made it...

So I'm here, on NE Morris street in Portland, Oregon sitting in the attic trying my best to hold onto the first dose of Internet connection available since my arrival on the west coast, listening to an album I haven't heard since high school as my housemates come up and down the stairs.

I've been anticipating this moment for a while. Or maybe I've been anticipating a lot of moments since signing onto JVC northwest, as I committed myself to working in a transition home for people who are homeless that have just been released from the emergency room, living with seven other people I haven't met, and relying on a small stipend every month. But after the thought of all of those realities, came the ultimate challenge: the blog. The way I would somehow make all of this psychoticness seem somewhat compelling and interesting to not only people who cared to read about it, but myself. I'm here. Ready to be ruined for life.

This year will unfold differently than this past week was, as 120 brand new Jesuit Volunteers (or "JV's" gathered in the woods 40 or so minutes outside of Portland for orientation. The days passed by like a college orientation might, except in the woods, with sing-a-longs, long discussions about composting, and late night games of yuker (which I never actually learned how to play.) I stayed in a cabin with the girls from communities that I will be on retreat with, volunteering in the Portland and Seattle area. We were excited. We had our journals on hand, and were pleasantly surprised to find out the amount of people we coincidentally knew or knew of from our respective colleges or what not. I guess I was surprised how easily it all came, how quick the bonds were formed and the strange feeling of familiarity that came with complete strangers.

We had speakers several times a day, as you normally do during conventions in the woods, (not that I've been to many before) but I guess what I got out of everyone that came to share their thoughts was a certain fullness I saw in them, a strength that they'd developed throughout their JV year. The hour long discussions of what kind of milk to buy, who forgot to do their dishes, who farted on whose pillow. They had a certain spark in their eye that living in community, working among those who have been marginalized by society, and surviving on an $80 a month stipend had given them. "Every single moment has an opportunity to be holy," Maryland (I am forgetting her last name now) who works at the University of Seattle and served as JV for two years in the city 16 years ago. She paused for a moment. And we, the crowd in our creaky chairs, sat silently. She was right, we all knew this. Religion aside, every moment is special and alive and life changing, as long as you could see it that way, and her JV year was her chance to realize that.

So now I will try to live out her words. In the conflict and in the joy. In the slight awkwardness of orientation, the silly songs, the slices of ham that I accidentally put in my sandwich on the first day rather than turkey. I am now moved into my house. It is big and old and their is dust piling up in the corners. Stacks of books and cassette tapes line the shelves. It feels good to be living in a home that has been occupied by volunteers for the past few decades. My housemates are now mostly asleep. I can see the dark outlines of trees outside the window. I have no idea where I am, or what it will be like, and am slightly reassured by that.

(pictures soon to come)