Feels like home

"You guys, we LIVE here."

We have to remind ourselves of this fact when confronted with the beauty of boats, birds, and beaches on Lake Michigan, less than a mile from home and school.

It's been our refrain since Thursday, when our orientation program sent us out into the neighborhoods surrounding the seminary to observe the homes, apartments, brownfields, train depots, grocery stores, currency exchanges, bus stops, factoryesque high schools, cardboard shelters, and high gas prices.

We are nearly all white, nearly all in our mid-twenties, nearly all "not from around here," fanning out on Chicago's south side as if we have business there. How silly we must have looked clustering up at every corner to decide which way to walk next.

Most of us appreciate the chance to explore and reflect on what we see, but mostly we're anxious to get started with our main task here, which is to study theology in preparation for ministry. Of course we've all chosen to be in this context because we want to experience a real urban neighborhood, but other things are on our minds. We need our class schedules so we can go out and get jobs so we can go out and get groceries. However, it is also good to have this time of forced togetherness...or more positively, "intentional community."

Today we had impromptu community on the 57th street beach, throwing a frisbee around and eating cookies in honor of a classmate's birthday. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to say I live here, and knowing I get to stay here for two years puts me at ease although the details of that time remain hazy.