I just told a woman that she wasn’t being culturally sensitive.
And I’m stuttering excessively and slipping over words because it is THAT uncomfortable for me to confront someone.
I think if I had to do this day in and day out, I would have heart problems.
there was a little girl I met in the refugee camp’s children classroom who I sat next to coloring. I showed her a video on my phone in Farsi about the gospel by way of different prophets. The characters were familiar to her: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses.. the theme was related to blood sacrifice and restoration with God and ended with Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice that restored us to God forever.
When the story led to Jesus, her eyes lit up and she exclaimed “Issa!”, or Jesus in Farsi. She quickly turned to to call her friend to come watch the video. She was unsuccessful and continued watching.
Meanwhile, I felt like I was breaking some kind of code to share with her the video and the whole time felt like I was going to be caught. When it finally ended, I asked her through google translate if she liked the video and she said yes.
I appreciated her posture towards the gospel. I love how she was excited to see Issa and how she immediately wanted to share the video with her friend.
This past year has been nuts. I’ve never agreed to pile on so many activities that demanded consistency and responsibility until this year and there were months I thought I was going to collapse. In between school, my fellowship experience in Downtown LA, Bruin Shelter, Church, I had to deal with my own internal crap related to relationship and singleness, the drama that came with living through different iterations of roommates, and the sinking feeling that my academic program was not anything close to what I thought it would be.
I’ve been through so much school that I see time in relation to academic years and this past year has been challenging in a different way than past academic years. This year has been marked with the sentiment of not being able to fathom how I would ever get from point A to point Z- not just externally but internally. From experiencing emotional healing, being a part of a community, getting through the school year, getting a job – contemplating all these seemingly distant point Z’s resulted in many sleepless nights.
But today is the last week of the academic year and I find myself at point Z.
To build off of this metaphor, there will probably be more alphabets to cross through but for now, life is groovy. God is good 🙂
sometimes when i have something pending that I really don’t want to do-like write my last paper-I lie in my bed wishing the paper would go away and write a blog post.
sigh.
today’s shooting on campus made me think of a lot of things.
for one, the other members of my cohort and I were in the middle of giving presentations on our research when the first alert came. as more alerts came, we notified our professor, who told us to continue with the presentations because it was “better to focus on something positive” and “be productive”.
as calls and texts started coming in, she told us to pay attention to the presenter please.
learning number 1: when crisis is happening, please acknowledge that safety is more important than school.
later when myself and another student called the chair of the program and told her about how our professor handled or didn’t handle the situation, we were told it wasn’t a valid concern, her concluding remark: “you could have died, but you didn’t die so then you’re fine”.
ironic how two of the least empathetic professors happen to be in the doctoral program of the social welfare department.
the shooting happened around 10AM, but we were under lock-down until 12:30PM. during this time, we were getting different updates on what was happening through twitter, texts, new sources and word of mouth from other people in the building. we could hear helicopters, we saw photos of police – we were all paranoid, at times being told there were up to 4 active shooters in different parts of campus, including north campus- where I was. At one point there was news that the shooter was armed with an assault rifle.
we were told of this 6 foot white male shooter being spot at different places and in this scenario, if we were in a state that passed concealed carry laws, we would probably have student vigilantes walking around wreaking havoc, targeting students who looked suspicious.
in the end, we found out that the shooting that occurred at 10AM was the only shooting and led to the death of a professor and a suicide. but the feeling of that frenzied paranoid lingers.
and the tragedy that leaves a professor dead is a mark that is engraved on our campus forever.
Today is my last day at The CalEndow.
This past school year has been a wild ride with plenty of let downs. This past year has also been rife with transitions church-wise, fellowship-wise and relationship-wise. The CalEndow or TCE has been an anchor, a stable routine-where my role is clear, my tasks are well defined, and my co-workers appreciate me. I’m writing this post at 8PM – I have been staying late in recent weeks to finish all the school-related crap. It really is a bunch of baloney. The school stuff.
This opportunity came out of the air after I thought I would opt out of doing a second year field placement. By chance, I read through an email through a listserv I don’t pay attention to, saw this fellowship opportunity, and applied last minute.
Who knew I’d get it?
Who knew that it would have been a place of rest away from the crap-storm of school? Not to mention that if I stuck with my original plan, I would not be able to graduate from the MSW program.
On that note, who knew I would actually be at a place to leave school?
Who knew?
That’s the question of my life and the answer can only be GOD. God knew 🙂
Out of Darkness 