Ellen
Jewett serves as a Dominican Volunteer at Immaculate Conception Academy Cristo Rey
High School in San Francisco California.In this letter to herself that she wrote Dominican Volunteers USA's Midyear retreat, Ellen reflects on her Dominican
Volunteer year thus far. Thank you for your service, Ellen!
Dear Ellen,
You’ll fall in love. And no, I’m not
talking about that cute boy in choir, though the four months you’ve spent with
him so far haven’t been half bad. You’ll fall in love with life, with your
community, with your ministry, and with yourself.
One day not too far into your year
of service, you’ll realize you aren’t taking about the kids but your kids, much to your boyfriend’s
amusement. You’ll laugh that your conversations must sound absurd to outsiders,
jumping around between kids but always using the possessive.
When
there’s an issue with BART, your first concern will be if all your kids made it
home, saying a prayer that none are stranded.
You’ll
nearly cry in the back of the auditorium as one of your seniors gives a speech
about how her mother died a few years ago and her dad is here illegally and
might be deported under the new president, leaving her without parents. You’ll
feel the water slosh around in your eyes, but you’ll pull yourself together so
that you can be there for the freshmen you’re about to bring to work, freshmen
who have their own struggles and really need you to be present to them.
You’ll
find yourself having a hard conversation with one of your favorite campus
ministers long after school ended because she’s concerned about her mom and
brother’s relationship and what will happen when she leaves for college at the
end of the year. You won’t have answers – you definitely won’t have answers –
but all that matters to her is that you’re listening and you care.
When
your kids find out your grandma passed away, they’ll give you hugs as they
leave for the day. The next morning one of the same girls will wrap an arm
around your shoulder as a way of greeting you, wise beyond her years, knowing
that the pain and sadness wouldn’t have disappeared overnight.
With
every single one of your students, you’ll see the strain that minimum wage
jobs, long hours, and absurdly high rents put on a family. And it will hurt. A
lot.
Your
ministry will push you, sometimes it will push hard. You’ll be handed a retreat
with 60 freshmen with just four days’ notice. You’ll help run a choir even
though sometimes you barely feel qualified to be in a choir. You’ll play piano
and flute in front of the whole school. You’ll somehow learn the entire rapid
transit system in a month. But you’ll never feel overwhelmed. Even in the
scariest of situations, you will feel a pervading sense of calm, as if this is
what you are meant to do.
You’ll
fall in love with your community, despite all their foibles. You’ll love their
intentional and caring actions, like the prioress offering to tell all the
Sisters that your grandmother just passed away so that you don’t have to go
through the pain of saying it all over again or your prayer partner leaving a
treat outside your door just to brighten your day. But you’ll also love their unintentional
truths and little quirks. There’s one who, though she drives you insane most
days, leaves a packet in your mail box called “Writing Tips for the Doctoral
Student” the day after you get your first acceptance to a PhD program. You’ll
realize that’s her own special way of showing love and it will mean the world
to you. Another will try to convince to you stop being vegetarian because she
thinks that is why you’ve been tired for the last few weeks. It will drive you mad,
you’ll want to scream, but you’ll understand that it’s because she cares about
you, despite how misguided her suggestions may be.
When you’re with your family at
Christmas, you’ll refer to the convent as “home” without thinking twice about
it. And you’ll mean it.
You won’t exactly fall in love with
your study, either academic or spiritual. But that’s where you’ll start to
grow. Though graduate school applications aren’t fun, they will force to you
think about what exactly you like in the different fields you study. They will
help you find that passion once again, passion that slowly drifted away over
the hustle and bustle of senior spring. You won’t love Theological Reflection
either, but you kind of knew that when you signed up for the program. But it
will allow you to push yourself, to share in larger group settings. It will teach
you about aspects of Dominican spirituality, but more importantly, it will
teach you to be vulnerable.
Prayer
will be different, but the presence of God will be the same. You’ll tell
yourself that you’ll wake up for morning prayer at 6 am, but it won’t actually
happen. You’ll look forward to evening prayer at the end of a long day, a way
to unwind and recenter after nine hours of work. Personal prayer will be
difficult at times, mostly because sitting still for so long will make you want
to fall asleep, but even this perceived dryness will help you grow and mature. You’ll
enjoy going to Mass again, brought to tears by incredible and thoughtful Jesuit
preaching that somehow always manages to connect perfectly to your life and the
struggles of any given week.
You
won’t fall in love with the city, especially not its absurd issues with
gentrification, unreasonable rents, and income disparities, but you’ll fall in
love with certain parts of it. You’ll find a family in choir at St Agnes, looking
forward to every single rehearsal as a chance to laugh and to be whole. Every
Sunday, your breath will be taken away as the J train comes up over the hill to
the edge of Dolores Park and you get a view of downtown. When you’re stressed
or just need air, you’ll walk up 24th Street and find a little
village of bookstores, restaurants, and coffee shops and you’ll finally be able
to breathe again.
In
these six months, you’ll grow.
You’ll
be happy.
You’ll
be whole.
With
love and blessings,
Yourself
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