Square Peg in a Round Hole

Back in Boston. Back to the quick moving, alarms that go off to early, filling my brain with knowledge, sitting in classrooms overwhelmed with emotion and the joy of the community that has become home here. A friend talked about the sensation of leaving home and arriving at another home. Feels like the story of my life. When I landed in Boston I saw another BC Grad Student in the airport and it filled my heart, as I drove to my house knowing the way, recognizing buildings, memories in places we passed I felt a comfort that I didn't have last semester. A comfort of familiarity that still isn't the level of home in Colorado or the Bay but that reminds me of the ways this will continue to become home. The best thing about this place is the community we have built, thanks to the STM and its focus on community and the caliber of people it attracts who can talk about the biggest life questions and laugh til we cry, stay up too late and sometimes just let it all go.

I've wanted to write a million different blogs since I got back a week and a half ago and haven't been able to focus on one thing or find the time to sit down and let the words come together cause again my head is spinning with thoughts and questions and emotion, and again it doesn't quite feel like there is time to make sense of it all.

Every Thursday we have all school liturgy- it's usually mass, I sometimes struggle, often miss Santa Clara masses and Celebrations of the Word in San Ramon but always love the community that fill the pews next to me. Yesterday was the first I've been at since being back and it was an Ecumenical Prayer Service for Christian Unity. A woman presided and told the story of the woman at the well from a perspective of strength, curiosity and willingness to ask the hard questions to the people who see her as other. Seeing a woman up there, telling a story about the strength and independence of a woman moved me in a way that reminded me how always hearing a male voice doesn't move me. It was beautiful and painful and knocked me back into this world of trying to understand.. Why I am here? How do I fit in? What am I fighting for? And how much do I have in me to really fight when I could just go somewhere else where the progress I am so looking for has already been realized? One of my dearest friends sat next to me throughout the liturgy wiping tears away, asking the same questions, feeling that explosion of gratitude mixed with frustration that is most deeply felt not in the moments where we are surrounded by patriarchy and male voices but in the moments where a female voice surprises us, speaks to our hearts in a way a male voice often cannot. The response of so many incredible, strong, full hearted women was palpable in the air and that is what keeps me afloat here.

My theology classes this semester are Integrating Faith, Counseling & Services of Justice, Job and Suffering and Theological Anthropology of the Body. My month at home was a month of "I'm getting my MSW" with no mention of the other degree that takes up so much of my time, energy and heart- a Masters in Theology and Ministry. I haven't figured out how it all fits into me and still don't feel sure of articulating it to others. These classes, again, are exposing me to the problems AND the possibilities of this faith that has become some confusing part of me over the years. We are digging deep into the meaning of it all, looking at how it functions, the disparities between what we say and what we do and the ways we as ministers can use it for healing and liberation rather than oppression, control and judgment. It's hard to defend something I'm not totally sure of but Catholic Social Teaching, commentaries on suffering, ministry to the poor, hospitality and an unconditionally loving God who is not simply a white, man in the sky are values that have become part of who I am.

At the service yesterday students from different faith traditions poured water into the fountain, symbolizing the beauty of all of us coming together, then they presented objects symbolizing the gifts brought by each of these traditions. In a lot of my world even having a faith is something that boggles people's minds- that's the one part of this all I am sure of- there is something bigger than me out there. There is a resiliency, hope, strength, mystery in this world- especially amidst deep suffering that is bigger than humans, I found that in my own suffering and even stronger in the suffering of the Salvadoran people. The rest I am trying to make sense of. And I am trying to makes sense of all the different fonts of water that have been poured into me to make me Michelle- how they all come together into a fountain of life, strength, passion that is motivating me to be on this sometimes hopeless path of being honest about reality and committing myself to justice.

You can't fit a square peg into a round hole.. and maybe that's what's pulling me in ways that feel frustrating and leave me hopeless and up spinning at night. Maybe its not about figuring out how to fit into some mold that has been provided by the world to me. A mold of Catholic or not, committed to justice or not, living simply or not, consumerism or not, who I am in El Salvador or who I am in the US, suffering or joy. I KNOW this world is not black and white..my mom drilled that into my head years and years ago when she started to explain to me the pain she felt when people said "Everything happens for a reason or God only gives you what you can handle" after she lost her son. When I started trying to understand why on earth life had to be so hard for her when I knew it my heart of hearts she deserved none of it. I know that the pain caused by those black and white beliefs is part of the reason I'm here. Because when we understand that the gray is the only place we can really live, and each of our lives becomes a different shape that doesn't fit the triangle or the square or the circle- we have to work together to make sense of where we land, to hold each other up when nothing seems quite right. I want to walk with people in that. I want to love people when nothing make sense, look for comfort and hope when there isn't any, and take the pieces of all the different fonts of water that have poured into me and let them swirl together into something that doesn't make any sense.. but that's why its beautiful.

So this semester instead of trying to fit into some mold that has been held up for me by the world. There are so many- so many shapes different people seem to think are right. But I cant fit anyone else's shape- I have to be my own, find my own and create my own. I will take what I like and leave what I don't.. and continue looking for places and people that fill the empty spaces. But more importantly I will try to remember that that is ok- that is beautiful- that is what this world needs, because it's all too complex to be some simple make up of square, triangle and circle blocks dropped in a bin to all fit together.