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           I haven’t blogged for quite some time now, which some of you have noticed.  As odd as it is for me to be accountable to a community like this one, I am grateful for the kind thoughts and wishes those of you who have been mourning my lack of writing have expressed.  It’s weird to have a following—small though it may be!

            As I mentioned in my first post, blogging does not come naturally to me, and that’s part of the reason I’ve been distant.  The larger reason though, is my hesitance to be publicly vulnerable.  I have been struggling since my last blog—not with safety or the garden or my housemates, or any of the normal YAV things it is assumed we volunteers struggle with.  I have been struggling with the idea of my future.

            I know this sound ridiculous; that I should focus on the present and the many gifts I have right now.  I live in an amazing city that is perpetually unfolding its awesomeness to me.  Every time I venture out of my house, I meet a new friendly person, or get to experience yet another humble and overwhelmingly delicious restaurant, or learn about some new festival on the horizon that is celebrating some obscure and worthy venture—facial hair, merlitons (aka chayote squash), gumbo, voodoo, music, BBQ, Po’boys—the list goes on and on and on.  My housemates, even when they are frustrating, are a delight.  My every encounter with them allows me to further explore who they are and what they love, as well as learn more about who I am and what I love. 

            And yet…I constantly worry.  Not about tomorrow, or the day after that.  Not about the many plans and events I have been instituting for my job here; those will fall into place and I will worry about them when their time comes.  I am worried about what on earth I will do when this year is over.  And what is manifesting this fear is that I want to go home when my time in New Orleans is finished, and I don’t know where home is anymore.

            Perhaps it is my undue obsession with my age, or perhaps it is just exhaustion, but I feel a need to finally settle.  However, I don’t have a clue where I should seek sustenance for the roots I long to put down.   Thus, I have been trying to define what “home” means for me, and here is what I have come up with: 

• Home is where I have space that is mine—space to furnish and share and grow a garden and keep a dog.
• Home is where I have a sense of community—friends, family, and neighbors—people that help me stay grounded and who lovingly challenge me to grow.
• Home is where I can explore a fulfilling vocation. 
• Home is where I have a meaningful relationship with a church.  Where I am known and can know others in the family of Christ, and where I can experience the Glory of God in both silence, as well as through thought provoking sermons, classes, and study groups. 
• Home is where I have a sense of place—where I value and honor the land around me as much as the people who live on that land. 

            Of all the areas I have lived, only two come close to encompassing this definition, yet both are lacking on some level.  I know that the onus is on me to discover some locale that fulfills all these needs, but I am so weary from searching!  And while I have been excitedly considering grad-schools and seminaries, I am keenly aware that those would still be temporary homes in temporary communities. 

           

            How does a person go about finding their place?   Is it serendipitous or does one turn to past experiences for comfort?  Is it a conscious choice?  How do adults establish community in our modern world?  And how do they sustain it when their communities are ever shifting?  Does anyone actually have the luxury of a sense of place anymore?  Is this even a realistic expectation?     

            As I write this, I feel self-conscious and pathetic.  I have a blessed seven more months to resolve these issues, so why let them weigh on my heart now?  But if I am to be honest in this odd blogging experiment, if I am to be REAL, then I must acknowledge how overwhelmed I am by feeling that I do not belong anywhere and how desperate I am to belong somewhere.  

"Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, 

especially in the inner city.  Plus, you get strawberries."

     -Ron Finley 

Check out his TED talk here 

Look what I grew!!  Brassicas on the left (Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbages), Flowers (Johnny Jump-Ups and Marigolds) on the right!  

Fear and Trembling

          Today I went to the reading hour at my community center in Pension Town.  I went to reading hour not knowing what to expect, but excited to see what the center was about and meet some folks who might be interested in volunteering in the garden. 

            Over enormous blueberry Costco muffins and bottles of ice water, I sat with four other women, the only white lady among them, and read Little Black Girl Lost #4, an account of a farmer’s daughter captured from Nigeria by Dutch slave traders.  As I am reading this book with these women, all of whom are older than me, I notice how many of them struggle with the reading.  Listening to them read aloud is similar to listening to my former eighth grade students read aloud; they help each other, but frequently stumble over complicated words. 

            As I am reading this book with these women, I also notice how much violence is present.  Of course, we are reading about the conditions on a slave ship en-route to Europe from Africa, but in only twenty pages, we are privy to the grisly details of a beating, a shooting, and three shark attacks.   One of the victims of these incidents is a child.  We stop at this point to reflect on how witnessing violence impacts children, and how children deal with witnessing violence, as well as living with the threat of violence on a daily basis.  We are not talking about the book anymore.

           

            I live in one of the deadliest cities in the United States.  There have been four murders in my neighborhood already this year, including the September 2^nd death of an 11-year old girl.  She was shot in a drive by while sleeping in her home less than two blocks from the garden where I work.  Two years ago, there was a drive by shooting at the school where my garden is located, in the middle of the day!  No less than eight gang members just got arrested at the corner store with the excellent fried chicken that sits across the street from my garden.  In June, an Americorps volunteer was shot to death while walking on one of the cross streets that borders my garden.

            I listen to these women reflect on how these events shape this neighborhood that is my home.  I listen to them and I think, “What am I doing here?”  I am a little white girl lost in a land where the privilege of my skin color, education, and class separate me from those I’m called to serve every day.  I don’t have stories about getting pregnant at 17 and then watching the same thing happen to my daughter.  I don’t have stories about watching my son witness a murder and then turn to drugs, before eventually getting the help he needed through a social worker.  All I have is a donated tomato plant, and a donated trowel, and what frequently feels like a donated sense of courage. 

            I believe that, with God’s help, I can be safe in my garden, and that showing up and humming to my plants on a sweaty patch of asphalt can serve as a witness to the idea that if God can sustain my trust and my courage in the face of so much fear, maybe He can start doing it for more of the folks around me.  And maybe, that will make the world a slightly better place for all of us.  

Orienting

         

     Greetings all!  Sorry it's been a while since my last post, but as I mentioned in my first post, blogging gives me anxiety.  Anywho, I've been reflecting a lot lately on my YAV orientation thus far, which has consisted of two stages: the first was a week in Stony Point, New York with all 68 of the Young Adult Volunteers serving this year, as well as with YAV Alums and national church office staff.  The second is currently taking place in and around the city of New Orleans.  Though our city orientation technically ended two weeks ago when we began work at our site placements, I’m still getting my feet under me, and while I love and value being oriented, it is exhausting, and it’s particularly difficult because I feel hyper cognizant of my age.

            Though one can serve as a YAV if they are anywhere between the ages of 19 and 30, after which I guess you’re no longer considered “young” and only “adult”, no one in the upper end of this age spectrum seems to serve.  Case in point: perhaps 8 of the 68 YAVs this year were past the age of 25.  I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that this is due to the fact that by the time most folks hit 30, they have somehow managed to figure their lives out, at least to the extent that they don’t need to spend a year living with other people that they don’t really know doing community service work.  Folks near 30 are supposed to be in grad school, getting married, having babies, or holding down jobs that pay them a salary whilst providing health care and ensuring eventual financial stability.  Near 30 year olds are “productive”, not inquisitive!  I’ve always assumed that by the time I was cresting 30 this would be my reality too.  I honestly thought that just approaching that magic number would make my life fall into place; it would somehow settle me.

            In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this has not happened, and I must say, being an almost not “Young” Adult Volunteer is intimidating.  My time at Stony Point really hit this home for me.  Here I was, surrounded by folks fresh out of college, who stared at me with a confused awe.  “What the hell is this old person doing here?” I imagined them wondering, and then subsequently tweeting/texting/ or Facebook messaging to all of their friends. 

            For me, this second year of YAV means embracing ambiguity and acknowledging that I don’t have my shit together in a profound and jarringly vulnerable way.  It also means redefining adulthood and honoring the fact that life is gloriously messy.  Relationships don’t always work out, jobs aren’t always fulfilling, achieving the “American Dream” can be a slippery business, and no matter how many times you had to read Death of a Salesman in high school, it’s still hard to acknowledge that dream as impossible to maintain, and frequently overrated.

            This year is definitely going to continue to be uncomfortable for me, but ultimately, I’m having a good time, and folks, YAV and otherwise, are meeting me where I am and respecting and even celebrating it.  I only hope that I can do the same for the people I live with, work with, and encounter through this program, and that I can continue to do so well into my “adulthood”—whatever that eventually comes to mean for me.  

 

Some pics from Stony Point...

My wonderful small group!

from left--Catherine, Clarissa, Bennett, Me, Tony, Libby, and Kelsey

The YAVs I got commissioned with at First Presbyterian Church of Englewood enjoying Korean BBQ!

Clockwise from left--Kelsey, Suyeon, Me, and Ian 

Katrina Remembered

Yesterday marked the eight year anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Sit with that for a minute.  

Eight years later and there are still people living displaced lives; modern American refugees in states and places that are not home.  There are also folks rebuilding, resettling, recommitting to the joy of this place.  This is the community I have been called to serve.    

While we didn't do anything to commemorate the event as a YAV house, which, quite frankly, I'm not sure how we would have done anyway, the date weighed on my heart, and I was pleased to notice this story on NPR , acknowledging the destructive anniversary and celebrating the work of Ronald Lewis, who I had the pleasure of reading about in Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans.

Mr. Lewis' dedication to the preservation of Mardi Gras Indian culture in NOLA is inspiring, and his passion for the resuscitation and celebration of the Lower Ninth ward is contagious.  While it is easy to get flooded with grief from the images above and the memories they evoke, New Orleans is a city still living into the reality of surviving trauma, and rightfully honoring and glorifying that survival.  I take a lot of hope away from folks like Ronald Lewis. I'm hoping to meet the man and visit his House of Dance and Feathers soon.

Until then, the city breathes and weeps and sings, honoring the abundance that is having enough.  

Initial Reflections

            Well, I’ve had this blog up here for about a month now, and I’ve done nothing with it for a plethora of reasons:

  1)   I don’t know how to blog.  I am used to writing newsletters, which are long-winded, comprehensive, and usually have a theme.  From what I can infer, blogging is comprised of brevitous snippets of thought and reflection; I am not known for my brevity.

  2)  I am afraid of blogging.  Yes, I’m a “millennial”, (I think…but maybe I’m a Gen Y?  How does one discover the hip term applicable to their stage of development?) but I don’t really like technology.  The internet is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but I like looking at people when I talk to them, and quite frankly, I’m not comfortable with the idea that anyone can check in to my ramblings in a public forum (like this one), or see pictures of my every social interaction on Facebook.  I’ve probably just watched too much Law and Order SVU or read too much Science Fiction, but the idea of everyone having access to the speed of my latest sneeze freaks me out!

  3)  Blogging seems self-indulgent.  I guess if you’re writing an advice column that's an exception, but it just feels presumptuous to assume that people are interested enough in my life to interrupt their own and read about it.  Perhaps this is some left-over self esteem issue missed by a middle school counselor, or perhaps I have the wrong idea about blogging, but blogging seems synonymous with public diary writing, and all my experiences with diaries involved tiny gold locks.  Usually, things with locks are supposed to be somehow protected from other people, no?  When one considers writing their most private thoughts in this format, #2 becomes an even greater concern. 

            So that’s my disclaimer…BUT the Presbyterian Church is encouraging me to write a blog in this, my second year of service as a Young Adult Volunteer, and I’m taking their advice.  I want to keep up with those few and varied people in the world who are interested in my life through sharing stories and thoughts, even if they aren’t as brevitous as seems appropriate, and also, I am trying something new, which is really what this year is about for me.  Becoming a YAV again seems crazier the more I think about it—I am turning 30 this year (what?!), I had a stable job with health insurance, I’m not accustomed to room mates, I’ve never even visited New Orleans—BUT I am having a year of adventure, a year of trying new things.  All last year I sat in my little house with my big dog and watched my world get smaller and smaller, and that is not how I wanted to live.  This is my year of hitting the metaphorical “reset” button on my life. 

            So anxieties, be damned!  I am excited to live with seven other women!  I am aching for Christian fellowship!  I am pumped to explore New Orleans!  I am stoked to eat boudin and live in a city and gaze lovingly at the Mighty Mississippi!  Bring it, New Orleans--with your food and your love and your hurricanes and your history!  I’m throwing caution to the wind to live joyfully again!