Here I Am

[This is a recent journal entry I wrote as I was thinking about how to tell the story of where and how I'm living these days... who am I, and how do I explain that to people?]


So, these days I live at a homeless shelter; help run a soup kitchen out of my house.

It's a big change, perhaps, from going to a top-ranked college, or even from growing up as a priest's kid.

I don't know that I could ever have imagined living here -- here in a shelter, here in the inner city, here in Kansas City (where I don't know too many people), here in an intentional community, here in a house of peacemaking & social justice, here where I work to feed, clothe, assist, listen to, shelter, get yelled at by, and befriend anyone who comes to the door (day and night). Homeless, out-of-luck, drunk, drugged, mentally ill (perhaps all of the above)... another image of Christ. Another night at the Holy House -- at my house.

It's wonderful to finally feel settled in here, like this really is my house and my life. The radical difference between this and anything that I had done before, or seen as much of a focus in the church I'd grown up in, made me pretty conflicted for a while.

But on the other hand, maybe this isn't so much of a change. I've been searching for a long time now to understand who I am, what I'm called to. Moving here was certainly a leap, but also just the next great experiment in learning how to live.