Just a Rich Kid That Knows Nothing

Over the past five months I've been on a journey of uncovering truths hidden too well by familiarity. Everyday, in conversations and observations, I understand a little more of God's great world like light piercing through the cracks around my bedroom door, slowly pushing around the dark edges. I see a little more everyday and realize how little I have ever known. In fact, I often joke that my official motto has become "I KNOW NOTHING". But I'm learning, and as I pioneer through this great journey, I've been writing about these truths in my journal and here, crystallizing the thoughts into words and structure. Often after I've set an idea into words, I stop thinking about it; I then move from idea to idea, pulling in bits from the last to make sense of the new, yet there is one idea that seems to keep resurfacing. 

This thought began very early, back to the first day I came to Service Adventure. My family was dropping me off at my new home, and as we drove up Somerset Street I was filled with anxiety. We were already late, and I didn't know what to expect. When we got out of the RV (we were coming back from vacation), all I saw was the cracked, faded pavement, the weeds, the trash, and the broken, old  houses. As I anxiously gathered my stuff, I whispered under my breath, "I hate this street, I hate this, I hate this" (a classic, stressed Erin thing to say). Inside the house, my eyes were drawn to the dim rooms, the poorly paneled walls, the rotting kitchen floor, the mismatched linoleum, and all the cluttered corners. Over orientation week, I lost the sensitivity to see these things, and as weeks grew into months, I loved our old house and the people in it all the more. 

Fog over the Stone Bridge while walking home from Saturday morning yoga

But this is where it began, this incessant thought, and I wrote briefly about it in one of my first blogs - "I'm realizing how I have grown up thinking. I see from the oldness of our house, that I was accustomed to new..." (A Grasping for Common Ground, September 23). I began to see how I really thought. 

It came back again when I traveled home with the unit for the Relief Sale. My house seemed to have grown! "Home. My dogs, my door, my kitchen, my room, my bed, my everything. Has it always been so open and clean? Were the counters always so big? The corners so square? The floor so solid?" I wrote this in my journal the night after coming home again. My home seemed so grand and beautiful in comparison to the unit house, and I loved it for all its familiarity. My family as well seemed to have everything they wanted, and I was culture shocked for a moment after being accustomed to living off a stipend and not buying anything I didn't really need. 

But the true horror of it didn't hit me until I was asked a simple question. I had been showing the unit my home, my friends, my school, my church, my life, and as we were in the car driving through a neighborhood
 to one of my friends' houses, Evan cautiously asked in his soft spoken voice, "Erin, are all your friends rich 

Thanks Ev, for making me think all the deeper

like you?" How could he ask that?! I'm not even rich! I've never been rich! My family struggles to pay for 
some of our expenses! Some of my friends have it even worse! Sure, there are some who are very well off, but I'm not rich! 

But as my indignation rose within me and I began to raise my defense, my thoughts were cut down in an instant by the thought of our spacious house, our lack of true want, my private school, my Europe trip this summer, the college I'd soon attend. But I wasn't rich, I couldn't be, how could I be? "I would be ashamed to be rich," I wrote later "to have such privilege and hoard it." The idea lodged in my chest all that day and stayed there the next day, the next week, and on and on. I kept seeing all the abundance my family had, and it covered my hands like blood. How had we not shared it more? How had we justified this prosperity while others suffered so? Didn't Jesus expect more? Didn't he say we should give everything to the poor? Then again, I knew I would never want to give up my standard of living, I loved it too much.

Upon returning to Johnstown, I saw the disparity between my community and the new one here in renewed contrast. As I worked at New Day, with my newly-realized identity as a rich kid, I felt the shame of being so privileged while teaching children who had seen more hardship than I had. How could I tell them to be nonviolent and love everyone when they had seen real violence and grief? How could I stand there and teach them about Christ and the world when I had seen so little? I struggled to form bonds for this reason with the older kids who had been so hardened by their world. It made sense that they wouldn't care about me, I'm just an SA, I'll be leaving next year anyways, and what do I know about their kind of life? I'm just a white, Mennonite girl from Virginia. On October 26 I processed this idea and wrote, "...I'd tell them that I'd just want to be there to be something for them when their life sucks even though I'm just a rich kid that knows nothing."

Eva and I walking side by side at the Flight 93 Memorial a few weeks ago. Photo Cred: Evan

Even though the idea of being so blindly privileged in this world of misfortune tormented me, I recognized that my new perspective was showing me where I had been ignorant and very naive. I don't want to lose this awareness, but next year I will be attending Wheaton College, a university characterized by its rigorous academics and middle to upper class, conservative, mostly white students. Is that really the place I should commit to carrying out the most formative studies of my education? Wouldn't I become so blinded to difference there, swamped by wealth and narrow-mindedness? I had just realized my privilege, now I would walk back into the same ways? Encamped with similarly afflicted sinners, I would lose the eyes to see the sin.

My confliction gnawed at me and I was discomfited all the more as I looked closer at how much debt I would accumulate, how far I'd be living away and the ever ambiguous direction of my academic career. For a week, I questioned terminating my enrollment. The arguments played back and forth in my mind, insisting that I had no choice but to get out and then also begging all the reasons to stay with it. Surely Wheaton could equip me for service, surely I could live with a challenge, isn't refusing to to deal with narrow-mindedness narrow-minded in itself? But, then again, how could I even trust myself to find truth in a place so biased, so removed from the suffering in the world? Also, where else would I go next year if not to Wheaton? I hadn't really liked any other college I had looked into (believe me, I had looked hard); Wheaton had the things I really valued - a robust music and science program, an acceptable campus, prestigious academic standing, and an alternative Christian perspective that I perceived to be authentic. At least, these were the only things I used to value. Wheaton was the only place I wanted to go, but now how would I be able to hold on to this humbling perspective of privilege for the next four years?

This week of inner torment ended with a conversation with Krista, a monthly One on One. I laid out all of my thoughts, the vying opinions, and immense uncertainties. I wrote that night that she was "strangely comforting though she didn't refute anything I said." What she did do was pray that if terminating my enrollment to seek something new was important to God, that I would continue to be uncomfortable.

I'd prayed about it before, but not in this way. The next day, I prayed all day, "God, please show me what I should do!" then added, "if you give me enough passion to write a blog post, I'll know." Maybe that sounds quite trivial as a request to God, but I needed some standard. Of course, I didn't write anything though I thought about if I should start on one often and continued discussing privilege whenever it came up. I decided to stand by my enrollment and try a year. I put the idea to rest for awhile believing my questioning was for at least a while, over.

What a silly-willis I am. I have much more to learn.

The farm under a fresh coat of January snow, a very common sight

After coming home from Christmas in Harrisonburg, which once again pit my comfortable lifestyle choices into renewed dissonance with my understanding of Christ-like ethics, Leah and Krista announced that in place of weekly Learning Components, we'd be going through a book study of Trouble I've Seen by Drew Hart, a book that addresses racism inherent in the modern church. After the first chapter, I found myself criticizing Hart's professionalism, diction choices, interpretation of events, and research quality (thank you to EMHS for teaching me all the ways to falsely think I'm smarter than any other writer). I wanted to accept the critique of white Americans with grace, and dignity but found myself indignant to all his offenses. Why is it always white peoples' fault? Can't I respect my own race? Do all of my offenses at being hated for being white mean nothing simply because I am in the majority? I am also tired of classification based on race! I'll be the first to vote we scrap it all! Of course I admit, racism still exists, but I'm cautious. I haven't seen anything big enough to make me think it was worth deconstructing, and I don't want to overcompensate for injustices of the past.

As you can tell, I was well versed in speaking the mild, sweet language of white, sheltered, and also self-wise Americans. It wasn't too long before I caught myself in my ignorance, speaking as though I understood complex issues entrenched in centuries of history, experienced the daily offenses of minorities, or had basis to be indignant about the treatment of my race. A confident, self-diagnosis of white fragility knocked my pride down to humility, where it belonged. I didn't know anything! (there's my motto again :) ) Of my fellow, rich friends, nearly all were white, of my educators, favorite authors, and faith leaders nearly all were white. I knew nothing of modern day discrimination, and while I have never done anything to discriminate against people of color, my failure to do anything for the rights of people of color incriminates me. I've accepted the spoils of a system bent to my benefit and never questioned it.

My hands again are dripping red. And again I look to where I'm headed, a racially uniform campus, whose service to "urban" neighborhoods does them little credit. How can I wash my hands there? Or wash them at all? Will I ever escape from the patterns of privilege and systemic racism? What other blindness in society can I not yet see around?

If only the world's issues were this black and white. Oh wait, this is just a lot of gray. An artistic shot from our December Pittsburgh trip, compare to the one from our September Philly trip. From left: Jonathan, me, Evan, Krista, Eva, Abby

These questions are ones that tower over me, and while often I can find answers rather easily, these I cannot. I'm stuck, and I don't know where to go, how to move on. But the idea, the idea that we are people of privilege living in a complex society striving to follow Christ, hasn't stopped rolling around in my mind, and I think I am nearing, at least, the beginnings of an answer, and as I always find myself saying at the farm after work, "It's always a good start, and never a finish,"may it be so with this; may I never see the end of all truth, for the least benefit, I won't have to change my motto. 

....to be continued.....