Summer 2013 Update

          With summer officially begun, many of you might be wondering what I am up to this summer...what sort of adventures are in store for me now? One of the first adventures to occur is the taking of the GRE! For those who don't know, the GRE stands for Graduate Record Exam and is the SAT for grad school. Although I don't plan on applying to grad school for a couple of years, I decided now was the best time to take this test, when I don't have a job and can devote time to studying. The scores are good for five years, then. I take the test on Monday, June 17. Until then, I am once again a full time student, brushing up on vocabulary and math skills.
         However, even before the test I am taking two shorter adventures. The first is a trip to Cincy to have a couple day retreat at the monastery. I am really looking forward to a time of reflection and retreat in that sacred space! My time there will end with my parents and I attending a Reds baseball game. Then, in two weeks, my best friend Jana and I will be taking a four day camping trip to Northern Michigan! I am so excited to spend this time with her before she gets married in October and I head off to another part of the world.
         The last week in June, I am heading to the cabin in Colorado with my family and friend Amy for a week. I then fly from Denver to Phoenix for Mennonite Convention, where I am a young adult delegate for Central District Conference. After convention, I fly back to Colorado where several of my college friends will meet me. We will then spend another week at the cabin, hiking, exploring, and spending quality time together. I will then road trip to Maryland (with stops in Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia) to begin my orientation with Brethren Volunteer Service. This orientation lasts from July 16- August 2.
         Most likely at that point, I will go back to Virginia to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend, before coming back to Ohio to work on the farm in August. Plans in September are up in the air right now, but hopefully it will be a time to visit people before I leave the country. Jana is getting married on October 12, then I leave soon after that for Europe!
         It is a busy summer, but I am really looking forward to everything (with the exception of the GRE). I also decided that my blog needed some freshening up, so I gave it a new look. Hope you like it dear readers!

Creative Writing Attempt #1

          ... Maybe if I was a better writer I would take note of my neighbor, an older man with a bright red shirt on that fit snuggly over his large belly, out on the front porch talking on the phone across the street. Maybe if I was a better writer I would wonder about his life, wonder why he lives in a yellow house in this dinky little town. Mayber if I truly cared, I would bake some cookies and wander across the street and introduce myself. But I don't. I don't belong to this little town and don't want to belong. I feel like I made for bigger things. For better things. As I run through the streets I smile at the dad teaching his kid baseball and observe another neighbor talking to the one cop in the town. This town has my permanent address, but nothing about it feels permanent. It is as if I am living in someone else's life. I have no desire for this life, the life lived in a small Midwestern town. As I run, I run towards the future, towards the quaint city and life I see myself living. I picture myself on the same run, but within that future life, where I am successful and happy. It is this dream that I picture as I cool down and pet my cat. Before bed, I read in my current novel. This one is about Turkey and lands far away. Right before sleep takes me away, I imagine my city and the life that is about to happen. 

Homesick

Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew Largeman: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

Excerpt from Garden State

          As I have begun my summer reading list, I have been struck by the concept of home once again. I have written several times about not belonging anywhere and the couple of places that have felt like home (Colorado and Northern Iraq), but today while reading Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orphan Pamuk, I am once again feeling like I don't have a place to call home. Pamuk's Istanbul is a sort of memoir where Pamuk describes the city with beautiful language, looking at his memories as a child and his life now as an adult in the city. He describes the beauty and the desolation and hopelessness of a city of ruin. However, what makes the book remarkable is that Pamuk has the authority to describe the city because he still lives in the apartment building where he grew up. He is so intimately connected with the city, and this connection holds him, even when he has the opportunity to move away. I am jealous of this intimacy. 

          Just like Andrew from Garden State, I feel homesick for a place that does not exist. While reading Pamuk I felt the desire to move to Istanbul. His descripitions of the city were so hauntingly beautiful that one feels the beauty and poetic meloncholy that the city brings. But I realize that even if I would just pack up and move there, it would not be home in the way it is for Pamuk. I would just be some Western girl in a foreign city. I doubt I would be able to experience Istanbul the same way a native experiences it. And from my Spring Break there, I really do not believe I would like to live there, even as I am intrigued.
           But this reading made me wonder what place will become my home-- or will I ever find a place that truly feels like home? Am I just a "Hopeless Waunderer" to quote a favorite Mumford and Sons song or will I someday find a city where I put down roots and become intimately connected. And will this only come with a family as Andrew from Garden State suggests? As much of an adventurer that I am, I long to feel at home in a place; I long to belong somewhere and know that I am home. It is funny because so far I have found places that feel like home (Colorado, Iraq), and I have found places where I belong (EMU), but as of yet, I have not been somewhere where I feel as sense of belonging and home. 

Graduation, A Shift In Identity

          As I am sitting in my bedroom in Ohio, I realize that it has been a month since I have last written. So much has happened in the last month, so many memories made, both happy and sad. I am now a college graduate. That makes me sound so much older and mature than what I feel. I have to admit that graduation Sunday was actually a terrible day for me. I had stayed up most the night before with friends and thus on Sunday I was tired, crabby, and honestly just deeply mourning the end of what has been the best four years of my life. For me, graduation was not a celebration of the work I have achieved, but a rough shove out of EMU into the real world. For with the end of college came a loss in identity.
         No longer am I a college student. I can no longer claim that title and sense of identity. I have been a student for the last sixteen years and now all of a sudden, it no longer holds true. As I walked around an empty campus the days following graduation, I also realized that I no longer belong at EMU. Yes, as I was reminded by a friend, EMU will always be a home to me just like Hogwarts was to Harry. However, it is not the same... things will never again be the same. I am not an EMU student and will no longer be involved in EMU clubs and events. When I visit, I come as an alum, not an active part of the EMU community. Since I moved right after high school graduation, Northwest Ohio has never felt like home; I don't really belong here. And now I don't belong at EMU either. For a few days in the last month, I felt like I didn't belong anywhere. I lost my identity as an EMU student and thus believed I lost my identity all together.
          But do not worry, I have some of the best friends and mentors in the world and was soon reminded of who I am. I may still be in mourning at the end of the era, but I am also truly excited for the future. This summer I will be attending orientation for Brethren Volunteer Service and then taking off this fall to begin a two-year term most likely in Eastern Europe. These past four years have shaped who I am and I will take that identity with me as I go. So who am I and how have I been shaped in the last four years? I would like to end with the words of my one of my campus pastors, Byron Peachey, who served as a mentor to me and presented me with the Cords of Distinction Award. To read more about this special award, go to http://emu.edu/now/news/2013/05/emu-awards-10-students-with-cords-of-distinction/. I have to say that this ceremony the day before graduation was more meaningful than receiving my diploma and I am so blessed to have been part of such a great community.
          
         "Come with me and step into Julia's apartment... look around and you'll see her eye for beauty and a quality of gentleness in the paintins she's done, over here closet doors have been removed to create a little more space for guests. On the table is her tea set to host and provide a space for conversation with fellow students, ministry assistants, with Shane Claiborne, and me. On of her professors says "Everyone seems to know Julia" - because they've come over for tea, or because they've heard hr speak in Common Grounds about the Conflict Free Campus Initiative focused on the Congo. Perhaps they know Julia through her leadership role with SGA, with Peace Fellowship, or Res Judicata or from something she's written in the Weathervane. Or maybe she's met with them one-on-one throughout the year in her role as a Pastoral Assistan.
          At EMU we hear the slogan -- "serve and lead in a global context," which Julia already is putting into practice. I've listened to her reflect on a cross-cultural semester in Belgium, her Ministry Inquiry Program summer with a church in San Antonio, Texas, her travel with a Christian Peacemaker Team to Iraq, and finally because - 'hey, the tickets were so cheap!' about her Spring Break in Istanbul. Characteristically, she drew four other students in going along with her. 
          Julia is a person of mystery -- with all her involvements when did she do her homework? I'm sure she's had plenty because not only is she graduating with a major in History, but also minors in Peacebuilding, Pre-law, Political Studies, Philosophy, and Bible & Religion. Julia is profoundly curious about the world, and her studies point toward a vocation of advocacy for human rights, for systemic change, and for cultivation of deep relationships. A graduate student from Africa says she has 'a heart of peace, sense of leadership, and competency of mobilization."
          She loves 'to plan adventures to brighten people's day.' 'She's one of my heroes!' says one of her faculty mentors, 'She is the best we have!' And now Julia, we have to let you go -- knowing you have truly made our campu community a better blace. 
          Wherever you go -- and recreate your apartment of hospitality -- you'll continue to share all you've learned and integrated in yourself, with friendships you've begun here, within the wider church, to strangers in other places who will become your colleagues and friends. I am so proud to present you with the Cords of Distinction."