This week marks the beginning of my YAV year. We spent the final weeks in August at National orientation at Stony Point Center in New York and then I (along with my fellow BFJYAVs) moved to Boston to continued site-specific orientation in another new city! I was especially challenged and stretched these past couple of weeks and continue to be called to new insights throughout the next eleven months.
National orientation kept me wrestling with the suffering this world experiences daily. Why is there injustice in this world when there is a compassionate and ever-present God? Undoubtedly, this question can draw people to religion and drive others far away in search of the answer. I do not speak for any organized denomination in the way I have approached this question, but have drawn on my own experiences, philosophies, and in conversations with mentors in my life. World suffering is caused by the free will of humans acting against the will of God. We are privileged by God with free will – the ability to choose. Our love and devotion to God means so much more when it is a freely chosen act. Freely given love—also known as agape--is the love we are called to model after God’s love for us. This is kind of love is counter to what we often think of as the emotional upswelling of care and adoration of another. This chosen, volitional, unconditional love is one that we decide to give to another. We don’t need a wave of emotions to spur us to action – this is love we give freely. Love we decide to give to Creator and Creation. Because of our ability to choose, however, can choose not to love God. This refusal to love separates us from God’s Will and leads to sin. We, therefore, live in an environment permeated with the effects of sins: Brokenness riddles our world and injustice envelopes and corrupts powerful systems of governance and leadership. We are no longer in the idyllic Garden, equal to one another in our own eyes. Instead, it takes us too long to recognize the ease with which sins occur. National YAV Orientation – or as it was later suggested, Dis-orientation – was focused on making us recognize the sins of the world rooted in race-motivated injustices. We wrestled with the implications and consequences of race. Our continued education on this subject was focused on the damaging effect unawareness of race has on interactions. During our day in New York City, my small group traveled from the grand Riverside Church in Harlem to Tom’s Delicious Pizza to Central Park to Yankee Stadium. We were confronted with several indications of the dynamics this power imbalance puts into play. The most concrete example was when we got our lunch. An important part of our day in NYC was navigating being on a small lunch budget. Our group had 8 people with $5 each allotted for lunch. We decided to pool our resources to get a pizza. This led us to find Tom’s Delicious Pizza that had large pizzas for $15 and waters for $1. To set the scene for those who’ve not gone to Tom’s Delicious Pizza, it was a narrow shop with enough tables to sit about 10 people. When we entered, a woman was ordering to-go and there were two men of color conversing at a table set up for 6 people. Our group of 8 boisterous folks seemed to fill the entire restaurant with our tired feet and hungry attitudes. Once we ordered a large cheese pizza and four waters, most of us moved outside. As we stood on the sidewalk, it became clear that we would not all fit into the restaurant. I was sent back in to see if we could get the pizza to-go so we wouldn’t disrupt the two men. It was too late. The man bringing out our pizza had promised the two we’d left inside he would find a table. What this turned into, however, was the man putting the pizza at the table for six the two men were still in conversation over. We were helped in our displacement of these men of color by our server and we could only stand by and thank the men for giving up their seats for us. Now, what national orientation week told me was that this was clearly a power imbalance expressed through race. What I have learned through uncomfortable life lessons is that nothing is so simple. These men had been sitting and talking, no longer eating any delicious pizza at the biggest table in this cramped restaurant. Our large group of young adults was about to eat pizza but had nowhere to sit and enjoy it. This could also have been a restaurant worker trying to make his customers comfortable and rush out those that are no longer providing revenue. The encounter was turned into only the power dynamics of race that made these men give up their seats for us. I refuse to allow one lens to color how I see the world, but I yearn to see through many. I am still challenged with trying to timely recognize and face the injustices rooted in imbalanced race dynamics as a part of this broken world. I will continue to fall short. The ambiguity of these interactions is another way I will be stretched. It was a challenge from our group leader to quote the song, “Only Time,” by Enya. This month the lyric “Who knows? Only time” speaks to the ambiguity of the many interactions I will encounter in the months to come. My awareness will be a muscle I will strengthen and tone throughout my life. The YAV motto, “A year of service for a lifetime of change” will hold true in spring-boarding me into being more alert and equipped to stand up for the poor, the hungry, the immigrant, the widowed, the orphaned. We are called to look to Christ as the great example for life. He, who lived a life free of sin in a sin-saturated world, shows us the disdain for hiding behind corrupt institutions and unjust laws as an excuse not to fight for the equality of all. We’ve been called to live in the tension of believing in the sacred humanity in everyone as it was in the Garden and fighting to restore the world as the true kin-dom of God. Who can say where the road goes Where the day flows, only time And who can say if your love grows As your heart chose, only time Who can say why your heart sighs As your love flies, only time And who can say why your heart cries When your love lies, only time Who can say when the roads meet That love might be in your heart And who can say when the day sleeps If the night keeps all your heart Night keeps all your heart Who can say if your love grows As your heart chose Only time And who can say where the road goes Where the day flows, only time Who knows? Only time -Enya, “Only Time”
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AuthorHi, I'm Sierra! I will be serving in Boston, MA as a Boston Food Justice Young Adult Volunteer for the 2019-2020 academic year. I graduated college with a major in Philosophy and minored in Classical Studies. Archives
July 2020
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