My last reflection paper from Shaw House... I'm still turning these thoughts over in my mind.

I'm not really sure where to begin this last reflection. These past six weeks have been such an intense learning experience, a challenge to so many of my moral and spiritual and social presuppositions, and I feel like I am only now beginning to process it all. I've gotten to know (and love) Boston in an intimate way I never expected, meet amazing people (here at Shaw House and at my placements), and really think about my role and responsibility as a human being. It's been an emotional and somewhat difficult journey, but now it's coming to an end, at least in its most concrete form, and it's time for me to make my way back to California, with my head full of questions. Let this reflection mark the beginning of me sifting through the thoughts floating around my head...
I've done a fair amount of community service/social justice work in the past, but both Rosie's Place and the Suffolk County House of Correction presented entirely unfamiliar learning environments for me. At Rosie's, I was able to see more closely the effects of urban poverty on an individual's life, how it influences each aspect of their being, how distinct its impact on women is. I met some happy women and some sad, some grateful and some bitter, some well-balanced and some unstable, women who had all reacted to their poverty in different ways but who were still, essentially, women and, more importantly, humans. I learned how important it might be to take a moment to listen to someone who wants to tell their story, and how much I can learn from it. I learned (or, more accurately, had one of my pre-existing beliefs confirmed) that as person's place in life is not entirely dependent on their behavior or the environment imposed on them, but a combination of both. I learned how big of an impact individual action or concern actually can have, at least on one person's life.
At Suffolk, I learned that justice doesn't exist in black and white terms, that though people make the choice to commit crimes, they often have less control in that decision than one would expect. I saw how destructive time in prison ( and the behavior leading up to it) can be not only on one person's psyche, but also that of their family, their friends, their community. I saw that prison life, though not as exciting as that which is portrayed in crime dramas, is still harsh and pervaded by a hopeless sorrow, a temporary break from the fast toughness of the streets that does little to rehabilitate. I realized the untrustworthy image my white skin and BC student ID can create and that I must be careful to have my actions redefine that image. I was reminded how unfair life can be.
Looking back at these lessons learned, I am slightly overwhelmed because I know I must put any new-found wisdom to use. I know that I must add together all the moments of restlessness and frustration and questioning and epiphany into some form of action; I need to do something but I don't know what, I can't let myself be paralyzed by the scarcity of justice, of compassion that troubles me. As I have pondered this call to action, the poem "To Elsie" by William Carlos Williams, one of my favorite poets, comes to mind:

The pure products of America
go crazy--
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure--

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express--

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she'll be rescued by an
agent--
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs--

some doctor's family, some Elsie--
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us--
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

This may seem like a somewhat melodramatic portrayal of suffering in America, but it's one that speaks to me, at least in terms of its treatment of individual responsibility. Like I said before, it would be easy for me to be overwhelmed by my own sense of powerlessness and lapse into inaction, to be discouraged by the fact that there is "no one/to witness/and adjust, no one to drive the car." I could spend my life wondering why more people don't care, but what good would that do, in my life or in the lives of others? I think, instead, my only reasonable option is to take over the "driving" myself, or at least offer to help in the steering, and look to those "isolate flecks," those beautifully rare moments of love and connectedness and hope, for inspiration. I want my life to reflect the ideals I believe in, I want to perpetuate compassion and communion, I want to keep working for my fellow human beings even when it seems hopeless. I'm not sure how exactly to go about that, but I'm starting to figure it out, with the help of my experiences from the past month and a half. I know I want service and social justice to be a component of every aspect of my life: in my relationships and in the way I use my money and especially in my career choice. I know that I want to work closely with the people I am serving and not just spend my life behind a desk. And now, thanks to my placements, I am thinking that I want to work with urban populations and focus my view to the suffering in this country. But, really this is just the beginning of my journey, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what I learn and what path I end up taking...