Week 6

I need to find a gym. Despite the huge amount of walking I'm doing, I feel it's inevitable that one day soon I will wake to find myself an ox.

I may be on a different continent and doing a year of service, but I can't seem to shake my intrinsic and overwhelming need for travel and exploration. Some may call it restlessness. I call it embracing myself.

Today I'm in York. It's one of the most beautiful and historic cities I've seen. Sure, there are a lot of tourist traps and I haven't been immune to those. But there is history everywhere. The York Minster is about 800 years old. It's built on the site where Constantine was appointed the First Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 AD. Nearby is the shambles, narrow stoned streets with age-old shops hanging over your head. I walked into a weaponry shop where you can buy a flail, a wooden stick connected to a chain with a spiky iron ball on the end. Imagine trying to make it through customs with that baby. Then there's York's reputation fo being haunted. I'm the type that likes to watch shows like 'Ghost Hunters' on the Discovery Channel. Still, I must be careful to separate the fascinating, possibly real and yet corny Ghost exhibits from the ridiculous, obviously fake and hit-myself-over-the-head-I-can't believe-I-paid-10-pounds-for-this Ghost exhibits.

More closely related to the Radical Journey program, I'm beginning to become comfortable with the notion of being uncomfortable a majority of the time. Like my predecessor Matt Yoder said, paraphrasing, 'I didn't do Radical Journey to be comfortable.' Matt was referring to his outlook after having been robbed in the very flat in which I now live. After spending the first part of the year in comfortable solitude of the Pacific Northwest, I guess it's only fitting that I now feel like a salmon out of water. There are expected reasons and some causes I didn't expect for feeling this way. Living in a different country and working with children are things I expected to be daunting. I have to say I am more comfortable with the culture and the children than I had envisioned. I didn't necessarily think the tension, confusion and misunderstandings within our team would be as high. It is pointless to avoid the reality that our different outlooks, places in life, differences related to gender as well as religious and social beliefs are larger hurdles than I had thought. It will take time to become more comfortable, open, vulnerable, understanding, and trusting. All those things might be overstated but cannot be understated, especially in a program like this.

Thankfully there is something that I have been drawing on that never runs out, and that is the appreciation and knowledge of myself that I have taken from recent experience. That self-knowledge manifests itself as a quiet strength and undying belief that this is where I need to be, and gratefulness to myself for having decided to do this with the knowledge that there would be times when I wanted to quit. I admit that I have carried some motives for this program that could be diversive to the intentions of the program. However, I have faith that I will give of myself, maybe in ways that I won't even realize, and that I will be given what I need from the experience to prepare me for the next thing. Perhaps I can carry this same attitude of grace for myself and apply it to others as I continue to enter into uncomfortable situations with those who see the world differently. Who knows, I may make some lifelong friends.

Here's to many more adventures...