Where's the meaning at???

What's really important to you? To YOU?

Where do you get the meaning in your life?

Have you ever had that feeling, like a star burning just under your ribs in the center of your being, radiating hidden light and unlimited energy, that THIS is something you could dedicate your life to? Something you could get up to every morning and look it in the eye and no matter whether it was easy or hard that day, always be drawn back into that relationship, that journey? Something that would never bore you, something you’d always want to be with, because there’s nothing you’d rather do—because without it, nothing else would be meaningful?

If you have, and that something actually corresponded with a feasible set of possibilities in your current life situation... you are very lucky.

If you haven't, or if you have but the translation of that feeling into things you can realistically do with your time was complicated and confused... you're like most people, I suspect. Welcome to the dimension we call reality.

I, for instance, will probably never be a married Jesuit priest. If I were a priest, I could use my head to study and teach theology and write homilies, my heart for the human connections of spiritual care, and my developing organizational/leadership skills for the business of leading a church. It sounds great. Sounds wonderful, in fact. But I can't do that in the church I've grown up in. (I picked the Jesuits for my little flight of imagination because they’re intellectuals, but passionately focused on social justice too. I like to think I’d fit in with a crowd like that.)

Four and a half months ago I got back from Peru jetlagged and nauseous from flying overnight, badly in need of a haircut, hauling my guitar and two beat-up suitcases and shivering in my little Lima jacket on Inauguration Day… and despite the exhaustion, I felt like I arrived charged with a marvelous energy. I’d seen something in that insane Latin American country that I’d never seen here. Call it love, call it a simpler life, call it community, call it the face of Christ in the poor and needy and the redemption that comes from reaching out to them. It was a connection that gave me meaning. During my first days back home I felt a deep desire to ask every American I saw—What is important to you? Where’s your meaning at? What feeds your inner self, in the midst of our darling culture’s obsession with buying crap we don’t need? And what’s it LIKE here, what’s LIFE like for you? What’s on the radio these days?? What music are you dancing to when nobody’s looking???

(My answer: that really catchy one-note song, “Because when I arrive, I—I’ll bring the fire make you come, alive, I—I’ll take you higher…” And the car-dancing began.)

My volunteer experience is over, but life continues. At this point I’m interested in putting together my two very different worlds and discovering how a young, modern American can seek out and live a deep spirituality—which is to say, a deep, full life. I have no set-in-stone career plan. I’m not going to become a nun, because shutting off all possibilities of relationships and family in my life does not feel life-giving to me. I don’t know what form of ministry I’ll find fulfilling in my church; I may consider other churches that would let me do other things. But I’m on this journey, and I believe many others are too. I like it because it involves me doing crazy things and learning to laugh more.

As I move into the next phase of life, I feel it's best to end this specifically volunteer-experience-based blog (except for those vacation pictures I still have to put up) and begin a new one. (So sad! But true!) My new blog will explore my thoughts related to spirituality in a broad sense—things I’m learning about how to live as a human in this world—and continue chronicling my adventures, Peruvian and otherwise! Please see my new exciting post-volunteering blog at:

http://kfwanderer.wordpress.com.

July 4th: I head back to Peru until I take it into my head to come back. Sometime within the next year, ideally February: I begin a Master’s degree in theology, and see if I can’t figure out some of this nuttiness called life in abundance.

If my musings amuse you—welcome along!

The Adventures Continue

If anyone's still reading after a break of more than 2 months--Hola again! I've got news: in just over a month, on July 4th, I'm going back to Peru for a while. Incredibly, it's the right thing for me to do right now, as part of this "in-between" time of my life after volunteering and before I start grad school.

For the past couple months I've been working, working, occasionally stopping to wonder what has happened to me recently, and working some more. I taught an ESL class through the end of April; went to visit my top choice of theology school, the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA; and got jobs. I got a job in the office of Notre Dame Mission Volunteers, because hey, they've messed with my life so much at this point that the least they could do is take pity on a poor ex-volunteer in a bad economy. It's actually cool because I get to coordinate some aspects of next year's international program, and the people at the office are mostly young women my age, thinking about their next steps and doing something good in the meantime, like me. I got another job as a server at the Ropewalk Tavern in Federal Hill, Baltimore--only to discover after a month that the guy on the back of my T-shirt was Ronald Regan, and the place's motto, "Old School Conservative!" The people are all so cool, they had me fooled!! ;) I have not told them of my secret inner flaming liberal. And I got another job teaching voice lessons on Sunday afternoons at my local Music & Arts center--SO fun! I'd never taught voice lessons in English before, but I'm really enjoying it. I have a 19-year-old soprano, a 40-year-old beginning singer, a 17-year-old aspiring punk rocker, a 9-year-old who likes musical theater, and a young adult baritone who wants to sing backup in his Christian rock band.

So it's inconvenient that now that I'm just getting a bit comfortable, I'm turning around and going back. But I'm doing it both to check out possibilities of future theological study there, and to pursue a relationship that began while I was there. (Can you really say you've lived if you haven't moved to another country for love? :) ) And of course, to see all my friends again, and to experience the nuttiness that is Peru, the nuttiness that keeps you awake! Also it's just been too long since I was squished into one of those combis, heh heh.

...of course the truth is that I'm not truly comfortable back home yet, and I have to recognize that. Being the foreigner everywhere you go sucks. But it also wakes you up. It makes you live in the present, because you're constantly being surprised by something you're not used to. Living in the present is one thing I learned a little bit in Peru and am trying to maintain... it's much more difficult than it sounds, especially when you've gone from being on a "mission" in a foreign land with a definite purpose, to working for a living in suburban Maryland, where everything's the same as when you were growing up there, quietly scheduled and predictable. I have spent entirely too much time at the mall these past few weeks. At first it's fine, and it's good to have clothes, but then the mindset kind of seeps into your brain, and before you know it you're basing your idea of yourself on whether the shoes match the bag, etc. Lots of my friends in Tupac had about 3 or 4 outfits that they wore ALL THE TIME, and that was it. And life went on. It is SO refreshing to keep that perspective in mind--it allows you to enjoy what you have, and let it be enough--more than enough, delightful! Read Anthony DeMello's Awareness, if you haven't.

Living in the present for me is also about being in contact with reality, or the universe, or Mystery, or God. And so I've applied to an MTS (Master of Theological Studies) program at the Franciscan School I visited. There is so much in my experience of Peru, God, the poor, community, foreignness, being on a journey--that I feel I need a degree program to help me unpack it all and see what I came back with. So that's the long-term plan. In the short term, however, there will be some more Peruvian insanity coming up in just a few weeks. And I promise to try to get my Puno/Lake Titicaca pictures up before then.