Spinning, Fallling, and Getting Back Up

The following is a reflection written by Matt Cunnane, one of this year's Little Village House Volunteers.

“Ya know, if you spin around in a circle for about a minute, then I shine a flashlight in your eyes, you’ll fall right to the ground.”

“No, Beth, that can’t be true.”

“It’s true.  I can explain the science to you.”

“Forget the science, grab the flashlight.”

So we walked off into the middle of the empty field, flashlight in hand, stars overhead, and that’s how it came to pass that after 30 seconds of spinning around like a loon, Beth knocked me clean over with nothing save for the bright exposure of flash light, the both of us laughing like children understanding the “orange-ya glad I didn’t say banana” joke for the first time.

Believe it or not, but my community experience is exactly like the above story.  I started off in the dark, completely unaware of my surroundings, creatures of the night lurking, completely invisible except for rustles made in the wilderness.  Then, we passed through orientation.  Suddenly, I felt companionship, a sense of belonging in the urban wilderness of Chicago.  No longer alone, but with guides.  Stars slated to point me North, if ever I found myself off track in my journey.  After orientation I began work at my service site, the Lawndale Christian Legal Center.  More stars emerged in the form of my supervisor and another support system, people who have my best interest at heart and wish for me to succeed, both for my individual benefit and for those whom we serve.

So far so good.  Community life began to make sense.  I started to learn the patterns.  Who gets upset when you leave dishes in the sink, who is willing to put all things aside in order to help you out with a problem, and what causes others distress.  Then the spinning started.  Tasks at work started to pile up, chores at home began to suffer because when I’m at work I’m thinking about community and when I’m in community all I can think about is what has to be done tomorrow at work.  I didn't realize it until I felt like I was about to throw up, but I was spinning like a loon, taking in the stimuli as best as I could with a brain that was too disoriented to know which way was up.  This continued on until finally...Bam!  Light flooded my vision, I hit an emotional breaking point, I fell to the ground, the inescapable result of a lack of footing, mixed with cochlear confusion and the sudden brightness.  “Just get to the ground,” my brain fired, “Wait for the spinning to stop, then we’ll get back up and take on the challenges of this world.”

In community, you have to fall down in order to know what standing is.  You have to be overwhelmed in order for your eyes to adjust to increasing amounts of light.  What Beth had wanted to tell me on that night with the flashlight were the facts, the hard science of the matter.  She tried to save me from falling down in order to learn the truth, but if community has taught me anything thus far it’s this: you can’t be told these things, you have to see them for yourself.

So, how do you cope?  How do you stay present, stop spinning, find your footing, and stand when the light is blinding?  Each community group has to answer this for themselves, but in Little Village House, we do simple joys.  Each evening at dinner, Monday-Thursday, we go around the table and we say one thing that gave us joy that day.  Each community member speaks, and all listen.  We even dubbed Kara the “Viceroy of Joy” so that if side conversations begin to take over there is someone to hold us accountable.  “Today, my boss congratulated me on helping him with a task”, “Today, a little boy told me that he liked my lunch bag”, “Today a young man came to our organization with nothing but the clothes on his back, and we were able to help him”.  It doesn't matter how big or simple the joy is, what’s more important is what it provides.  Simple joys not only remind us to be attentive to the experiences of those in our presence, but they also allow us to answer two very similar questions, “For what am I grateful today?” and “Where did I see God today?”

I've found that these two questions are tantamount to having a positive experience while in community.  For one thing, they keep me focused on the positive.  Each evening I know that I will be asked to speak an experience of my day which is life-giving.  You’d be surprised how many times you see God when you’re looking for him in the street, in the office, in the car, or in papers strewn across your desk.  From there I've noticed that I have grown in my ability to see God in each experience.  Of course I fall on my face and get frustrated just as much, if not more than, the average Joe, but when my mind is oriented towards asking where God is, I focus my attention when I see him that day.