Feel It

The adjustment to having Sunday be a work day has easily been the least smooth transition of my experience here in South Dakota.  I am a big lazy Sunday person, and take seriously my time to sleep in , relax around the house in sweats, and have time to prepare myself for the upcoming week.  Here, however, there is no such opportunity to do so.  I am up at 8, which isn't that early given I am up at 5 every other day of the week, but this is principle here.  My community and I drive the 20 minutes to Rosebud in order to work the 9:00 mass there at St. Bridget's parish (Jessica and I playing music, Mike coordinating the entire mass and all of volunteers).  We come right back to St. Francis, wolf down a quick breakfast, usually go over the music we messed up last mass and try our best to prepare mentally for the chaos of the next mass.  St. Charles parish mass starts at 11:30, has many more people in attendance, and thus requires significantly more preparation and stress.  Immediately after the mass, we are in the car and heading up to the radio station to run a 2 hour spiritual talk show.  All in all, not a particularly relaxing or rejuvenating day.

The last thing I do on Sunday (before our weekly community meeting takes place after dinner), is to volunteer at the Juvenile Detention Center.  It is only an hour a week commitment.  I show up with one of the Jesuits and we do an hour of spiritual reflection, teaching, etc.  We meet with the residents there, who often range in age from 14-17, both male and female, and are in for various offenses - drinking and drugging (especially coupled with driving), violence against family members or schoolmates, theft, and other similar actions.  Most of the boys are the ages of my younger brothers, and when I look hard enough, I can see some of them reflected in these kids - not because my little brothers are delinquents, but because really, they are all just kids trying to figure out what their life is about.  Though this is my least frequent experience, it is the one that has by far impacted me the most in my time here.

I have cried on my drive home every time, without fail.  It is the craziest thing.  There isn't anything particularly disturbing that I see in my time there, nothing we talk about that really rattles my cage - but I am almost guaranteed to find myself in angry tears on the drive home, pulling over to the side of the road and yelling curse words through sobs.

What I realized last time was that I just need a good sometimes.  That most of the week, I am happy.  I deal lovingly with many of the hardships and difficulties that I am surrounded with on a daily basis.  I feel very heavily - seeing others in pain results in sharp pain in my own heart.  It is hard for me to see others suffering, and it affects me deeply.  People who suffer have a claim on my heart, whether I want them to or not.

I guess subconsciously, my drive home from the JDC has become my time to really feel all of that pain and hardship, the sadness that inevitably comes with encountering those realities.  And it really is addressed to ALL of the things that weigh on me.  I cry for the longing and sadness I feel for missing friends back home, for missing my family and wishing I could be with them and experience the lives they are living.  I cry for the people I talk to during the week, ruined by alcoholism or drugs.  For the people who can't see their own self-worth and have a difficult time letting themselves be loved.  For the kids I teach, whose parents are in jail or have left them - for the fact that the majority know more people killed in drunk driving accidents than college graduates.  For all of the stories of racism and government incompetency/neglect that shapes the ability of an entire people to prosper.  For those who went through the boarding school experience, for the pain caused by a faith I find so much life in, and for entire generations of people who were forced to reject where they came from and who they were.  For my own pain at lost relationships, my own fears of being able to continue to exist lovingly in a world filled with suffering, my own longing for direction and clear purpose.

On the drive home I take a route that give a really clear and beautiful view of the horizon.  And I think that helps me to feel the sadness too, because it highlights how small I really am.  How big the pain of the world is, how out of my range to heal everything, even to heal all of myself.  Maybe that's why there are so many of us, to help each other out with that massive project.

There is a lot to be sad over.  And I think my rides home have really helped me to understand a few lines taken from one of favorite poems - it is called "The Invitation" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, and those few lines read as such:

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I have found that the best way I can pray in these situations is just to sit with it.  It does the pain and sadness discredit to try and push it away.  To ignore or it suppress it would be to say that the things I feel for are not important enough to give myself fully to.  The best pray I have to offer in those situations is my pain and tears - and I think I have come to understand that those are more than enough, and speak more than my words ever could.  It helps me to recognize the beauty that is inherently present in all of that as well.

Sometimes, I just need to feel it.  To share that sadness.  And after that, I can look at the world with fresh eyes again and an open heart, ready to receive whatever I can.