Monthly Archives: June 2017

we’re chained together forever

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Last week, my housemates and I sat in around our living room, writing on different colored strips of paper. Periodically, we would glance at a key in the center of our circle detailing what we should write:

On the yellow: Where we’ve seen joy this year.

On the blue: Where we’ve seen God.

On the purple: What we’ve learned this year that we’ll take into next year.

On the white: What we will do to continue on in service.

After writing, we linked the papers together, sharing our written thoughts as we folded and taped, folded and taped. After all 24 links were in the chain, one of my housemates said, “Now we’re all chained together.”

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 Lately, I’ve been wondering what our relationships will be like in the years coming. Except for two of my housemates, we will all be in different states instead of rooms only a few steps or flight of stairs away. And except for a wedding in a few months, we don’t have planned meetings in the future. While I have questions, I don’t have any doubts that we will be connected together for a long time. For me, the proof is in what is written in that chain.

I wrote, among other things, that I saw joy and God in each Sycamorean and every one around me. Everyone else’s answers varied, but one thing that they had in common were people because people often have the greatest impact. Some of us wrote that we had gained newfound knowledge of ourselves. Some of us wrote specific acts of service that we will continue to do and some others were more vague. I, for one, will try to be more involved with social justice in whatever community I am. Our answers were all different, but they all had something in common: They were all influenced by each other, further proving that…

“There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them”(Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling).

Or rather, there are some things you can’t share without being chained together forever, and being in the Sycamore House together for a year is one of them.

Preparations

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“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” -Jeremiah 29:11

This last weekend, I went to Colorado for a family event. The day before the event, we cooked and baked for half the day. I myself made four pies.

It was busy, but familiar. Growing up, my family almost always spent a full day of preparation before a gathering, whether it be Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, a bridal shower, or funeral. There is always a lot of labor that goes into a meal that will be devoured in a few minutes with considerably less effort, but that has never bothered me. Maybe food’s impermanence is easier to grasp than our own.

Much of this year had to do with dealing with the present, but starting in March, suddenly it became all about planning. My housemates and I all started looking at our options for the next year or so, applying to jobs and schools. As our year of service with Sycamore House starts to close, I feel like I’m in the kitchen again, preparing for whatever’s ahead of me. Except I am not in the kitchen. It is not entirely comfortable or familiar and what I’m cooking won’t be devoured in one evening, but rather years.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the beginning of the year as it compares to now. I have grown a lot. I have learned more about myself (so much that it seemed for a while that I was discovering something new every day) and I learned more about the state of Pennsylvania than I ever thought I would. I have grown closer to my housemates; they feel like family instead of people I simply share a house with.

While in Colorado, I visited some good friends and my college town. Two important things happened there: 1. I decided that I want to eventually move back there. 2. I saw a double rainbow.

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In the story of Noah and the Ark, we are taught that God made a rainbow appear in the sky after the flood as a promise to us that he would not try to destroy our world again. I was not thinking of this story when I saw the rainbows, but rather I was awestruck of their beauty. I was grateful that I had come back to Colorado even for a short time. And I was grateful that I got to share it with my friends.  And most of all, I was unconcerned, for at least that moment, of my future.