Soon after arriving in Pine Ridge, I realized that my life would revolve solely around this building and the ministry that happens out of it. My "office" is my kitchen table which is in my apartment off of the community kitchen in the building. On my day off, I really can't putter around and do laundry, since as soon as I step out of my apartment, everyone else is working. When I'm done for the night and we don't have anyone in the building, I can't even walk out of the apartment without being seen through the front door, should someone be looking into the building.
I also learned this year that I have always been a multi-faceted person and this internship was going to be mono-faceted unless I decided to change it. What does this mean exactly? Well, when I was in high school, I applied to college with an entire page of extracurricular activities. I volunteered. I played sports. I worked. I was on academic teams. I was in musical ensembles. In fact, I did a little bit of everything. The same happened in college. I was on student government. I led our activities council. I was an RA and eventually a Head RA. I worked...multiple jobs. And because of this diverse collection of activities and interests, I've always had a diverse population of friends.
Living and working in the same building...without any time to volunteer or join clubs (worked 70-80 hours a week will do that to you), I needed to find ways to get out.
I joined a community choir through the Chadron State College. Rehearsal was once a week in Chadron, an hour's drive away, but it was one guaranteed time away from the building per week. I can't say that I became best friends with everyone in the choir but I met a few people who were excited to see me and I was excited to see them. To them, I was Meredith. Some knew that I commuted from Pine Ridge and that I was in the process to become a pastor, but they didn't "need" me in the same way that I'm needed in my work.
On April 7th, I sang in our spring concert. The choir runs on the school schedule, so the concert marked the end of rehearsals until the fall...when I'll be back in Chicago. Even though I didn't know many of the people well, it made me a bit sad to say goodbye to the people who I did know.
It was my first "goodbye" of internship. As soon as we started talking about beginning internship last year, we also talked about how to say goodbye. As pastors, it's particularly hard to say goodbye to a community that has welcome you into their lives. As an intern, here only for one year, it's a difficult task to form roots and trust, knowing that we'll disappear in 12 months.
I don't know what the rest of the goodbyes will look like, but with less than three months to go, the goodbyes are going to start happening.
No comments:
Post a Comment