state of the sarah

I’ve been here 3 months. I had my half-way discussion with my supervisor Danielle a week or two ago. I haven’t reached my goal of being able to coordinate a similar program, but I have a far more realistic understanding of the work necessary to do so. I’m learning about being myself while being professional and contextual. I’m taking initiative in setting small goals and creating action items to reach them, and fulfilling promises.

I understand more of the power behind BuildaBridge classes’ three foci: hope-infused, child-center and trauma-informed. Last week I had to physically remove and restrain an 8-year-old girl. Her brother had hurt her, and it triggered something raw. I want to be trauma-informed. I am becoming so, and will become more, as I get to take classes at the same Institute that I am planning at half-price. It’s still expensive, but I’d be a fool to pass it up. This experience is giving me more of a drive, to be relevant, to be ready, to be willing, to be engaged, to be in community.

I’m past college. It’s been a year (Greg Laswell song!). Not that I’m an adult. But I realized we’re strange at this age. It’s cool, as long as we know it. People are better together, as family, however that family looks. Brotherly love is hard. College students are both really bad and really good at being family to each other. I want to be family to people, but it's hard. Anyways.

I went to an open mic at World Café Live. I had to have a table for one, which sucked, but then it was a spot right next to the stage, which rocked. I listened and drew and performed. No new friends, but I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and at 11:30 I walked to the train station. I waited on my platform on the far end and played guitar and it echoed. It was by far the best part of the evening. That sense of peace and of healing and belonging is what I love in music.

When I went to another open mic, someone said I had an accessory with my guitar. It feels that way, like Malibu Stacy, only not. It opens up avenues for talking, carrying it around, even if it is heavy. When I first reached the train station on the way into the city, there was a guy playing his own guitar, and we talked. He’s a music ed major, and he has to learn several different instruments right now, which he’s never done before. It makes me think maybe it’s not so far-fetched for me.

I’m considering other far-fetched things, too. Like Georgia, for a 10 day arts camp through BaB with refugee youth. Like an internship in Atlanta, Georgia with refugees, through Fugees Family. Like staying in Philly. Or coming back to Cali but bringing the brotherly love with me. It depends on how the numbers add up. I miss Cali, and I miss family, and I miss free rent and belonging. But…idk.

I drive home from church cell with Barb and Liz most of the time. Last week Barb asked if I was getting what I wanted out of Philly, and what my plans were, where I was going. No, I don’t know, and Ill be somewhere. We laughed about it, because Liz had a similar answer when she was young about being somewhere, and that’s really still her answer and a lot of people’s answer. Because life’s full of questions. I don’t know where I’ll be. I’m trying not to care, though I do.

Sunday Monday Rising

Did you know traditionally, Christ didn’t actually rise until Monday? There’s a blog entry by Daniel Majors (a Christian religious studies grad student in CA) that talks about this. I can’t find the link, but check him out at danielmajors.com. The point was simply about that tension of where we live today, in the already but not yet, the Sunday of Christ in the grave but not yet risen. Of course, Christ has risen, but I know Easter came and went for me and I still didn’t feel that hope that goes with that truth. And, for our world, it still has not yet experienced the full power of that.

Still, my Easter was definitely good. I worked. I ate an incredible staff lunch. I played guitar. I hung out with a friend who had a bad family experience over Easter.

Honestly, though, it seems a long time ago now. I’ve been busy at my internship, busy with my first time as an assistant teacher in the transitional shelters. It is powerful to see how vulnerable and sensitive children are to one another’s criticisms. It’s so easy to see in children, who don’t yet know how to hide their feelings, but I think adults are often nearly just as vulnerable. We just better at pretending we’re not. We play make believe. But don’t hate the player, hate the game, right? Yeah. Have you ever been in a shelter? I have been in one before this, but not for a very long time. Just to see the kids coming “home” from school and the moms (no dads in either) reading in the lobby with their kids…trying to make a life. Having a 4-year-old at a Women Against Abuse shelter punch a drawing of a character she didn’t like, and hear the mother tell her to be different from her mother. It’s different when you’re there. To see people working to get from Sunday to Monday, who have to hope that the grave isn’t the end of our story.

It certainly gives you perspective on your own financial worries. I’m less worried about money right now, though honestly more because of a small windfall than any mature, reflective considerations on my one day of work in the shelters. Last weekend I played guitar for a 17-year-old girl’s youtube vids, and her mom very generously compensated me. The girl is Taylor Bright, but the whole family and their friends were just very nice to meet, made me feel very appreciated and excited to be there. Anyways, I’ll be sure to let you know about the vid when it comes up.

Of course, my news is quite small compared to the big news of the week. Osama. I didn’t like the big news of the week. Not because I’m naive, though I probably am that, too. Not because verses about loving your enemy and not rejoicing in their deaths, either, though those are good things. It seemed pointless, and our response made me feel tired and hollow. I read about people celebrating in the streets, and my mind immediately went to 9/11 when people celebrated the deaths of American civilians. These are two very, very different situations, I would never want to minimize Osama’s sway to persuade through his hate-filled rhetoric, nor accuse the victims of 9/11 of harboring the same intent to cause harm to others that Osama did. I have read several of Osama’s speeches and letters. It made my heart sick.

But I do see in the two celebrations similar emotions of gloating and pride. Behind the rhetoric of justice and democracy and the war on terror and peace and making the world a safer place, really we just wanted to get ours, and save some face that it took us so long. So we did. Round of applause. Did it do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. But it didn’t make me want to celebrate. It reminded me it’s still Sunday. We’re still half in the grave. And sometimes we’re still just as sensitive and angry as the little kids I worked with. And I don’t mean that in a patronizing way. It is what it is.

Anyways. Luckily, later on Monday I talked on the phone with my brother after his first day of work and I called him a closet-hippy, and I watched Elf with friends, and Tuesday I danced in my room. Nothing like a little sweat to feel alive. :)