This I believe.

This week, we had a community/spirituality night entitled "This I Believe," based on the NPR radio series and the couple books out by the same title. As the introduction to the book says, "This I Believe offers a simple, if difficult invitation: Write a few hundred words expressing the core principles that guide your life -- your personal credo. ... This I Believe is an exercise in philosophical self-examination in a public context. It rises from the grass roots, where people can begin to listen to each other, one at a time." So we each wrote a short essay and read them out loud to each other, one at a time. The task was more difficult than I thought it would be, and I wish I had taken more time to complete my short essay (I wrote it at the end of a long work day, forgot to print it out or email it, then re-wrote it quickly when I got home), but here's what I came up with...

I doubt myself pretty frequently -- my decisions, my plans, my work, my views. Hell, just reading a well-written philosophical piece can temporarily unravel what I consider to be my firmly held beliefs. But I consistently believe in the value of two things: learning and giving. In learning about others, I learn, too, about myself. I seek to understand -- to understand what makes me who I am, you who you are, and them who they are. And in learning about people, I recognize our similarity and equality. I see that we are equal genders, races, ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientations, people. I see that we are uniquely gifted and flawed, myself included, and that these flaws unite us in humble humanity. 

And what's more, as I learn about the world we as people inhabit, I am inevitably drawn to the grandeur of a divine Creator. There are few things more beautiful to me than the mysteries and phenomena of biology -- the ever-turning circle of life, to be sure, but also the intricate turnings of the citric acid cycle, the blob-like-yet-perfectly-folded shape of a protein, the leap from electro-chemical nerve synapses to consciousness. When I marvel at these processes, I turn to God in humility, confusion and adoration. Learning makes me a better person. This I believe. I seek to learn and to marvel always, and to never close my mind to the possibility that I am completely and utterly wrong.

I believe just as assuredly in giving. After all, how can I respond to God's overflowing love in any other way than to be generous with my own love? In giving myself and my love to others -- family, friends and strangers -- I encounter the divine reality of relationship: that we are all a connected community of beings. In service, I encounter God, for it is in loving the unloved that I can most readily mimic God's example and that I can most faithfully bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. I believe that we can be the best versions of ourselves when we are giving that self away. Because in its essence, "giving" is not just a one-way process; in being present to one another, we become connected. I believe that in the balance of grasping versus sharing, it is sharing that will bring us peace and justice. I believe in giving. I hope that in my life, I will share rather than grasp, and give rather than keep.

I choose to invest my life, and my love, in learning and giving. In so doing, I will be reminded during my times of doubt and questioning of the goodness of God and the beauty of human connection.

"Shame on Ceasar! ... Seniors! ... Cedars! I meant Cedars!"

A couple weeks ago for one of our community nights we attended a candlelit vigil/protest of the closing of the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in L.A. This is the latest in a trend of psychiatric services being cut across the state, including MediCal cutting much of its coverage for psych services. Most of us work with persons with mental illness in some capacity or another, so we see daily how essential these outpatient and inpatient services are. I'm happy that one of the speakers at the vigil made the point of saying that without psychiatric care, many people would end up in prison or on the streets. Unfortunately, the decision has already been made, and plans are already being carried out to close the 60-bed psych ward at Cedars, but we attended the vigil to help make the point that mental health is just as important as any other piece of healthcare. As a psychology major, it's natural for me to consider mental illness as a part of overall health, but there is certainly still a stigma attached to disorders of the brain.

After the vigil, we walked around the massive block of buildings that makes up Cedars Sinai, chanting "Cedars must reconsider!" and "Shame on Cedars!" Try repeating that for about 20 minutes at a high volume. I kept saying things like "Shame on Ceasar!' and "Shame on seniors!" And my voice was pretty hoarse at work the  next day...

one more year?

I'm applying for an additional year of JVC. Crazy? Maybe...but no more so than it was to move across the country in the first place to share oh-so-limited resources with six strangers who are intensely passionate about working with the marginalized. To share some insight into my crazed mind, here is an excerpt of my application, from the essay prompt about motivations. It's not my finest literary work, but I think it aptly depicts why I am even considering this next leap of faith...

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       I wrote in my application to JVC last year that “I see JVC as an opportunity to adapt an orientation of myself towards others and towards the world -- an orientation of self-giving love, rather than selfishness and greed.” I could not have understood the degree to which that statement would be true just one year later. I could not have understood how working intimately with the marginalized would motivate me to fight for change; how living in a community would nurture my faith; or how running out of cash could make me reassess “necessities.” Although I had previously accepted the values of JVC on face value, actually living them has begun forming me into the loving person I long to be. I know that there is much room for still further growth before I will have the confidence and courage to truly integrate these counter-cultural ideals into my life beyond JVC.

      In this sense, my motivations for applying for an additional year are much the same as they were last year. Yet this year, I apply with greater conviction and understanding. I apply with the knowledge that being loving to community members does not always mean being “nice,” and that giving of myself fully to clients requires more than a solid work ethic. I apply with a genuine enthusiasm to continue along the path of growth as a self-giving and loving woman for others, rooted in an Ignatian sense of spirituality. Being a JV this year has made me certain that I want to commit my life to social justice -- and in particular to work at the intersection of medicine and social justice. My work this year has also convinced me of the type of physician I long to be: one that treats each patient with dignity and respect regardless of socioeconomic status, and one that advocates for justice in the systems that preclude some from necessary healthcare. I know that an additional year of JVC would foster the attitude and conviction I need in order to develop into this person.

      I also know that an additional year of JVC would be challenging, and in many ways more so than this current year. Simply maintaining the level of energy I have now for both my placement and my community will be a challenge. I had not anticipated how much effort would be required to support community after a long day of working, but I believe in the fruits of community enough to put in that effort. I anticipate being challenged by the transition to a new community, too. Beyond uprooting myself from the known to the unknown, I foresee facing a constant temptation to judgmentally compare my new community to Casa Maura Clarke. I acknowledge that the mental comparisons sometimes cannot be avoided and may be valuable, but I do hope to keep my self-judgment to a minimum. Whether or not I live in an additional year community, I know that my views toward community will be shaded by the successes and failures of my present community; I hope to learn to appreciate these insights without imposing upon the organic development of my new community.

      I believe I have been more present in the past six months than at any point during my college career. Unlike my previous life of constant stress over future plans, I have been taking each day and learning from my interactions with new and familiar people. I know that I will struggle next year to balance presence to community and clients with my goal to simultaneously apply for medical programs. However, I hope to find inspiration in the knowledge that this presence to my JV years will positively impact my life as a student and physician.

      I desire to accept these challenges, and to continue grappling with the challenges I currently face in my JV year. I want to live in closer solidarity with the individuals I serve. I want to commit to a simple lifestyle beyond my superficial acceptance of the challenge to make it through each month within stipend. I want to nurture the strong drive for social justice that the past few months have planted in me. There are many ways in which I hope to strengthen my commitment to the JVC values, and I am excited by the opportunity to do so in the next year and a half. 

Boring, but true. Cheers to you for reading this far.

Silver lining: discovering the beauty of community

I feel ashamed for having posted so little about community. Part of the reason for this is laziness: I'm too lazy to explain to people outside of intentional communities what it means to be living in one. Part of the reason is that there are so many intricate pieces of community that it's difficult to make generalizations in giving said explanation. Part of the reason is that I'm still coming to understand what exactly intentional community means for me.

But the happenings of the past few weeks demand that I reflect on community, and perhaps the best way to illuminate the importance of CMC is to share examples of community "working" and functioning at its best. Indeed, I'm pretty sure the reasons that I have survived the past two weeks at work are my resolution to be more patient, this song played on repeat, and the support of my community.

Background story. I am currently doing three jobs at work: my own two jobs as cafe manager at Bread and Roses and case manager with the Culinary Training Program (CTP), and now also the job of "program manager" of CTP (the program manager is on leave). Now, the position of program manager is several pay grades above mine (that is to say, above not being paid), and it is a pretty hefty job to just wake up one day and have without asking for. Since case management meetings and notes took up the bulk of my time in CTP, I had previously done very little to help with the administrative side of running CTP, making it all the more difficult to figure out what to do when I became the sole administrator. I could go on, but needless to say, I have been a little bit very stressed about this whole situation.

Enter CMC.

My community of seven has been a source of support all year, but especially as I cope with these [hopefully] temporary changes at work. I feel safe being myself in the environment of CMC, and I feel comfortable bringing up challenging issues, be they personal or communal. Each person brings their own strengths and weaknesses; their own experiences and values; and their own challenges. Each person has supported me in a different way in the past two weeks...Sarah has been an incredible listener; Jackie has managed to make this ridiculousness seem funny; Megan has offered spiritual advice; Emily has shared her resources as I try to design the job search curriculum of CTP; Maria jumped at the opportunity to bash SJC; and Kevin has played cards and drunk beer with me.

I do know (and if you know me, then you know, too) that I am prone to exaggeration. But while I may be playing up the stress at work (my anxiety is probably still less than it was any given day at Georgetown), I am not exaggerating how happy I am to be living in the intentional community of CMC this year. I do not think I could be introduced to social work in any other way and come out of the year anything but jaded.

I'll conclude this long, rambling post with a quote from Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities (one of which I volunteered at as a freshman at Georgetown):

Each member of a community who grows in love and wisdom helps the growth of the whole community. Each person who refuses to grow, or is afraid to go forward, inhibits the community's growth. All the members of a community are responsible for their own growth and that of the community as a whole.

Perhaps the most essential quality for anyone who lives in community is patience: a recognition that we, others and whole community, take time to grow. If we are to live in community, we have to be friends of time.

Memorial of the Martyrs

December 2 was a special day for Casa Maura Clarke, Casa Ita Ford and Casa Dorothy Kazel of L.A. It was the anniversary of the deaths of the namesakes of our JVC houses. The fourth martyr, Jean Donovan, also had a JVC community, Casa Jean Donovan, until it was consolidated into DK and Ita this year. All four women were beaten, raped and murdered by a Salvadoran death squad on Dec. 2, 1980. Two were Maryknoll sisters, one an Ursuline sister, and the fourth a laywoman; all were Catholic missionaries working with the poor in El Salvador before their untimely deaths.

We attended a memorial service at Mount Saint Mary's College last Friday night, with about 30 sisters, including a few Maryknoll sisters and more than a few who knew the women. Rather than recount the service, I'll share a quote from each of the four martyrs:

"We have refugees, women and children, outside our door and some of their stories are incredible.  What is happening here is all so impossible, but happening.  The endurance of the poor and their faith through this terrible pain is constantly pulling me to a deeper faith response. My fear of death is being challenged constantly as children, lovely young girls, and old people are being shot and some cut up with machetes and bodies thrown by the road and people prohibited from burying them. One cries out:  ‘O God, how long?’  And then, too, what creeps into my mind is the little fear, or big, that when it touches me very personally, will I be faithful? I want to stay on now.  I believe now that this is right. God is very present in seeming absence."

-Sister Maura Clarke, M.M.

"Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could except for the children, the poor bruised victimes of adult lunacy. Who would care for them? Whose heart would be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and helplessness? Not mind, dear friend, not mine."

-Jean Donovan

"[El Salvador is] writhing in pain—a country that daily faces the loss of so many of its people – and yet a country that is waiting, hoping, yearning for peace.  The steadfast faith and courage our leaders have to continue preaching the Word of God even though it may mean ‘laying down your life’ in the very REAL sense is always a point of admiration and a vivid realization that JESUS is HERE with us. Yes, we have a sense of waiting, hoping and yearning for a complete realization of the Kingdom, and yet we know it will come because we can celebrate Jesus here right now."

-Sister Dorothy Kazel, O.S.U.

"I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you; something worth living for -- maybe even worth dying for; something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can't tell you what it might be -- that's for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking ahead and support you in the search."

-Sister Ita Ford, M.M., in a letter to her 16-year-old niece

A JVC Southwest Thanksgiving

I know Thanksgiving was a while ago, and I know people quickly moved on to Christmas. However, this was my first Thanksgiving away from family (not away from home, though, since we celebrated in Scotland one year), and I think it bears recounting on the blog since it was a great weekend! Thanksgiving with 35 JVs in Phoenix isn't quite the same as Thanksgiving with the fam, but if there's a group of people I'd want to spend this Thanksgiving away from home with, it'd be these fools.

Two 21-pound stuffed turkeys, 25 lbs. of mashed potatoes, 18 lbs. of sweet potatoes, 12 pies, and a whole lotta love.

   

 And, as JVs do, we went on a hike up Camelback Mountain.

   

Sunsets in Phoenix apparently always look this beautiful.

This torta was legitimately one of the top-five sandwiches I have ever eaten. Just amazing. And maybe this photo from an art exhibit we went to in L.A. a few months ago gives you an idea of how I feel about sandwiches.

We found a Christmas parade in Tempe, followed by a tree lighting. We were older than all the kids and younger than all the grandparents in attendance, but it was a fun way to mark the beginning of the Christmas (well, technically Advent) season.

Things that have happened

Sorry for neglecting you, blog readers. My only explanation for my absence is that I got hooked on the show Parks and Recreation (go watch it immediately), so every time I opened the internet to write a blog post I got sucked into the next episode...it's a wonder I didn't fail out of college. Here's a crash course on the mid-October to mid-November happenings of my life: 

We went to San Diego for Halloween weekend.

The seven casamates of CMC dressed up as loose interpretations of the seven days of the week. I was Wednesday (from the Adams Family).

San Diego was beautiful (especially Balboa Park, pictured below), and further convinced me that L.A. is ugly.

But then Los Angeles tried to make us think it was pretty with this sunset on our drive back.

On Halloween night, we walked down Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood with a couple thousand other Los Angelenos in costume.

Jackie and I "volunteered" at a gala benefitting a fellow L.A. JV's agency, which actually turned into us just being the youngest, least-wealthy guests at a ritzy country club in Pasadena.

My parents visited! In typical Arnold fashion, we spent the weekend eating good food and drinking good wine.

We visited a winery in Temecula.

And drove along the coast to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano.

My parents took the whole casa out to a Korean BBQ restaurant, where the waitress shot us disdainful looks all night long for being Korean BBQ beginners. But we didn't care because the meat was so. flavorful. 

We met with some of Casa Ita Ford for a hike near Pasadena.

Other news-in-brief: St. Joseph Center had a staff-wide retreat, where I was reminded of all the great things going on at our agency. We did a few 5K walks for local organizations, including the food bank I visit every week for Bread and Roses. We sent a new class of almost-graduates from the Culinary Training Program to their externships. And Bread and Roses is getting ready for a Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday!

Oh, and the Packers are still undefeated, which I will now enjoy from the Packers bar I found in West L.A.

'Cause This is Thriller

It was my turn to lead community night this week, and [not to toot my own horn but...] I would call it a pretty big success. I decided to teach my casamates the Thriller dance. It wasn't exactly like the music video (I only had about a half hour to prepare and learn it), but I do hope to one day master the actual dance. I blended the music video version with the version we've taught to our five-year-olds in Dance DC and came up with the newly minted CMC version. It's awesome.

If you're interested, the dancing in the official music video (below) begins at about 8:30.

H O L L Y W O O D

This past weekend, we explored Hollywood on our way to a BBQ hosted by one of the other JV houses. Since we were avoiding museums with entrance fees, we just wandered up and down Hollywood Boulevard and admired the walk of fame and the handprints of stars outside the Chinese Theatre.

Some of my favorites:

  

I was back in West Hollywood on Monday at the House of Blues for an Obama fundraiser/rally. I wouldn't say I'm his biggest supporter of late, but when someone offers me a free pass to a $250 event that gets me 20-25 feet from the president of the United States, I accept. I volunteered to help staff the event after I met a classmate at a Georgetown Alumni Association event who is currently working full-time for the Obama re-election campaign of Southern California.

My job as a volunteer was to be a gatekeeper of a staircase for VIPs only, which happened to be only feet from the stage...

The event was emcee'd by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Mitchell on "Modern Family"), and there were performances by the Gay Men's Chorus of L.A. and the rapper B.o.B. (who actually has some songs you might recognize) to warm up the crowd. I'm really not sure what target demographic they were going for with this event, but it seemed to work.

So because my fellow stair-guarder and I spent a fair amount of time with Jeff the Secret Service guy (Is his name really Jeff? We'll never know...), we were allowed to sneak into the front section before President Obama came in. Not a bad vantage point:

  

  

The president spoke about the economy and the jobs bill he introduced, about his campaign for re-election, and about the 13 months until then. The overarching theme was that the vision he put forth in 2008 is the same vision he has for the country today. There were a few jabs at the GOP, but it was primarily a positive message directed at a lot of frustrated people. (Speaking of frustration, folks were paying $38,000 for the fundraising event that followed this one later in the evening; meanwhile, people are homeless and hungry down the street.)

The bad part was the commute, which was easy on the way there when streets were open, but quite an adventure on the way home when my phone was dead and I was wandering through West Hollywood...whoops. I knew where I was the entire time but just couldn't find any buses that were running, and in the end it only took me an hour and a half to get home. However, taking the bus did afford me the opportunity to do more sightseeing than I could while driving, and I can definitely understand why people who live in West Hollywood/Beverly Hills like L.A. It is a very different Los Angeles than the one I work in every day...

CMC Mission Statement

We have two FJV (former JV) "support people," who come to our casa on a biweekly basis to support us in various ways. In preparation for our Program Coordinator's area visit in October (when a JVC staff person stays with us for a week to assess how everything is going, meeting with each of us and our supervisors one-on-one), our support people led us through the activity of creating a mission statement for our community. The activity was somewhat redundant after our many discussions at JVC Orientation, but it is nice to have something written out. Here it is:

In the tradition of St. Ignatius and our namesake, we the intentional community of Casa Maura Clarke seek to act selflessly, challenge lovingly, and communicate honestly, so that we can support one another both in joy and in struggle. We will foster individual and communal growth as we deepen our spirituality, work for social justice, and find solidarity in simplicity.

It doesn't read that smoothly, but we had a lot to fit in!