Am I Who I Want to Be?

I'm leaving Maryland tomorrow morning.. .

I'm starting to get scared. I hate packing and trying to figure out whats worth bringing. What makes me most angry is the difficulty in deciding which objects of personal and relational value I want to bring as a means of reminders of who I am, what I want to be. Gifts from friends, picture frames, etc. Maybe I'll have to leave them all behind for the year?

I've been writing a ton lately. It's been a means of providing peace and clear-headedness as my huge wave of transition starts. I don't even know which ones are worth posting and which ones aren't. Be expecting a lot of random (but meaningful) thoughts to flow through this digital space in the next two weeks before I head off to China. It may not all have a point, but it ought to keep me sane.

For starters, a few thoughts from Washington DC:

I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to visit Camp Heaven on friday, July 15th. It’s the inner city day camp ran by Little Lights Urban Ministries in Southeast DC that changed my life two years ago. Although I’ve had the blessing of keeping in touch with many of the beautiful counselors I worked with, I have not been able to see many of the kids.

So as I walked through the doors of the new church building in which camp is held (different than camp I participated in) I was filled with a heavy nostalgia, but also pangs of discomfort. New counselors and staff I didn’t quite know were running about keeping the kids occupied. Playing board games, making fuse beans and braiding gimp, watching movies, being taught lessons. Brett Crull, a Wheaton student, had an amazing lesson set up with a timeline that the kids could fill in with names and do skits to. I remember planning lessons that never worked, but by the grace of God some other idea would usually come floating in during the moment that worked just right. It made me lazy to prepare ahead of time. Memories flood into my head, but all the new faces throw it off.

There was nothing glamourous about any at all, but I could not help wishing I was a part of it. Being a part of it is huge in the personal sense, being connected to the poor and the real are things I need to live life in a way that matters.. . I don’t want to forget.

Of course not all the faces were new, but they were certainly different. Many of the kids I remembered had grown up and become teen counselors. Others appeared the same, but perhaps more articulate and energetic. Many of the faces seemed new to me, but I knew they weren’t. I’d just forgotten them.

God, I don’t want to forget.

“Do they seem different?” Jen asks Valeri Chow and me.

“Well, it’s hard to tell by only spending one day with them,” I answered, “Unless you mean physically.”

“Uhh, yea, that’s what I meant.”

“Oh, then yea, they got big.”

I had heard a rumor that Brian and Corann, two of the teen counselors from my time at camp, had dropped by. I was excited to see them, but I had evidently just missed them. I imagined the meeting in my head and realized it probably wouldn’t be all that great anyway. I’d say hey and they’d say hi back, we’d exchange hand shakes and I’d ask them what they were up to. They’d probably tell me nothing much. Perhaps an awkward silence or two. Then they’d run off to do their thing and I’d be off doing mine.

I didn’t see any of the kids that were in my group except one, Kayvon. I wonder where the rest of them were. Kayvon didn’t seem to remember me, and I certainly didn’t get his name right on the first try. He has new counselors come in and out every year anyway, and I’ve got my own life to lead.

It’s two different worlds really.

But oh, how I wish and pray that such worlds could be joined together. If Christ is real then walls will be broken down and connections, reconciliation, and life would triumph, right? Yea, but it probably doesn’t happen in the time I would like it to.

We drove by the Potomac Gardens Housing Project on the way to and from camp. It’s the project that all the kids come from. I asked Jen if she had heard any news about the space and she replied that she had not. Rumor has it that any day now an official government ordinance will bring it crumbling down, to be replaced by new condos much like the rest of DC. I’ve never seen so many building cranes in the DC skyline as I have this summer. I hear that Mayor Anthony Williams even has big plans for Anacostia. I remember driving by a big plot of land dedicated to the new Department of Transportation building. I wonder if in five years it’ll be another new yuppie center. If the new Nationals stadium finds a place there then I’m sure it will. It’ll be just like downtown Silver Spring, a thriving new commercial center ‘sprung’ up, dividing from the poorer residence that once resided there. With the new Supreme Court ruling, giving city governments the right to confiscate and use private property for urban development, nothing is in the way of stopping it. Is this better in the long run though? Could we possibly turn the ugly workings of gentrification and maybe actually use it for the community development it was meant to do instead of just pushing the poor out?

These are the problems we face, I’m talkin’ poverty and race, does everything happen for a reason?

Whatever the case, this is all just figurative and theoretical talk, what about the people? The people!!

I’ve always had this thing for staying connected to the poor in real relationship, not just in spirit or intellectually. It’s a mentality that pushes me to believe that I’ll never be capable of living and changing in such a way that really matters unless I love and learn from real people who’ve fought the battle to survive against the powers that be . I think I’m losing it. Visiting Camp Heaven made me realize this, the awkward mix of familiar and unfamiliar.

“I can see myself coming on staff here when I get back from China,” I mention to Val.

“Yea, I could see that,” she replies, “I can see myself doing it too after I graduate too.”

“And if Potamac Gardens gets torn down, Little Lights will have to totally revamp itself too. They’ll need all the people they can get.”

Val and I have talked of big dreams and visions for DC before.

“I’m sad, I don’t want to leave,” Rachel Griego comments to me. She’s another friend from Wheaton College spending her summer at Little Lights as a camp counselor. In a week she will be leaving for Illinois to start her new job. I remember feeling the same way when I was in her position, having spent weeks investing in the kid’s lives. But don’t worry, Rachel, (or actually, worry a lot) once you find your routine in Naperville you might forget about it all. I hope you don’t though. I hope I don’t.

* * *

By the way, Happy Birthday Dylan Park. Congratulations to Steve and Mary (the founders of Little Lights Urban Ministries) on your new son. It was an honor to be at camp and hear the news the same way I heard about Kayla years ago. Many blessings!