Changing seasons

I have kept a journal since I was in first or second grade, and halfway through October I finished my old volume and started a fresh one. Usually I opt for journals without anything already on the pages, frequently without even lines, but this journal was given to me as a gift and has quotes on every other page. I brought this one up to Chicago with me because I thought this format might be helpful in the discernment processing I'll be doing this year, and so far this has been very much the case.

Autumn has always been my favorite season, I love the weather, the changing leaves, the crisp coolness in the morning and clear night skies. (Superficially, I also love wearing sweaters and scarves, and fall is the time for their seasonal comeback). Perhaps since I am still oriented towards the rhythms of the academic year, late fall also represents the transition from exciting newness and possibility to making sense of an emerging routine. In year of service terminology, this might also be called the low point of (loosely defined) culture shock, the crash of reality which follows the "honeymoon period." In lived experience, this shift into the season of fall pushing towards winter looks and feels a lot like the symptoms of depression. It is helpful to have housemates who are experiencing the same general phenomenon in their own ways, but establishing a routine while continuing to be a stranger in a strange land is singularly isolating.

In my attempt to not become too mired in this necessary low point, I have been trying to craft an intentional process for discernment through my journaling. The following quotes were found on pages of my journal as I've been processing questions of purpose during this fall season.

"I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us." -- Anne Lamott

"Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don't have to read or analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish." -- Jessamyn West

"When a man has made peace with himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world." --Martin Buber

"Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness...Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted." -- Paul Tillich

In the midst of this personal dark time, our director's husband, Jim, and one of my housemates, (Nathaniel) Potts, were both mugged last week. Neither is a typical "mugging victim" stereotype, and both muggings involved the same group of young men, the same early evening time, and guns. Both were within a 5 minute walk from our house, both occurred on the evening commute home on weekdays. This sent our community into a group dark time around an issue far more concrete than our slow adjustment to our year as Chicago Dwellers.

This incident illustrates the kinds of questions I am wrestling with during this season. What is my place here, in Garfield Park? How do I best live with integrity in this community as an outsider who currently lives within the neighborhood lines? What sort of difference does it really make that I care and am committed to the harsh, unfair social and economic realities of the residents of Garfield Park? How do I negotiate fear for my personal safety with the knowledge that much of my safety is outside my control and the theological certainty that I love the people of Garfield Park? Is there anything that I can do as one person, with the book knowledge and now face-to-face experience, to combat the ways in which enormous systemic issues have severe personal impact? Must I choose between addressing the sheer quantity of systemic problems and precious quality of individual lives in order to make any impact at all?

On an abstract level, I understand that such incidents are not personal, they are systemic, they point towards larger social inequities. I also understand the traumatizing emotional impact, on a personal level, that is the direct result of a mugging. On a personal level, it is a violation of human dignity and respect, that is a serious violence beyond the obvious physical violence of the situation itself.

In the meantime, when I'm not wrestling with the Big Questions, the sky seems to have turned to its perpetual gray. I recently heard the phrase "Midwestern malaise" and I think that may very well describe this turn towards winter as the seasons keep marching forward. Hopefully I can find some beauty or meaning in the constant gray to keep me from going stir crazy. That, however, may prove to be the most challenging of my probing questions this year.