Thursday, January 15, 2009

Matt - Life in LA

When I learned I was moving to Los Angeles, I didn’t expect glamour and celebrities at every corner. I didn’t picture fancy dinners on the Sunset Strip or sipping $13 cocktails by the beach in Orange Country. I certainly didn’t imagine making a lot of money – after all, the word “volunteer” isn’t in so fine a print in the job description. The day I made my decision and signed that contract, I thought I had a pretty good idea of the things I would be giving up and saying “no” to by accepting a year a Jesuit Volunteer.

What I didn’t expect was just how much I would be given or how much would be expected of me. [I find the things I miss most about Boston and love about L.A. are different than what I thought they’d be.]

In many ways, my life includes your typical 9-5 workday and time at home with my roommates. On the surface, it appears to be only that: paperwork, meetings, and commuter traffic, chores, waiting for the bathroom, and watching TV. But my work is so much more than a job and my roommates aren’t just people I share a roof with. Together, my placement and my community breathe life into my experience.

At work, I am challenged on a daily basis to reexamine my faith and it how it shapes the way I see the world around me. My clients are former gang members, convicted criminals, and people who I would have grown silent as I passed three months ago. Today, I am asked to get to know them, listen to their stories, and work with them without judgment. You see, I work with the robber and the robbed, the victim and the victimizer. Almost all of my clients have been shot or shot at, and several more have used a gun themselves.

Sometimes the stories are difficult to hear and I almost wish I didn’t know what my clients have been through, witnessed, or done. But then I remember that for many of my clients, this is the first time they’re telling anyone not wearing a badge, suit, or robe such events of their life.

It’s been a lesson in listening, and humility.

Coming home from my placement isn’t the end of my day, but the beginning of an equally important part of life as a JV: community living. Living in community is different than living with roommates. You share a living space with roommates, but in intentional community your living space becomes a living space. Its very function is to breathe life into a place that for too many of us is a place of only seclusion and sleep. We eat together, pray together, share struggles with work and relationships, and, perhaps most importantly, keep one another from getting too comfortable.

The weather and the schedule are adjustments, for sure, but it’s the demand of my placement and community that I’m most challenged by – and most grateful for. Though I’m worn our by the time my head finally hits the pillow, I go to sleep grateful that my exhaustion comes from exercising not only my body and mind hard at work but my heart and soul when I’m at home.

These are the early goings of one Jesuit Volunteer. I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Paz,
Matty

Matt Carroll is a blogger for Jesuit Volunteer Corps. He welcomes questions and comments at Matthew.carroll.86@gmail.com.

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