Amate House: Looking back at Orientation 2011

The following is a reflection written by Kelley Ambrose, one of this year's North House Volunteers.

Confession: I am absolutely awful with directions.

Most of my family and friends know this, and I willingly admit it to those who don’t. Last summer, my grandparents (saints that they are) equipped me with a GPS we lovingly named Gertrude. I grew to rely on Gertrude’s robotic British accent to get me from their house to my internship—and everywhere in between. Luckily, I also have a GPS system on my p

hone. If (God forbid) I need to park a couple of blocks away from my final destination, I can watch myself as a pretty blue dot moving closer and closer until I stumble upon whatever I need to find.

About a month ago, twenty-nine young men and women set their GPS systems to Amate House. Hailing from as far away as L.A., Hawaii, Boston, and Georgia or as close as the western suburbs of the city, we arrived in Chicago and gathered for two weeks of orientation.

That word, orientation, strikes me as I pause to reflect, now almost a month-old “Amatian”. Orientation. Something by which we orient. The process through which we seek direction. For Amate House, it began with the physical. I reside on the north side of Chicago, four blocks west of the lakefront. Even the name of the house—North House—communicates an orientation. As we moved in, we began to seek out our place in our house communities, in the program as a whole, in our neighborhoods and the city itself.

Perhaps at some point during those two weeks we were reminded of the state of our heads and hearts when we found ourselves pointed towards a year of service with Amate: our mental orientation. Flashback to four years ago, it was my freshman year at Boston College and I wanted to be a doctor. I was going to major in Biology, go to a prestigious medical school; I had set my navigation system towards this goal. Through the participation and continual involvement in a service-learning program on campus, my inner compass slowly began to waver, eventually shifting away from medical school and towards the pursuit of a career in social services. Final destination? Unknown.

And I’m okay with that. Whether our sights are still looking forward to medical school or other postgraduate studies, my fellow Amatians have allowed their internal Garmins to be swayed by something. Sometimes it seems like we need GPS systems for our lives, to have everything figured out from start to finish with little room to work with. But what’s life without bumps in the road or deviations from the norm?

Case in point: As we settled into our new homes when we first arrived, we were inundated with information—from how to gas up the *well-loved* Amate vehicles to learning about our communication styles. We were also afforded ample opportunity to get to know one another. In fact, I found myself most appreciative of the unplanned conversations that formed and spontaneous laughter that erupted (during Game Night rings a bell...). These little moments sandwiched between the presentations that introduced us to the tenets of intentionality, voluntary simplicity and faith formation became the first examples of living out those tenets, in my opinion.

Having this wiggle room during orientation allowed me to begin to develop connections with the people and philosophy of Amate, and starting finding out where I fit in to the Amate family. What is my place? And how am I intricately connected to the people I serve and my housemates? We were each given “roles” in our houses—the ever-frugal Grocery Shopper, the brave Car Caretaker, and the truly wonderful Petty Cash Master, etc. Through these assignments we were able to define a small piece of our contribution this upcoming year.

But orienting is hardly a process we do only at the start of something, right? It is a continuous action. Our experiences in our houses, neighborhoods, and service sites will constantly re-orient our values, and the paths our futures will take. With each other’s help, I hope we can commit to paying attention to our compass’ orientation over the course of the entire year. Our communities will become our companions, support networks and friends. Unlike Gertrude, I hope to question them as much as they challenge me.

Looks like I may have found a new GPS for the year.

Here are some images from Orientation 2011!