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.

Beautiful Beaches

These are the moments when I think I could live in California forever...

...don't worry, mom and dad, I'll come home eventually.

The benefit of the doubt

How would your life be different if you believed that everyone was always doing his or her best under the circumstances? Like really, truly believed that each person is acting to the best of his or her ability? And not only believed it, but treated others as though you believed it?

I, for one, would be less frustrated with the current situation at my placement. I would be less resentful toward the huge responsibilities put on me, and more genuinely committed to working for the best interest of my clients.

There have been times at work in the past six months that I've felt I haven't been given the benefit of the doubt, or that I haven't been treated as though I am trying my best. I ask for the benefit of the doubt, but I, too, must reciprocate.

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.

MLK's Dream

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Although MLK is known for his role in a very particular social movement, this nobel laureate's ideas about social justice and change are clearly applicable to the many challenges we face in society today. I want to share a few provocative quotes from Dr. King, as well as what I think is an interesting (and spot-on) take on King's legacy from the NYTimes Sunday Review this weekend.

This must have been an incredible moment to experience.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

There are a lot of reasons why I choose to fight for social justice, even when I myself am fortunate (through my happenstance birth as an upper-middle-class white woman) not to face most of these injustices day-to-day, and this (above) is one of them.

"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

For a community night in November, Maria led our community in a great discussion about power (the community organizing group she works for is called POWER, and power is a critical part of community organizing). It's interesting to think about the power that each person has within his or her own community.


"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

Is complacency, then, a society's greatest enemy in the movement towards justice? Perhaps, and this is as much an incrimination of myself as it is of our nation's ability to sweep injustices under the rug when they don't directly impact the majority of us as individuals (which brings us back to the first quote...).

What injustice would Dr. King be non-violently working against if he were alive today? Nobel-prize-winning economist and NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman says, in sum, "Goodbye, Jim Crow, hello class system." After a discussion about the lack of mobility in societies of great economic inequality, his concluding paragraph speaks volumes:

"Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in 'quiet rooms.' There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place -- and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams." 

And, finally, just because it makes me think, one last King quote..."Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?"

This year I resolve to...

Be more patient. 


Keep in touch with friends and family.


Pray daily, and get a spiritual director here in L.A.


Be more intentional about how I spend my personal stipend.


Keep physical fitness and healthy eating a priority.


Get accepted to medical school.

Hello, January.

Happy new year!