Hello from 30,000 feet! As I travel from Newark to Atlanta to Bogotá today, I’ve had time to unpack all of our new learning from a powerful and community-filled past week.
That is, a week ago my fellow 2019/2020 YAVs and I traveled to New York to gather in a community/conference center for a week of relationship building, dialogue, and worship. It’s a curious thing to meet up with a group of strangers for the first time near the baggage claim of an unfamiliar airport, and yet I’ve found that uncomfortable meetings like that lead to fast friendship. After spending the days leading up to my departure oscillating between apprehension and excitement, it was a welcome relief to feel so comfortable around the rest of the YAVs so quickly. Although we'll be spreading out to a variety of national and international sites, it was a big comfort connecting with other young adults who have made the countercultural decision to press pause on the rat race and accept the invitation to (what we hope will be) a year of transformational learning.
While we had anticipated a week of orientation, it was made clear to us early on that a truer name for the week would be “disorientation.” I can say now with confidence that it was most definitely a week of disorientation. The bulk of our time was spent on a challenging antiracism training and in conversation about what it really means for us as people of faith to engage with justice work. Of course every YAV site will pose unique challenges to us over the course of the year, but it was our understanding that race would play an integral role in our year of service regardless of site placement so it was necessary to engage in dialogue even before transitioning into our sites.
Aided by the facilitation of some very capable leaders, we wrestled with questions of race and our unexamined biases. We strove to talk openly and courageously about the roots of racism in the United States and how oppression of the past continues to affect our world today. From access to education to public health to policing, systems of privilege and oppression that are grounded in race form the framework for our everyday experience. Still more, as a community (and especially as a majority white community) we explored how we are complicit in those systems. It was deeply humbling for me to realize that, even as I can taut a college degree that concentrated on social justice learning, I have to be drawn back into wakefulness toward these systems and the ways in which I uphold white privilege at the expense of people of color. That fact alone is evidence of the way in which my whiteness has become a buffer within which I can choose when to think about race and all that comes with it. Moving forward I sincerely intend to engage with these questions more often and continue to grapple with what it means to be white in the world today.
And a disclaimer – I am in the process of learning to see the world through this lens more permanently. Or, as I phrased it at the beginning of this post, unpacking all of this new learning. In the words of *the* Michelle Obama, I am becoming and have come nowhere near the end of my justice journey. And in a culture that is notorious for policing one another’s language, I can only hope that you receive my words with grace and a grain of salt as we each discern our way toward true learning.
Speaking of justice…this week also marked a critical coming together for me wherein justice was incorporated with faith. This union is grounding and restorative. It's unsettling for me to reflect on the fact that my faith circles in recent years have been largely isolated from ongoing conversations about global development, human rights, and current events, but I’m encouraged going forward that these seemingly separate ideas are really one in the same. Through a series of really powerful Bible Studies, I was reminded of the simple, radical invitation Jesus extends to those who choose to follow Him to come together as one Body, love through action, and witness to the world. The challenge remains to stay engaged with these questions and see them as paramount to my humanity and my faith.
An unexpected blessing from this week of “disorientation” was my small group. At times pensive and reflective, and at times childishly silly, I am grateful to come away from our time with shared memories and new relationships.
In the weeks ahead my fellow Colombia YAV, John, and I will meet our site director, Sarah, and have our first encounters with this new country we will call home. I would welcome prayer for an open heart to keep struggling with the questions that orientation planted in me, and to let the layers of newness wash over me. I'll be better able to share the specifics about my placement(s) in future posts -- for now, welcome to the adventure alongside me!
As always, your support and encouragement mean the world to me.
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