I’ve completed two months as a Jesuit Volunteer in rural Alaska. As I continue to find my experiences difficult to summarize, here is a poem-reflection on my first encounters.

Bethel, Alaska

They say it’s not the end of the earth…
But you can see it from here.

Out across the undulating grasses
The mossy ground
Littered with lonely lakes
Traveling on and on and on
Perhaps ending somewhere just out of sight

Small graying houses, perched on their stilts
Like flamingos standing in the water
Clustered together for companionship
Neighborhoods standing in solidarity
Their Red and Green roofs are the only skyline

The dust, the mud,
The silt- a thousand times finer than sand
Seeps into your skin, your hair, your clothes
And sticks
Impossible to wash off,
Carry these places with you forever

The roads end.
Taper off. Stop. The end of town, then end…
Is this the end of the earth?
Or can I see if from here?
What should I be looking for?

They say it’s not the end of the earth…
But you can see it from here.

Not so early anymore
The holy spirit stretches her wings
Across the morning sky
Breathing life into an infant day
And warming the world with a precious light

In the freshly filleted fish
Hanging out to dry
Carrying the summer’s bounty long into winter
Even a hostile land provides sustenance
Subsistence from above

Berry Pickers dot the land
Plucking fistfuls of blue or black or red bounty
From that ground many have called desolate
Tossing hundreds of the fuites rouges into buckets
Actions become life-giving prayer,

Written off and forgotten.
Isolated by choice
Or culture
Or geography
Or poverty
A place where the roads end.

They say it’s not the end of the earth…
But you can see it from here.
Or might it be its own beginning
A place where the roads begin
Swelling with God on the tundra.

Photo: “Alaskan Tundra” by images of life from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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In under a week I will be a Jesuit Volunteer. Not to be over dramatic and alarmist, but everything is about to change for me. The transition from college to…well…not college is a big one for many people. While lots of my friends are looking for jobs or starting graduate programs, I decided to join JVC Northwest. Over the past few months as I have been preparing (or avoiding preparing as is more generally the case) for this transition, many people have asked me when and why I decided to make this commitment. Honestly, this is because many of my friends think I’m totally crazy.

My commitment is for one year in Bethel, Alaska. I will live in community with other JVs and attempt to incorporate JVCs four core values of community, simplicity, spirituality, social and ecological justice into my life in tangible ways. If I look at it another way: I’m moving somewhere I’ve never been with people I’ve never met to work a job which I am completely unqualified to do. When I look at it that way, no wonder people think I’m crazy.

The truth is I have no idea when I decided that I wanted to do this. I have friends who were JVs. But I think the idea was planted in my head from birth. My mom was a JV. I grew up hearing about her experiences and meeting her friends whom she had met through JVC. One of my earliest memories is of a JVC reunion in Texas. Somewhere along the way I thought that I would probably do it too. I once talked to my younger sister about this, and she sees it much the same way: it seems like the natural next step.

When I started thinking about what to do once I graduated from college, I entertained possibilities of grad school, internships, and other volunteer programs but really never wavered from my plan to be a Jesuit Volunteer. The application process is lengthy and requires a lot of writing and a lot of personal discernment. I started it later than I should have: I’m a chronic procrastinator. I only gave myself about a week to do the whole application. I got to the question ‘Why do you want to be a Jesuit Volunteer’ and was a bit stuck. I really didn’t know how to answer that question. I was stumped. I sat, staring at my laptop screen for a long time. Hours probably. I avoided it for days. Hoping something would come to me. I started having doubts. Maybe I hadn’t thought this through as well as I thought I had. I finally decided to continue on with the application and come back.

One of the next steps was to read the covenant- the commitment that JVs make to guide them to live out those four core values. As I read it, tears welled up in my eyes. I was overwhelmed with the beauty of the commitment that JVC asks its volunteers to make. This was why I wanted to be a JV. In that two-page commitment I later signed, I saw who I wanted to become. So many of my spiritual desires were right there on the page in front of me. I want to be a Jesuit Volunteer because I want to be “ruined for life”.

In the end, I’m ok with my friends thinking I’m a little bit crazy. I’m also ok with my moments of panic at the coming transition. While my nerves are pretty obvious and expected- a natural reaction to change- they also indicate something more to me. I think I’m nervous in part because I know that I will learn and grow and be changed by this experience. And maybe, if I’m lucky I’ll be “ruined for life”.

Photo: “Bethel Winter“by Images of Life from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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1. Life in the Ruins

I don’t want to in any way diminish the importance of making ourselves and our homes more environmentally friendly. However, I am extremely concerned with what might happen when Target stores stop carrying “I’m green” t-shirts, when the fad fades. Can this idea transition from a fad into the true lifestyle change that it needs to be? One reason why I am so concerned is because of my friends’ distain for an actual experience of nature. It’s important to ask how much concern we can actually muster for the natural world if our children don’t even enjoy stepping outside. How genuine can this shift be when whole societies feel enormous disconnect from that which they are attempting to protect?

There are other reasons to live in a more environmentally conscious way: finances, self-preservation, etc. But if underlying this movement is not an understanding that the earth is sacred, then the steam in this engine could soon disappear. When asked to remember a time when they felt God’s presence in the world, many people identify encounters with nature, often in dramatic scenery. They report the sense of wonder and awe they felt gazing up at a waterfall, looking out over a mountain range, or feeling the spray of an ocean breeze. They find God in these things and experiences. This has happened to me too, many times. But what I notice is that these experiences do not restrict themselves to the grand- they have a trickle-down effect. Because I had that experience of feeling God in the sunrise, my joy and awareness of God’s presence follows me when the colors fade and I look down at the wildflowers, grass, and insects. My awareness of God in the world bleeds into my daily life. In essence, because I have these encounters with God in nature, I find it much easier to see God in my daily life.

My idea of God in the world is inextricably interwoven with the environment, probably to a fault. These encounters with God through nature have changed both how I understand God and how I understand nature. I believe in the necessity to care for and protect the earth because I see God so firmly rooted within it.  And if we are to truly care for ourselves and for our planet, we cannot cut ourselves off from it by hiding indoors. We must get out and experience the world and experience God’s creation all around us. Perhaps where we need to find God most is not in the sunrise, but in unromantic dirt and sweat. The more time I spend outside, the more I want to be outside.

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