Midnight Run

It was sixty-two degrees yesterday and got as low as forty-three degrees at night, but you wouldn’t know it from Alice, who resides in Verdi Square in Manhattan. I use “reside” generously, as Alice is homeless and has been for the past three months. Her demeanor was anything but that which I would expect from a homeless woman; she was friendly, comical, even gregarious, and utterly willing to discuss her current state.

“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I don’t have sex, I don’t do any of that stuff,” she told my partner and me during our Midnight Run. “I want to live a wholesome life with good people. I may be homeless, but I still have my dignity.”

Not exactly what you’d expect to hear from a woman on a bench with a cart beside her.

Where Are We Headed?

Image c/o pinterest.com

I love the dichotomy between the two views of society: one which posits that society is headed toward the Kingdom of God, and the other that says that Eden was the Kingdom and we've been decreasing ever since. (I generally believe the former, but sometimes it isn't so easy!) In both cases, we're fallen and in need of God. It's the ways in which we see ourselves needing God that determines so much about our faith.

Merton is very clear about his stance on this issue. Reflecting on Bill Grime's "prophecy" about the future, Merton discusses the possibility of "Nothing to look forward to but the same inanities, falsities, cliches, and pretenses...surely more frustration, therefore more madness, violence, degeneracy, addiction" (177). However, he puts these options and a standstill and chooses hope over dread. "I have higher hopes," Merton says. "I dare to hope for change not only quantitative but qualitative too; such change must come through darkness and crisis, not joyous and painless adventure. Perhaps I say that out of habit" (177).

What does this mean for us? With technology and globalization, is the world becoming the "vast asylum" that Merton feared in the 1960s? Are we straying from the good ol' days when life was simple, even moral? Merton's idea of where change comes from is even more intriguing: as a society, are we in the midst of "darkness and crisis," or have we instead embraced "joyous and painless adventure"? As I read this, it occurred to me that these two options are nearly synonymous: in seeking joyous and painless adventure, we find ourselves in the reality of darkness and crisis.

RA-ing

Being a Resident Assistant, a Residential Life live-in staff member, is both a blessing and a curse. I'm living in a freshman dorm this year, and being back on campus with freshmen has been endlessly rewarding: I am cried on, loathed, laughed with, poked, prodded, teased, relied on, and loved. Granted, I am also pulled out of my bed to let residents into their locked rooms at all hours of the night, required to meet various conditions so that Res Life has favorable statistics at the end of the year, and responsible for sending overly-drunk students to the hospital, which, at one particularly poignant moment, happened while I was dressed up as George Washington and NOT on-call. That's the thing about being an RA: you're always on-call. Even when you're just taking a stroll across campus on an average Thursday night, sipping lemonade, dressed up as George Washington, with two staff members back in your dorm officially on duty for the night. There's just no escaping it.

The RA Staff of Alumni Court South this year.
Photo c/o Erin Swide/Caitlyn Pedone

Aside from my list of bizarre RA experiences, though, there are some pretty cool things about the job. As I like to put it, the responsibilities of Resident Assistants essentially fall into three categories: 1. Creating programs/events for students to attend (this includes, but is not limited to, organizing, budgeting, marketing, and facilitating said programs); 2. Appropriately confronting and/or referring counseling/psychological concerns; and 3. Making sure that students are following University/state policy, and documenting the situation (i.e. telling your boss about it) when they aren't. You'll notice that these duties all contribute to the same goal, that is, making sure that residents are having an awesome year. Providing fun (and sometimes free!) stuff to do, encouraging -relative- sanity, and ensuring overall safety and moderate tameness can only enhance the good times, right?

Sample fliers from RA-ing last year

Of course, I encourage you to take my sanity comment with a grain of salt; this founding father's perception of "relative sanity" is very, very relative.

Does God Want Us To Be Happy?

It feels like an offensive question. "Of course my God wants me to be happy!" one might hastily proclaim. "My God who sent his son to die on the cross. My God who forgives my sins. Of course my God wants me to be happy! Why else would He have done all of this?"

Frankly, it seems like God has ulterior motives. Happiness doesn't have much stage time in the bible: joy, peace, contentment, they're all there, as well as charity, patience, and kindness, which show up on the list of Seven Heavenly Virtues. Yet happiness is of a different flavor. Happiness is not necessarily synonymous with contentment or peacefulness. "Blessed are the poor, the meek, the merciful," Matthew recounts in chapter 5 of his gospel, listing states of being that are far from happy.

A City of Death

I landed in London on July 6 with one stuffed suitcase, two extra heavy carry-on bags, and a scapular around my neck. “Wear a scapular,” said Joe, my ex-housemate who plans to enter the seminary post graduation. Anxious about lofting 30,000 miles over the Atlantic for six hours in a narrow, plastic tube, I went home and ruffled through the collection of scapulars I had accumulated from both of my Italian grandmothers that had remained untouched, and unwanted, until now. I picked a red scapular out from the tangle of brown strands; the Passion scapular, as it is known, had more intricate images on its panels and also had scripted on it a brief plea for protection. I’m not sure if I believe that scapulars will save their wearers from purgatory as does my housemate Joe, but I was certainly willing to subscribe to a divine protection plan and hope for the best.