The Art of the Visit

This is a blog I've been thinking about for a while, but alas, time, you crafty vixen, have gotten away from me.

A few weeks ago my mom and I traveled out to Chicago to see the city, yes, but also to visit some folks. I went to see some good Mississippi friends who have resettled there and she was looking forward to seeing an old college friend and a cousin she grew up with.

There have been times, I'll admit, when I feel like because I am single and in school (which means you have all the time in the world right?) I have been expected to be the one to go, to travel. And I often resent that. Yet, I'm coming to realize what a great gift it is to be able to visit others, both for them and for myself.

For one thing, because I generally avoid phone conversations and long e-mails about my life or anyone else's life (if you send me a mass e-mail from your summer trip, I probably won't read it), visiting gives me a chance to catch up on those things in person. Linda's trip to Europe for instance, was much more interesting to hear about while I visited her in Austin and we lounged spring side in the city. I understood her excitement and frustration more (yeah those French airline people stink) when I could hear and see her.

I also love seeing where people live. While visiting Ben in Baltimore, I saw his new place and where he works. I have some context now when he tells me about his day to day life.

It's great to have friends in fun places too. It's so much better to listen to the funny tour guide on the architecture tour with Erin than by myself. Also, it's good to be lead around sometimes, to have someone who knows where the good restaurants are and which museums are boring.

Often the visit is informative too, in a personal way. When I visited the Boston ladies at the beginning of September, I got in touch with my college self. Oh right, I remembered, I like dancing in the kitchen to ABBA, and telling dirty jokes. I am bonded with those women through a very certain time and place where we learned who we were.

The most interesting thing about visiting Juanita and Ann in Chicago was learning about my mom and indirectly, about where I came from. When my mom and Juanita talked, it was as if no time had passed, although it had been 30 years. I could see two college women who perhaps also danced in some kitchens and told dirty jokes.

I got to ask our cousin, Ann, something that has always intrigued me. I wanted to know about my grandmother, my mom's mom, who died before my second brother was born. What was she like? I asked. Because I feel like we have made her into a saint, and I'm sure she wasn't. What was she really like?

According to Ann, she was something close to a saint. Except she was sassier. She was warm and caring, but knew how to tell the truth. She could prepare a feast out of almost bare cabinets. Ann still remembers her as one of her favorite cooks. These memories were a great blessing to me.

Of course, I'm not the first to understand the transformative nature of a visit. Jesus visits all kinds of people and sometimes he transforms them, and sometimes he is transformed (see certain interpretations of the Syro-Phoenician woman). I think in a culture consumed by texting and facebook, it seems to be a great gift to be able to give if you can, all the way around.

Maybe some of you will be inspired to come visit me!

Oh the horror

So today, for no reason in particular, the second of two coffee makers my roommate and I have in our apartment quit on us. What is God trying to say?

I'd appreciate any feedback you have on models of coffeemakers or good places to buy them.

Birth of a Frustration

I've had one of those days, except its been a series of days. Those days where so many little things keep going wrong. Anne Lamott, a favorite Christian writer of mine, says these days, these little frustrations serve to birth something really beautiful. I'm still waiting for the something beautiful.

Let me explain. On my way out a Hebrew Exam on Friday, I found my driver's side mirror hanging off my car, three hours before I was supposed to drive down to Baltimore. After cursing the town of Princeton and all the rich, SUV driving yuppies in it, I took my car down the street to the mechanic where I was guilted into renting a car.

Next at the pharmacy I needed to stop at before leaving town, I discovered my doctor had not called in my prescription. Awesome.

On the way down to Baltimore, I stopped for a coke. I asked for a medium, but seeing that a medium meant a cup as tall as me, I asked for a small. The girl working the register looked at me as if I had just asked her to build a spaceship out of paperclips that could send me to the moon. I said I would take the large.

There was all kinds of traffic.

Upon arriving at my hotel, I realized my door was difficult. I tried unsuccessfully to open it with all my bags on me for about 10 minutes before going to the front desk. After the hotel "engineer" showed me that I paradoxically needed to pull and push it at the same time, I kind of got it, but it provided endless entertainment the rest of the weekend.

Later that night, coming back at midnight, my friend Erin couldn't park her car because an event entitled "Fierce, Fabulous and Fortunate" was taking place in the hotel's ballroom.

The next day, I tried to find a movie theatre but got stuck in traffic and missed them all.

Last night, I sat down to figure out some financial stuff only to realize A: the website the financial aid people sent me to wasn't acknowledging my school's existence, B: my credit card payment was actually due the day before, resulting in a $35 fee, C: I haven't gotten any work study or field ed money yet, and D: the people in San Antonio that owe me a refund (long story) are choosing not to acknowledge me

The section of the library I need has been closed both times I've tried to go.

The auditorium I need for the play I'm putting on has a roof that's caving in and we can't rehearse in there for a month.

I looked at the wrong shuttle times (because remember my car is still in the shop) and got to school way late.

My curtains have fallen down.

By now, you're undoubtedly all singing the Charlie Brown sad song for me. But seriously, all this has been so frustrating, and one side of you is like "How bad can it be? You have food and shelter and don't have AIDS or someone chasing you with a machete." In my selfishness, though, I don't what the beautiful thing being born is. I didn't fall in love at the mechanic's, or find a space even better than the auditorium, or find out about some amazing opportunity to build orphanages on the Galapagos Island while riding the shuttle.

If my frustrations have impacted your life for the better, please let me know.

This is a funny place

Well, it's been a while. Since my internship ended, I've been travelling, catching up with friends, and packing (and packing and packing). I've arrived safely at my new apartment in Princeton, and while a lot of my stuff is still in boxes, I feel remarkably at home already.

Sometimes it takes some travelling, I think, to help you realize how much you miss a place. This summer when people would ask about seminary, I would often say that I was enjoying it, but that I didn't necessarily feel at home here. While that might be true to some extent, this week I'm realizing that I've probably carved out more of a niche than I was aware of. Somehow I was personing (my alternative to "manning") two tables at the Organization Fair, have several birthday parties to go to already, and have known more people than not in most of my classes. That's a good feeling.

A few things have happened this week to remind me what a funny (in the good, beloved, funny valentine way) place this is.

- a professor cried during a lecture. Twice! A little awkward, I'll admit, but when do professors get so into what they're talking about that they cry?

- people have helped me out! From fixing the copy machine, to passing out fliers, to carrying the top half of my desk, colleagues have been anxious to kindly be of service. In case you live in a bubble, that doesn't happen all the time.

- we didn't get classroom assignments until the night before classes started. While this was not funny in a lot of ways since no one knew where their classes would be until 8 hours before they started, I choose to see at as another way that this place is personal and not robotic.

I'm looking forward to what the semester will bring!

10 (possible) Upsides to Having Your Wallet Stolen

In no particular order:

1. You get to feel very Law and Order when you go to not 1 but 2 ghetto police stations in Philly at 11 o'clock at night. (This after you've been sitting in your apt. for 3 hours because no one came. Apparently in Philly when a theft moves to a fraud, as in someone spending $317 on your card at CVS, an officer has to physically see you. Then when you go to station 1, they inform you that actually your particular crime happened right on the edge of their precinct and you need to go to station #2)

2. You don't have to worry about being mugged in said ghetto areas because everything worthwhile is already gone!

3. You become very chummy with your Bank representatives who, after detecting the crime before you did, seem like the Second Coming.

4. You get to make an unexpected trip to everyone's favorite place (wait for it)...The Jersey DMV!!

5. You get to make little jokies with the one nice guy of five people who check your IDs about why exactly you're carrying your College diploma, framed, into the DMV.

6. You find out your seminary is kindly not going to charge you for a new I.D.!!

7. After said DMV trip you get to see your baby niece for a little while.

8. You get to work on that all important Christian quality of forgiveness while picturing someone stealing your wallet out of your bag, running to CVS, spending $317, using the cash in your wallet to get to Cherry Hill, then spending $500 more at Target.

9. You get to hear everyone else's story about the time they lost their wallet, and kind of feel less bad about your situation. Kind of.

10. You get to correct everyone's assumption that the homeless people you work with took the wallet by saying, "Actually, my wallet was stolen in a food court in a really swanky hotel that caters to wealthy people and wouldn't let a homeless person in the door!"

Now doesn't all that sound awesome?

Caution: May be controversial and unpatriotic

For those of you who know me, you may know that I struggle with the relationship between the church and politics, specifically American politics. I wonder if it is the church's role to speak out about things like the war or gay rights (either for or against) or if we are called to speak more generally about the Kingdom of God and let people fill in the gaps. This is getting stirred up in me again this summer in light of an event the church I'm working at is having. We're hosting author, Shane Claiborne, in a few weeks to talk about his book, Jesus for President. I've read some of the book, but even if you haven't you can gain a lot from the title.

So then this happens. Today I got yet another e-mail forward of the "look at how hard the troops are fighting to protect your right to drink Starbucks, you unpatriotic hippie" variety. While I totally feel like people have a right, and should fight for the right, to be excited about our troops and the war on whatever, the fact remains that I have a right not to. More than that, I wonder how being patriotic has gotten boiled down to supporting a war or not.

So I looked up "patriotic" on dictionary.com. This is what came up:


patriotic
adjective
inspired by love for your country [ant: disloyal]
patriotic [pӕtriˈotik, (especially American) pei-] adjective
(negative unpatriotic) having or showing great love for one's country Example: He is so patriotic that he refuses to buy anything made abroad.


Two interesting things came out of that for me. The first being the antonym, which is "disloyal", and the second being the use of the word in a sentence.

These are interesting to me because firstly, my views are often called unpatriotic and, yet, I don't feel disloyal. Because if I am disloyal to America, who am I loyal to? And secondly, apparently buying things here makes one patriotic, which is funny considering so many of our clothes, toys, etc are made in sweat shops abroad.

Ok, then, in a very loose train of thought, I'm mixing around these ideas of God and country.

- Who am I loyal to? I should first and foremost be loyal to God in the way that Jesus was more loyal to God than to the Romans or Pharisees. The irony in that is that so many who are "patriotic" would also claim they are very loyal to God. Why then is there such a breakdown in ideologies and viewpoints?

- Many people who only buy "American", like in a real and true sense, are the same people who are called unpatriotic. You know who i mean -- people who do food through co-ops, make their own clothes, and use bio-diesel in their cars. Often though they also have some sort of bumper sticker on their car that talks about ending the war. Hmmm...

- I always thought that patriotic meant to help your country in some way be the best it can be, and for me that has meant speaking out against things I don't agree with or living with 5 other crazy people in a trailer in Mississippi fixing homes and lives, or eating the same meal with someone who has lived on the streets for 20 years. I do this firstly because God challenges us to love God by loving each other, but also on some level because this country has bestowed all kinds of amazing rights and privileges on me that I feel need to be realized by all in this country, and if the government can't do that for its own people than its our duty to do it for each other.

And so I think my point is not to pat myself on the back, but to really grapple with how to build bridges between two vastly different groups of people who both call themselves Christian and who both proudly call themselves American. Where and how does that conversation start?

A Blog in Two Parts

Part 1 in which I learn something new

Something I didn't realize until recently, which maybe you can relate to, is how informed people living on the streets are about politics and issues of social justice. They often hear things before the public, have witnessed both the pros and cons of service providers, and have a lot of time to discuss policies. The irony I caught on to this week, as I was telling my friend Irwin he should run for mayor since he knows a ton about Philly after 18 years on the street, is that many can't vote because they don't have permanent addresses or an ID to get them into the shelter (yes shelters in Philly require an ID) that might provide a mailing address or the $20 it costs to get an ID. Essentially, then, the people who are more informed about politics than most liberal college kids and who would benefit most from radical changes in government have no voice in that system. Huh.

Part 2 Its not all about you.

In talking with the youth this summer about different issues, the one topic that frequently comes up is why a lot of our homeless friends tend to be unsocial or resistant to conversation with them at our church meals. Many times the guesses from the teenagers about why this might be the case are something like, "They're jealous of us" or "They're intimidated by us". We gently explain that while there is a chance of this possibility, because our friends are battling larger systems of oppression than just who has the better iPod, "jealous" is probably not the word and because many of them have been beat up, robbed, or sexually assaulted in their time on the street, they're probably not intimidated by a bunch of rich, white kids.

The point is they make it about them without realizing our friends carry so much baggage with them into this place, both physical -- bags, duffels, backpacks -- but more importantly emotional -- shame, rejection, anger and fear. With all that, they may not want to talk about the weather with some kids they've never met before.

*I should sidebar here and mention that many in our congregation love to talk for hours and to meet new people, but there are a few who stick to themselves.

But in this misunderstanding I begin to reevaluate my own frustrations with this job and calling. I'm constantly frustrated about time off, how my work is received, who's doing what, how moving chairs fits into my job description. In other words its often all about me. Huh.