Thursday, May 17, 2007

Happy May :) I can’t believe that it is May already. It has been exactly a year since graduation it is so surreal even still. I was lucky enough to speak to a few close friends during their commencement ceremony for MSMC this year and it made me so happy. I will let the names remain anonymous but know that you made me extremely happy, I so wished that I could have been there. I have been having a hard time letting go of what college was. The memories will forever be with me but I have been wishing I was still there a lot lately; it is still a tough transition all these months later. Some days are better than others and this week seems to be a relapse week. Let’s go back to the end of April with Displace Me…

Invisible Children is an organization set up by 3 guys from So Cal who decided one day to go to Africa and were taken by the amount of people affected by the violence and decided to do something about it. MSMC showed a screening of IC 2 years ago, I think. Last year they had a nation wide event called, the Global Night Commute. This was to raise awareness of the night commuters. Children all over Africa commute nightly to "safer" places to sleep so they are not kidnapped by the Lords Resistance Army and turned into child soldiers so IC had this event in 136 different cities and had about 80,000 participants. Participants commuted by foot from a designated area to another area where they spent the night to be in solidarity with the children in Africa. 3 months after this event peace talks began to end the 21 year war in Uganda.

This year I learned that about 85% of the Ugandan population lives in displaced persons camps that is about 1.5 million people. imagine. So they decided to go bigger with this event and only hold it in 15 major cities in hopes that people would travel to the cities and choose to really be displaced for a night. One of the cities was Chicago and my roommate Stacey and I signed up to be volunteers for the event. It was on Saturday April 28th. Registration started from 3-midnight and there was a lot going on in this time. Official check-in was from 3-4. As people came in they got their wristbands and dropped off what water and saltines they brought in and then were sent to the far end of the parking lot, our camp, to set up their cardboard huts. At about 7pm started a series of video clips and action. IC is known for filming and doing documentary type things so it started with filming everyone who was there which I am pretty sure ended up being around 5000 people. There was a poem and each city had big banners with the lines to the poem so they started with people holding the banners and altogether all 5000 people kneeled down and stood up and then creamed a cream of injustice. It was powerful, it gives me chills just thinking about it. So they filmed a few different segments and then the videos started. The first video was about the huts that the Ugandans lived in and talked about how they decorate then to make them more like home. So after the segment everyone returned to their huts and decorated them. A lot of people wrote anti-war slogan and bible versus or lyrics to songs that were powerful, it was awesome. The next segment was the food and water. All we had there was saltines and water; I mean thousands and thousands of boxes of saltines and bottles of water. So the video played and talked about the food and water situation at the camps. All of the women were in charge of getting water and the men the saltines. They could only pick up one water bottle and one sleeve of saltines at a time and then return to their camps, drop it off and come back until everyone in their camp had food and water. It was nothing like what the Ugandans really went through but is was amazing to see the amounts of people who were willing to come back again and again and to watch the line of people. The line was never ending, I'm tall and I stood on my tiptoes and could not see an end, that was real. After that there was a segment about the history of the war followed by 21 minutes of silence for the 21 years that the war has been taking place. All 5000 people were silent; you could hear nothing, well besides the city still moving and alive around us. Talk about major Goosebumps. The final screening was a little boy from Uganda asking as that as we fall asleep to remember him and dream of them. It was moving and then came the most uncomfortable night of sleep in my life. We slept on cardboard on the concrete in a sleeping bag. I could not fall asleep, I was ready to give up and I felt like such a baby. I thought about Phil, a homeless man I had met through the homeless ministry I did while at MSMC and how he does this every night and I thought about all those who do this every night. It was eye opening and a crude reality check. In the morning they had an African drum choir wake us up, it was beautiful. This is an experience that I will never forget, an uncomfortable yet very real, eye opening experience.

The weekend after this event was our much needed silent retreat. This retreat was pretty much amazing. It was in Milford, Ohio. I am becoming a hard core Midwest traveler this year, its fun! Anyway…so we were staying at a Jesuit Retreat Center there. There facilities were awesome; we were out of the city and were right on the outskirts of the town of Milford. If you walked down the street leading to the retreat center you entered right into town, it was both a grace and a challenge. A Challenge because it encouraged talking and not really being intentional and it was a grace because there were real down to earth people there and a feel of a community that you don’t get or see in the city. There was river down the hill which was walking distance from where we were staying. Jeff, a JV from Milwaukee, and I went wading one afternoon in the river. I also spent some times in the mornings reflecting and praying by the river. It was very peaceful and a place to listen not only to God but the nature and to be fully embraced by natures beauty. When we were wading we did see a snake though and that was kind of scary and disturbed the peace! Every one had their own rooms, very simple with a bed, desk, chair and sink. Also every room had a big window which was nice. We got there on Wednesday evening and in true JVC Chicago style we were late and the last car there again. This has become our tradition. So we get there and everyone is eating dinner already so we grab some before they put everything away. I actually couldn’t eat because I had gotten really sick and couldn’t eat for about 4 day’s total (that’s a different story). Wednesday night we had community check ins and we have these at every retreat where we all talk about one or 2 challenges an graces in community since the last retreat. It is always nice to hear how everyone is doing and also to hear that your community is not the only one struggling. After that the night was ours to chat and catch up with those who we haven’t seen in a while. Then Thursday was not a silent day. We had a speaker come a talk to us about his experience as a JV, he is now a Jesuit and I can’t remember his name but he talked to us about immersion after our JV year and how not to lose what we have. It was a great talk and we had time to break off into groups with people who were not in our communities and talk about a list of things from the talk. We pretty much had the rest of the day to hang out and get all the talking out for the rest of the day and then came the silence. On Thursday evening we were introduced to our spiritual directors for the retreat, mine was Marj. 5 of us had Marj so we all met with her and she introduced herself and told us a little bit about her role. She was there as a guide. If we were encountering struggles with the silence or anything that we were thinking about during the retreat she was there for us to talk to. I met with Marj every day, she is awesome! Then we all gathered in the chapel and yes, we were late. There we were to gather ourselves and prepare and when we were ready to enter into silence we left and pretty much everyone went to their rooms to read and sleep. Day one of silence was not so bad. We had breakfast first thing and the first meal was super awkward. People were just kind of staring out of the windows and at each other. At meals music was playing which eased the tension a little bit but it was really bad music! There was Morning Prayer in the main room and it was a meditation which was nice. Then I met with Marj and told her what I wanted to get out of the silent retreat which was just peace. I just wanted “to be” I wanted to spend time with God and to experience God as fully as I could. She game me some materials some centering prayers and mantras to think and pray about. Then the day was mine. The whole entire day was mine to be silent and reflective. This was tough, it was tough not to get bored because there was nothing planned so I took a few long walks outside, the weather was gorgeous, I played Frisbee in silence, I walked the labyrinth which was cool and I sat and read for a while. By night time I cracked. I was having a hard time being silent around so many people and on Friday evening a JV from Detroit asked me if I wanted to go for a walk so we did and we chatted a bit. It was nice though. That night some people built a bonfire in the fire pit and there was conversation there as well. Some of us ended up staying up until 4am chatting. It was really nice, not silent but very rewarding none the less. On Saturday I was intentionally silent in the morning. There was Morning Prayer after breakfast again and I met with Marj and told her about talking and she laughed but reassured me that it was ok. Then again, the day was mine. I was silent most of the daytime again except when I played Frisbee with Jeff, we were chatting and laughing, mostly because I didn’t know how to throw it. I slept that afternoon because I was super tired from hardly any sleep the night before. For evening prayer we had Tai Chi, which was fun, it was relaxing. After Tai Chi we went and played cards and baseball in the dining hall. The night was by far the toughest time to be quiet. When we gather at other retreats the nights are ours to play games and hang out so we naturally got really antsy and a big group of us ended up hanging out. It was a great time. I was really insistent on spending intentional time being silent and focusing on just being which Marj informed me at our last meeting that I had for sure accomplished just being. That was great to hear because I felt like I was failing miserably. She told me I was very peaceful and happiness radiated from me explaining how I was seeing God. It was really refreshing to hear what she had to say to me on Sunday morning. The weekend ended in Mass where we did not have to be silent. Oh, there was Mass every day during the “silence” also, that was also really refreshing. Masses are always fun when we are al together. When it gets to the “Peace be with you” the Priest always tells us to wait until the end so Jesus isn’t waiting for so long. It’s funny! We then shared our last meal being as noisy as we could, it was great food all weekend as well, well when I could eat it it was fabulous! Overall the weekend was so good. I have realized the true power of just being and appreciating the birds chirping and literally stopping to smell the roses in all aspects of life. I have learned how to talk to God about every and any thing like and old friend. I am still learning to trust fully and wholeheartedly in God. It is not an easy task but this year and the opportunity to reflect on things at this retreat has definitely made it a priority in my life now.

My whole perspective on JVC as a whole changed over this weekend also. I was not gung ho for recommending JVC to anyone based on all the disappointments that I encountered in the first few month of being here. It was really tough. I have learned though that it is what you make it. It is about embracing differences and accepting people for who they are rather than comparing them to who I am. It is about working hard in relationships and being intentional to where I am now. I have grown in so many ways and continue to do so and definitely would recommend JVC to others, I’ll even promote it!

Happy Mothers Day Moms! A little late but eh, it’s tradition. There is a new addition to our family, little Dyllan was born on Mothers day. He was 7lbs. 10.5 oz and 20 inches. He is adorable! My sister and Dyllan are both healthy and doing well. I can’t wait until I get to see him, just a month to go!

Next weekend we will head up to Detroit for Memorial Day weekend, it should be fun times, as always! I am continuing job searching in San Diego and am so excited to be moving back in June. Bev is coming to visit soon and I am so excited and Roberta will be visiting in July. She is doing JVC in Tennessee this year so it will be cool to talk about our experiences so far. There are exciting things coming up! Come and visit, Chicago summers are amazing I hear!

Happy Graduation to those who graduated! You are amazing :)

Love, Blessings and Peace to all xoxo

Labels: