Well, I’m back, and I think I am recovering. I woke up Saturday morning at 6:00 am to leave, and I went to bed yesterday (Sunday) at 6:00 am. The time in between was spent on the road in a fifteen-person van, and I drove more than half of that trip. I now have a cold. I’ve slept, though--a lot—and am doing pretty well now.

I’m comforted by the memories of the week. It was a good week.

These are the things I most remember.

7. Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago for five hours. We get one free day during the week. When I was in Chicago three years ago, I got to see most of the major sites, and my favorite was their magnificent art museum. This year, with my art major sister along, we decided to spend our time here. It’s absolutely amazing to be able to stand two feet away from some of those paintings that you’ve seen in books your whole life (like Picasso’s The Old Guitarist and Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte). My personal favorites were the paintings by El Greco, Wassily Kandinsky (as always), and Durer’s engravings.

6. Playing Tea-Party at St. Vincent de Paul’s – St. Vincent de Paul’s is a school/daycare that’s free for the children of men and women who are working their way out of poverty. We were signed up to volunteer for about six hours during the week, each person to a room. When you signed up, you only knew that you were signing up for the number of a room; you didn’t actually know what age group would be in the room you chose. I signed up for room 122—-the two-and-a-half-year-old girls classroom it turns out. I’m pretty good with kids that are around four and up, but I’ve never been around kids younger, so this assignment scared me a whole lot. It shouldn’t have though. We had a great time cutting up pictures and making collages, dressing up (they were happy to have a male to wear the fireman’s uniform and hat), and playing tea-party (they through me a birthday party—a plastic hot dog bun was the cake). We volunteered for two days, and on the second day when I walked back in the room, about five of them yelled my name and ran up and hugged me. I found out later that only one of the little girls has a father in her life, so it’s not difficult to see why they liked me.

There was one really sad moment. Right when I arrived, three of the girls were sitting on a window sill looking out at people standing at a bus stop. I asked the girls what they were doing, and they said that they were playing bus stop. I asked them where they were going. The first answered, “To work.” The second answered, “To the trial.” The third girl said, “To the pen.”

5. Volunteering at the New Moms’ Shelter – The New Moms’ Shelter is a place for homeless young mothers. The place gives them and their children a place to live and tries to help them to develop parenting skills. We worked in the day care room. This was really the most difficult project of the week. All of the children were under two, and this was easily the most difficult thing for me to handle. I really struggled. Even more difficult, though, was witnessing how many of the mothers handled the children. I really hate to say it, but most of them didn’t want to have anything to do with their children. We saw mothers yelling at infants for dirtying their diapers or for not eating their food (when they were still too young to feed themselves). We saw infants whose diapers had not been changed since they were at the day care center the day before (the social workers could tell this by the type of diapers and by the way they were fastened). It was all very difficult to see. These babies were so vulnerable, and we knew they would never get the love and attention they needed. These mother's just couldn't offer it. How do you know how to love someone if nobody has ever loved you? It was a cycle that we knew would keep going. We hated leaving the infants. Several people cried.

4. Dancing at Misericordia – Misericordia was a very large center for the mentally disabled. It was really an extraordinary experience for everyone. We “worked” there over several days. I was in the laundry which was great because we were just folding clothes which allowed for plenty of time to talk and to make friends with all of the people there. It was really great. Everyone we met was really excited just to see new faces there. They just flocked to us to get to know us, and everyone I met was especially excited to know I was from Texas. I met a couple, Ronda and Patrick, who had met in a high school class for people with downs syndrome and who had been together for eighteen years since. We talked for several hours. They have a band that has performed for the governor of Illinois. I talked for a long time with Chris, who was autistic and loved mechanics, and who wanted to know every detail about the van we drove and about the ride up and about the washing machine in my apartment. And I spent a lot of time with Mila who couldn’t talk but who likes holding hands and giving hugs (and who got quite jealous when I was talking with Ronda). They greatest thing about the laundry is that between loads, the music is turned up (it’s always on) and everyone dances like crazy. It was a lot of fun.

3. Emmaus Ministries – Emmaus Ministries works to help homeless male prostitutes off of the streets and off of drugs. I didn’t get to work with them much this year (as I had in the past), but most of the other campaigners did. It was seeing their experiences with Emmaus that made an impression on me this year.

When the group was going through orientation, the Emmaus worker made the following statement: “Christians have so many political opinions about homosexuality, but if you ask most Christians, they will tell you that they don’t even know a person who is homosexual. How can Christians have such strong and negative opinions about homosexuals if they don’t even know any?” This isn’t the sort of statement you normally hear in the conservative Christian south, but after talking with some of the campaigners, I think this statement really hit home to a lot of the campaigners. That was what amazed me. While working with Emmaus during the week, several of the campaigners actually had the opportunity to meet and to have conversations with gay men. And it wasn’t for any sort of evangelical purpose at all (something which Emmaus does not try to do), and it wasn’t so that the campaigners could judge the men (that’s what impressed me with the campaigners, they didn’t act judgmental at all). As the campaigners were working with the men around the Emmaus neighborhood, they just got to know some of the men, and in doing so, they actually got to see some gay men as humans, not as a concept that disgusted them. That’s an enormous breakthrough, I think, when you come from the place that many of the campaigners came from. It was extraordinary for me to hear how some of the campaigners viewpoints (and hearts) changed so drastically from one experience.

2. Singing at the Chicago Food Depository – The group this year could sing. That’s one of my favorite things about the Church of Christ tradition. The acapella music teaches many to sing quite well, and this group could. So, as we were bagging (literally) four tons of noodles at the depository, we sang praise songs together, and this was probably the moment where we really started to come together as a group. It was a lot of fun.

This moment also eventually provided the funniest moment of the trip. After working and singing for a long time, another group of volunteers joined us in the room (though they didn’t join in the singing). Eventually, one of our campaigners jokingly asked one of that group if the singing ACUers were “freaking them out.” The college girl who he had asked replied somewhat angrily, “You’re not freaking me out, but you’re being irreverent, singing those songs while working.” The guy who had asked was also the guy who was leading the singing, so upon hearing this, he immediately switched from praise songs to singing Beatles songs. Later, he explained to everyone his decision to change to Beatles songs: “When she said that singing here was being irreverent, I thought, ‘Ah, weaker faith, I’ll let her have this one.’”

Maybe you had to have been there.

1. There was one other experience that would be number one. I'm now sure, however, that I'm at liberty to write about it. If I am allowed to, it will be its own post. Otherwise, just ask me about it sometime.