The purpose of this blog has not and will not be to discuss issues like this. Those who know me know that I usually try to disavow political discussions, whether out of frustration or disdain. But I recently read a letter from a Catholic bishop that seems to me to provide a glimpse into the sort of attitude that too often poisons churches today. This is not an attack on Catholicism, churches, or the bishop himself. It is an attack on a perspective that runs counter to the vitality, in my opinion, of any communal or personal faith.
As some might be aware, Rep. Patrick Kennedy from Rhode Island has been having a rather public dispute with the bishop of Providence, Thomas Tobin. The argument has to do with abortion, health care, and Kennedy's political stances as emblematic of his faith or lack thereof. Tobin basically calls Kennedy "less of a Catholic" or not at all for his stances, and apparently asked him not to take Communion, with the cooperation of the priests in his diocese.
I think I would generally have dismissed this as a stupidly simplistic and reactionary approach to complex issues, but what irked me here was the nature of Tobin's criticism of Kennedy. In a letter dated 11/12/09, Tobin responds to Kennedy's statement that, "“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Tobin's reply is "that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, [it] makes you “less of a Catholic.”
Tobin claims to base this on "Sacred Scripture" and then proceeds to quote the "Code of Canon Law" the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" and a statement from the church. But I won't dwell too much on the stuff of Protestant hand-wringing here.
Tobin tells Kennedy, "Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church."
I have often struggled with the apparent substitution of the term "Catholic" for Christian that is so common in Catholic discourse. And perhaps this is all a misunderstanding. Perhaps Tobin is not attacking Tobin's faith, but merely his relationship with his community of faith. Perhaps when he calls him less Catholic, he literally means that his communion with the rest of the church is diminished, as he often says. But it is difficult to ignore the implication that his faith is also diminished in this. I do not think Tobin would distinguish between Christian and Catholic.
I wish to abstract from the point of Kennedy and Tobin's dispute, because I am not concerned with resolving the issues of abortion and its implications. I can certainly see how a certain stance on abortion could be considered as a serious flaw in the structure of one's personal belief. But I do not agree with what follows from the (inferred) conflation here between what Tobin terms Catholicism and Christianity. What, Tobin asks, does it mean to be Catholic?
"Do you accept the teachings of the Church on essential matters of faith and morals, including our stance on abortion? Do you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish? Do you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly? Do you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially?"
Tobin criticizes Kennedy, not because of what he believes, but because he fails to "accept" a teaching of the Church, taking a position that is "unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members". In essence, Kennedy's problem is that he disagreed with the church and offended many of its members.
In practical terms, this certainly would, it seems, diminish one's communion with the church and its community. But does it diminish one's faith? Tobin seems little concerned about the veracity of the church's opinion, so long as it is accepted. Perhaps this is unfair to extrapolate from one letter, and, as I said, this is not an attack on Tobin either. But I think it is fair to challenge the idea that being Christian means accepting church teachings in "docility" as the catechism suggests and adhering to a faith community. If this is what it means to be Catholic, then that is all well and good, but I cannot accept that this is the extent of what it means to be Christian, or even essentially relevent.
Kennedy may certainly be incorrect, but to challenge a religious institution's teaching or position can be conducive to the examination and understanding that one might argue essential to faith.
In short, I fully endorse the quote which provoked this letter, with one clarification:
"The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Christian"
That's all. Now we return to our regular programming.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Lessons
Yesterday we had our weekly tutoring sessions after camp. I spent the hour or so teaching two of our boys about improper and mixed fractions, as well as giving them pointers on long division. They were attentive and I thought it went pretty well. We finished up a little early and had five minutes or so to hang out before take homes on the bus.
Earlier that day during program, we had done egg drops as a science activity when all of our kids were finished with their homework. We divided the kids up into teams and gave each team an egg and some cardboard, tape, and plastic with the instructions to create a container such that the egg, when dropped from the ceiling, would not break. It's a fairly standard science project. Our kids got really into it, and as it turned out, with three teams, it took two drops per team for just one of the teams' eggs to break. Apparently the older class, which was doing the same thing also experienced a great deal of success with their egg holders. In conclusion, after camp was over we had four or five kids running around with hitherto unbroken raw eggs.
Stevie and his cousin Rich had done really well in tutoring that day, so I told Stevie that if he wanted to, he could crack his egg over the sink provided that we cleaned up afterwards. He happily agreed to these conditions, and we did so (I am not sure why it is so entertaining to crack an egg; perhaps a number of our kids will go on to find their true vocation as world-famous breakfast chefs). As we were washing out the sink, Angelina, who had been working on reading came in and, seeing the yolk running down the drain, pulled out her own egg and cocked her arm to chuck it at the wall, the obvious and most sensible response to such a sight.
"Angelina," I said warningly, until I got her to make eye contact with me. "Do not throw the egg against the wall."
Angelina lowered her arm thoughtfully and then just as quickly raised it again, a smile coming over her face.
"Angelina," I said, "do not throw that egg."
Angelina pulled her arm back and cocked her wrist, her eyes still staring straight into my own.
"Angelina," I said, desperately, "do not throw that egg!"
Angelina finished her windup and then, still staring directly into my eyes, laughed and hurled the egg. I shot out my arm and managed to deflect the egg, which smashed against my palm before splattering behind me.
I lost it. Without actually shouting, I informed Angelina that what she had done was not ok, that I had told her directly not to throw the egg, that she had done so anyway, and that she should not be still laughing, as she was. By the time I was done, she was no longer smiling and I was beginning to regret the anger which was dripping from my voice. Fortunately, another intern came in, saw what was going on, and proceeded to talk Angelina through why what she had done was wrong and how we couldn't accept it because we cared about her and wanted to see her do well.
Angelina nodded and ran off to play catch. I later apologized to her for losing my temper. The reality is that these kids get yelled at all the time and my little episode was probably pretty forgettable. But it was still wrong of me to react that way and the anger that was pulsing through me was not acceptable. We try to create an environment where our kids are affirmed into respectful and thoughtful action, and I had failed to seize an opportunity to do that. It is regrettable, but more than that, it is a personal challenge; not just to have the patience to deal with misbehavior or disrespect, but the humility and creativity to see the agents of it as Christ does, and to use each moment of conflict as an opportunity to build them up as young adults. Fortunately, if there's one thing that I'm sure of, it's that our kids will give me plenty of opportunities to continue to try to develop my patience and affirmative correction.
Earlier that day during program, we had done egg drops as a science activity when all of our kids were finished with their homework. We divided the kids up into teams and gave each team an egg and some cardboard, tape, and plastic with the instructions to create a container such that the egg, when dropped from the ceiling, would not break. It's a fairly standard science project. Our kids got really into it, and as it turned out, with three teams, it took two drops per team for just one of the teams' eggs to break. Apparently the older class, which was doing the same thing also experienced a great deal of success with their egg holders. In conclusion, after camp was over we had four or five kids running around with hitherto unbroken raw eggs.
Stevie and his cousin Rich had done really well in tutoring that day, so I told Stevie that if he wanted to, he could crack his egg over the sink provided that we cleaned up afterwards. He happily agreed to these conditions, and we did so (I am not sure why it is so entertaining to crack an egg; perhaps a number of our kids will go on to find their true vocation as world-famous breakfast chefs). As we were washing out the sink, Angelina, who had been working on reading came in and, seeing the yolk running down the drain, pulled out her own egg and cocked her arm to chuck it at the wall, the obvious and most sensible response to such a sight.
"Angelina," I said warningly, until I got her to make eye contact with me. "Do not throw the egg against the wall."
Angelina lowered her arm thoughtfully and then just as quickly raised it again, a smile coming over her face.
"Angelina," I said, "do not throw that egg."
Angelina pulled her arm back and cocked her wrist, her eyes still staring straight into my own.
"Angelina," I said, desperately, "do not throw that egg!"
Angelina finished her windup and then, still staring directly into my eyes, laughed and hurled the egg. I shot out my arm and managed to deflect the egg, which smashed against my palm before splattering behind me.
I lost it. Without actually shouting, I informed Angelina that what she had done was not ok, that I had told her directly not to throw the egg, that she had done so anyway, and that she should not be still laughing, as she was. By the time I was done, she was no longer smiling and I was beginning to regret the anger which was dripping from my voice. Fortunately, another intern came in, saw what was going on, and proceeded to talk Angelina through why what she had done was wrong and how we couldn't accept it because we cared about her and wanted to see her do well.
Angelina nodded and ran off to play catch. I later apologized to her for losing my temper. The reality is that these kids get yelled at all the time and my little episode was probably pretty forgettable. But it was still wrong of me to react that way and the anger that was pulsing through me was not acceptable. We try to create an environment where our kids are affirmed into respectful and thoughtful action, and I had failed to seize an opportunity to do that. It is regrettable, but more than that, it is a personal challenge; not just to have the patience to deal with misbehavior or disrespect, but the humility and creativity to see the agents of it as Christ does, and to use each moment of conflict as an opportunity to build them up as young adults. Fortunately, if there's one thing that I'm sure of, it's that our kids will give me plenty of opportunities to continue to try to develop my patience and affirmative correction.
Free Write: What Does it Mean to Love God?
I used to think I could find the answers to questions like this. Now I am mostly hoping to learn what everyone else already seems to know and deal with as a part of maturing as a rational and spiritual being.
Theodicy grapples with the inconsistency in a universe created and sustained by a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God that also contains apparently meaningless suffering. This inconsistency is and must be pervasive throughout a life of faith; even more so in the experience of ministry. If God loves us dearly, and he has the power and foresight to prevent suffering, then how can suffering truly exist in this world? And yet who can claim humanity and deny the reality of suffering in the human experience? If we are to affirm the omnipotence and omniscience of God and the reality and atrocity of suffering, then how can we understand him to truly love us?
The major theodicies attempt to attack or justify our concept of suffering, whether as a necessary evil, a function of a higher good, or part of our personal development. We cannot question God's omnipotence or omniscience or his love for us, so we try to deny or re-conceptualize suffering, even though of all the four it is probably the one that we can understand most concretely and completely. Another approach is to attack the attributes of God as a lethal caricature of his person. Hegel, while not generally accepted as orthodox, arguably makes an accurate assessment of the attributes of God when he says that, in replacing God himself, they destroy the spirit of a living God as our object of worship. One might conclude with Wittgenstein's famous line here, "Of that which we cannot speak, let us say nothing."
But to deem theodicy irrelevant under the terms of a completely apophatic theology does nothing to settle the discomfort and frustration that merely finds debatable form in our positive conceptions of divinity. When faith is not only blind but placed in what cannot be known or spoken, it seems like a great deal has been lost. How can a God simply beyond conception or analogy be any more living to us or less of a caricature than the God of many adjectives?
The point here is that perhaps the attributes of God are not only useful but necessary according to the limits of our reality in order to engage with the divine in any meaningful sense. And yet, because they are imperfect analogies drawn from a temporal, spatial experience that cannot contain any true conception of eternity, they will inevitable falter under the demands of consistency of a framework not meant to address their object.
I know that God loves me and that any love I have for him must occur as a function of this love he has for me. The Pope talks about the interaction between divine and human love, the former purifying the latter while the second materializes the first. In order to understand what it means to love God, we must consider what it means for God to love us. At the heart of this query, for me at least, is theodicy and the problem of evil. As we engage the world as Christ commands us to, it is very easy to look around and wonder incredulously that God loves us, not because our brokenness is impossible to love but because in his goodness and power we are yet so broken. If we are certain nonetheless of his love for us, and our love for him is a function of this love, we cannot fail to seek what this kind of love this can possibly be if we are to love him back.
Theodicy grapples with the inconsistency in a universe created and sustained by a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God that also contains apparently meaningless suffering. This inconsistency is and must be pervasive throughout a life of faith; even more so in the experience of ministry. If God loves us dearly, and he has the power and foresight to prevent suffering, then how can suffering truly exist in this world? And yet who can claim humanity and deny the reality of suffering in the human experience? If we are to affirm the omnipotence and omniscience of God and the reality and atrocity of suffering, then how can we understand him to truly love us?
The major theodicies attempt to attack or justify our concept of suffering, whether as a necessary evil, a function of a higher good, or part of our personal development. We cannot question God's omnipotence or omniscience or his love for us, so we try to deny or re-conceptualize suffering, even though of all the four it is probably the one that we can understand most concretely and completely. Another approach is to attack the attributes of God as a lethal caricature of his person. Hegel, while not generally accepted as orthodox, arguably makes an accurate assessment of the attributes of God when he says that, in replacing God himself, they destroy the spirit of a living God as our object of worship. One might conclude with Wittgenstein's famous line here, "Of that which we cannot speak, let us say nothing."
But to deem theodicy irrelevant under the terms of a completely apophatic theology does nothing to settle the discomfort and frustration that merely finds debatable form in our positive conceptions of divinity. When faith is not only blind but placed in what cannot be known or spoken, it seems like a great deal has been lost. How can a God simply beyond conception or analogy be any more living to us or less of a caricature than the God of many adjectives?
The point here is that perhaps the attributes of God are not only useful but necessary according to the limits of our reality in order to engage with the divine in any meaningful sense. And yet, because they are imperfect analogies drawn from a temporal, spatial experience that cannot contain any true conception of eternity, they will inevitable falter under the demands of consistency of a framework not meant to address their object.
I know that God loves me and that any love I have for him must occur as a function of this love he has for me. The Pope talks about the interaction between divine and human love, the former purifying the latter while the second materializes the first. In order to understand what it means to love God, we must consider what it means for God to love us. At the heart of this query, for me at least, is theodicy and the problem of evil. As we engage the world as Christ commands us to, it is very easy to look around and wonder incredulously that God loves us, not because our brokenness is impossible to love but because in his goodness and power we are yet so broken. If we are certain nonetheless of his love for us, and our love for him is a function of this love, we cannot fail to seek what this kind of love this can possibly be if we are to love him back.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Roller Skating
This Wednesday we took our sixth graders roller skating, since our seventh and eighth graders had gone to the haunted house and our fifth graders had gone to Messiah College. I was excited because I don't know how to skate. We drove to the rink and our kids ran to get skates from the counter. I checked out a size nine and laced them on tightly. I didn't want to worry about my skates falling off while I was falling down.
A few minutes later I was experiencing the joy of discovery: skating is hard. Perhaps more exasperating than the dozens of times I hit the deck was that every time I tried to push off, my skate would glide forwards while I tumbled backwards. But I refused to give up and about half an hour in I suddenly realized that I was skating. I was so excited that I promptly flipped out and kissed the wood again in a flailing mess of arms and legs.
A few minutes later I was experiencing the joy of discovery: skating is hard. Perhaps more exasperating than the dozens of times I hit the deck was that every time I tried to push off, my skate would glide forwards while I tumbled backwards. But I refused to give up and about half an hour in I suddenly realized that I was skating. I was so excited that I promptly flipped out and kissed the wood again in a flailing mess of arms and legs.
As I lay stiffly in bed that night it occurred to me that my hour skating that day resembled my experience in Camden. Often it seems like every step I take pushes me somewhere I did not intend or causes me to fall. All my effort seems to be filled with frustration and uncertainty. I don't know how to do things and it seems the only way to figure it out is to do what I don't know how to do. But all of a sudden something will work. Something I tell a kid will have the desired effect. I will take a stand and someone will respect it. I will be skating, actually skating, and in these times I feel like I could keep going forever and never tire. But it's difficult to hold the form and I can't coast very long. Sooner or later I'll slip and, trying to remember what I did before, proceed by trial and error, longing to re-attain my previous success but meeting with only frustration. Until, of course, I unexpectedly get it again, for as long as that might last.
I have never done much of what I'm doing in Camden right now; I have little experience with kids and even less with the issues that the city and it's people struggle with. My daily experience repeatedly makes me painfully aware of this. But every once in awhile I'll do something right, and get a little hint of how to succeed. From that point on, while still clueless, I try to emulate what worked before, sometimes with success, and sometimes not. Those times when I don't know what to do and it shows are very difficult. But those short moments when I seem to understand are shattering and intoxicating and seem to build on one another.
I may not know yet how to skate, but I have glimpsed enough of actually doing it that I cannot think of giving up.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Messiah College Trip, Part II
Surprisingly enough, we had breakfast, loaded up the vehicles, and left on schedule, followed by the frightened glances of the elderly vacationers and businessmen with whom we had shared the hotel overnight. It was a short drive to Messiah College, where we marched the kids into a chapel and held a short church service for them, although unlike any one would usually imagine. We started with a few games: Categories, Go Get It, and a simple who can yell the loudest contest, all, of course, boys versus girls. Then we led them in a few songs: Big House, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, and I've Got the Joy of the Holy Ghost. I broke my pick during the first song and my fingers were bloody from strumming by the end. I also definitely opted for yelling over singing throughout, but it was a lot of fun trying to raise the kids' voices up to the Lord. After the songs, Boston, one of the directors, gave a short message about how, even in Camden, there was both a responsibility and a rich degree of possibility to help others with even less. This was followed by a spontaneous offering, where the kids proudly marched up and gave away what their parents had managed to give them to spend on the trip, to go towards an ongoing penny drive we've been holding to build a basketball court in Kenya. Over twenty dollars was raised from that unplanned offering of love, modest in its monetary value, but not its meaning.
When the service was over, students from Messiah College took over, splitting the kids up into groups to go on a scavenger hunt tour of the college which exposed them to some of the structures and culture of college life. We all ate lunch together in the cafeteria, which was, unfortunately, also a literal taste of college life, and then they took the kids to spend some time hanging out while we were given a couple of hours' respite.
When everyone came back together again, we loaded up the buses and headed back to Camden, where we delivered the kids, some of whom were finally crashing, back to their homes.
The trip was crazy, busy, fun, and tiring for all of the staff, and I hope as much so for our kids who went. Pennsylvania was beautiful, as we drove through hills tinged with green, red, and gold and the silvery wisps of elm and oak flanked the highways to and from Hershey. Our kids couldn't stop talking about the roller coasters, and when someone asked Michael about his favorite part of the trip, he immediately answered, "the hotel room--we had fun," although he told me I was a punk for not letting him turn the TV back on.
The trip cost $20 per child, although we used what funds we could to allay this if possible whenever needed. Still, as Tony, a director from an affiliated program in South Camden, pointed out, many of his kids were from social services, and didn't have parents who they could ask for money, whether they could provide it or not. As a result, even the money raised specifically for the trip wasn't enough to bring all the kids who might have come. Other kids didn't come because of their parents' concerns about safety sending their children in such a large group to a far away place overnight.
Regardless, I am very grateful for the kids who did come and the time we got to spend together, screaming on rides, shivering in the rain, running around parking lots, making faces through bus windows, jumping on beds, and just hanging out and talking. I had some anxieties about the trip and there were a lot of aspects about the trip that were draining or difficult, but it was definitely one of the more satisfying and encouraging experiences I have had as an intern so far and hope it was equally as worthwhile for the kids I got to go with.
When the service was over, students from Messiah College took over, splitting the kids up into groups to go on a scavenger hunt tour of the college which exposed them to some of the structures and culture of college life. We all ate lunch together in the cafeteria, which was, unfortunately, also a literal taste of college life, and then they took the kids to spend some time hanging out while we were given a couple of hours' respite.
When everyone came back together again, we loaded up the buses and headed back to Camden, where we delivered the kids, some of whom were finally crashing, back to their homes.
The trip was crazy, busy, fun, and tiring for all of the staff, and I hope as much so for our kids who went. Pennsylvania was beautiful, as we drove through hills tinged with green, red, and gold and the silvery wisps of elm and oak flanked the highways to and from Hershey. Our kids couldn't stop talking about the roller coasters, and when someone asked Michael about his favorite part of the trip, he immediately answered, "the hotel room--we had fun," although he told me I was a punk for not letting him turn the TV back on.
The trip cost $20 per child, although we used what funds we could to allay this if possible whenever needed. Still, as Tony, a director from an affiliated program in South Camden, pointed out, many of his kids were from social services, and didn't have parents who they could ask for money, whether they could provide it or not. As a result, even the money raised specifically for the trip wasn't enough to bring all the kids who might have come. Other kids didn't come because of their parents' concerns about safety sending their children in such a large group to a far away place overnight.
Regardless, I am very grateful for the kids who did come and the time we got to spend together, screaming on rides, shivering in the rain, running around parking lots, making faces through bus windows, jumping on beds, and just hanging out and talking. I had some anxieties about the trip and there were a lot of aspects about the trip that were draining or difficult, but it was definitely one of the more satisfying and encouraging experiences I have had as an intern so far and hope it was equally as worthwhile for the kids I got to go with.
Fried Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Biscuits, and Applesauce
If I were I smoker, I imagine this would be akin to lighting up on the rooftop of a large warehouse overlooking the water, watching the sunrise twinkling off the drowsy towers of the city in the lull between a long night's work and Denny's for eggs and hash browns before bed.
This weekend was UrbanPromise's annual Messiah College trip for its third through fifth graders, and it was a weekend that was every bit as fulfilling as exhausting, as these trips tend to be.
We left the UP headquarters at around 11:00, half an hour late after one of the two Urban buses refused to be woken up on a dreary Saturday morning. Many failed jumps later, we were cruising down I-76 with seventy kids, thirty staff, and all their luggage packed into one bus, a minibus, two vans, and two personal vehicles. I was on one of the vans, along with the other interns deemed "too large" to squeeze onto the bus with the kids. Around 1:00, we stopped at a McDonald's which was lucky enough to be inundated by orders for seventy Happy Meals. The ten kids we brought, six boys and four girls, were understandably not very interested in waiting it out, so we crossed the street and ate at Wendy's instead. We made it to Hershey Park by 3:00 and charged exultantly into the twisted metal and whining roar of the roller coasters amidst a light drizzle that promised to get worse by the time we left.
I was a little less exultant than the rest about the roller coasters, but I was secretly thankful to save one of our boys, Richard, from the embarrassment of following the group around as the only kid afraid to do the rides. The two of us did one coaster but then split off from the group to play arcade games, ride the cable cars, drive the bumper cars, and take the monorail around the park. The monorail, as Richard put it, was like a roller coaster, only it didn't make you feel sick. By dinner time, the wind and the rain had picked up considerably, and we made our way back to the parking lot to eat bagged sandwiches that we had prepared the day before out of the back of one of the vans. Dinner was followed by a tour of the Hershey Park Chocolate World that took us through the birth of a chocolate bar in a faux-factory complete with singing cows. We exited through the ubiquitous museum gift shop, where our kids loaded up on candy from Hershey workers that were giving it out for Halloween. Then it was back to the park for more fun in the rain and dark, until 8:00 when we loaded up the bus for the trip to the hotel where we were staying.
After distributing the luggage, we were each assigned two to three kids and given a room. The schedule that night consisted of swimming in the hotel pool at 9:00, lights out at 11:00, and a snack delivered to the room sometime in the interim. The plan was to get the kids down to breakfast by 8:00 so we could load up and leave for Messiah College at 9:00 in the morning. I was assigned Richard, Michael, and Marc from our boys, and after heading up to the room to get changed, we ran down to be the first in the pool. It turned out that a lot of other kids had the same idea, and the hotel pool was not built to accommodate seventy odd people at once. Undaunted, our kids filled the hot tub and packed into the pool with giddy screams, promptly scaring away any other guests at the hotel hoping for an evening dip.
We made it back up to the room before 10:30 so that, as Michael suggested, we might have some time to "play" before lights out. I had made it clear that at 11:00 the lights were going out and we were going to lay in bed, and that at 12:00 the television was going off for good. With this in mind, my three boys set out to have the most desperately packed half an hour of fun possible. By the time eleven o'clock rolled around, we had played several rounds of hide and seek in the pitch dark, diligently jumped on the beds, thrown pillows at each other, ding-dong ditched the girls' room next door and prank called the guys' room on the other side, and heated up a pack of Famous Amos cookies in the microwave. The snack cart was late and I let them stay up until it rolled around and left us buried in a healthy pile of chips, SlimJims, Gushers, and Capri Sun. Up until this point, I had been fairly bewildered by my kid's apparent inexhaustible store of energy. I had warned them that if they didn't go to sleep on time, they would be miserable trying to wake up the next morning at seven to be on time for breakfast. This, however, I figured would be the breaking point. I had both seen and experienced the effects of junk food on kids who hadn't just spent the day and better part of the night running around an amusement park, dunking each other in the pool, and having pillow fights. Michael told me that he hadn't even slept the night before we left in his excitement. It was inevitable. They would eat their chips and their candy and briefly go crazy on the mixture of sugar and chips and glee before crashing in a most devastating manner into respective comas that I would have to shake them out of the following morning for breakfast.
Over an hour later, I was still trying to calm them down enough to sleep. As requested, all three kids were lying in bed, and the television went off at 12:00. Marc was the first one to drift off, and, figuring that I wouldn't have to worry about him anymore until morning, I ignored his emphatic snores to concentrate on the other two. After polishing off his last SlimJim, Richard contentedly dropped out in the middle of a conversation with Michael about building his own roller coaster and where hamburgers came from. Triumphant at the sound of his even breathing and Michael's indignation at suddenly talking to himself, I bluntly denied Michael's request to turn the television back on and set out to talk him to sleep.
To my surprise, our conversation went from cows to the topic of death. After a moment's pause, Michael asked me whether I was aware that there was no place in the entire earth that was safe. Curious, I asked him, "Safe from what?"
"From dying," he replied. "I hate dying, and I don't even like to talk about it. I hate that people have to die. But I don't want to talk about it anyway," he concluded.
A moment later, he continued, "I just hate it when other people die. I wish there was no dying."
I told him that dying was a part of life, and that, all things considered, heaven didn't sound so bad.
"Still," he answered, "I wish when we were going to die, we would all just go back to being babies again, and start over, instead of dying."
He went on to tell me of a world where this held true, one where he could meet all his grandparents and great grandparents, and where people would stop needing to go to school unless they wanted to. Jobs, he reasoned, could be filled by kindergartners, unless of course they were too short.
"Matt," he asked, stopping abruptly, "are you asleep?"
"Getting there," I responded.
"Good," he said, and in the silence that followed, I knew Michael was finally asleep.
Weary but satisfied, I lay down on the floor and prepared to get what rest I could, setting my alarm for 6:30 so I could shower before setting about waking up my boys. Sleep came quickly, and I was grateful for it. It certainly didn't seem like much time had passed when I felt something and woke up to Marc poking me and asking whether it was 8:00 and time to go down for breakfast yet. As it turns out, this was because much time hadn't passed; it was barely past three, and, as I pointed out, very much still dark outside. I wasn't sure whether I was more shocked at being woken up or at finding him awake a mere three hours after I thought he had been dispatched by fatigue, and I told him to go back to sleep. He did so without arguing, but not before waking up Michael and Richard to let them know that it was only three and still dark outside.
The rest of the night I spent praying whenever one of the boys stirred that he wouldn't wake up, and a few more disturbances aside, we made it through the night, unaided by the fact that, with the clocks changing that night, it was one hour longer than usual. To my amazement, they all woke up on their own before seven, filled with boundless energy and excitement for the day at Messiah College.
This weekend was UrbanPromise's annual Messiah College trip for its third through fifth graders, and it was a weekend that was every bit as fulfilling as exhausting, as these trips tend to be.
We left the UP headquarters at around 11:00, half an hour late after one of the two Urban buses refused to be woken up on a dreary Saturday morning. Many failed jumps later, we were cruising down I-76 with seventy kids, thirty staff, and all their luggage packed into one bus, a minibus, two vans, and two personal vehicles. I was on one of the vans, along with the other interns deemed "too large" to squeeze onto the bus with the kids. Around 1:00, we stopped at a McDonald's which was lucky enough to be inundated by orders for seventy Happy Meals. The ten kids we brought, six boys and four girls, were understandably not very interested in waiting it out, so we crossed the street and ate at Wendy's instead. We made it to Hershey Park by 3:00 and charged exultantly into the twisted metal and whining roar of the roller coasters amidst a light drizzle that promised to get worse by the time we left.
I was a little less exultant than the rest about the roller coasters, but I was secretly thankful to save one of our boys, Richard, from the embarrassment of following the group around as the only kid afraid to do the rides. The two of us did one coaster but then split off from the group to play arcade games, ride the cable cars, drive the bumper cars, and take the monorail around the park. The monorail, as Richard put it, was like a roller coaster, only it didn't make you feel sick. By dinner time, the wind and the rain had picked up considerably, and we made our way back to the parking lot to eat bagged sandwiches that we had prepared the day before out of the back of one of the vans. Dinner was followed by a tour of the Hershey Park Chocolate World that took us through the birth of a chocolate bar in a faux-factory complete with singing cows. We exited through the ubiquitous museum gift shop, where our kids loaded up on candy from Hershey workers that were giving it out for Halloween. Then it was back to the park for more fun in the rain and dark, until 8:00 when we loaded up the bus for the trip to the hotel where we were staying.
After distributing the luggage, we were each assigned two to three kids and given a room. The schedule that night consisted of swimming in the hotel pool at 9:00, lights out at 11:00, and a snack delivered to the room sometime in the interim. The plan was to get the kids down to breakfast by 8:00 so we could load up and leave for Messiah College at 9:00 in the morning. I was assigned Richard, Michael, and Marc from our boys, and after heading up to the room to get changed, we ran down to be the first in the pool. It turned out that a lot of other kids had the same idea, and the hotel pool was not built to accommodate seventy odd people at once. Undaunted, our kids filled the hot tub and packed into the pool with giddy screams, promptly scaring away any other guests at the hotel hoping for an evening dip.
We made it back up to the room before 10:30 so that, as Michael suggested, we might have some time to "play" before lights out. I had made it clear that at 11:00 the lights were going out and we were going to lay in bed, and that at 12:00 the television was going off for good. With this in mind, my three boys set out to have the most desperately packed half an hour of fun possible. By the time eleven o'clock rolled around, we had played several rounds of hide and seek in the pitch dark, diligently jumped on the beds, thrown pillows at each other, ding-dong ditched the girls' room next door and prank called the guys' room on the other side, and heated up a pack of Famous Amos cookies in the microwave. The snack cart was late and I let them stay up until it rolled around and left us buried in a healthy pile of chips, SlimJims, Gushers, and Capri Sun. Up until this point, I had been fairly bewildered by my kid's apparent inexhaustible store of energy. I had warned them that if they didn't go to sleep on time, they would be miserable trying to wake up the next morning at seven to be on time for breakfast. This, however, I figured would be the breaking point. I had both seen and experienced the effects of junk food on kids who hadn't just spent the day and better part of the night running around an amusement park, dunking each other in the pool, and having pillow fights. Michael told me that he hadn't even slept the night before we left in his excitement. It was inevitable. They would eat their chips and their candy and briefly go crazy on the mixture of sugar and chips and glee before crashing in a most devastating manner into respective comas that I would have to shake them out of the following morning for breakfast.
Over an hour later, I was still trying to calm them down enough to sleep. As requested, all three kids were lying in bed, and the television went off at 12:00. Marc was the first one to drift off, and, figuring that I wouldn't have to worry about him anymore until morning, I ignored his emphatic snores to concentrate on the other two. After polishing off his last SlimJim, Richard contentedly dropped out in the middle of a conversation with Michael about building his own roller coaster and where hamburgers came from. Triumphant at the sound of his even breathing and Michael's indignation at suddenly talking to himself, I bluntly denied Michael's request to turn the television back on and set out to talk him to sleep.
To my surprise, our conversation went from cows to the topic of death. After a moment's pause, Michael asked me whether I was aware that there was no place in the entire earth that was safe. Curious, I asked him, "Safe from what?"
"From dying," he replied. "I hate dying, and I don't even like to talk about it. I hate that people have to die. But I don't want to talk about it anyway," he concluded.
A moment later, he continued, "I just hate it when other people die. I wish there was no dying."
I told him that dying was a part of life, and that, all things considered, heaven didn't sound so bad.
"Still," he answered, "I wish when we were going to die, we would all just go back to being babies again, and start over, instead of dying."
He went on to tell me of a world where this held true, one where he could meet all his grandparents and great grandparents, and where people would stop needing to go to school unless they wanted to. Jobs, he reasoned, could be filled by kindergartners, unless of course they were too short.
"Matt," he asked, stopping abruptly, "are you asleep?"
"Getting there," I responded.
"Good," he said, and in the silence that followed, I knew Michael was finally asleep.
Weary but satisfied, I lay down on the floor and prepared to get what rest I could, setting my alarm for 6:30 so I could shower before setting about waking up my boys. Sleep came quickly, and I was grateful for it. It certainly didn't seem like much time had passed when I felt something and woke up to Marc poking me and asking whether it was 8:00 and time to go down for breakfast yet. As it turns out, this was because much time hadn't passed; it was barely past three, and, as I pointed out, very much still dark outside. I wasn't sure whether I was more shocked at being woken up or at finding him awake a mere three hours after I thought he had been dispatched by fatigue, and I told him to go back to sleep. He did so without arguing, but not before waking up Michael and Richard to let them know that it was only three and still dark outside.
The rest of the night I spent praying whenever one of the boys stirred that he wouldn't wake up, and a few more disturbances aside, we made it through the night, unaided by the fact that, with the clocks changing that night, it was one hour longer than usual. To my amazement, they all woke up on their own before seven, filled with boundless energy and excitement for the day at Messiah College.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Haunted House!
This Wednesday, we took out 7th and 8th graders to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, annual home of one of the more infamous haunted houses in America. As we walked through stone passages lit by strobe lights or not at all, dozens of actors did their worst to scare the living heck out of us. Other parts of the house included a 3-D section where actors blended into walls and then popped out at you, a corrider with spinning lights that made it difficult to stand, and an "infirmary".
I had never been to a haunted house before, and wasn't sure what to expect. It wasn't until after we got home that we learned that "Terror Behind the Walls" at it was called, was consistently ranked one of the scariest haunted houses in the nation.
The most entertaining part of the evening was definitely seeing the reactions of our older kids throughout the haunted house, and the way that the mutual fun of the night broke down barriers amongst us.
Today is the Harvest Carnival, where we've set up a gymnasium full of games and candy for all the kids. Tomorrow we're leaving for Messiah College, and the fun of chasing giddy 5th graders around an amusement park, a swimming pool, a college campus, and a hotel room.
I had never been to a haunted house before, and wasn't sure what to expect. It wasn't until after we got home that we learned that "Terror Behind the Walls" at it was called, was consistently ranked one of the scariest haunted houses in the nation.
The most entertaining part of the evening was definitely seeing the reactions of our older kids throughout the haunted house, and the way that the mutual fun of the night broke down barriers amongst us.
Today is the Harvest Carnival, where we've set up a gymnasium full of games and candy for all the kids. Tomorrow we're leaving for Messiah College, and the fun of chasing giddy 5th graders around an amusement park, a swimming pool, a college campus, and a hotel room.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
It's Been Awhile
One of the consequences of my recent move to downtown Camden has been the loss of steady access to a computer lab and, hence, internet access. That's my way of apologizing for the two week silence.
The past two weeks have been challenging and exciting with a packed schedule that promises to only get busier in the upcoming week. After my first week of program at Camp Grace, we had only half of a week to make room for this week's annual UrbanPromise Banquet, a rather involved show put on by children and young adults throughout the organization to allow parents and donors a glimpse inside UrbanPromise. After a successful show for family and friends on Wednesday night, seven hundred donors showed up for the banquet the following night. Performances included songs by a choir assembled from a diverse group of UrbanPromise programs, the UrbanPromise Step Team, a skit by alumni of UrbanTrekkers, the presentation of a boat from the UrbanBoatworks project, all emcee'd by two fifth graders from the North/Downtown programs. Almost as incredible as the kids themselves and the amount of preparation that went into the event was the sheer number of people who are involved in making UrbanPromise go as an organization. Mingling before we served them dinner, I was impressed by the stories that each and every donor had about how they got involved with UrbanPromise and what that involvement had meant to them. Even though I see mostly what the staff and volunteers do every day, I rarely consider the hundreds and hundreds of people who are also involved directly or indirectly in every piece of what we do each day. It is quite cool, for the lack of a better word, to imagine my staff of four or five as one of seven hundred.
Next week, the last week of October, we have a "special week" in camp, where we get extra funding. With this, we'll be taking the 7th and 8th graders to a haunted house and the 6th graders skating. This Friday we're holding a Harvest Carnival, with games and food and fun for all the kids involved with UrbanPromise programs. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we'll be taking 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders from all the different programs on a bus to visit Messiah College and get an early taste of college life from students that partner with us there. We'll also visit Hershey Park and stay overnight in a hotel with a swimming pool which might be the most exciting part of the trip for some of our kids.
In short, I'm finding myself both excited and exhausted, and I'm looking forward to what this week has in store for all of us.
The past two weeks have been challenging and exciting with a packed schedule that promises to only get busier in the upcoming week. After my first week of program at Camp Grace, we had only half of a week to make room for this week's annual UrbanPromise Banquet, a rather involved show put on by children and young adults throughout the organization to allow parents and donors a glimpse inside UrbanPromise. After a successful show for family and friends on Wednesday night, seven hundred donors showed up for the banquet the following night. Performances included songs by a choir assembled from a diverse group of UrbanPromise programs, the UrbanPromise Step Team, a skit by alumni of UrbanTrekkers, the presentation of a boat from the UrbanBoatworks project, all emcee'd by two fifth graders from the North/Downtown programs. Almost as incredible as the kids themselves and the amount of preparation that went into the event was the sheer number of people who are involved in making UrbanPromise go as an organization. Mingling before we served them dinner, I was impressed by the stories that each and every donor had about how they got involved with UrbanPromise and what that involvement had meant to them. Even though I see mostly what the staff and volunteers do every day, I rarely consider the hundreds and hundreds of people who are also involved directly or indirectly in every piece of what we do each day. It is quite cool, for the lack of a better word, to imagine my staff of four or five as one of seven hundred.
Next week, the last week of October, we have a "special week" in camp, where we get extra funding. With this, we'll be taking the 7th and 8th graders to a haunted house and the 6th graders skating. This Friday we're holding a Harvest Carnival, with games and food and fun for all the kids involved with UrbanPromise programs. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we'll be taking 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders from all the different programs on a bus to visit Messiah College and get an early taste of college life from students that partner with us there. We'll also visit Hershey Park and stay overnight in a hotel with a swimming pool which might be the most exciting part of the trip for some of our kids.
In short, I'm finding myself both excited and exhausted, and I'm looking forward to what this week has in store for all of us.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Some Changes
This upcoming week, I will be moving from the Rosedale ASP in East Camden, to Camp Grace, the ASP for 5th-8th graders located in North Camden. This is the product of some on-going staff and personal issues that go back to when I first started in East side, and while I am disappointed and disheartened with myself and the situation, I am grateful for the flexibility and humility with which everything has been handled, particularly on the part of my superiors who are guiding us through this and the intern who agreed to switch places with me. I am grieved because I will be leaving the kids who were the major motivation for me to spend the year here in the first place, but also excited to work with the kids in the situation which I am entering next week.
North Camden is different, on all accounts, from East side, and there are those who tell me that I will now be seeing the "real Camden". I will be moving this Sunday from my house in East to a house in Downtown Camden, where the rules about walking alone and staying in the house at night are much more carefully observed. I have also heard a great deal about the difficulty of working with the kids at Grace due to the situations that they have to deal with themselves. I just pray that God will give me the vision to see the place and the kids as he would have me see them, and the wisdom and courage to deal with the situations that arise to test me along the way.
I would also ask for prayers for the kids and staff that I am leaving, and the effect that my departure may have on any of them, as well for the effects that the other intern's departure may have on his staff, his kids, and his housemates. I will need a great deal of patience and grace, both from others, and for myself, over the next few weeks of transition.
North Camden is different, on all accounts, from East side, and there are those who tell me that I will now be seeing the "real Camden". I will be moving this Sunday from my house in East to a house in Downtown Camden, where the rules about walking alone and staying in the house at night are much more carefully observed. I have also heard a great deal about the difficulty of working with the kids at Grace due to the situations that they have to deal with themselves. I just pray that God will give me the vision to see the place and the kids as he would have me see them, and the wisdom and courage to deal with the situations that arise to test me along the way.
I would also ask for prayers for the kids and staff that I am leaving, and the effect that my departure may have on any of them, as well for the effects that the other intern's departure may have on his staff, his kids, and his housemates. I will need a great deal of patience and grace, both from others, and for myself, over the next few weeks of transition.
Highlights from the Past Two Weeks
Last Wednesday we talked and read about volcanoes and then made them ourselves with some clay, discarded water bottles, and baking soda and vinegar. It took me awhile to get the reaction right (it ranged from fizzing within the bottle to the bottle exploding and drenching the ceiling) but I finally settled on putting two cups of vinegar in first, then three drops of food coloring, six drops of soap, and finally, 3 tablespoons of the baking soda itself, wrapped up in a toilet paper packet so that it would slowly be released into the vinegar. It worked awesome and my kids were having so much fun it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The highlight was probably when I was doing the demonstration and caught one of my kids turning between me and his table to take notes, his eyes wide in rapt attention, and I almost broke down laughing.
This Wednesday we talked about storms and weather, and then we made tornadoes in a bottle. This is when you essentially put water in a two-liter bottle and tape another one to the top. When you flip it over and swirl, you get a vortex as water goes down and air comes up. I went to the recycling center with Jordan, my roommate, over the weekend, and trash-picked over 40 bottles. My kids were pretty confused when I told them we were going to make tornadoes in a bottle, but when I spun the one I had made ahead of time, the room filled with cries of "Yoooooooo!" and "That's hot!" and I knew we were in for a good afternoon. (Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a cooking show: "And next you put it in the oven for forty minutes. Now here's one that I did ahead of time!") The next couple days I had kids in other camps or classes asking me how to make tornadoes in a bottle.
This Thursday was my last day at Rosedale, as I'll explain in my next post, and during homework time I was trying to get the noise down to a workable level, when Bryan asked me for help with his homework. He usually does his homework pretty quickly without any help, so I was curious as to what he needed. As it turned out, his assignment was to interview a family member about a story from his family history and record it. "Mr. Matt," he told me, "you're not really in my family, but you're my Urban family, so I want to interview you!" I told him a story about my grandparents, but it was a rough reminder of what I'm leaving behind.
This Wednesday we talked about storms and weather, and then we made tornadoes in a bottle. This is when you essentially put water in a two-liter bottle and tape another one to the top. When you flip it over and swirl, you get a vortex as water goes down and air comes up. I went to the recycling center with Jordan, my roommate, over the weekend, and trash-picked over 40 bottles. My kids were pretty confused when I told them we were going to make tornadoes in a bottle, but when I spun the one I had made ahead of time, the room filled with cries of "Yoooooooo!" and "That's hot!" and I knew we were in for a good afternoon. (Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a cooking show: "And next you put it in the oven for forty minutes. Now here's one that I did ahead of time!") The next couple days I had kids in other camps or classes asking me how to make tornadoes in a bottle.
This Thursday was my last day at Rosedale, as I'll explain in my next post, and during homework time I was trying to get the noise down to a workable level, when Bryan asked me for help with his homework. He usually does his homework pretty quickly without any help, so I was curious as to what he needed. As it turned out, his assignment was to interview a family member about a story from his family history and record it. "Mr. Matt," he told me, "you're not really in my family, but you're my Urban family, so I want to interview you!" I told him a story about my grandparents, but it was a rough reminder of what I'm leaving behind.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Highlights from Friday Relational Time
Every Friday we spend some time with a selected number of our kids in lieu of having program that day. This friday Sarah (the other intern) and I invited four kids from the elementary school up the street and three of them showed up, two third graders and a first grader. We made rice krispie treats, played with the guitar, did some board games, and went to the park.
Wisdom from my buddy Bryan:
"There is nothing in the world that is bigger than a blue whale. Except for the galaxy........and God."
Five minutes later all five of us were hopping in a circle yelling "I am not a grape!" at the top of our lungs (so that nobodywould eat us by mistake).
Wisdom from my buddy Bryan:
"There is nothing in the world that is bigger than a blue whale. Except for the galaxy........and God."
Five minutes later all five of us were hopping in a circle yelling "I am not a grape!" at the top of our lungs (so that nobodywould eat us by mistake).
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Oscar Romero
We had a speaker from the Oscar Romero Center for our intern class tonight and she distributed this quote taken from her employer's namesake. I recognized the passage from Father Maher's Jesuit Education class.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master buildre and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
--Archbishiop Oscar Romero
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master buildre and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
--Archbishiop Oscar Romero
Learning the Hard Way
I often have trouble asserting myself in issues of discipline, garnering me a reputation as a softie, or in other words, a pushover. I generally do not see the harm that this could have and prefer to pride myself on being "laid-back". Unfortunately, I was reminded today that the discomfort I might avoid by being especially lenient is not worth the effects that I might not see on the kids I work with.
Every day I walk a group of kids to program from their school down the street. Usually they joke around and have a good time coming back, and I don't generally prevent them from doing this, as long as they're safe on the roads and respectful of others. Today two of the kids were hanging on and playing with another one, one of the most imaginitive and indefatigably cheerful kids I have ever met. They were pretending he was their pet, and he was grinning and laughing at first, so I didn't pay so much attention to what they were doing so much as the cars at the intersections where we had to cross. All of a sudden, however, he burst into tears, crying out, "Mr. Matt, you're not even saying anything to make them stop!"
Horrified, I scrambled to stop whatever was going on and tried to console him as he sobbed into my arm for the rest of the walk. When he had calmed down a little bit, I tried to apologize and explain what he obviously already knew: how wrong it was of me to ignore what was going on, and how irresponsible it was to assume that he was having fun. I know he must have been waiting for me to step in and gotten more and more frustrated at my apparent indifference, until it boiled over. Not only had I ignored his distress, but I had caused him the humiliation of losing his composure and crying in front of his friends.
A couple of hours later we were playing ping-pong and board games like nothing had happened, but I still felt terrible about what happened, and I gather that I will continue to for some time. But insofar as I cannot reverse what already happened, I suppose that it is best that the memory lingers, so that it might remind me of the responsibility I have to these kids to look beyond my own comfort and be an adult and in control even when it involves stepping in to discipline a child or stop a situation that I try to convince myself doesn't seem so bad.
Every day I walk a group of kids to program from their school down the street. Usually they joke around and have a good time coming back, and I don't generally prevent them from doing this, as long as they're safe on the roads and respectful of others. Today two of the kids were hanging on and playing with another one, one of the most imaginitive and indefatigably cheerful kids I have ever met. They were pretending he was their pet, and he was grinning and laughing at first, so I didn't pay so much attention to what they were doing so much as the cars at the intersections where we had to cross. All of a sudden, however, he burst into tears, crying out, "Mr. Matt, you're not even saying anything to make them stop!"
Horrified, I scrambled to stop whatever was going on and tried to console him as he sobbed into my arm for the rest of the walk. When he had calmed down a little bit, I tried to apologize and explain what he obviously already knew: how wrong it was of me to ignore what was going on, and how irresponsible it was to assume that he was having fun. I know he must have been waiting for me to step in and gotten more and more frustrated at my apparent indifference, until it boiled over. Not only had I ignored his distress, but I had caused him the humiliation of losing his composure and crying in front of his friends.
A couple of hours later we were playing ping-pong and board games like nothing had happened, but I still felt terrible about what happened, and I gather that I will continue to for some time. But insofar as I cannot reverse what already happened, I suppose that it is best that the memory lingers, so that it might remind me of the responsibility I have to these kids to look beyond my own comfort and be an adult and in control even when it involves stepping in to discipline a child or stop a situation that I try to convince myself doesn't seem so bad.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Further Reflections
Last Easter I watched the Passion of the Christ with some friends. It was, in some sense, an emotional experience. But that emotion gave me pause, although I was unsure why it felt uncomfortable at the time. Only recently, it occurred to me that this was because we see Christ actually crucified everyday and it evokes no emotion in us the way that the movie did.
The crucifixion of Christ was as much a sin of omission as it was murder. Imagine if every just man acted out to stop the greatest injustice in human history. Their individual decisions to instead live their own lives ensured Christ's crucifixion.
Every time we choose to live our own lives we crucify Christ through our indifference or desperate ignorance. I am sometimes astounded by the rash of perturbing statistics that accompany most cries for help from a place like Camden. It is not only depressing to see how apalling the numbers are but to see a place or people that you think you know reduced to such. When it come's to God's work, however, the important statistics are not, I think, the statistics of suffering, of violence or poverty rates, of broken families and SAT scores, of mental illness or suicides. Ever since the fall, mankind has suffered in this world. The important statistics are unprecedented: the extraordinary indications of a lifestyle that makes no sense in the context of our world and its history, the statistics that reflect the choosing of one's own life over God's vision for us. Without dwelling on guilt or blame, perhaps when we look for brokenness in the world, we should not concentrate on its symptoms but on the crucifixion of Christ that occurs daily at our own hands, through our omission. It is not enough to concentrate on the effects of sin, but on the sin itself and the sinners, ourselves.
This is not about guilt. Choosing to give of oneself to assuage guilt is still choosing to live one's own life; it is choosing something that enables one to continue living as blind to the crucifixion that we see before us.
Nor is this about efficacy. There were two men with much to lose who stood up for Jesus, who chose to deny the possibilities of their own lives for him. They did not prevent his death and suffering or its injustice. Often our choice to deny our will for God's will not stop or even reach the suffering in which we see the injustice of Christ's agony. But it is still one instance of the rejection of the sin itself. Every instance of self-denial for the sake of Jesus takes down one cross.
Ultimately, we should only go where God calls us, and only because he calls us, and His wisdom and goodness will take care of the rest.
The crucifixion of Christ was as much a sin of omission as it was murder. Imagine if every just man acted out to stop the greatest injustice in human history. Their individual decisions to instead live their own lives ensured Christ's crucifixion.
Every time we choose to live our own lives we crucify Christ through our indifference or desperate ignorance. I am sometimes astounded by the rash of perturbing statistics that accompany most cries for help from a place like Camden. It is not only depressing to see how apalling the numbers are but to see a place or people that you think you know reduced to such. When it come's to God's work, however, the important statistics are not, I think, the statistics of suffering, of violence or poverty rates, of broken families and SAT scores, of mental illness or suicides. Ever since the fall, mankind has suffered in this world. The important statistics are unprecedented: the extraordinary indications of a lifestyle that makes no sense in the context of our world and its history, the statistics that reflect the choosing of one's own life over God's vision for us. Without dwelling on guilt or blame, perhaps when we look for brokenness in the world, we should not concentrate on its symptoms but on the crucifixion of Christ that occurs daily at our own hands, through our omission. It is not enough to concentrate on the effects of sin, but on the sin itself and the sinners, ourselves.
This is not about guilt. Choosing to give of oneself to assuage guilt is still choosing to live one's own life; it is choosing something that enables one to continue living as blind to the crucifixion that we see before us.
Nor is this about efficacy. There were two men with much to lose who stood up for Jesus, who chose to deny the possibilities of their own lives for him. They did not prevent his death and suffering or its injustice. Often our choice to deny our will for God's will not stop or even reach the suffering in which we see the injustice of Christ's agony. But it is still one instance of the rejection of the sin itself. Every instance of self-denial for the sake of Jesus takes down one cross.
Ultimately, we should only go where God calls us, and only because he calls us, and His wisdom and goodness will take care of the rest.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
There is No Suffering Here
Alongside its internship program, UrbanPromise runs something called UrbanPromise International Fellows, where interns come from all over the world to learn about and experience the UrbanPromise model of ministry in order to emulate at home. One of the UPI fellows recently admitted that she was struggling to see God's purpose for her in Camden. Thinking of what she had seen and experienced in the past, she explained, "there is no suffering here". The children she saw here, she told us, had everything in excess, and even so were ungrateful for what they had.
Now I think there are many things wrong with this. To begin with, the second statement is probably wrong. Just because fewer people starve to death or lack clothing or shelter, or, more likely, they are less visible, does not mean that it fails to occur in America. I also think American children are taught, from a young age, to hide what they do not have. Often what appears to be ingratitude may actually be desperate posturing for something that isn't actually there. Perhaps more importantly, suffering is nobody's prerogative. Suffering is in humans as much as situations, and all human beings have the capacity to suffer. One would not conversely go to a refugee camp and declare, "there is no joy here". And perhaps as poignant as we find joy in the midst of suffering is suffering in the midst of gladness devastating.
Nonetheless, that short, simple statement really rattled me. In all the time I've spent in Camden, it never occured to me that it would be possible to come here and to say such a thing. The issues that I see are so beyond my own experience that I have often wondered that we allow such conditions to persist. The idea that what I have always seen as incomprehensible suffering is no suffering at all to somebody else is staggering in its implication of suffering beyond what I even understood as suffering in this world.
The death of 5,000 people in the attacks on 9/11 shook and restructured the understanding which shaped our nation's policies at home and abroad. In these deaths we saw evil, we saw suffering that we could not but respond to. When Hurricane Katrina left almost 2,000 people dead and a city in ruins, we were indignant at the tragedy and the injustice of apathy or incompetence in our response. This is sorrow, this is injustice, this is suffering.
But in his foreward to Jeffrey Sachs' book, "The End of Poverty" Bono writes that 15,000 people die in Africa each day of preventable diseases. 15,000 people every day!* Realities like these provide the context for statements like, "there is no suffering here", not because they trivialize the suffering we see, but because the sheer magnitude of the suffering they represent is so overwhelming.
So what is my purpose in a place like Camden when the suffering it contains pales before the atrocities of the world elsewhere under a certain metric? Even in Camden I sometimes have doubts about my purpose in one of the more peaceful neighborhoods in the city. But I think the problem here is in the question. My purpose is understood as my meaning: how my presence might be the most meaningful to others. But this comes down to the pure pride of a gloryhound. One cannot love for the purposes of glory or achievement. To seek out greater suffering as worthy of my love is to seek out greater opportunity for my love to be appreciated, to be a greater hero. If I were truly to seek out suffering out of love, then I would be unaffected if God required my love in a more comfortable place; in any situation I would be able to love equally. Instead, personal pride or achievement masquerade as compassion.
*Assuming Africa has a population of roughly 1 billion people and the US around 300 million (and my math is correct), this rate is relatively equivalent to 4,500 Americans, or 1.6 million a year. Other studies suggest that 45,000 Americans actually die each year for lack of health insurance, which might be somewhat analogous to the statistic here. 45,000 a year, while also staggering, comes out to roughly 123 a day, or a little under 3% of 4,500. Of course, people are not statistics, and each of 45,000 preventable deaths is every bit the tragedy of each of 5.5 million.
Now I think there are many things wrong with this. To begin with, the second statement is probably wrong. Just because fewer people starve to death or lack clothing or shelter, or, more likely, they are less visible, does not mean that it fails to occur in America. I also think American children are taught, from a young age, to hide what they do not have. Often what appears to be ingratitude may actually be desperate posturing for something that isn't actually there. Perhaps more importantly, suffering is nobody's prerogative. Suffering is in humans as much as situations, and all human beings have the capacity to suffer. One would not conversely go to a refugee camp and declare, "there is no joy here". And perhaps as poignant as we find joy in the midst of suffering is suffering in the midst of gladness devastating.
Nonetheless, that short, simple statement really rattled me. In all the time I've spent in Camden, it never occured to me that it would be possible to come here and to say such a thing. The issues that I see are so beyond my own experience that I have often wondered that we allow such conditions to persist. The idea that what I have always seen as incomprehensible suffering is no suffering at all to somebody else is staggering in its implication of suffering beyond what I even understood as suffering in this world.
The death of 5,000 people in the attacks on 9/11 shook and restructured the understanding which shaped our nation's policies at home and abroad. In these deaths we saw evil, we saw suffering that we could not but respond to. When Hurricane Katrina left almost 2,000 people dead and a city in ruins, we were indignant at the tragedy and the injustice of apathy or incompetence in our response. This is sorrow, this is injustice, this is suffering.
But in his foreward to Jeffrey Sachs' book, "The End of Poverty" Bono writes that 15,000 people die in Africa each day of preventable diseases. 15,000 people every day!* Realities like these provide the context for statements like, "there is no suffering here", not because they trivialize the suffering we see, but because the sheer magnitude of the suffering they represent is so overwhelming.
So what is my purpose in a place like Camden when the suffering it contains pales before the atrocities of the world elsewhere under a certain metric? Even in Camden I sometimes have doubts about my purpose in one of the more peaceful neighborhoods in the city. But I think the problem here is in the question. My purpose is understood as my meaning: how my presence might be the most meaningful to others. But this comes down to the pure pride of a gloryhound. One cannot love for the purposes of glory or achievement. To seek out greater suffering as worthy of my love is to seek out greater opportunity for my love to be appreciated, to be a greater hero. If I were truly to seek out suffering out of love, then I would be unaffected if God required my love in a more comfortable place; in any situation I would be able to love equally. Instead, personal pride or achievement masquerade as compassion.
*Assuming Africa has a population of roughly 1 billion people and the US around 300 million (and my math is correct), this rate is relatively equivalent to 4,500 Americans, or 1.6 million a year. Other studies suggest that 45,000 Americans actually die each year for lack of health insurance, which might be somewhat analogous to the statistic here. 45,000 a year, while also staggering, comes out to roughly 123 a day, or a little under 3% of 4,500. Of course, people are not statistics, and each of 45,000 preventable deaths is every bit the tragedy of each of 5.5 million.
Red Tape
One of the exciting opportunities that has presented itself this year is a mural project with the freshmen students at Woodrow Wilson High School, one of the two major public high schools in Camden. An UrbanPromise intern had very successfully completed a mural at the school in the past, and an administrator from the school had been in contact with UrbanPromise for some time about creating another one. Last week, myself and another intern went down to the school to see the school and the wall, and to discuss the project with the school, with the expectation of starting today and dedicating at least two days a week to this project. Upon arriving this morning, however, our contact informed us that, under the new adminstration, all projects had to be board-approved, a process that requires a minimum of eight to ten weeks. Even further, we are not even allowed contact with the students without board approval. While this makes sense, it is still frustrating, and there is nothing we can really do except for wait and hope that, after the wait, it actually does get approved. In the meantime, we are brainstorming ideas and identifying needs and potential partners to fill those needs, but it looks like I'll have to find another place for morning service work, at least until December.
Blessings,
Matt
Blessings,
Matt
Monday, September 21, 2009
Program Eve
I spent the weekend mostly preparing my classroom and lesson planning, and I still don't feel ready. Nonetheless, tomorrow is the long-awaited first day of after school program (ASP). I've chosen a pirate theme for the 3rd and 4th grade classroom with the catchprase "Books Ahoy!" and a giant pirate ship and sea monster on the wall. Tomorrow should be a fairly laid-back day with an opening program, snack and homework time, and lots of free time. We won't start teaching classes until Wednesday. Our director has suggested we take to heart the old teacher's adage, not to "smile until after Thanksgiving". I'm not sure I can do that, but I do get her point.
After program I'm going to a church with Has, a talented streetleader, to help him perform a song he wrote before a men's group where Bruce Main, the president of UrbanPromise, is speaking.
After almost two weeks of training and prepping and sitting through policy seminars, we finally get to actually do program! Here's praying it goes well.
Thanks to all,
Matt
After program I'm going to a church with Has, a talented streetleader, to help him perform a song he wrote before a men's group where Bruce Main, the president of UrbanPromise, is speaking.
After almost two weeks of training and prepping and sitting through policy seminars, we finally get to actually do program! Here's praying it goes well.
Thanks to all,
Matt
Friday, September 18, 2009
More Preparations
Summer at UrbanPromise is a wild, busy, and very crowded two months of screaming excitement. Hundreds of freedom-crazed kids, dozens of enthusiastic streetleaders, and almost fifty interns ranging from dazed to berserk, swarm around campsites throughout the city of Camden, playing games, laughing through skits, stumbling through crafts and Bible lessons, and shrieking camp songs at astonishing volumes. It's a time of forced growth, necessary faith, physical exhaustion, emotional turbulence, fast friends, and glasses-fogging heat. Reflection is impossible until, waking up from your thirty-six hour nap that began the second you left Camden, you finally have the time to comprehend that something just happened.
By all accounts the year-long program is of a very different nature. I'm living and working at the East Camden site, in the Rosedale After School Program, where UrbanPromise began its afterschool ministry. It's the same site where I worked the past two summers, but instead of five interns we have two, and instead of eighty kids we have forty. During the summer kids would arrive before 8:00 and peer in through the doors as we were meeting before camp. With school in session, we pick up our kids from the local elementary schools just before 3:00. Instead of rotating through all the grades for the same lessons, I have my own class, varying the lessons between literacy, bible, and creativity activities. Our mornings are devoted to building community and volunteering locally, providing opportunities to move beyond the confines of the UrbanPromise "bubble" and experience other elements of the community than we do with our kids.
Program officially begins on Tuesday. We have a dry run on Monday and in the interim I'm planning lessons, coloring classroom decorations, and searching for worksheets pretty much nonstop. Along those lines, if anyone ever has any ideas for activities having to do with literacy, arts, math, science, or music, please let me know and I will more than likely give them a try.
Thanks to all my friends and supporters!
Blessings,
Matt
By all accounts the year-long program is of a very different nature. I'm living and working at the East Camden site, in the Rosedale After School Program, where UrbanPromise began its afterschool ministry. It's the same site where I worked the past two summers, but instead of five interns we have two, and instead of eighty kids we have forty. During the summer kids would arrive before 8:00 and peer in through the doors as we were meeting before camp. With school in session, we pick up our kids from the local elementary schools just before 3:00. Instead of rotating through all the grades for the same lessons, I have my own class, varying the lessons between literacy, bible, and creativity activities. Our mornings are devoted to building community and volunteering locally, providing opportunities to move beyond the confines of the UrbanPromise "bubble" and experience other elements of the community than we do with our kids.
Program officially begins on Tuesday. We have a dry run on Monday and in the interim I'm planning lessons, coloring classroom decorations, and searching for worksheets pretty much nonstop. Along those lines, if anyone ever has any ideas for activities having to do with literacy, arts, math, science, or music, please let me know and I will more than likely give them a try.
Thanks to all my friends and supporters!
Blessings,
Matt
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Ready for the Battle?
I arrived at the UrbanPromise headquarters on the eastern edge of Camden on Wednesday, September 9th, with my guitar and a Rubbermaid tub full of clothes, toiletries, and books. Eleven other interns trickled in over the next two days; we have fourteen ready to open program next week as I write this, and we expect to have a full twenty by the end of October. We spent the weekend on a spiritual retreat on a farm in the foothills of the Lehigh Valley, an odd contrast to the urban setting we will all learn to call home soon enough. We chatted, prayed for one another, transcribed our expectations, fears, and supplications for the year in letters to God, and ate unhealthy amounts of home-cooked food. And then we all crowded back into two white UrbanVans and crept back to the city invincible to catch what rest we could before a week of training sessions and preparations.
As you might know, I made a decision some time ago to postpone my senior year of college in favor of a year-long internship with UrbanPromise, a ministry in Camden, NJ with which I have been blessed to share my past two summers. The reasoning that preceded this decision was not particularly coherent, prudent, or, perhaps, sufficiently prayerful, but I am ready to proceed with much prayer and anticipation where God might lead me on (or from) the road that I have chosen. Hopefully as I continue to write this blog I will be able to articulate and explore not only the reasons I came here but also come to understand why I am here, why I continue to be here, and why I will be where I am to go.
A friend of mine from Georgetown suggested that this process of understanding is also one of seeking who I am in the eyes of God. And such a search is intimately concerned with the character of God and His relation to his subjects, his creation, to which I belong. This search, in fact, is at the core of much of what I see before me this year, and, as definitive in my thought processes, will also color this blog, insofar as it serves to record my reflections here.
As such, it is my hope not that this blog will simply provide a record of my activities as an UrbanPromise intern, but detail the questions I encounter along the way.
As always, thanks to my friends and supporters who would share in this with me.
Blessings,
Matt
As you might know, I made a decision some time ago to postpone my senior year of college in favor of a year-long internship with UrbanPromise, a ministry in Camden, NJ with which I have been blessed to share my past two summers. The reasoning that preceded this decision was not particularly coherent, prudent, or, perhaps, sufficiently prayerful, but I am ready to proceed with much prayer and anticipation where God might lead me on (or from) the road that I have chosen. Hopefully as I continue to write this blog I will be able to articulate and explore not only the reasons I came here but also come to understand why I am here, why I continue to be here, and why I will be where I am to go.
A friend of mine from Georgetown suggested that this process of understanding is also one of seeking who I am in the eyes of God. And such a search is intimately concerned with the character of God and His relation to his subjects, his creation, to which I belong. This search, in fact, is at the core of much of what I see before me this year, and, as definitive in my thought processes, will also color this blog, insofar as it serves to record my reflections here.
As such, it is my hope not that this blog will simply provide a record of my activities as an UrbanPromise intern, but detail the questions I encounter along the way.
As always, thanks to my friends and supporters who would share in this with me.
Blessings,
Matt
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