What We Risk

January 24, 2014

What We Risk

As those assisting in ushering in God’s kingdom, we are called to awareness of the world around us. This awareness is not only academic and intellectual, but also emotional, a passionate connection to the others on this earth.

I sometimes worry that we as college students, in our pursuit of education, begin to operate like mindless drones, void of feeling, as we frantically cram our heads with facts. We distance ourselves from our subjects in our haste to find evidence, construct an argument, turn in an assignment, and forget, already dreading the next due date.

             Earlier this week, I turned into such a drone as I researched several different terms used for Americans of Mexican descent: Latino, Hispanic, Chicano, and Mexican-American. The sources I found lamented the injustices this group has suffered over the decades. Noting the theme of trials Mexican-Americans have endured, I turned to a new topic, desperate to finish my research in the small space of time I had.

             Having stumbled across the term “illegals” in my research, I decided to search for current articles that use this dehumanizing term for those who have entered the United States illegally. As I browsed through heated discussions about immigration, my drone mentality was jolted. Passion for those who face uncertain futures flooded my senses.

I remembered why I cared about immigration reform in the first place. Although there is no obvious solution, people who are affected by policy matter deeply to me. Beyond facts, beyond knowledge, beyond efficiency, regard for people should be my main concern.

           And so in all we as stewards of the earth do, we must not lose ourselves in the strained monotony of our daily lives. Rather, I hope we can remember why we work so hard, why we invest in others, why we envision a better world.

           Because at the end of the day, the ability to feel, to have a heart that breaks for others- that is what truly matters.

-Anna Lindner

Service-Learning Center Partnerships Coordinator

Closer Look: Community Partnership Coordinators

Community. Service. Learning.  Each Residence hall at Calvin partners with one agency in Grand Rapids in a long lasting, intentional relationship that strives to work towards these things.  Students from Calvin Residence halls continue to serve and learn alongside their partner organizations for years, in an intentional two-way relationship.  The people that connect the dorm residents with their partner organizations are the Community Partnership Coordinators (CPC's) from each dorm.  This semester the CPC’s worked on activities including the ACCESS county-wide food drive, dorm service auctions (to raise money for their partnerships), and continued to lead other important work serving and learning within the Grand Rapids community. 

Fall 2013 CPC's

Boer-Bennink: Libby Schimmel

Bolt-Heyns-Timmer: Aby Nwadike

Beets Veenstra: Sarah De Vries, Sierra Slaughter

Noordewier-VanderWerp: Amber Gilliland, Matt Schanck

Rooks-VanDellen: Josi Baar, 

Schultze Eldersveld: David Potts, Abby Stapleton
Kalsbeek Huizenga Van Reken: Marissa Ritter, Anna Lindner

Access-County Wide Food Drive

BB - Cook Library Center

S-LC: What have you learned about Grand Rapids through working with your partnership?

"Through service-learning with Cook Library, I have learned so much about Grand Rapids. Surprisingly, there is more then Calvin College here! I think that it is really easy for students to get stuck in their studies on campus, but I have learned that there is so much to learn from throughout Grand Rapids. Every neighborhood in Grand Rapids is different and has something beautiful to offer. I am so thankful for the opportunity to see the beauty in the Roosevelt Park neighborhood through going to Cook Library and attending church there." -Libby Schimmel

BHT - Messiah Missionary Baptist Church

S-LC: What have you learned about Grand Rapids through working with your partnership?

"There really is an invisible line that divides the poor from the rich. You drive down one street and the houses are beautiful and big. You literally move one street over and the houses change. The color of the people usually change too."  - Abuoma Nwadike

S-LC:  -How does your service take you out of your comfort zone?

I have to work with a lot of kids who say things they shouldn't, have seen things they shouldn't, smell like cigarette smoke and aren't always clean. It pushes to think about the circumstances that led to them being there. Its also kind of hard to relate to them. A lot of their parents are divorced, remarried or single parents. From a two parent home, how do I relate? - Abuoma Nwadike

BV - Horizons

S-LC: How does your service take you out of your comfort zone?

Beets-Veenstra's dorm partnership is Horizons which is an organizations for adults with special needs. What we do as a dorm is, we have monthly events where we get to hang out with the Horizons members and play fun games and eat food. As simple as the service is, it actually puts many people outside of their comfort zones every time we have an event. Lots of people are uncomfortable in situations where they have to interact with people that are different from them, and people with special needs seem so different on the outside that it is hard for lots of people, especially students, to relate. Usually, after a conversation it is easy to see that there are common interests and a relationship is possible! Sometimes it can be really hard to strike up and carry on a conversation with a person with special needs. Sometimes people feel like they are just sitting at a table with not much to talk about and they feel very awkward and out of place. But that is okay! Service-Learning is never meant to be an easy thing. It is good for everyone to be in a situation where they are outside of their comfort zone from time to time. -Sara DeVries

KHvR - Supper House

S-LC: What memory from your service with your partnership will stick with you?

"There was one evening at Supper House when I was waitressing a large group of adults at one table. They were a particularly high-energy and talkative group; it was difficult to forget them! After I had finished serving food to them and a few other groups I was attending, I stopped by their table to see if there was anything else I could do for them. They were loud, but polite, with their replies, exclaiming that everything was good and nothing was needed at this point in their meal. I began to walk away when a man I had not paid particular attention to at that table stopped me. He pointed at the apron I was wearing. "Do you go to Calvin College?" he asked gently. I said that I did. All the waiters and waitresses wear aprons that are provided to us through Supper House. On that particular day, I had happened to pick up a black apron with "Calvin Dining Services" printed on the front. How it got at Supper House, I can only imagine, but I am glad it ended up there! The man continued to make small talk, asking me what year I was and what I was studying. After a minute or so, he asked me if I could do him a favor. "Sure," I replied. He motioned for me to come closer to him and to take a seat away from the rest of his loud table. I did so and proceeded to ask what I could do. He looked at me very seriously and with a small voice asked, "Could you pray for me?" I quickly told him that I could, of course, pray for him. I asked if there was anything in particular I could pray for and he simply said, "Everything. Especially employment." I nodded in understanding and asked if he wanted me to pray with him at that moment. Shaking his head no, he motioned me closer yet again and said so quietly that I had to lean in to hear him, "My name is...Pray for me." I gave a small smile and assured him that I would. When he and his energized table group got up to leave, he smiled slightly at me and walked out. I have not see him since, although that does not mean he has not been at Supper House since, but I continue to pray for him and whatever it may be that he is facing. I am thankful for the many ways God continues to use Supper House and the people there. And how he placed a Calvin College Dining Services apron in front of me that night to spark a simple conversation." - Marissa Ritter 

NVW - Oakdale Neighbors

S-LC: What is your favorite thing about the organization you are serving with?

 “What I like the most about Oakdale Neighbors is their flexibility and their desire to work with you. The members of Oakdale Neighbors also care for the community that they serve in.” - Matt Schanck

S-LC: What memory from your service with your partnership will stick with you?

“I think the memory that will stick with me the most is when I first went to tutor, there was a girl that could barely speak English and I was trying to help her read a book and write a reflection.”

- Matt Schanck

RVD - Baxter Community Center

"This year, RVD has had the privilege to work alongside two great organizations, Baxter Community Center and the soccer ministry through Eastern Avenue CRC. With both partnerships, the residents have the opportunity to work and play alongside the people of the community, and the conversations that occur in the process are wonderful. Spending face-to-face time with the people we serve and learn from has been the best aspect of our time with both organizations."-Josette Baar

SE - Roosevelt Park CRC

 S-LC: What memory from your service with your partnership will stick with you?

 "There was a day when only one ESL student showed up and so we all sat and talked with her and helped her with some words and phrases, but it soon turned to her talking to us completely in Spanish.  It just really reminded me how much of a learning opportunity it can be for me as it is for those students who come." - David Potts

S-LC: What have you learned about Grand Rapids through working with your partnership?

 "I feel like I've really learned how diverse Grand Rapids really is by interacting with the people from our partnership and those who come to it." - David Potts

-Kelsey Stark
Communications Coordinator 

"What does practicing resurrection mean to you?"

"What does practicing resurrection mean to you?"...This is tricky. While writing our covenant we searched long and hard for something to counterbalance, “We practice resurrection,” looking carefully for a phrase that recognizes the uncertainty that comes implicit in faith. It isn’t that I don’t want to practice resurrection or am completely incapable of ever doing so; the issue is that I’m not sure what it even looks like. Hence, “we don’t know what will be.” I shuffle between the two on a daily basis, at times feeling absolutely rooted in the truth of Christ and his resurrection while at others feeling completely isolated and alone, stuck in a system that emphasizes doubt and uncertainty above all. But resurrection remains even when I can’t see it, and that’s the beauty of it all. Practicing resurrection is practicing a heartfelt and others-focused search for the Lord. Maybe some day I’ll be able to answer the question after having found and embraced Him with all that I have, but for now the search is all I’ve got. Practicing resurrection is looking for Jesus in the faces of peers, faculty, friends, family, and the woman who comes knocking on my back door at 2:00am looking for food. Practicing resurrection is looking for a beautiful, simple truth underneath the layers of muck that surround me. I might not find it all the time, but that’s why it’s a practice. Some day I’ll be better.

-Evans Lodge

ABSL Natural Sciences & Math

on beauty.

The English 395: Senior Seminar curriculum attempts to cover all the major questions of the discipline: the right use of language, ethical limits on writing, the nature of knowledge, what counts as literature, hermeneutics, the high brow. This week, we've been talking about beauty.

Elaine Scarry, professor of Aesthetics at Harvard, wrote our text: a short treatise called On Beauty and Being Just. Beauty, she argues, has ethical significance. It matters for how we live in the world. Beauty prompts us toward justice.

Beauty is preexistent; it is in the world without any action on the part of humankind. It does not rely on us for its being; we may create beauty, but we are "only collaborators in a much vaster project," which sounds a lot like shalom to me.

"Beauty is a call," available to our sensory perception in a way justice is not, characterized by symmetry, and generously present to all people at almost all times. When we experience it, we undergo what Scarry calls "radical de-centering." We are surprised into giving up our imaginary position at the center of the world and following the motion of beauty toward a presence beyond our own, which Scarry doesn't call Christ, but I do. Confronted with beauty, we are humbled. We are moved to create. And we are moved toward creating justice that mimics the equality and generosity of beauty. Beauty is a single mark that we are not entirely selfish creatures; we wish to protect even paintings we will never see and mountains we may never visit.

The book's philosophical underpinnings were widely debated in capstone this morning, but all of us were moved, and this in a class brimming with opinionated writers, linguists, philosophers, historians, marketers and poets. We approached the conversation with the strange, compelling reverence native to art museums and cathedrals. Beauty matters, and we had been reminded.

In gray days of paper-writing and coffee-drinking, on mornings when I am late for school or forget my lunch, on long evenings in a cold house, I am reminded to look for beauty and to practice it. I will be generous with myself and with others and the world, and I will create justice in response to loveliness that bids me "attend to the aliveness of our world." I am blessed to know a beautiful God, who calls me to this.

[katie van zanen]

Love the Lord. Love the world. Practice Ressurection

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry, is one of the pieces that inspired this year's Service-Learning Center covenant. It is definitely worth reading and reflecting on.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
-Wendell Berry

"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection."

Kelsey Stark

Communications Coordiantor

The Power of His Resurrection

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection..." Philippians 3:10

As of late I have been thinking more about heaven. What would it be like if everything was perfect?  Not the worldly definition of perfect, but God's definition of perfect.  In trying to practice resurrection, and live out our staff covenant, I've been thinking a lot about what it would be like if everything was resurrected. Philippians 3:10 starts, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection..."  Think about it, the power that resurrected Christ is in us through his Holy Spirit. The power that resurrected his dead, still body back into heaven, and onto his throne lives in us.

Realizing this has led me many places.

This semester I have been realizing my weaknesses...things that, personally, I cannot see myself ever completely overcoming in this life.  However, understanding that the power of Christ's resurrection lives in me and works with me in my weakness is overwhelming.  This great power meets up with my weakness and completely takes over... so that each time I fall feels like a "mini resurrection."

In the context of community we can unite in this power, joining together to create one whole.
In the context of service we can wholeheartedly give, and realize that even our smallest steps towards justice matter.
In the context of learning we can fully open our hearts to others, the way that Christ did.
and in the context of...well...life, we can see and participate in resurrection and the coming of His Kingdom.

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection..." Philippians 3:10

Blessings,

Kelsey Stark

Communications Coordinator

To Walk In Faith

"Writing, for me, is an act of faith, a hope that I will discover what I mean by 'truth.' I also think of reading as an act of faith, a hope that I will discover something remarkable about ordinary life, about myself. And if the writer and the reader discover the same thing, if they have that connection, the act of faith has resulted in an act of magic. To me that's the mystery and the wonder of both life and fiction - the connection between two individuals who discover in the end that they are more the same than they are different."

from "In the Canon, For All The Wrong Reasons," by Amy Tan 

I’ve been thinking about faith recently, about belief in an intangible reality, hope in an invisible scene. Amy Tan’s quote about writing as an act of faith conveys exactly the confusion and outright weirdness of the conversation that I often find myself dwelling on; we’re waiting, all waiting, for a connection to be made while having to recognize on a daily basis the difficulties and fears that push us all apart. We struggle to move forward into the kingdom even though it often feels like we’re running in the wrong direction. Which way is up?

I don’t know.

But then there’s this quote, this idea of faith. Faith as hopeful anticipation. Faith as expectant perseverance. Faith as confidence in the beautiful things yet to come. When I first read Tan’s essay, I was struck by the idea that her “faith” is based on connections that she might never get to see. How often, when I read a good book, do I write the author to share the connections that were made? How often, when art of any kind impacts my life, do I track down the artist and share my thoughts?

I don’t, really, but that’s not necessarily the problem. The problem is that I value those connections less because I don’t get to see both sides; the issue is that I’m too prideful to recognize that those two sides aren’t always mine to see. Pride, in so many ways, is antithetical to the call to live faithfully. It inhibits true service, forces us to quantify our productivity and put numbers to our love. Faith does neither. Faith, true faith, allows us to act and live and work for peace without any expectations outside of the truth of Christ.

Jesus, walking among us, changes things.

My hope for the Service-Learning Center, for Calvin College, for Grand Rapids, for [insert ever expanding circle here] is that we, we humans, will recognize the deep roots of service that extend from such a faith, a faith that recognizes how humble Christ truly calls us to be. Maybe we will work, struggle, and walk towards the kingdom of God for the rest of our lives and never see any progress. Maybe we will find out that we took a wrong turn from the start. But should this deter us from trying?

No, because such a faith dictates that we simply carry on, recognizing the choices we make as imperfect and the changes we bring as, at best, approximations of justice and peace. Faith demands trust that the intangible reality we wait for, this hope for a future, will actually arrive. The timeline is unimportant. The truth is the point.

In the midst of the Westgate attack in Kenya, of continued warfare in Syria, of earthquakes and hunger and famine and disease throughout the world, let us not forget the power of simple, humble faith. Faith that connections will be made and, whether it’s now or later, true change will come.

In Christ,

Evans Lodge

ABSL, Natural Sciences and Mathematics