“I’ve been given a rare gift: about an hour everyday where all I can do is sit"

Our latest blog post comes from Dominican Volunteer Gabrielle Smith, who serves as a counselor at Immaculate Conception Academy Cristo Rey High School in San Francisco California.

Gabrielle shares how the daily tedious task commuting has given her a new understanding in appreciation for the Dominican Pillar of Study.

Dominican Volunteer Gabrielle Smith

The Bay Area Rapid Transit of San Francisco.

One of the somewhat unfortunate aspects of my job is commuting in the mornings and afternoons.  I’m actually not commuting to work like most people, but I’m chaperoning high school students to their workplace and then picking them up in the afternoon.  As a Cristo Rey school, all of our students work at a company one day a week, so we need chaperones to ensure students using public transportation arrives at work safely.  This means I ride the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) four times a day, going various distances, with a group of high school students. 

I think it’s fair to say most people probably don’t love commuting to work in general (even without a gaggle of girls following you).  However, I’m going to make a brief plug in favor of commuting, as it has given me some much needed time to reflect, read, study, and discern.

Since I come back to school in the morning and go out for pick up in the afternoon without students, I’ve been given a rare gift: about an hour everyday where all I can do is sit.  I cannot move anywhere or move any faster than the train already is.  I am forced to sit still for once and be okay with letting my mind wander or I can finally read a particular book I’ve wanted to read.  Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been quite productive on the train.  I’ve studied for the GRE, listened to many podcasts, chilled out with some music, and have read All the Light We Cannot See, The Shack, The Road to Character, Just Mercy, The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar, and “The Death of Ivan Ilych”.  I’m currently reading A Man Called Ove (in case you were wondering).  My housemates are definitely tired of hearing all of my unsolicited book reviews and summaries :-)

But having that time to simply sit and read or stare out the window or meditate has really been a blessing in disguise.  It has forced me to slow down and not feel like I need to be doing something all the time.  I’m writing about this seemingly mundane topic of commuting because it has changed the way I interpret the Dominican Pillar of “Study.”  If you are not familiar with the Dominican Order, we have 4 pillars (aka values): ministry, prayer, community, and study.  The first three are pretty straightforward in my opinion, but study seemed a bit vague to me when used outside of academia.  What am I supposed to study when I’m not a student in school?  No one is going to tell me what to study?! 

That has been quite a mental shift as we go from being students in school to graduates who can now read or study whatever we want simply for the sake of learning.  How freeing that is to read books that have nothing to do with my job, but simply because I want to.  I personally have lost that as I’ve gotten older throughout high school and college where we’re told what to study and have no time to study random topics of interest.  I think that’s what the pillar of “study” is all about though -- we should continue to study something to keep our minds sharp and to make learning a lifestyle even after we’ve left the classroom. 

If you have any book or podcast recommendations, leave a comment below!

  

Circle of Relationship

 Jennifer Doering serves as a Dominican Volunteer at St. James Elementary School in San Francisco California.

In our latest blog post, Jennifer reflects on living with Sisters in a religious community and her own personal growth from that experience.

Jennifer and her San Francisco community

For Lent this year, I gave up both Netflix and Hulu. It has been a struggle, but I’ve been reading a lot more books in my newly free time. I’m currently reading The Shack, by Wm. Paul Young, and although it’s not really a theologically “accurate” representation of Catholic belief, it really challenged me to think about my understanding of God and our mutual place in the universe.

For those of you, like myself, who have never read The Shack, it is about Mack Phillips, a man who’s gone through terrible trauma and is angry, furious, with God. He goes to a shack in the woods and spends a weekend with the Trinity, represented by “Papa,” a black woman, Jesus, a Jewish man, and Sarayu, an Asian woman. I’m about halfway through the novel, and I just finished with a chapter on relationship that really reminded me of religious life. Mack sees the three speaking over breakfast and is fascinated by their easy relationship. He asks God how they don’t have issues of power and authority, really asking who is at the top of the “chain of command.” After some confusion and laughter, Sarayu explains that, “We have no concept of final authority among us, only unity. We are in a circle of relationship, not a chain of command ... What you’re seeing here is relationship without any overlay of power” (126). The three go on to explain how the presence of power in a relationship is a truly human limitation, is a barrier to true relationship, and is almost at the core of all our world’s problems. This struck me as real truth. I had never thought about relationship as a power struggle, but it really is. Even our pop culture recognizes this: in How I Met Your Mother, the token couple, Marshall and Lily, have an episode where their main struggle is deciding who is the “reacher” and who is the “settler,” i.e. who “settled” for a less attractive partner, thus having more power in the relationship. Our family, school, romantic, government, political, workplace, societal structures are all based on power. We live with it, and accept it, but never really think about how it could be different. But I was reminded of people who did, once upon a time: the founders of religious life.

Yes, religious life isn’t perfect. There is still a “chain of command” and someone in charge. But living in community has taught me that religious are more in tune with living in true relationship, like the Trinity, than most people in the world. They try really hard to work together as a team and see the good in every person and every situation. Yes, they are sometimes passive aggressive and petty, but who isn’t? They’re still human. But the difference between sisters and the rest of us is that they choose to dedicate their lives to living in community. They dedicate their lives to living with a large group of other women, with all the problems that that entails, and still live in communion and loving relationship with each and every one. Just last night, I experienced this love. Every Friday night, the San Francisco community has a Happy Hour and Movie, where we drink cocktails, eat light snacks, and then watch a rented movie together. One of the sisters had received a gift of special Irish cheddar cheese for her Feast Day (akin to birthdays in religious life) and chose to share it with us all as part of the snack table. Another sister had purchased the movie Coco for herself and graciously offered to share it with us so the members of our community who hadn’t seen it could experience her favorite movie. While neither of these actions seems like a huge deal, they are a representation of the true love and community that are fostered in religious life relationships. They are a representation of the relationship of our triune God that religious sisters try to emulate. They are a representation of the joy of religious life.