Portland, Maine: A Summer-y. Middle School Style.

I’d Take It If I Had One Wish:

• Sunshine. Both the kind that comes from that huge star 93 billion miles away and the kind that only happens when you mix A-kon and the third phloor crew.
• Driving around singing at the top of my lungs. Not gonna lie, I’ve been tempted to do so on public transit. Poor Julianne has already witnessed me having my own private concert while waiting for the bus. (Luckily not at full capacity.)
• Cable TV. As if I weren’t already scarred enough by having my cable yanked during the middle of Yogi the Bear at age four, I recently had to experience the sheer torture of no ESPN access during the US-Brazil soccer game. But, wait... The US blew that one, didn’t we? Guess we really are better off without TV.
• Reliving my childhood with kickball and Red Rover in Shillito Park. Although they do have zombie kickball here. Too bad my hate of the rain outweighs my love of the undead.
• Hanging out with more than one other person my own age. At this rate, I am going to be way too mature by the end of the summer to go back to ND. Compared with my new friends in Portland, even the grad students are going to seem juvenile.

 

And I Think It’s Fly:

• The ocean. OK, so it’s been too foggy to see it for the most part, but the second the sun comes back, I am jumping into the Atlantic, sixty-degree water or no. (And if the sun doesn’t come back soon, I am really jumping into the Atlantic.)
• My “host family.” Who else would embrace all the worst parts of camping with such enthusiasm? Imagine, camping in rainy, fifty-degree weather-- not to awaken to a day of hiking and enjoying the great outdoors, but to go into work. And then turn around and do it again. For three days in a row. Now that’s the L.L. Bean capital for ya.
• The Nastycat. Nothing bonds two roommates better than a shared hatred of hairballs. And, well, felines in general.
• Being in a completely new place with completely new people. Comfort zone? What comfort zone?
• Realizing how amazing my friends and family are. As one of my best friends put it, “Although we are not physically together, we are in spirit.”

 

I don’t know how better to say it, except maybe…

LYLAS.

(Love You Lots All Summer.)

;)

Bad Guys & Good People

I never thought I'd be inspired to start my own blog. But I feel the need to get this out there, and I'm not sure it's an appropriate first post for the IWJ blog. (Considering it doesn't even mention IWJ.) Anyway, here goes. (Definitely starting off light...)

I’ve never questioned the use of the phrase, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” It’s a generally accepted human sentiment, particularly for Christians. If it’s really all in God’s hands, why does evil take place in the world? Now I don’t want to start delving into explanations of the source of human evil, but I do want to step back and take a look at what we consider the difference between good and bad to be. Because I’m not sure it’s as black and white as we think.

It’s easy, at first, to identify the good guys and the bad guys. Take tonight. My new friend Kori, who works at the Root Cellar, a Christian outreach facility for a primarily immigrant area in Munjoy Hill – good guy. She’s a young, white girl devoting her summer to doing mission work in a variety of communities in need. Then there’s the bad guy – a black guy in a black hoodie who ran up out of nowhere and stole her wallet as we were walking from dinner to the Mission Summer minivan.

But can we really classify people that easily? I don’t think so. We have no idea why that man stole Kori’s wallet. Maybe his mom is sick in the hospital and can’t afford surgery, and out of sheer desperation, he resorted to robbing a girl who appeared to be well-off. Should we blame the man, or the flawed system that drove him to take such an “evil” action?

I certainly encountered kids last summer who did bad things – breaking into homes, robbing people at gunpoint, beating people up in order to steal their possessions – but I don’t think they are bad people. They are simply people, caught in a screwed-up system, and I pray to God every night that they can make it out. But to simply label them as bad kids? That lets everybody off the hook. I don’t think any of us has the right to identify anyone as “good” or “bad.” If we are going to be honest with ourselves, we have to look further.

Does the fact that I am privileged enough to spend my summer doing an internship rooted in social justice make me a good person? Can I consider myself a good person because I was lucky enough to grow up in an upper-middle class, white background with loving, supportive parents who gave me a great education and the resources to pursue work based on ideals rather than necessity?

And does the fact that millions of young black men are growing up in a country that continues to proclaim the myth of equal opportunity for all her citizens while maintaining flawed social institutions that condemn a huge percentage of the population to institutionalized poverty make the man who robbed my friend a bad guy?

I don’t think so.

While every opportunity and every obstacle may be what you make of it, that assertion denies the fact that the opportunities and the obstacles are not evenly divided in this nation. Racism may be less blatant today than it was during the Jim Crowe years, and I am so proud to be able to say that I am growing up in the time of our first black President, but racism is still fully alive in this country. And it saddens me to see the stereotypes played out yet again tonight: black gangster robs white girl.

I see so many things wrong with the system in this nation. I have felt my brain turn to mush countless times over the past two and a half weeks with all of the in-depth discussions of our various social problems. I want to help. I want to make a difference in the world. But at the same time, I question that desire. I call myself out on my own paternalistic hope “to make the world a better place.”

I believe that I have come a long way since a year ago. I no longer look at the world with idealistic notions, believing that I know how to fix things. I don’t. But I do know that I will keep searching for my own way to make a difference. To quote a certain over-commercialized tween movie (that I happen to love) – we’re all in this together. That is what I remind myself every day: I am striving for a common good. As Lilla Watson said, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work
together.”

We must recognize our interconnectedness in order to effect social change. The plight of the impoverished hurts everyone. And in ways deeper than stolen wallets. It hurts us insidiously, in our notions of good and bad, black and white. We must begin to open our minds and hearts to see all people, even thieves, as brothers and sisters, and then perhaps we can begin the process of transforming our society.