Creative Ministry

Sorry I've been gone so long, guys! I promise I am still alive! I've been in a creativity slump, which I need to force myself out of -- and which I will force myself out of with short posts, sharing exciting things with my loyal (and possibly quite bored) 3.14 readers.

Today I came across a story of a basketball ministry in Oklahoma City.  I wish my kids in St. Louis had had something like this.  Reading the story made me want it for those kids, and looking through the photo gallery made me miss them and wonder where they are today.  Every now and then I hear about one of them, since Ana still lives in St. Louis, and the stories are not always happy ones.

If you have a few moments today, please say a prayer for those kids.  They live in the world that produced the blow-up in Ferguson.  It's encouraging to see a ministry like the one in Oklahoma, but heaven only knows how badly we need more ministries like that -- ministries that reach out to kids in the language that they speak.

Image Credit goes to The Oklahoman.  Go read the story and see the other pictures.

Let Love Grow

I know I have not been keeping this blog up well this semester -- I should be posting at least twice a week.  Oops.  So now I am going to backtrack and cover the wedding in Houston!

Meemaw got married a mere two weeks ago.  Ana, Em, Triss, and I all made it out to her wedding -- only Byrd couldn't make it.  I hadn't seen Meemaw or Triss since they left St. Louis over two years ago.  I was surprised, though maybe I should not have been, at how easily we picked back up, as if we had parted only weeks ago.  As the four of us drove around and about Houston, we fell into community again.  So of course I remembered the beautiful thing about our VSC covenant: we never put a time limit or an end date.  We are bound by sacred kinship bonds forever.

The four of us stayed with Em's aunt and cousins and her parents and sister came into town. Which means that for the weekend we were adopted into a beautiful Mexican family.  At the wedding, we were surrounded by Meemaw's Vietnamese family and her Filipino in-laws.  The Mass was tri-lingual, featuring English, Latin, and Vietnamese and included Filipino wedding traditions.  I have never felt so white or so blessed to be in a place where so much beauty can come together.  The reception made it even better: ten courses of Vietnamese food that three white girls and a Mexican tackled with chopsticks!

The only bad part was, of course, the parting.  It's easy to forget how much you miss people when missing them becomes a part of your everyday life.  When that hole is filled for a few days, suddenly, it's even worse to be apart at the end.

Falling Behind for Christ

Living at home for the summer, I am surrounded by friends who are well into their adult lives.  Which, surprise!, I am too.  My life story has taken a different path than that of many of my peers.  (Side note: a great comic about life paths for recent grads.) Mostly I don't compare.  Instead, I ask myself: Am I where God wants me to be?  Am I listening to Him so as to prepare for the next step?  Am I living fully according to His will here and now?

When I read this article on Busted Halo, I wanted to sit down with the writer (Seth) and have a heart to heart about a year of service.  "I'm glad you learned to cry, but let's take a deeper look at your year.  Let's start with a deeper look at your tears."  One of the most valuable things I gained from my year (and I know this is true of other volunteers I know) was a deeper understanding of human dignity.  I came in with a great theory of the intrinsic value of the human person.  I came out valuing individual people in a way I hadn't known was possible.  Of course, this outcome was not the only, or even most valuable, grace from the year, but it is one of the easiest to explain.

All these graces together mean that my year, as Seth worries about his, was not a waste.  But more than that: no time spent with Christ is a waste.  So Seth's time in the soup kitchen had intrinsic value, apart from his learning to cry.  My time with the VSC had the same intrinsic value -- as did my time as YACM, as does my time at Franciscan.  All these times are times of abiding deeply with Christ, which is, after all, our ultimate goal.

A Final Word on Spring Break

I am falling behind everywhere in life, and it wasn't until I went to post last night that I realized just how far behind I am here!  My apologies to my loyal readers.  Here is the rest of my spring break story:

*A lot of my adventures in STL had to do with food or coffee or tea.  Ana and I visited our old haunt, Kayak's Coffee, which is much more pleasant at 9am than 6:30am.  I caught up with my former boss at another coffee shop and studied with Em at a third.  And by "studied," I mean we both did enough reading to justify talking about life, school, boys, and feminism for most of the time.  We visited a cute retro diner with homemade catsup and old-fashioned soda and a gelateria (poor choice to give up sweets for Lent!)

*Ana and I spent a good deal of time looking for a bridesmaid dress: she is in Meemaw's wedding this fall.  We finally found one through Pintrest of all places!

*Em and I went for lots of walks, including to the zoo and a park near her and Byrd's new house.  They live in an intentional community in a house that resembles our old volunteer house.  Apparently, there was a time when that's how they built nun houses.

*Em and Byrd live next door to an adult day-care with a chapel that holds Adoration weekly -- which happened to coincide with the time I was at their house.  So Em and I stopped in to say hi to Jesus.  Only when I walked in and saw the monstrance with the San Damiano crucifix in the background did I realize how much I missed having Adoration available literally all the time, as well as meditating on that cross.

*I drove by the school where Ana and I volunteered, although I did not stop in.  I was going to, but I chickened out about contacting anyone there.  During the drive, I discovered the power of classical conditioning: as soon as I saw the building two blocks down from our school, I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that was exactly the same as how I felt getting out of Ana's car each day during my VSC year.

*I got used to living with Ana way too fast.  It made it hard to leave.  Ana and I dreamed up a small business plan.  If it goes into action, I'll leave the world of theology and come to Saint Louis to make it real with Ana.  I know it's a castle in the air, but it was fun to dream up.  And I love that city and even more those girls!

*I hate leaving people and places that I love.

Back to Big Bend

I spent the past week taking my first real spring break -- flying off somewhere to carouse in the sun with friends.  My sunny destination: Saint Louis!  (Which, incidentally, put on some lovely beach weather for me.)  Ana and Byrd live out there, doing the grown-up thing, and Em is at nursing school.  I had a week off with no commitments; how could I pass up the chance to see them again?

Ana and her boy picked me up from the airport Saturday.  We flitted around the city for the night, making a stop at her boy's apartment, one of the downtown lofts I'd always both loved and hated.  From having been inside, the love has gone up, though I am still not sold on living downtown.  They showed me the best veggie burgers in the city, and we saw The Artist (a great black and white, silent film, that should be seen on a big screen if possible).

Sunday we went to Mass at Wash U, reminding me that there are Masses that are not a Steubenville experience.  After brunch, we dropped Ana's boy off at the airport and went to comfort ourselves with chocolate from her place of employment: Kakao Chocolate.  Life advice: eat lavender flavored things, especially if such things are chocolates.

We then had birthday adventures for Byrd, including paint-your-own-pottery, Mexican food, and Footloose (the new one).  So basically quality time with Ana, Em, and Byrd.  Although we've all changed since our Vincentian Service Corps year, some things are still the same, and I was right at home again with 4 of the 6 Pack.

Friend of a Friend

My Facebook world just got strange: in one (very short) week, I received friend requests from both a former teacher (my first grade teacher!) and a former student.  My mind is blown and I no longer know how I fit in to the universe.

Hello, Again!

My hiatus is over, and I am returning to the world of blogging! I have a lot of catching up to do; to speed up the process here are some quick updates:

1) I am doing recruiting work for the Catholic Volunteer Network, CVN. They help people find service opportunities, like my VSC year. Check them out here. I did training with them in DC for a weekend, during which I met some awesome people and decided to be excited about grad school again.

2) I want to give a shout out to Ana, Julia, Wendy, and Emily as well as my mother and her sister, who have been awesome support for me over the past two weeks. I've always known the women in my life were amazing, but this just made it hit home all the more. Most, if not all, of you ladies read this blog: thanks! <3

3) Lots and lots of testing. I'm ready to be a student in the classroom again, but I am not thrilled about having to study again.

4) The Great Move to Ohio happens soon. Virginia is protesting with all her might, in the form of a 5.9 earthquake. Sorry, my dearly beloved state, but have no fear: our separation is not forever!

The Other Half Continues

When I update my blog, it automatically posts to Google Reader and Google Buzz. So I end up with more comments through Buzz than I do on Blogger. My post about my experience at Romeo Elementary generated an interesting conversation, and I want to post some of it here.


In Response to "The Other Half"

DD: I had this very realization senior year of college. My goal as an educator is to teach giving back. Should I get hired by an affluent school, I feel obliged to show my students how they can share their resources with other, less affluent students. (For example, students may tutor or donate year old school supplies, etc.)

For now, that is the only solution I can figure. Fixing the problem itself remains a daunting thought.

AP: I agree. PS 50, where I volunteered in Jamaica, Queens, is far different from Ellis Elementary, where I volunteered in Manassas, Virginia. The trick, I've found, is not to resent those children who are fortunate enough to go to a school with smart boards and shiny playground equipment -- after all, I believe that every child deserves those things. I agree with you that I have no idea how to solve the disparity in education in this country, but begrudging children fortunate enough to live in high-property-tax areas doesn't solve that (not that I'm accusing you of that, of course. I know that you distinguish between the children themselves and the situation in which they live).

From what I have personally observed and read, it is as much the teacher as it is the microphones and document viewers that make education a success. Perhaps one of your Romeo 4th graders will be able to come up with the answers that we cannot.

On a related note, have you seen the movie "Waiting for Superman?" Honestly, it's horribly depressing, but I definitely recommend it.

Beth: Fixing the problem does remain a very daunting thought. And it's hard to tell when my job is to fix the problem and when my job is to treat the symptoms. I have a tendency to want to fix everything, which I cannot possibly do. Coming to terms with that takes a great deal of humility.

Part of the problem is that I'm not sure this tutoring even treats the symptoms. If these kids have enough and more, should I seek other places to serve? It's hard to find poverty in the 'burg, and I'm not sure I have enough guts to go where I need to in order to find it (because it is here). Then again, just because these kids are at an affluent school does not mean that they have everything they need.


The discussion continues for several more posts, and Julia joins in as well. She pointed out (and rightly so) that children who have everything materially may still lack relationally. Just because these students have the appearance of "having it all" doesn't mean that they have no need for another person to be a positive presence in their lives. Indeed, the affluent can sometimes be the most relationship starved of all. I am making judgments about the lives of these 4th graders without really knowing anything.

As for AP's comments about the teacher mattering as much as the physical resources, also so true. In some ways my kids from last year suffered (and suffer more this year, since we lost some good teachers) in that regard, and in some ways they are blessed. I witnessed last year both how much a good teacher can do with a lack of resources and how little a poor teacher can do with the resources he or she is given. The disparity in the education, commitment, skill, and ability of teachers is yet another tragedy that frustrates me.

The Other Half

I found, in the months since I left St. Louis, that I missed kids and I missed volunteering. I also have Mondays off, and only so many of them can be filled "taking care of life" -- running errands, paying bills, cleaning the house, etc. After many failed attempts to find a place to spend my Mondays, I ended up with a group that tutors at local elementary and middle schools. Sadly, none of the middle schools had Monday slots, so I am now tutoring 4th graders at Romeo Elementary.

I'm assigned to Mrs. Smith's room. (Each tutor is with one teacher.) The last time I went, I worked with one student on long division. I noticed that Mrs. Smith wore an electronic device around her neck. I have a friend with a hearing aide and it looked like the device that he hands to professors to help with the sound. I assumed that one of the students had a similar difficulty, although I couldn't identify the particular student.

Today, I stayed in the classroom for instructional time. During it, I noticed the amazing acoustics of the classroom -- Mrs. Smith was not speaking loudly, but her voice was on math : comparing fractions. I learned a "fail-proof" method of comparing fractions.

Then things got fun. She handed out egg cartons, plastic tokens, and string to pairs of kids and explained how to make fractions out of them. They divided the carton with strings. The number of holes became the denominator. Then they filled the holes with chips for the numerator. So maybe 3 of 6 holes had chips in them.

It was all very confusing, and I settled in with two boys and helped them figure it out. As I sat on the floor, Mrs. Smith kept talking. It dawned on me that I couldn't figure out where her voice was coming from. That's when I realized that she had a projection system in the classroom -- essential, she had a microphone!

I later learned that all the classrooms at Romeo are similarly equipped. They also have document projectors that show full-color images of objects. The President's Day display had legit colonial clothing on it. Both times, someone had left goodies in the office for teachers. It's fairly clear that this school has money. Earlier in the day, I had gone to read with 3rd graders at another school, similarly shiny and high-tech. I spent a few minutes in the library there -- a large, clean room, lined with organized books, bright and shiny with a plethora of tables and chairs. For a moment I saw my library from last year and my kids. I resented the abundance here and the lack there.

So by the time I figured out how loaded Romeo is, I was predisposed to be upset. I am already enjoying the kids and learning their fun personalities, but finding out that each classroom has microphones made me a little sick. How is it that schools across the nations have such disparities? Not only are these schools so much better off than mine last year, but St. Louis public schools are even worse. It's not right, the way some children have the world in their hands while others have so little education. But it's one of those problems in this world that I have no idea how to solve.

These Things Will Change

One common question I've received about my volunteer year is: "How have you changed?"

Because I process things slowly, and self-change is often difficult to measure, most of the time I stumble and bumble my way around that question. The other day, however, I discovered one answer : I look over my shoulder more often.

Ours is a safe campus, and, during my time here, I didn't hesitate to walk across campus at 9 or 10 at night. Once the clock hit 11 or 12 or later, I would hesitate, but I would also walk a mile from CCM to my apartment before calling Campus Escort. Not the wisest choice, and certainly not what they tell you during Freshmen Orientation, but the only 2 times I've felt uncomfortable by random people on campus at night, I've been in a group.

From safe campus to St. Louis I go, where I hesitated to walk out to my car late at night. (That was probably just paranoia. Our neighborhood was generally safe.) Some neighborhoods were off limits at night; some streets were off limits during the day. I became much more aware of the people on the streets around me. At sundown, I felt unsafe standing outside our school.

Back on campus, I found myself with half an hour to kill before an event that started at 8pm. During my time as a student, I would not have considered it late. It would not have occurred to me to be vigilant during my walk. It wasn't even eight at night! Yet I found myself wondering if I should be walking alone, if this was safe.

When I became aware of these thoughts, I had two reactions : 1) Beth, you are being ridiculous! and 2) But it's true! This person walking towards you could be anyone!

I processed the second reaction. Yes, she could be anyone. However, I would assume that she was a part of the College community, which makes her part of "us" rather than "them." Especially if I am a student, she is "us," not "them." And being part of one community means that we are, to some extent or another, invested in each other. Which mean that, unlike on the streets of St. Louis, on the paths of the College, I don't encounter just anyone. And they (for many reasons) are safer.

Please note : I am well aware that the College is no magical place where bad things don't happen. I am well aware that anyone can walk on the campus, not just members of the College community, and that not all members are committed to the common good, or others' individual goods. Still, I am also aware that the campus is much safer than where I was last year.

Walking Backwards

I think it might at last be time for me to turn introspective and consider this year. After all, I start my new job Monday -- which I can't believe -- and I should finish my blogging about my volunteer time first. Here is my list of Things I've Learned. They fall into two groups : the Hows and the Whats.

Things I've Learned in My Year of Volunteer Service:

1) How to jump a car (though I probably won't remember)

2) How to get rid of flies

3) That Panera started in St. Louis

4) How to parallel park

5) How to pay in cash for gasoline

6) That a GSP is not necessary

7) That Wednesday mornings are perfect for lattes.

8) That I don't know myself as well as I thought I did

9) How to be friends with people who are not nerds

10) That a Beth-sized person can fit into a laundry chute

11) That poverty is complex

12) How to bite my tongue

13) How to speak with compassion

14) How to placate rich donors

15) That dignity and pride are different

16) How to make and sell dog bones

17) How to make clam chowder

18) That white-girl hair fascinates black girls

19) How to be more observant

20) That I don't matter -- or that I do

Round-Trip

My parents arrived in St. Louis on Monday and we've done a whirlwind tour of the important sites: Anheuser-Busch, the Arch, the Cathedral Basilica, the Butterfly House... Underlying it all was the knowledge that when they leave St. Louis on Thursday, so do I.

Tomorrow morning, I fly out of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on a little plane bound for DC. In the coming days, I'll post some concluding musings about my time here : what I've learned, how I've changed, etc. This post is more to update my loyal readers who read for the sake of knowing where I am and what I'm doing. I'm leaving my community and family here and heading home for a couple weeks.

Exit Story

I had to write a story about my year as part of my paperwork for AmeriCorps. I want to post it here too; it's longer what I normally write, but it's a good summary of my year here.

Every now and then, as I bend down to help a sixth grader with a math assignment, I am extremely conscious of my blonde ponytail swinging down my back or of the color of my skin next to my students’. I become suddenly aware that I look like a poster-child for charity. You know, the kind you see on a website, the white teacher smilingly instructing minority students, patiently explaining to them how to read, how to add, how to find Europe on a globe.

Mostly, I am aware of this appearance when someone new comes into the school: a parent, a visitor, a new teacher. At other times, I forget. No matter what color your skin, fractions work the same way and the patterns of the solar system are the same. When I came into the school, the lack of knowledge surprised me. I knew I was coming into material poverty; the educational poverty and lack of cultural literacy astounded me. However, I quickly learned that my children had many lessons for me that sprang from who they were. Our society often attempts to disguise differences. I learned from the places where who we were as separate from each other shone.

To lose our differences is to claim a loss. Although the 7^th and 8^th graders hesitate to say the word “white” in front of me, let alone notice our differences, I have learned this year that our differences make us whole. My students’ perceptions of our difference range: from the kindergartner who created my portrait with dark skin and brown hair to the sixth grader who told me he had thought I would be mean because I was white, to the 8^th graders who complained about “ignorant black people” and apologized to me for saying it.

Racially, the difference that fascinates me is hair. With their weaves and extensions, the braids, curls, and straightenings, my girls did beautiful things with their hair. In turn, they couldn’t believe that I had to wash mine every day or that it was all mine and all its natural color (especially because I have bright highlights in my hair). They flipped out when I donated it to Pantene, because it would take them much longer than 18 months to grow enough hair for that. I think they are all beautiful; they love my hair. It was an easy way for my girls to notice that we are not the same without making a value judgment. It is an easy way to show how diversity adds to beauty.

First Realization: Our differences are beautiful.

The hair is for the girls. With the boys, the difference I noticed was the way they jumped. I’m sure if I found another community of boys as intent upon basketball playing, they also would jump. But I had never seen anything like this before, the way my boys flew into the air with or behind the basketball, aiming at the falling-apart hoop. In my neighborhood, we never had to jump that high.

In fact, the playground is the best place to take this story next. The teachers own the classrooms, but the students own the playground. We don’t really have a “playground” – recess is held in a bumpy, pothole-riddled courtyard, with basketball hoops facing each other at fifty feet across the yard and one hundred feet of asphalt stretching around them. On this courtyard, two games of basketball back up to each other. A football barrels match through them and around the four square and jump rope at the far end of the yard. Two or three children playing tag weave in and out of the other games. And a teacher can walk the hypotenuse of the yard without looking and not a single child will collide with her.

Second Realization: We learn from what we have.

Just like the “playground” offers less than what my children ought to have, the computer lab hosts a legion of dinosaurs on which the students learn to operate Microsoft Word. Another volunteer and I hold newspaper class in that room. At the end of the year, the class shrank. When it consisted of two teachers and two students, we spent more time chatting than writing the newspaper. I tried to explain to one of the girls why she had to be in school from eight in the morning until five in the evening. She, in turn, tried to explain to me that her neighborhood was not dangerous. She told me that they didn’t even hear gunshots very often.

I offered her my own story – that in some places, you don’t hear gunshots at all. “Not even on New Year’s?” she asked, not believing. Not having any idea that gunshots were as foreign to me as their lack was to her.

Third Realization: We don’t always know what we deserve.

That same girl had gotten in trouble recently for an altercation with some of her classmates. Then, it turned out, they got in trouble too, because they had been talking about her brother. And try as she might to keep her temper (although, like most 13 year olds, she didn’t always try hard), her classmates had done the one unacceptable thing: they messed with her family. Whatever and whomever family may or may not be, it means something very clear. It means being there. Even when Mama leaves marks on your arms, family trumps self.

One of my sixth graders proved it clearly. I was substituting for the kindergarten teacher and had fourteen little people running havoc across the courtyard. Then one of the littlest tripped and fell. As the tears started to fall and I started to move, her sixth grade sister was there. I almost hadn’t seen her step out of the door of the school, and here she was, halfway across the yard, comforting her sister, the errand that had taken her out of class forgotten.

Fourth Realization: Being there matters.

Not only did the school have a high concentration of families – siblings, cousins, half-siblings – but many of the families had been there for years, generations. So friends became like family, with the same sort of love-hate dynamics that some families have. Stories grew, like family traditions, of the day a new student came to school, the time that the loud girl used to be quiet, the teachers they chased away. Because teachers didn’t stay, principals didn’t stay, people didn’t stay.

I could impart all the classroom knowledge in my own repertoire and that wouldn’t mean as much as my simply coming to school every day. My simple acknowledgement of each child’s beauty, talents, humanity. An acknowledgement of humanity is an acknowledgement of human dignity. For all the pride my children had, they had very little dignity.

Take, for example, on seventh grader. She believed that she was going to go into high school, get pregnant, and drop out. In seventh grade, someone broke up with her because she wouldn’t go far enough with him. Her hurt and bitterness spilled into the way she treated other people and herself. Throughout the year, with the constant attention and affirmation from a few positive women in her life (one of whom was myself), she began to blossom, gaining confidence, self-love, and maybe even a bit of book-learning.

Fifth Realization: We cannot change each other, but we can leave God’s fingerprints on each other.

If I left His fingerprints on my students, they left theirs on me. They showed me beauty and taught me why people jump. They reminded me who was my family and how not to run away. Even on the days I came home raging against God and His world, even on the days I fell like an unbalanced trapeze artist onto my community because I couldn’t take it anymore, even on the days I had to remind myself to breath, they pushed and molded me into the person I am now.

So even those days when I know I look like a poster child for charity, I know it’s just an illusion. I’m not reaching down to give a generous educational gift. My students and I are in a reciprocal relationship, sharing our lives and our differences.

Happy Endings

Yesterday, I woke up at 4:45 am, in order to take Meemaw and Triss to the airport. Our Six Pack is down to three. On an impromptu G-chat survey, apparently, when you reduce a Six Pack to three, you get a trinity, a three layer cake, or drunk.

I went to the 6:30 Mass, ate breakfast, brought Ana to a job interview, and distracted myself by being excited about finding housing for next year until it was time to go to summer school.

I don't go in for hugely emotional posts, but this blog would not accurately reflect my time as a volunteer if I didn't mention how hard it is at the ending. So I'll finish this post with some words of encouragement from a wise Daughter of Charity:

"Let the sadness be; it is a sign of all you loved about your companions and your special year. It deserves to be honored. Lean into it a bit and rest with it."

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

I knew it was the beginning of the end when Em's parents came in Thursday evening. They were visiting a few days, attending our closing Mass, and taking Em home with them. So Thursday night, a night of sushi and gelato, was really our last night.

But our official ending was last night, at our "Mass of Thanksgiving." Once again, we gathered in the provincial house, with the same priest and sisters who welcomed us back in August. We invited family and friends from our year here and planned music that would make us cry. Our director planned a farewell and blessing to make us cry as well. We dressed up for the occasion as well, even those of us who aren't so much about the dresses.

My boss from school was there, along with the second and third grade teachers, who are talented teachers and amazing women. My housemates had a variety of guests as well, plus a good number of Daughters of Charity. At the end of Mass, we signed our names into the VCS Alumni Book and were given a framed copy of our covenant.

We had dinner with our guests and then came home... and then, this morning, Em and her parents left. And we are suddenly no longer a six-pack.

Horoscopes for Smart People

One of my favorite workshops at the Convocation focused on leadership styles. You may remember, either from knowing me or reading my post about Dittmer, that I have slight obsession with personality theories and tests. I know it's a silly hobby -- one of my friends called things such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator "horoscopes for smart people," and it's true. But silly or no, it intrigues me, so I jumped at the opportunity to take in more theory and ideas about how we as humans function differently.

Ana, Triss, and I walked in to the room, where we (along with the rest of the group) divided ourselves up according to colors. We read descriptions posted on the wall and self-defined ourselves into a color group. I was blue -- analytical; Ana and Triss were red -- social. The other two colors are yellow (conceptual) and green (structural).

Once everyone had settled into a color, the professor leading the workshop explain the theory. It is called Emergenetics (with some sort of a "we own this name/theory" sign behind it). People are measured on two sets of descriptors: the way their brains work and their behaviors. There was a circle picture to illustrate it, but I have no such cute little visual.

The four colors make up the first set of descriptors:

Blue: analytical Yellow: Conceptual

Green: structural Red: Social

Yellows are big-picture visionaries, with future-oriented thinking. They are experimenters and explorers, with new ideas, never bound by the "way things are done." They generate ideas and thrive on creativity.

Reds are relational. They focus on other people, recognizing them, affirming them, being in tune with their values and gifts. They love team work and learn by interacting with other people.

Greens are the organizers of the world. They think in bullet points; they are thorough, detailed, dependable, timely. They like guidelines, due dates, time lines; they are practical people who are drawn to the tried and true rather than new and innovative.

Blues logical, objective, rational. They assimilate new information with ease and solve problems quickly, focused on the end result. They are researchers, data-oriented, always asking, "Why?"

The rows represent abstract versus concrete thinking and the columns "symmetrical vs. asymmetrical," terms that replaced "logic" because of a value judgement. But the symmetry refers to the function of logic and order. (Blogger does not like my formatting; sorry that the table doesn't line up right.)

Symmetrical Asymmetrical

Abstract Blue: analytical Yellow: Conceptual

(abstract, symmetrical) (abstract, asymmetrical)

Concrete Green: structural Red: Social

(concrete, symmetrical) (concrete, asymmetrical)

Nice and simple, right? Then, in an arrowed circle around this diagram came the three measures of behavior: expressivity; assertiveness; flexibility. Expressivity is tendency to share and express emotions. Assertiveness is willingness to speak thoughts. Flexibility is openness to accommodating the thoughts and actions of others.

They are divided into thirds to describe people; you can be a "first third expressive" or "third third flexible." The thirds confused me but a "first third" means weak in that area and a "third third" means high. Example : a loud extrovert tends to be a third third expressive. We didn't get as much about the behaviors as the ways of thinking, so I have no specifics, though I can take guesses about where I fall on these scales.

In our color groups, we worked together to answer the question : How would your group go on a vacation together? When we presented our resulting posters to the group at large, the professor caricatured the color tendencies that appeared in our interactions and answers. I would have like to have learned more about leading as a specific color-brained person and about interacting with people of various color brains and various behaviors. Then the workshop would have been as useful as it was fun. As is, I got food for thought and a library recommendation to read more of the theory.

Back to Chicago

Somehow or another, I seem to be spending a good deal of time in Chicago this year. Five of the 6 pack road-tripped it up to the Windy City this past weekend for the National Vincentian Youth Convocation, celebrating the year of the 350th anniversary of the deaths of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac. De Paul University was hosting 135 young Vincentians to celebrate the founders of the charism.

Most of the attendees were students at one of the three Vincentian universities : Niagara, St. John's, and De Paul itself. In addition, there was a small but strong showing of volunteers and former volunteers and seven brave "other" souls. The strong student contingent tinted the entire conference with a decidedly collegiate focus. Still, most of it was applicable to the life of a Vincentian volunteer as well.

We started out the weekend with a service activity. Try as I might, I cannot escape education; I helped prepare activity supplies for De Paul's Jumpstart. As a teacher's aide this year and a teacher's daughter for life, I understand the importance of the prep work of coloring, cutting, and laminating, but after a long early morning drive, the repetitive activity got to me and I had a very hard time staying awake for the end bit. However, I had a nice nap afterwards and was surprisingly awake for the reflection and dinner (Chicago pizza -- yum!).

Dinner was followed by a boat ride on the river and lake, with a tour of the architecture of the shoreline. Apparently Chicago has the longest uninterrupted shoreline of any city in the US. Some highlights of the tour : 1) Part of downtown, the "Gold Coast," was once owned and declared independent from the city and the state by Streeter, a man who had dirt dumped in the river to form the land. 2) The Chicago River's flow was reverse, because Chicagoans (is that right?) were concerned about waste flowing into Lake Michigan. Instead it flowed south to St. Louis. Gee, thanks, Chicago. 3) One of the largest LEED certified buildings stands along the Chicago shoreline. The green roof collects rainwater, which is used to help cool the building.

Sunday and Monday were sit-and-listen days, with "plenary" and "concurrent" sessions. I kept forgetting the word "concurrent," and calling them "breakout" sessions, and I discovered at lunch on Monday that really no one knew what plenary means. Kudos for the cool words, De Paul leadership, but I think your genius was largely lost. Sister Patricia Connelly, DC, who represents the Daughters of Charity in the UN, gave the keynote address about systemic change as part of the Vincentian charism. We also had plenary sessions on an international Vincentian group called MISEVI and on Haiti. I attended sessions on different models of leadership (the colors, for those of you who know whether you are blue, green, yellow, or red), women's stories, forgiveness, and the Vincentian archives at De Paul. We had Mass together and ice cream and prayed some.

You'll hear more about the content and suchnot of the the sessions over the next few days. Some I enjoyed, some challenged me, some worried me. We started and ended with the "Vincentian question," a question Vincent de Paul asked at the beginning of his ministry, and one I struggle to answer and invite my dear readers to consider.

Seeing the condition of the poor in the villages of France, Vincent turned to his friend, Madame de Gondi, and asked, "What must be done?"

That's What I'm Doin' These Days

School is over. If you've been reading faithfully (you have, haven't you?), you know this already. So what does a teaching assistant do with her days after school ends? Summer school, of course!

Ana and I are working with a summer school program that takes place on-site at our school, but is not actually run by our school. So I have a new boss now. The program focuses on maintaining and improving literacy skills for 4th and 5th grade students. Most of the day, the students will have different reading-related activities, as well as art and PE classes, although even those classes will link back to reading. The school day ends at 3:30, and then the aftercare program begins.

Enter Beth and Ana. Our boss commissioned us to set up education-related after-school activities for our kids. So, while summer school doesn't start until June 28, we've been keeping ourselves busy with planning. For the past week and a half, we've been scouring the St. Louis area for organizations that might bring activities and presentations to our school for free or cheap rates. And by "scouring St. Louis," I mean spending many hours online, researching groups and programs and sending emails into the dark : "I don't know if you can help, but..."

I've been working out of a coffee shop, which has been fun. Meemaw introduced us to a cute one in the Italian section of town that has free wireless and, unlike Panera (known as St. Louis Bread Co. here), they don't kick you off after 1/2 hour during lunch time. So Ana and I can sit for three or four hours shooting out countless emails, calculating budgeting, and creating calendars.

We're working out some cool programming. The Humane Society is coming to talk about animal rescue; the Science Center is doing demonstrations on "Creepy Chemistry" and where you can find plastic that you wouldn't expect. The Magic House offers free programs for schools with 50% or more free and reduced lunch. The Shakespeare Festival has offered us sessions. (I am in love with our contact there. He is speed and generous, has a cool email address, and passionate about Shakespeare. I am also likely never to meet him.) Our challenge is to come up with 28 days of programming on a very limited budget.

The other challenge for me relates to timing. I will only be with the summer school program through mid-July, and we are planning up through August. Logistically, for the summer school, it works out; Ana, my new boss, and one of his interns are more than capable of handling whatever I get set up before I leave. I just have received another task in patience to set up all these exciting programs knowing that I won't be around to see them. God has given me the task of planting what others will reap a lot this year, and this ministry is another of them.

Weekend Away, Take III

On this, my third weekend "retreat," the VSC community was actually on a retreat. We had our third and final "renewal weekend," returning to Dittmer where we made our first retreat. This time, however, rather than wandering through the woods and sitting out by the pond, I spent the majority of the time with my feet or my whole self in the pool right outside our retreat house.

The weekend focused on moving on : what would we bring with us and what would we leave behind? What would we need for the future? We even decorated shoes to help us on our journey into the next part of life! Meemaw is very artsy and hers turned out looking like something that could end up in a store. My other housemates have the patience and skill to make nice looking shoes. Lacking in both, I ended up with decent shoes, but unsatisfied with my own handicraft. Sometimes it's good to know where your gifts don't lie.

I counted Wisconsin as a "retreat" -- while not a retreat proper, it did get me away from St. Louis and some of the influences and preoccupations in my life. I'm counting the Vincentian convocation next week as one as well. So that makes enough retreats that pretty soon I should be in full-out surrender.

"Tell Me, What Will You Do"

This past weekend, I traveled to Chicago with Ana, Em, and Triss for the Catholics on Call conference at the Catholic Theological Union. The conference focused on discernment of vocation : not just as to state of life, but as to type of ministry. Really, though, it provided the tools to discern anywhere, at anytime in life.

We spent four(ish) days there with about 30 other Catholic young adults who had an interest in discerning. Telling the story of the conference will require more than one post, but here are the basics :

We listened a lot. Sr. Barbara Reid, OP; Bishop Morneau (Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay); Fr. Robin Ryan, CP; and a panel of people from various walks of life spoke to us about various elements of vocations and discernment. We also had the chance to visit a ministry site -- either Misericordia (for people with disabilities) or Harmony, Hope, and Healing (for homeless mothers). We were divided into tables for small group discussions and reflections. We prayed (adapted) Morning and Evening Prayers and had Mass together. Those were the official bits of programming.

But, as with any retreat (even though this officially was not one), a huge portion of the experience came from the other people. Because I knew my three housemates coming in, as well as one friend from home, I had a different experience than some of the other participants. I had the honor of meeting some amazing new people, each of whom had a valuable and fascinating story, and the joy of spending time with people whom I already loved.

My dear readers will have to wait to hear content and conclusions from the conference, but I will say that I walked out with more questions than answers... and that might be okay.