the emotional toll.   As I prepared to finish up my JV year in the Twin Cities, I was very conscious of the finite amount of time remaining with community and at my placement.   Historically, my goodbyes are inadequate and I wanted to give myself and the people in my life the space to provide a semblance of the ever-popular, but completely intangible “closure.”  At the end of July I said goodbye to my community members.  Sarah, Sean, and Luke are all gainfully employed in Minneapolis.  Two of them took staff positions at their JV placement sites.  In July I was prepping all of my clients at the Drop In center I worked at that I would be leaving.  I didn’t want any surprises for them.  I was so focused on the end being positive that I didn’t give the beginning of round two in Philadelphia much thought.      

Moving back to the East Coast and starting at a new placement, entering into a new community, and opening myself to a new city has been harder than I anticipated.  JVC often makes jokes about grocery shopping being overwhelming, and having to sort through the moral dilemma of which ketchup to choose that is both socially Just for our world, as well as JV budget friendly.  Comedic geniuses understand that solid humor is rooted in the foundational truths of day-to-day life.  I am not a comedic genius, but I appreciate the simplicity of this and will joyfully embrace the retrospective humor and awareness I find in this story.

This past week, I was at the Bottom Dollar in Philadelphia doing some mid-week shopping for our community.  I was in a rush and didn’t have a quarter to hand over as collateral for a shopping cart.  So, I decided to use this box I found in the store to collect all of the groceries I would purchase, because I was far too busy to ask for change.  As I meandered through an unfamiliar grocery store and yearned for the limited selection of Aldi, I became resentful.  I was angry that I had to leave the cities I fell in love with in Minnesota.  I was truly sad that while my community no longer lived together, they could entertain the possibility of enjoying each other’s company.  I was frustrated that shopping for a community of 6 presented more challenges than shopping for a community of 4.    All of these feelings were being pumped through my veins as I felt more and more disoriented in Bottom Dollar.  The boxes became more cumbersome as I walked down the aisles and as I continued shifting the weight of the flimsy boxes, I could not find the tortillas.  I could not find the red wine vinegar.  I felt overwhelmed with these feelings of grief and loss surrounding last year.  Much like the boxes I was juggling, readjusting, and shifting, these feelings felt awkward.

I had already said my goodbyes, cried, laughed, written letters, and sorted through these feelings.  I’ve learned to be gentler with myself this past year, and providing these residual feelings that I have deemed as “awkward” with the space and consideration to exist is part of that process.  In this instance, it’s clear that these feelings are too large to have been addressed and resolved in the month of July, and that it will just take time.  But I was fortunate enough to find something similar to closure at Bottom Dollar.  I think it was somewhere in aisle 3 with the pasta, when I realized that I can love more than one place, and I can love more than one community, and that my heart can grow, expand, and welcome many new people into it.  When I decided to learn to love Philadelphia, I was in the Bottom Dollar on 31^st and Girard.