A Fork in the Road

A lot has happened since the last time I posted here!

I went to Washington DC on August 15th to enter into Formation with the Franciscan Mission Service.  I am living in shared, intentional community with 14 other people.  5 of us are in the Overseas Lay Missions program, 8 of us are in domestic service programs, and 2 are house managers.

As you can see, we are almost all women this year plus our brother Fede, and it's been a lovely house.  We've had the blessing of building and living a full life together, even as we feel the constrictions and isolation of a pandemic.  Here's a shot from a pirate mystery dinner we had recently--note the impressive commitment to character roles!

credit: me

Formation includes daily prayer and various sessions to prepare us for overseas service.   The sessions were wide-ranging to capture the complexity of overseas service and included topics ranging from power and privilege, sexuality, self-care, white supremacy, compassion fatigue, liberation theology, and more.  Our overseas lay missions class this year has very different backgrounds and personalities that added precious richness to our Formation, and I feel very blessed to have them in my life.

As you may know, I have been weighing 2 options: FMS and a Peace Corps position in Kyrgyzstan.  Kyrgyzstan was the country where I became a Christian and I have had a persistent, even annoying, yearning to return over the last 14 years.  I've been able to do so on a number of occasions, but it was never long enough or deep enough.  On the other hand, FMS has been an ideal sending organization that matches my own values and approach to service.  A few weeks ago, we received final country invitations from FMS, and I was invited to serve in Bolivia!

At this point, it was finally the time to choose between the options.  In Formation, this time was called Discernment, where we tried to gather more information, talk to others, search our own hearts, and pray to God to discern our choice.

It was a tough discernment for me.  I have been intermittently, in the background, discerning this choice since last February, when I first applied to FMS.  I'm generally a decisive person, so having a truly mysterious and unresolved major decision for almost 8 months was, at times, a trying situation.  However, I really appreciate the slower process where I had time to gather significant information on both programs and make relationships with people who were involved in both.

In the end, I chose Kyrgyzstan.  FMS is the best possible fit for a sending organization I could hope to find.  But after seriously considering and even trying to go forward with FMS, I discerned a strong, unmovable desire to go to Kyrgyzstan.  I'm not calling it "a calling" or "a mission"--too many connotations that I'm not sure about nor in agreement with--but I do think this desire is approved by and somehow connected to God.

So I'm committed to going with the Peace Corps as a K-12 English teacher trainer, whenever they determine it is safe to send volunteers.  Right now, the estimated time frame is June 2021.  I will be staying with my parents in Santa Monica until I depart.

In the meantime, want to learn more about Kyrgyzstan?  I'd love to share with you some of my favorite aspects about Kyrgyzstan!

- Its amazing, untouched natural beauty and remoteness.  I want to go here.

credit: "Ala-Bel pass, Kyrgyzstan" by ninara / CC BY

- The language and culture of the historically nomadic Kyrgyz people, and its multicultural society today.

credit: Suejean

-speaking of which, The Nomad Games, including the game of Kok-Baru

credit: "World Nomad Games athlete and falcon" by Save the Dream / CC BY

-Its struggle to create a democratic, free society in Central Asia (not so much something I love, but something that's constantly happening)

-The hospitable, creative, affectionate, hardy, and friendly people who I'm looking forward to seeing again..

                                                

credit: me

for up until now...

Let us begin, for up until now, we’ve done nothing. - St. Francis of Assisi

This is my first public life update!  I have never felt the need to write such an update until now, as the changes in my life have never felt so abrupt, large or potentially permanent.  Strangely, in one way or another, we are all involuntarily in this position as a global community so I know we are sharing the feeling of stepping into a new, unknown reality.

Many of you have accompanied me in the baby steps and struggles that have led up to this point.  I’m so grateful to have you in my life as part of my community.  You have helped me wrestle with the questions of vocation, justice, community, and faith that paved the way to this point.  And I am hoping that we can continue to walk together into the uncertainty!

I’m going to try to summarize the path to this point as an opportunity to reflect and put it all together and, thus, to start again together on the same page. This is my best attempt to summarize something that feels beyond words, yet requires words to make concrete. I reserve the right to revise or recant:)

This began for me in Kyrgyzstan, 2006.  I went there to travel on my own after graduation from graduate school.  I was expecting a month-long adventure, but I encountered a life-changing community instead by staying with my Uncle and Auntie Yang and their organization. It was the beginning of understanding that a life of faith is to live differently, and to live in the reality of a God who desires different ways of living than what I had done and seen done.  This involves different relationships between people certainly, but also different relationships with money, with property, with status, with comfort, with education, with culture, with race, with love, with truth, with God.

I have been struggling since then to find out what is the Difference!  And how is it to be specifically lived out in my life?

My time working in Detroit was the next intense experience of living the Difference and learning from others who were already embodying it so naturally in their lives.  The problem with living the Difference is that it is hard to capture in words, and therefore, hard to hold on to when you are away from it.

So when I moved to Southern California, I didn’t know what I was missing.  I just knew that something wasn't right about my life.  And I became deeply burned out.  Even though on the surface, I was checking all the boxes of what I thought was important: community-engagement, working with diverse students, and being a part of wise faith and educational communities who shared a commitment to social justice and who lived the Difference in their own inspiring ways.

Upon prolonged reflection and conversations with many of you, I learned that while there are aspects of life that all people need to thrive, there are other aspects that are filtered through personality, positionality, and our many identities--so that what is a perfect environment for one person, is suffocating for another. So it may be that the Difference is actually many Differences... But what is My Difference? 

It was through reconnecting--and leading with experience and my heart, not with my mind--on what My Difference has been that I realized those check-boxes I had been pursuing pointed to a deeper way of life that permeates all of my thoughts and behaviors. For me, it is the instinctive community with the stranger, the loose hold on our plans and possessions, the person not the title, and the intentional pause for rest, God, and wonder that transforms those check-boxes to sources of life which produce joy, love, and abundance.

And because I soak this up through my broader environment, not solely though individual or small group effort, I realized I needed to change my context. For me, I can feel life's pulse most strongly when placed outside of my "normal": outside of my social class, academic circles, White and Asian-American ethnic groups, and the United States.  Those outside spaces seem to encourage me into the deeper rhythms that allow me to live My Difference. So to chase that space, I applied and was accepted to two overseas service programs:  the Franciscan Mission Service (FMS) and a Peace Corps posting in Kyrgyzstan and made the move to take a 2 year leave of absence from my job.  I am searching to live and learn My Difference immersed in an alternate context for a prolonged period of time so that it may become solid inside of me.  Something I could feel in my bones, communicate in words, and hold on to, even when I’m not surrounded by it.  And it’s only with that lived understanding that I can see myself coming back to the United States and able to survive and even thrive..

And then coronavirus happened.

So the future is especially hazy!  But the next steps are still clear: on August 15, I will be leaving for FMS Formation in Washington, DC to discern whether I am a good fit for 2 year service potentially in Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica or Bolivia in January 2021.  At the same time, the Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan post has deferred departures to June 2021.  I am open to going to either program and I hope to be able to decide by October.

I believe all of you, my friends, are striving to live Your Difference.  I have felt encouraged by the way you live your lives and by how you have spoken into and affirmed mine.  I hope that the approaching large physical distance won’t mean the end of our mutual affection and support!  

As part of FMS, volunteers regularly update family, friends and supporters, and it struck me as a worthwhile effort no matter which program I end up going with.  So I’m going to be setting up this blog to post updates and also musings on how life is Different--or the same.  I want to create some tags so you can easily find categories of interest or relevance. I’d also love if you would like to guest-post on the blog about all the various ways you are living Your Difference or have discussions in the comments.

Maybe in the age of social distancing, we are learning that physical distance doesn’t have to prevent meaningful connection...but I wanted to create spaces in advance where we can still be together in case the local internet infrastructure doesn’t support video calls and more frequent, personal connection.  And to give us an excuse to interact since our lives will bump up against each other less naturally.

If you’ve read all the way to the end, thank you!!  Please try out the handy email subscription tool in the right-hand menu to be automatically alerted to new blog posts...or just send me an old-fashioned email to keep in touch or let me know you'd like to guest post:)   I will be happy to hear from you.

Love,

Jenny