I knew it was going to be a good mass when…

- Mass was only a 20 minute walk down the street from our house.

- We walked in the church and it was buzzing with chatter and laughter and greetings: a sure sign of a strong community.

- The Deacon and Priest both danced their way down the aisle to the entrance hymn.

- The Gospel choir started and the piano, saxophone, and drums rocked the whole building.

- The priest had hair longer than mine, in a style that looked like it hadn’t quite changed since he was an 80’s rock-band wannabe.

- At the beginning of the mass, Fr. Paul introduced himself and everyone who would be any sort of minister during the mass, and explained the 2 parts of a Catholic mass: liturgy of the word and liturgy of the Eucharist. 

- He then genuinely invited the entire congregation to participate as much as they felt comfortable, Catholic or not.

- The “Commentator” announced the readings, giving the page number they could be found on in the missal, and gave a one-sentence synopsis.

- Each reading was read with a clarity and passion that made it hard to lose focus.

- The Responsorial Psalm was a ten-minute long song by the fantastic Gospel Choir.

- Before the Gospel was read, Fr. Paul prefaced it with a note on the translation and word chice; he reminded us to keep in mind that the word “hate” as it appeared in the Gospel was probably not the word Jesus used when he says in Luke’s Gospel, “"If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

- During the Homily, Fr. Paul reads the corresponding passage from the Gospel of Matthew to help us further understand Jesus’ intention in saying this; he explained Jesus does not call us to “hate” all the people in our life, but rather to put Him first so that all other relationships may fall into place.

- Also during the homily, Fr. Paul read from an LA Times article that discussed human trafficking from Thailand to the LA area, and linked this social justice issue very concretely to the words of the second reading.

- The sign of peace was like a 15 minute intermission in the mass, when the priest went around to everyone in the church. He even added to the prayers of the faithful after finding out news about the passing of a parishioner’s mother after the sign of peace was over.

- Did I mention the Gospel Choir? I have never felt so alive!

- During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, about 50 kids (ages 1-17) joined Fr. Paul on the altar. (Even one Verbum Dei student was there!)

- After communion, the choir sang a fantastic hymn…”Here’s the deal, Jesus is real.” They had everyone on their feet singing and clapping and praising.

- At the end, Fr. Paul invited everyone who was new to the church to stand, and then the people around us patted us on the back, shook our hands, and asked us, very sincerely, to come back.

- We were the only white people in the church, minus 3 Jesuit novices and the priest. However, I have never felt so welcomed at a mass.

- We left the church, two full hours after mass started, singing and dancing our way home down the street.

- We were clearly mistaken for USC students when someone asked us after if we were walking all the way back to USC. Ha!

In other news this weekend, the girls in Casa Celina Ramos in San Diego came to stay with us for two nights. Trying to organize and mobilize 6 girls in addition to our 5 made me grateful for two things: a car (Seriously! They don’t have one in San Diego and it sounds like they are practically paralyzed because of their location in the city) and a co-ed house. They are great girls, but very I’m grateful for our house dynamic!!

G-Dog

On Wednesday night, my casa attended a talk given by Fr. Greg Boyle at USC. Fr. Greg is the founder of Homeboy Industries , a nonprofit downtown that provides employment opportunities, courses, and social services to gang members in LA. There are over 1,100 different gangs in LA County alone, and thousands of young people – particularly pre-teens and adolescents – are caught up in the violence and crime that comes with gang affiliations. In communities where gang membership is the only known form of protection and survival, it makes sense to me that kids – most of whom are living below the poverty line and in broken homes – chose to join.

Fr. Greg, affectionately known by the homies he works with as “G,” is currently on a book tour promoting Tattoos on the Heart.Much of his talk last night reflected what is in this book. We have a copy in our house, so it is certainly next on my reading list. Currently, I’m reading G-dog and Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles.  The book is an account of Fr. Greg’s work in the early-mid 90’s at Dolores Mission Parish, the Jesuit parish surrounded by the largest housing project complex west of the Mississippi.  I am learning so much about Fr. Greg’s work, his philosophy, and also about second chances. The whole principal of Fr. Greg’s pastoral work in East LA and at Homeboy is to treat the homies, many of whom are ex-convicts with ‘resumes’ that include crime, addiction, and gang-affiliation, as human. It sounds so simple. But is it?

Cara works as a case manager at Homeboy. As I read more about Homeboy and hear her stories, I grow more and more in awe of what she does. Thinking about it, our two programs operate on opposite ends of the gang-involvement spectrum. My kids at Urban Compass live in a neighborhood controlled by a very well known gang.  Our goal is prevention: to keep them out of neighborhood gangs, off the streets, and motivated to stay in school.  We want to give them a chance. As a case manager at Homeboy, Cara’s works in intervention: her role is to give people a second chance. Her clients have been involved in gangs and have records, but at Homeboy, they are humans. They are family. For many of the homies, the only family they know before Homeboy is their gang family. The gang becomes a source of income, protection from enemy gangs, employment (think drug sales), and relationship. Urban Compass and Homeboy work to model positive relationships outside the gang structure, and provide opportunities for people before, during, and after gang involvement.

Some points of reflection from Fr. Greg’s talk…

Kinship: “We’ve forgotten that we belong to each other.” Fr. Greg shared this theme last night, and it struck me as an almost deeper and more provocative word than solidarity, a term I have heard and used a lot in my own discussions about and reflections on service and social justice. Kinship, though, implies family, belonging, community in the most intimately connected sense.  “No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice.”

Church: Our collective work, as a people, is to work against separation, to work towards a world where there is no “them.” To be kin, there can be no “other” person. In East LA, this meant that the definition of ‘church’ must change. Many traditional church communities believe that the good people are inside the church, and the bad ones are kept out. But to be kin, to be in solidarity, we must jostle that definition. Fr. Greg did this by starting a school for gang members in Dolores Mission Parish, so he very literally invited the “bad” people inside.

Service: An appropriate theme to reflect on with 10 JVs in the audience! “Service is the hallway that leads to the ballroom of kinship.” G’s mission and model is not built on the service provider and service recipient model, but is rather a relational model: talk to people, get to know their story, take them seriously, treat them as humans, treat them as family.  Service is not about helping. F. Greg told a story about a dream that one of his homies had: Fr. Greg and the homie were standing together in a completely dark room. The homie, the dreamer, couldn’t find any source light. Then, G used his flashlight to shine a beam of light across the room directly to the light-switch. In retelling the dream, Fr. Greg emphasized that no one else could have turned the light on, metaphorically speaking, for this homie, but it was his role – and is our collective role – to use our light to show each other how we can do it for ourselves. (Doesn’t that give you chills?!)

The following evening, my house watched a documentary about the development of gangs in Los Angeles. I highly recommend Crips and Bloods: Made In America to anyone who is interested in learning more about the psychology, history, and rationale behind gangs. This documentary is mainly focused on black gangs formed in Los Angeles – the most famous of which are now found in almost every major city.  I think the documentary addresses a lot of questions that people like me, who were raised in a world completely never penetrated by gang involvement, understand the reasons why people like my students, whose lives since the moment they were born have been surrounded by this lifestyle, join gangs.  Also, much of the documentary shows images of Nickerson Gardens, the neighborhood where Urban Compass Students live.

  

I really hope to return to these themes in a couple weeks when I meet my students. Even though I am very much enjoying work, I am getting very antsy without students! My hope is to keep Fr. Greg’s reflections on kinship, church, and service in mind as I meet my students and their families, and come to know more about their lives.  If you have any reflections, ideas, questions to share…whatever it may be…please comment or email me!  Thanks again for reading J

Much Ado About LA

Another successful weekend! On Friday night, Theresa and I crashed the Verbum Day Staff Luau. Well, okay, maybe we didn’t crash it…we were invited. Nevertheless, after another long, hot day organizing our office, we headed over to the Multi-Purpose Room. There we found most of the Verb faculty enjoying Mai Tais, beer, or an unidentified frozen blue concoction. There was a light spread of Hawaiian BBQ snacks.  The gathering was very low-key, but I got to hang out with Julie and Zach and enjoy a cocktail before even leaving work!  My first thought walking into the room was “This would never happen in a public school!”

In true Jesuit fashion, this gathering was just the first of many social appearances of the evening. After swinging home to change and grab John, we drove over to Homeboy Industries downtown, where we joined all the other LA JVC houses, supervisors, former JVs, and support people. Our regional program director and program coordinator, Kelly and Andrew, even came down from Santa Clara for the evening!  Homeboy hosted this ‘housewarming’ party for all the JVs. They had delicious food from Homegirl café, where Cara works, and we even got to bring the leftover drinks from the Verb luau! Theresa and Jeff, the director of Operations and JVC contact at the Verb, joined the party. It was great to see everyone and get to meet some of the former JVs. I recognized one FJV from an overnight that BC’s Volunteer Service Learning Center hosted last year. Marcos served 2 years with JVC in Micronesia and is now volunteer teaching and working on a Master’s in Education through Placecorps.  It was great to see him again!

My Casa at Homeboy!
Cara, Zach, John, Me, Julie

We spent the rest of the evening at the Jean Donavon house at a birthday party for John, who also works at Homeboy with Cara. On Saturday night we went to Rose’s 30^th birthday party. (Rose is the FJV who brought us dinner last weekend.)The party was Glow themed…meaning there were blacklights, glowsticks, highlighters, glowing cocktails, and  every possible glow in the dark decoration you can imagine – including Rose’s custom made shoes. We didn’t know anyone else at the party but that didn’t stop us from dominating the dance floor! Rose was happy to have us there and constantly offered to help us out with anything we might need in the next year.

Rose's GLOW Party
(lime green shirt = John!)

On Sunday, we had big plans to hit the gym before mass and then going to see Shakespeare in the park. We only accomplished 1/3, but I’m glad we did! See, we had to postpone the gym trip until tonight because of car-sharing logistics, which was fine.  We were ready to go and out the door at 4:30 to get to 5pm mass at a church near Griffith Park, an enormous park in the middle of LA. Unfortunately, we got lost – twice – on the way.  By the time we even got close to the church it was already 6, and we had clearly missed mass. So, we traded pews for a picnic blanket, got a good parking spot on the lawn in the park, and enjoyed our picnic dinner,  until Much Ado About Nothing started at 7. The show was excellent! It was the last night of a free Shakespeare festival in LA. I’m so glad we went, even though we did miss mass and got home too late to hit up the late-night USC Newman Center mass.

The highlight of my day back to work today was something that a few people out there will understand very well – specifically those of you whom I used to subject to playing school with me after school every day. You might remember that I used to ask teachers for extra worksheets that were leftover from class (go ahead, laugh at my nerdiness! But know that when I say I've always wanted to be a teacher, it's true!) I'd use the worksheets later in the day with my own “class.” (Why on earth did you guys let me get away with that?)   Well, if my 8 year old self had seen the massive binders filled with hundreds of different math, reading, and writing worksheets that I sorted through today, she would have been in afterschool heaven. The only thing that could have made her happier would have been a box of fresh chalk and a captive audience to make do the worksheets. (Unfortunately, my students still haven’t started school and chalkboards are practically antique.)

That’s about it for now…we just got home from the gym where iron is being pumped in preparation for the JVC Olympics (okay, that’s just a dream of ours, but we would clearly kick butt!).

Five Senses

What better way to immerse yourself in a new city, community, and job than to use all 5 senses, right? Here’s a little bit of what mine have been up to this week:

See: Concrete, Mountains, Smog, Sun!

On the way to and from work every day, Julie, Zach, and I constantly see tons upon tons of concrete. We take two different freeways to get to work, and the on/off ramps boggle my mind. At some points there are 4 layers of highway stacked on top of each other. Theresa quoted her dad in describing LA as a “concrete jungle,” a phrase he probably used long before Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes made everyone sing it in Empire State of Mind.  It’s crazy because on the freeways, we can see all the surrounding mountains, unless they’re disguised in the horizon by the incredible amount of smog that hangs over the city. But despite the smog, the sun is out every single day!

Hear: Ice Cream Trucks, Helicopters, Neighbors

From our dinner table on Monday night, we could hear the lovely jingle of the ice cream trucks that constantly patrol our neighborhood. I’ve seen many different trucks and heard every typical carnival/ice cream truck song you can imagine – from “Pop Goes the Weasel” to a very aggressive and inquisitive recording of “Hello?” on repeat.  The ice cream trucks roll down the street at a leisurely 5mph and I have yet to see anyone solicit them. We are starting to suspect they might sell more than just ice cream, but we’re not exactly going to try to find out…  We can also sometimes hear loud, low helicopters over the city. Our support people (who brought us dinner on Monday night! Score!) told us that probably meant there was police activity that needed to be monitored from above, in case anything ‘went down.’ Luckily the choppers didn’t sound too close. Finally, the other sound that we are all enjoying waking up to our neighbor on the phone. He paces in his side-yard, which is only feet from our bedroom and bathroom windows, and speaks very loudly about something very nonsensical. His accent sounds Caribbean, and even though we can understand exactly what he’s saying, it makes NO sense. Again, sketchy?

We also had the chance to hear some great stories and wisdom from our newfound friend, Rose. She is a former JV who served in Atlanta. She told us the horror stories from her year – the foundation of her house collapsed, roommates had to be removed for medical reasons, and there were battles over free-range chicken.  Despite it all, she LOVES JVC…so much so that she brought us Thai food and wine to welcome us to LA! The next evening our support people, Krista and Maria, came over to check in on us. They are wonderful!

Touch:  Office Furniture, Glue sticks, Markers

This week at work has been mostly about getting the office ready. It’s a slow process, but it’s looking good! We have made a few furniture and container runs to IKEA. [Sidenote: The escalator at IKEA was, in my mind, SO “So Cal.” It was two stories and completely open air, with a roof for the occasional rainy day. I felt I like I was at an amusement park, riding to the top of a rollercoaster!] Today we took a mildly successful fieldtrip to a warehouse were another agency, ANEW foundation, distributes used office furniture to other nonprofits. We didn’t find much, but it was an interesting model. Their tagline is “Doing what’s right with what’s left.” Cute, right?  Otherwise, the week has been filled with hours of sorting through the massive quantities of crayons, markers, glue sticks, children’s books, games, and stationary as we start to get organized in our new space.

 I also had a chance to meet one of the mom’s when she came in to pick up some school supplies for her kids, which were donated to Urban Compass. She was really appreciative! We took a spin around Nickerson Gardens earlier in the week to drop off some toys to some of the kids who will be returning to the program. I got to see a couple girls who are students. They were adorable but super shy. Their mom practically had to push them out their front door to come up to the van to talk to “Miss G” (Theresa). The Mom only spoke Spanish, but that didn’t stop her from inviting us to her daughter’s birthday party in October!  After meeting this family, I found out that many of the parents translate through their kids, so I asked Theresa if it would be helpful for me to translate the student application to Urban Compass into Spanish as well. She loved the idea, which gave me a great project for the afternoon!  

Smell: Lemons, Candles, Tacos  /  Taste: Avocadoes, Granola Bars, Yogurt

Smells and Tastes naturally go together this week. Planning meals, grocery shopping, and cooking for five people is definitely an interesting project. I’m so used to shopping for 1 at school! We have to keep out meals simple, so we eat a lot of yogurt and granola bars as snacks with our lunches. Deciding what to buy in bulk vs at the regular grocery store has been tough.  We go through food so quickly! It amazed me when we ran out of apples on Wednesday of the week because what we bought on Sunday would have lasted me a week and a half at school.  I am very impressed at how easy it is to put together a grocery list though – no one is super picky about food so whatever is in the fridge will undoubtedly be consumed.

This week’s dinner menu was simple because we were treated to dinner on Sunday and Monday. I must say, though, that Taco Tuesday was the highlight! I found avocados for a fraction of the price we pay at home and made a very simple (and very delicious) guacamole using lemons from our very own lemon tree! How cool is that?!  We also made a yummy pasta salad on Wednesday and hot sandwiches that we took with us to the beach tonight for another community night under the stars (but the alliteration just isn’t as cool as Taco Tuesday).

Oh, and the candle smell? That’s from spirituality night on Tuesday. We talked a little more about what brought us all to JVC and past experiences with service and spirituality. It was a great evening!

One last thing: below is a picture from our party last weekend. These are all the fine LA JVs this year, gathered on our front porch!

That’s all for now…Thanks so much to those of you who are following along! Apologies for such long entries. Thanks for sticking with me! Much love <3

Jacked & Tan

So, while getting “jacked and tan” may not sound like ambitions aligned with JVC’s core values, we in Casa DK have certainly been enjoying trying anyway! (And don’t worry, we’re not neglecting our covenant!) Since orientation, it has been our house joke (well, maybe it’s not a joke!) that by the time Re-Orientation, our January JVC regional retreat, rolls around we will be so jacked and so tan that no one will recognize us. Our first casa picture was of all of us doing pushups, so we already have our “before” shot!

This weekend, we made great first strides in accomplishing our goals.

On Friday, John, Zach, and another John from Casa Jean Donavan took the key to Loyola High School’s gym that was left for us in our house. With the help of some very nice security guards and a golf cart, we found the gym. Let me say this: for the girl who always avoided the “man” section of BC’s Plex (ruby girls, you might have known this as the sausage-fest), I felt like I was encroaching on sacred male bonding territory as I entered this all-boys school gym, in the company of all boys. The gym is enormous as far as high school gyms go, with dozens of machines and weight benches. While the boys worked on getting jacked together, I biked and lifted on my own. We went back as a casa this afternoon, which was even more fun. Loyola High School is a sharp contrast to Verbum Dei. Both are Jesuit schools but nothing much else about them seems to be the same. The Verb has a suffering football team while Loyola’s is one of the best in the region. The Loyola campus rivals that of any small college or university, and is equipped with an outdoor pool, turf field, and football stadium. The discrepancy in resources is also pretty stark and definitely noticeable from the moment you walk on campus.

Later Friday night, my Casa-mates threw me a little birthday party, since I got to celebrate by flying across the country and then meeting almost 90 strangers on the first day of Orientation. They made me a delicious cake (picture below!) and we invited the other LA houses over. It was great! We took a big JVC- LA group shot and even played some reggeton (you can imagine, I was in heaven!)

On Saturday, we started working towards goal #2: Get Tan. We ventured to Venice Beach in the early afternoon. Venice is a very eclectic beach town. Besides a beautiful beach with brightly colored lifeguard shacks, there is a skate park, outdoor market, and the famous muscle beach.

We spent the day enjoying the sunshine, and even saw a few people be baptized in the ocean. There was a huge evangelical-type soul festival going on in the park with live music, food, and dancing…it was so fun! There was a path from the festival with signs for “Baptism…Disciples on the Move” from the festival to the shoreline. One very hippie-looking woman was going around to different people on the beach asking people if they’d like her to pray with them. Right next to this soul-fest were a bunch of little shops that sold medical marijuana cards. You can imagine the diversity in the crowds!

Today the cultural explorations continued as we tried to find a local mass to go to. In our neighborhood, it’s going to be a challenge to find masses in English that aren’t super early in the morning, or super long. The local mid morning masses are either in Spanish or Korean, or are 2-hour long hip-hop masses. I’d love to try all these out, especially the Spanish ones, but not all my mass-going roomies will be able to understand.

The rest of our Sunday is pretty lazy – we planned our menu for the week and took care of food shopping at our local Food4Less, which is awesome and right down the street. Tonight though, an FJV in the area is bringing us dinner…can’t pass up a free meal! Until next time, peace!

More pictures of my casa, roommates, and adventures coming soon :)

First Week in Watts

The first week of work is almost done! It’s been a pretty quiet week at work because the public school doesn’t start until September 13th. So far I’ve been running errands for my boss, Theresa, and exploring the neighborhood with her. I get in nice and early because my housemates have to report to the Verb (Verbum Dei, that is) bright and early. Zach works with the corporate work study program, so the boys at the school have to check in with him before they can take off for their placements. The Verb is part of the Cristo Rey network of schools, which means that the boys work one day a week for corporations that then sponsor part of their tuition.

On Tuesday, Theresa took me around Watts in the Urban Compass van. We drove through the housing projects, Nickerson Gardens, where my students live. We also drove through other parts of the district, and even saw Watts’ landmark – the Watts Towers. These are structures built completely from trash and recycled materials – they’re pretty cool! However, they’re not exactly in a prime location, so we didn’t get out and walk around. Theresa gave me the run-down of the gang presence in the neighborhood, but also assured me that the gangs very much respect the high school campus. Most of the families in the neighborhood have heard of Urban Compass or recognize her and her van, so she feels safe when she drives it.

As for our own neighborhood, we figured out yesterday that the technical name for it is “Adams – Normandie,” but also learned that the name doesn’t really matter. We’re in South Central, close to USC, and near the 110 – that’s all anyone seems to need to know! If you’re curious, you can see the streetview of my house here!(Thanks Google!) We have the bottom floor and our landlord lives above us.

As part of the JVC program, our Casa will be having once Spirituality Night and one Community Night each week. On Tuesday, we had our first Spirituality Night, and it went really well. (For any BC folks, it was kind of like a CURA group for roommates!) Last night, we celebrated our first community night at a free concert on the beach in Santa Monica. It was so cool! We met up with another JVC house in LA and mostly chatted and people watched. It was quite an assortment of people – hippies, hipsters, students, homeless people, and your stereotypical SoCal guys and girls. It was definitely amusing, even though we could hardly hear the music.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m looking forward to hopefully exploring a little more of the city this weekend!

Welcome & Orientation

Welcome! Thanks so much for checking out my blog. I will be writing periodically about my experience in Los Angeles as a Jesuit Volunteer. Keeping a blog was a great way to tell family and friends (mostly you, MomMom & Hubba!) about what I was up to in Quito, so I thought I'd give it a shot again. I'll try to add pictures of people/places once I get settled!

I arrived in California (for the first time ever) last week for JVC orientation in Aptos, CA. All the volunteers serving in Arizona and California gathered for 5 days to meet one another and prepare for the year. A bunch of really dynamic FJVs (Former/Forever Jesuit Voulunteers) came to speak to us about the four values that we have all pledged to live by over the course of the next year: community, spirituality, social justice, and simple living. After Orientation, we rented cars and drove from San Jose to our home in LA!

After arriving in LA, I took off for LAX and flew home for Kelly's wedding (Congrats!!). I was back here Monday evening just in time for dinner with my community and to start work on Tuesday.

A few fun facts and links...

My "Casa" is named Dorothy Kazel, named for one of the churchwomen murdered in El Salvador in 1980. All the LA houses are named for the four women killed - Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Jean Donavon are the other houses. Casa DK is now home to five new JVs - myself, Julie, Cara, Zach, and John.

We all have different jobs in LA. My position is with Urban Compass , a nonprofit that runs an afterschool program for students at 112th St. Elementary School. We are located on the campus of Verbum Dei High School, an all boys, Jesuit, Cristo Rey school.

At JVC Southwest Orientation last week, there were 13 BC grads! Impressive, huh?! We were the biggest contingent there. Go Eagles! [Sidenote: When I stepped of the plane wearing by BC Maroon & Gold rugby shirt, I realized I would easily be mistaken for a USC Trojan...not cool! My house is about a mile from USC.]