Matt - Life in LA

When I learned I was moving to Los Angeles, I didn’t expect glamour and celebrities at every corner. I didn’t picture fancy dinners on the Sunset Strip or sipping $13 cocktails by the beach in Orange Country. I certainly didn’t imagine making a lot of money – after all, the word “volunteer” isn’t in so fine a print in the job description. The day I made my decision and signed that contract, I thought I had a pretty good idea of the things I would be giving up and saying “no” to by accepting a year a Jesuit Volunteer.

What I didn’t expect was just how much I would be given or how much would be expected of me. [I find the things I miss most about Boston and love about L.A. are different than what I thought they’d be.]

In many ways, my life includes your typical 9-5 workday and time at home with my roommates. On the surface, it appears to be only that: paperwork, meetings, and commuter traffic, chores, waiting for the bathroom, and watching TV. But my work is so much more than a job and my roommates aren’t just people I share a roof with. Together, my placement and my community breathe life into my experience.

At work, I am challenged on a daily basis to reexamine my faith and it how it shapes the way I see the world around me. My clients are former gang members, convicted criminals, and people who I would have grown silent as I passed three months ago. Today, I am asked to get to know them, listen to their stories, and work with them without judgment. You see, I work with the robber and the robbed, the victim and the victimizer. Almost all of my clients have been shot or shot at, and several more have used a gun themselves.

Sometimes the stories are difficult to hear and I almost wish I didn’t know what my clients have been through, witnessed, or done. But then I remember that for many of my clients, this is the first time they’re telling anyone not wearing a badge, suit, or robe such events of their life.

It’s been a lesson in listening, and humility.

Coming home from my placement isn’t the end of my day, but the beginning of an equally important part of life as a JV: community living. Living in community is different than living with roommates. You share a living space with roommates, but in intentional community your living space becomes a living space. Its very function is to breathe life into a place that for too many of us is a place of only seclusion and sleep. We eat together, pray together, share struggles with work and relationships, and, perhaps most importantly, keep one another from getting too comfortable.

The weather and the schedule are adjustments, for sure, but it’s the demand of my placement and community that I’m most challenged by – and most grateful for. Though I’m worn our by the time my head finally hits the pillow, I go to sleep grateful that my exhaustion comes from exercising not only my body and mind hard at work but my heart and soul when I’m at home.

These are the early goings of one Jesuit Volunteer. I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Paz,
Matty

Matt Carroll is a blogger for Jesuit Volunteer Corps. He welcomes questions and comments at Matthew.carroll.86@gmail.com.

Dermot - Fr. Fred

Fr. Fred

"…The steward was shutting the door to the plane and, finally, I felt some relief. I was being deported from Peru. Then, the door opened and in popped Monseñor Luis Bambarén, the Auxiliary Bishop of Lima. He looked into the cabin to make sure I hadn´t been kidnapped and then secretly taken off the plane. In those days, you know, they were ´disappearing´ many people in Peru…"

It´s about 11am on a Sunday morning. I am gazing out over the Pacific Ocean, relaxing at the Jesuits´ beach house, about a thirty-minute drive from Tacna. I have the 85-year-old Fr. Fred Green, SJ, right where I want him: he is comfortably lounging in his favorite chair, relating another story from his unbelievable past.

Before me sits the legend of Tacna: the founder of two of its most prestigious schools, the builder of whole communities for the poor, the former-World-War-II-bomber-pilot-turned-priest, the Hawaiian-born surfer who has dedicated his life to a dusty Peruvian border town, the near saint completing fifty years in the priesthood.

In Tacna, the name "Padre Fred" is gold: he is a humble super-star, as unassuming as he is effective in the good works he directs. There are teachers at Fred´s schools who say they pass up better pay in other areas only out of gratitude to the man who inspired them to lead in the classroom. As Jesuit Volunteers, if we encounter problems at the border crossing to Chile, we are instructed to drop Fred´s name, as many of the guards are Fred´s former pupils. I know at least three Peruvians who bear the very un-Peruvian first name, "Fred," in honor of this extraordinary gringo.

I will even concede an almost selfish desire for one-on-one time with Fred, and so I was elated to accompany him to the Jesuit beach house, a refuge where Fred has spent almost every Sunday since before most who are reading this email were even born.

Alone with Tacna´s Superman in his own Fortress of Solitude, I have an insatiable desire to know all about Fred`s past. The problem is that Fred is too coy to reveal his cards so quickly: truly, this octogenarian Jesuit possesses a reticent dignity emblematic of America´s "greatest generation." I know his eyes have seen the horrors of war, the injustice of abject poverty, and the triumph of steadfast prudence against the caprice of Latin American despots. I want to learn about all that Fred has experienced, but realize the man possesses an inherent humility—characteristic of so many born in the 1920s—that prevents him from sharing too much of the grandeur of his past.

To get this deportation story out of Fred required a good fifteen minutes of digging. I knew that he had outlasted three Peruvian dictators and that he had had a close encounter with one of them. Now, Fred is relating how, in 1971, he fought on behalf of his teachers at Colegio Cristo Rey for higher wages and how this fight almost cost some of his motley crew their lives.

All the trouble started with an open letter to the Peruvian military junta. In 1971, with Peru in the hands of the tyrannical and pseudo-socialist General Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado, all available funds were being directed toward the military, at the expense of other vital services, such as education. Fred`s teachers saw their purchasing power shrink mightily, just as Peruvian army bureaucrats saw their salaries rise.

The teachers asked Fred to take a position on the matter and so Fred wrote an open letter to Velasco, noting the discrepancies in salaries and suggesting that the army chiefs take a reduction in pay, to free up more funds for the teachers and to show solidarity with their "comrade" teachers who played an equally important part in Velasco`s revolution.

The response to the letter was swift. Within a few days, it was published in Tacna´s daily newspapers and, within a week, in dailies in the large, southern Peruvian city of Arequipa. Shortly after, unionized teachers in Lima were making hundreds of copies of the letter and using it as a rallying call for a national strike.

With armies of teachers striking and thousands of ordinary citizens attending rallies against the government, Velasco was forced to acquiesce to the teachers' demands or face the possibility of a coup.

He increased the teachers` salaries and even paid them for the days they were on strike. The teachers could claim victory, in part thanks to the catalyzing effect of Fred`s letter.

But, now, Velasco wanted revenge. Convinced that Fred was a CIA operative bent on overthrowing his government, Velasco sent his agents to Tacna and to Colegio Cristo Rey, both to observe this troublesome gringo and to arrest some of his teachers. In a calculated operation, two of Fred`s teachers were "disappeared" to the Peruvian jungle and held there as political prisoners.

Thanks to Fred`s quick thinking, however, more teachers were not captured. Fr. Fred even surreptitiously celebrated a wedding for one profesora in her home and then spirited the new couple away to the Jesuit beach house for their necessarily secluded "honeymoon," in a grand scheme to evade Velasco`s spies. In the end, Fred was able to outfox Velasco: he stayed in Peru and his teachers—after a period of detention—were able to return unperturbed to their classrooms.

As Fred winds down his story, I am once again aware of the immense privilege to be able to spend time with a man who inspires me at times to consider a vocation to the priesthood. And the cause today seems all the more urgent. Fred is the second oldest Jesuit in Peru, yet the rest are not far behind. The Society of Jesus is aging fast and is constantly challenged to support works like the ones Fred started, with an ever-dwindling number of religious. Indeed, meeting Fred at the end of his life, I encounter a humble warrior readying himself for one last fight. Fr. Fred has parried the blows of Japanese fighter pilots, Latin American dictators, and Tacna´s petty bureaucrats; yet now he faces a much more indefatigable foe: his own mortality.

This fight against time is most apparent at Colegio Miguel Pro, a second school Fred founded in 1992, where three of my fellow Jesuit volunteers currently work. Unfortunately, this school is still more dependent on money that Fr. Fred raises on yearly trips to the US than on donations from other sustainable forms of funding.

Amazingly, Fred is still able to find enough money to allow Miguel Pro to offer a well-rounded education (he is able to put one student through the school for $129 a year, despite the falling value of the dollar and rising food costs). The problem becomes what happens when Fr. Fred is unable to keep up with the exigencies of exhaustive fundraising trips.

What will happen to Miguel Pro when Fred dies? Is it our job as volunteers to continue the financing of his good work? Would it be better if Miguel Pro were administered by the Peruvian government? Is it good that Fred´s schools were/are dependant on foreign financing?

Is JVI contributing to an unhealthy dependency on the "West" through our presence at these schools?

These are real questions that Fred and my community-mates tackle on a daily basis. You can only imagine the stresses that build from the uncertainties raised about Miguel Pro´s future. Moreover, as I have mentioned previously, when confronting such daunting challenges, the response can be fear-driven inertia: you don´t know how to deal with the problem so your response is slow or absent.

Here at the beach, though, soaking in the sum of Fred`s life experiences, the focus is not on these elephants in the room. For better or worse, I have stolen a moment to learn of Fred`s past. The fight will continue tomorrow. For now, the two of us sit back, take a break from the stresses of Tacna, and look out over the Pacific blue.

Lauren - The Challenge of Community

For some reason, over the summer before I started JVC, I had convinced myself that all my roommates were going to be closed minded, belligerently conservative Catholics. So when I first met my community and everyone turned out to be kind, open-minded, and easy-going, and I was relieved. I came to love them even more throughout orientation as we bounced around all kinds of ideas about composting, farmers markets, prayer before meals, chore wheels, even a social justice movie club. I was ecstatic. To me, we seemed like the perfect community. But of course, no community is perfect, and my first struggle in community was accepting that. My second great challenge was and is, accepting that I was not placed in this community to bring us to perfection.

The first challenge hit pretty quickly after orientation. Going into the year, I had very high expectations for us. I really believed that we were going to be able to implement all the ideas we talked about at orientation. So when we wouldn’t make a point of doing spirituality night, or we’d buy something I didn’t deem very simple, or there was tension over chores, I’d feel anxious and disappointed. How were we ever going to grow into a strong community if we couldn’t even meet some of the basic goals we’d set for ourselves? But as I came to see all the good that was coming out of our community, that anxiety started to disappear. Things like everyone coming together to cook even when there wasn’t a scheduled family dinner, or coming home at night to see everyone in the living-room knitting and watching baseball, or all the ridiculous but affectionate nicknames that emerged, all showed me that even though we may not be living up to all the specific expectations we had established, we were still building a great community.

But even after establishing we could be a good community even if we weren’t perfect, I was left with a second personal challenge: getting out of the mindset that I was in this community to push us closer to perfection. I didn’t even realize I was thinking this way until our Area Coordinator was giving us his suggestions after a week long visit and said, “In our individual conversations, each of you expressed your desire to go deeper into this experience as a community.” Hearing him say that woke me up to the reality that we’re all equally invested in our community. It has helped me re-orient the way I spend my energy thinking about community. Instead of thinking, “I know what we need to do to best live as a community, how can I share this?” I am trying to set aside my pride and think, “We all want to build community, how can we use all our different perspectives to build it collectively?” It’s a challenge I’ll probably work on all year, but luckily, together we’ve already laid the base for a warm, supportive, and trusting community, where we can all work together overcoming the many individual and community challenges of a year in JVC!

Justin - How I got here

How I came to JVC still remains questionable in my and a lot of my family’s minds. How/why does one actively choose a “Life of Ruin” shortly after graduation? Well, during March of my final semester of St. Edward’s University, life was going nowhere fast – so a ruined life seemed an upgrade. Just to give you an idea of how clueless I was moments before graduation, I was a Theology Major with a Minor in English Writing & Rhetoric who had little to no interest in:

Law School

Priesthood

Waiting Tables

Construction

Becoming a Full Time Writer

Pursuing a doctorate

Going into Sales

So how does a guy who is seriously challenged in thinking ahead or intentionally come across JVC and actually go through with it? Well I digressed for a moment but I now take you back to March. So I go into a job fair put on by student “ambassadors” (too bad they never go anywhere – so why that title I’ll never know). I come equipped with no resume or any inkling that I’ll find any short term or long term path. While at the fair, I stumble upon a JVC booth.

“Hey, I went to a Jesuit High School in New Orleans. Cool, huh?”

“Umm, so are you interested in this at all?”

“OK I’ll take some brochures.”

Well it was a little more than that but this blog entry is supposed to be 250 words… So for the rest of the semester I sat staring at the bag which contained the JVC information. And as graduation approached, the more and more I thought a year of service would be the thing for me. So finally, a month after graduation, I made up my mind. I was gonna do it!!! And by “it” I mean actually start an application. I waited until almost the last second, aced my phone interview, and realized that orientation was a week away. Whoops. The family was angry, perplexed, but most of all worried that I was getting into this in too much of a rush without any thought. “Don’t worry. I’ve been mulling this over since March.” And it’s true, whether or not I made a list of pros and cons (I didn’t), talked to peers and former JV’s about the idea (I didn’t), got permission from my mom (no shot) I had been intentional in my decision. As a theology major, you get a lot of theories about God and your place in the world. As far as God goes, it’s a Mystery folks. Hate to give away four years of study that quickly. And as far as your life goes, well my life at least, I like to keep my ear to the ground (or the sky if that’s where God lives) and be pulled into the direction I feel I’m sent. Not overly religious, not over-thinking, just willing to go blindly into the realm of transcendence, and begin anew. Welcome to JVC…

Others blindly heading into their year of service and a Life of Ruin.

Being "whooshed" into my new St. Louis community. I'm a lot happier than I seem, I swear . . .

Welcome our new bloggers

Though we get to hold on to Dermot through December, we welcome new bloggers from some of our other regions!
From the Midwest, meet Justin:

Justin grew up in Arabi, LA, a city in St. Bernard Parish located next to the lower 9th ward of New Orleans. He was raised by his perfectionist dad Anthony, a New Orleans policeman, and selfless mom, Karen. His older brother, Anthony Jr., currently works for Cintas Uniform Co. in Pensacola, FL, and his younger brother, Vinnie, is a freshman at Southeastern Louisiana University. Justin attended Jesuit High School in New Orleans and is a graduate of St. Edward’s University (Austin, TX) with a BA in Theology and a minor in English Writing & Rhetoric. Despite dealing with two major hardships over the past several years, the loss of his father to cancer during his senior year of high school and the loss of his home to Hurricane Katrina during his sophomore year of college, Justin enjoys finding humor in all things. He has performed as a stand-up comedian and co-hosted an internet radio show in Austin. Justin currently resides in St. Louis, MO, with four other Jesuit Volunteers. He works for Franciscan Connection, performing home repairs and renovations for senior citizens and low income families.

From the South, meet Lauren:

Lauren Carpenter is from East Hartford, Connecticut. In May 2008, she graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA with a major in anthropology and a minor in Spanish. While at Smith, she rowed on the crew team, spent her junior year studying in Puebla, Mexico and was an active member “the Radical Catholic Feminists of Smith.” This year she is working at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in San Antonio, Texas. At Our Lady of Guadalupe, she runs the Social Services Office which provides groceries and financial assistance to families in need. She also works with the youth ministry program and other parish activities.

From the Southwest, meet Matt:

Mathew Carroll was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Boston College in 2008 where he studied Philosophy and English. With none of Wall Street’s top Philosophy firms hiring, Matt decided to pursue a career as a contemplative in action at Homeboy Industries, the nation’s largest outreach center for gang members, located in Los Angeles, CA. This is the first time living away from Boston for Matt, so a little homesickness is natural. Fortunately, Southern California’s recent futility against New England sports serves as an easy reminder of home. When he’s not working as a case manager at Homeboy, Matt enjoys “practicing” guitar, writing, sports, reading, the outdoors, and 90’s boy band music (perhaps just a bit too much).

Kate - Moving On

Wow. It’s tough to try and sum up a year of my life in a short blog. I just returned from Dis-orientation, and Orientation feels so long ago. I guess that is a good place to start. When I arrived at Orientation, I completely freaked out. I knew my parents had met through JVC, but beyond that, I didn't know a lot about their experience. However, at Orientation, I realized so much of my childhood stemmed from this program (hence the freaking out). I grew up with agenda meetings, occasional spirituality nights, and anywhere from two to eight other housemates living with my family of nine.

I think the other part of my freaking out was that I felt as though this was one of the first things I did that really paralleled my parents' lives. Before JVC, I had participated in multiple "programs" and spent substantial time abroad. My parents were always 100% supportive of me, and yet, at the same time, I had felt that they didn't completely know or understand what it was that I was doing. And then there I was, at Orientation, thinking about my parents at my age at their own Orientation. Did they have any idea what the year would bring? Did they know that it would result in a lifetime together?

The way my life was paralleling my parents made me feel vulnerable and less independent. I subsequently emailed my parents and told them that I needed some space to absorb what was going on and that I would call them in a month. Which, luckily, they were mostly understanding about (well my mom was very understanding, and my dad called me at work on my second day.)

I didn't exactly understand my own reaction, but I knew I needed that space. In retrospect, I think I needed to delve into JVC in my own way, and truly decide for myself what the year would mean to me. And, while I know so much of who I am stems from my parents, I needed to fully explore that on my own. What roles do I want spirituality, simplicity, social justice, and community to play in my life? How would my understanding of these values evolve over the year?

As I look back over this experience, there is so much I am thankful for. The lessons I have learned from my clients, the mentors I have found in my workplace, the opportunity to pray with others, and the constant support we receive. Some of the greatest gifts have been things I wanted to happen-a reconciliation with Catholicism, the breadth of knowledge and skills I have gained in my workplace, being humbled, and finally having an excuse for my own cheapness. And some of the greatest gifts have come from things I was adamant I didn't want to happen- dating a fellow JV, having my housemates be my main group of friends, and moving mid-year.

As I sat at Dis-Orientation last weekend, it felt so strange to by saying good-bye to all this. And I realized that was because JVC is not just a program I am doing; it has become my life. And now suddenly somebody was taking that away from me - my job, my co-workers, my housemates, and my home - and I sort of want to say “wait a minute, you can’t have this.”

But my JVC year is coming to an end, and so I have been thinking about how I want to continue from here. JVC has given me ample time to examine myself, and also to examine myself within the context of the four values. I have been blessed this year to see so many different ways these values can manifest.

I would like to say I have been "ruined for life" by JVC, but I don't think it is a direct result of this year. I’ve pretty much been “ruined” since birth, and for that I have my parents to thank. What I have realized this year is that I want those values to not just be a part of my life, but I want them to be a conscious, intentional part. And I hope my understanding of them will constantly evolve. I don't know that I'll ever be able to fully answer the question as to how I want the JVC values to play out in my life, but I hope I never stop asking the question.

** In regards to the photos, the first is of my parents during their JVC year (30 years ago!). The second is me laughing with my favorite attorneys/co-workers.**

Learn about Kate here.

Dermot - Api

To lay the groundwork for this story, I need to take you back to the battlegrounds of Mes de Misión: the month-long service trip I completed in January. This is where I first tried api: a warm corn-based drink that has the consistency of runny toothpaste, the flavor of something awful doused with a lot of sugar, and the potential to ruin your day, if consumed in large quantities. I imagine that in some dystopian future, an alien invasion force might force-feed api to rebellious humans, as the beverage is as torturous as it is other-worldly. If you disagree, ask yourself: how many times have you seen anyone voluntarily drink steaming, purple goo? Before Mes de Misión and outside of reruns of Star Trek, I had never encountered anything like the pseudo-beverage that has become the nemesis for my teaching at Cristo Rey.

Now, I can't entirely blame what happened on the api. I was on my third day of Mes de Misión and was getting ready to eat a simple breakfast, when my new best friend Doña Lila filled my Nalgene water bottle with an overwhelming quantity of the purple stuff. I was happy for the generous gift and was pleased to know that Doña Lila (the cook at the cafeteria where we ate every morning) had taken the bait from all the effusive compliments I had paid her about her cooking. Unfortunately, the Almighty frowned upon both my gluttony and my sycophantic tendencies toward Doña Lila by giving me the all-to-familiar rumbling in my stomach which sends me running to a Peruvian bathroom.

I politely excused myself from the breakfast table and headed toward my living quarters. I was fiddling with the keys to open the door and quickly redeposit the api in our communal toilet, when mother nature dictated that that the front door to our house would be a better place.

Luckily, no one actually saw me vomiting up purple bile. But, sure as sunshine, all my kids came marching out of the cafeteria as I was attempting to hide the evidence of my latest failure with Peruvian cuisine. I tried to play it off that a dog had done something nasty….or maybe it was funny run-off from the river (I tried to tell them, "It´s the rainy season, you know"). Then, the biggest smart-ass in the class stared at me deadpan and said, " Meester Liinch, es vomito de api." (No translation needed).

The cat was out of the bag. And it’s been the running joke in the school ever since. In class, on a bad day, I turn around to write something on the board and I hear “api,” “api,” “api,” from various corners of the room. I try to discipline the kids and somebody invariably yells, “don´t worry, Miister Liinch, be api (happy).” Two weeks ago, I was watching Cristo Rey play a soccer game and the entire 4^th year and 5^th year classes (120 students) started chanting “api” as I walked by.

What can I do in the face of this problem? In reality, very little. At first, I tried to be rigid: a strict disciplinarian. I tried to make the kids fear me. I threatened them too much with detention. I tried to shock and awe them with meticulously organized lesson plans. None of this really worked. I realized that excessive punishment only alienates you from the students, while more trust will give you a great class.

I learned this valuable lesson in balancing discipline and encouragement after visiting the houses of my "tutoria" students. As part of the Peruvian education system, every thirty kids are assigned the equivalent of a super-homeroom teacher who must fulfill the role of head disciplinarian, counselor, spiritual guide, and adult best friend for the student. Part of this job entails a visit to each students’ house during the first half of the year. As an assistant tutor (working with a very capable Peruvian), I have visited 29 of the 30 kids at their homes and have learned about the difficulties many of them have overcome.

Perhaps most shockingly, I learned that about half of my students come from broken families. The parents might have had children early (and unexpectedly), as is often the case in Latin America, and now have trouble maintaining a marriage caused more by an accidental pregnancy than through mature and prolonged feelings of love. On the other hand, there are a surprising number of families who are split for economic reasons: the man or the woman might work across the border in Chile or in the mines outside of Tacna, while the other parent is left to work in town and take care of the family. Either situation is far from ideal and certainly gives my kids more to worry about than the correct way to conjugate the past perfect simple.

Furthermore, after talking with my fellow JVs who teach at another school in Tacna, we all concluded that depressingly few of our kids have positive male role models in their lives. I´d never known so many single mothers until I came to Latin America. I´d never met someone who beat his wife until I moved to Tacna. And I felt especially grateful this Father’s Day to have such a caring and stable father, when so many of my students lack the same.

I kept all this in mind when I saw the 120 kids chanting “api.” What did I do to stop them? I could have flown into a fit and punished the entire class. I could have grabbed some more teachers to "tranquilizar" the students. I could have ignored them.

Instead, I put a big smile on my face and charged head-on into the crowd. I half-tackled the ringleader of the group and introduced him to the very American concept of a "noogie," only after picking him up and playfully throwing him in the air, in a move reminiscent of the WWF wrestling stars all these kids love so much. The kids enjoyed my antics thoroughly and only chanted “api” in a louder voice: something I interpret as a good thing.

I understand now that these kids need a male in their lives that will do more than yell at them and demand of them without reward. In short, I've learned to embrace api in all its forms, as long as it will bring me to a closer and more respectful relationship with my students. Not, I join in the api jokes when it suits me, as a self-effacing way to connect with my students.

Learn more about Dermot here.