Opp Center Feb. 21 - Spiritual Warfare
This is my first posting of work in the Opp Center of the quarter. I've been sporadically going to my Wed 10-12pm time slot but I'm now going to try and get back into it regularly. I've also started, with Dawn, a computer skills training course in the computer lab. That runs on Mondays, and we had our first class last week. I will describe that in a soon-to-come post.
Today I came in and got to work in the kitchen. George was working there and shortly after I got there Jesse came in. George is a chubby black guy with short hair who mashes his words together, making it sometimes really hard to understand him. He had me get to work serving up some vegetable rice and pasta bowls for clients. It seems like Whole Foods comes a bit earlier in the morning on Wednesdays, and this food I was serving was some of what they brought. There were also nice bread loaves, bagels, and the usual fare of ramen and coffee, etc.
After the food, I helped Gina with laundry... I washed a bunch of towels that I guess were for the kitchen. I got my first chance with the laundry room, which is awesome. It was also my first real introduction to Philip, the guy who runs the opportunity center. He seems like a nice enough guy, maybe a little too business-like. I think Gina is the ideal personality for a place like this... a big heart, sweet person, but commanding of respect and stern when she needs to be. I also find it interesting that Philip, who seems to be of African (continent) descent, is managing a place with many African Americans as the needy clients. I wonder if some of the clients think, "hey, how did this African guy get to be the boss here? Don't they have it worse than me?"
The most interesting part of the shift was after I put the laundry in. Me and Jesse started talking religion and spirituality. Jesse is a big black guy with dreadlocks to his shoulders. He has a ghetto way of talking and a real raspy voice. In other words, a person you wouldn't expect to be into spirituality if you first saw him. Anyway, we got into it because he was talking out loud in the kitchen about how he had seen this video in church the other day. The video showed young children strapped with bombs and given guns talking about how they hated Americans. I gathered that it must have been something about radical muslims preparing for Jihad. He stressed how shocked he was to be seeing young kids who "were just ready to die" and "they weren't just thousands, this was millions" and "they were not playin'". After that we got to talking about how those kids got that way and that their minds must have been manipulated at very impressionable ages. He was reading a book called "Spiritual Warfare" and when I asked him about it we got to talking about religion. We talked about how minds can be poisoned to do and think evil things... I mentioned the horrific stories of Japanese soldiers in the Rape of Nanking. He told me the story of how he used to be homeless and a "nobody" and how one day he believed that the Holy Spirit entered him and rose him up to get his life together. He made some pretty deep comments about how he tries to "observe his anger" and can feel it rising inside of him and how he now tries to fight it.
We talked about religion and he said that "the world needs God more" and I countered by saying there's too much talking about God and how "we need to stop talking about God and start being God". This was a part of a series of statements about how I thoughtGod was inside each individual. I saw that it was hard for Jesse to accept that... whenever he talked about himself, he would insist that it was Jesus or God (something external) coming to him and releasing him from his actual bad self. We both agreed that religion wasn't in the Bible (which he had with him), that the book was just words and that real religion was experiential. He said emphatically, "you have to SEE Jesus" and talked about how one of the clients had visions of future events and that that was a gift from God to prove that God had come to him. He said something similar had happened to him, that he had experienced time when he knew God was present, like when he was on a bus recently and wanted to say something to a neighbor but held his tongue. Then that person made some comment that invited Jesse to say what he wanted to say... he interpreted that as God stepping in and requesting him to say what was on his mind.
My favorite thing that Jesse said was how he likened his spirituality to playing the Mario Brothers video game. He talked about how when he started playing the game he couldn't jump properly and couldn't "dodge things" but thanks to Jesus he could now play the game of dodging the evil inside of him effectively. He now had control over the game (himself).
When I was signing out, Gina repeated how I was a good and natural volunteer and that she liked that I had no agenda. As it happens, that's exactly true, and I told her, "my agenda is to serve." She said that's great and thinking that I was something special asked if I had a girlfriend. When I told her, she said "well that's good, and she's a really lucky girl". Yes she is!
Today I came in and got to work in the kitchen. George was working there and shortly after I got there Jesse came in. George is a chubby black guy with short hair who mashes his words together, making it sometimes really hard to understand him. He had me get to work serving up some vegetable rice and pasta bowls for clients. It seems like Whole Foods comes a bit earlier in the morning on Wednesdays, and this food I was serving was some of what they brought. There were also nice bread loaves, bagels, and the usual fare of ramen and coffee, etc.
After the food, I helped Gina with laundry... I washed a bunch of towels that I guess were for the kitchen. I got my first chance with the laundry room, which is awesome. It was also my first real introduction to Philip, the guy who runs the opportunity center. He seems like a nice enough guy, maybe a little too business-like. I think Gina is the ideal personality for a place like this... a big heart, sweet person, but commanding of respect and stern when she needs to be. I also find it interesting that Philip, who seems to be of African (continent) descent, is managing a place with many African Americans as the needy clients. I wonder if some of the clients think, "hey, how did this African guy get to be the boss here? Don't they have it worse than me?"
The most interesting part of the shift was after I put the laundry in. Me and Jesse started talking religion and spirituality. Jesse is a big black guy with dreadlocks to his shoulders. He has a ghetto way of talking and a real raspy voice. In other words, a person you wouldn't expect to be into spirituality if you first saw him. Anyway, we got into it because he was talking out loud in the kitchen about how he had seen this video in church the other day. The video showed young children strapped with bombs and given guns talking about how they hated Americans. I gathered that it must have been something about radical muslims preparing for Jihad. He stressed how shocked he was to be seeing young kids who "were just ready to die" and "they weren't just thousands, this was millions" and "they were not playin'". After that we got to talking about how those kids got that way and that their minds must have been manipulated at very impressionable ages. He was reading a book called "Spiritual Warfare" and when I asked him about it we got to talking about religion. We talked about how minds can be poisoned to do and think evil things... I mentioned the horrific stories of Japanese soldiers in the Rape of Nanking. He told me the story of how he used to be homeless and a "nobody" and how one day he believed that the Holy Spirit entered him and rose him up to get his life together. He made some pretty deep comments about how he tries to "observe his anger" and can feel it rising inside of him and how he now tries to fight it.
We talked about religion and he said that "the world needs God more" and I countered by saying there's too much talking about God and how "we need to stop talking about God and start being God". This was a part of a series of statements about how I thoughtGod was inside each individual. I saw that it was hard for Jesse to accept that... whenever he talked about himself, he would insist that it was Jesus or God (something external) coming to him and releasing him from his actual bad self. We both agreed that religion wasn't in the Bible (which he had with him), that the book was just words and that real religion was experiential. He said emphatically, "you have to SEE Jesus" and talked about how one of the clients had visions of future events and that that was a gift from God to prove that God had come to him. He said something similar had happened to him, that he had experienced time when he knew God was present, like when he was on a bus recently and wanted to say something to a neighbor but held his tongue. Then that person made some comment that invited Jesse to say what he wanted to say... he interpreted that as God stepping in and requesting him to say what was on his mind.
My favorite thing that Jesse said was how he likened his spirituality to playing the Mario Brothers video game. He talked about how when he started playing the game he couldn't jump properly and couldn't "dodge things" but thanks to Jesus he could now play the game of dodging the evil inside of him effectively. He now had control over the game (himself).
When I was signing out, Gina repeated how I was a good and natural volunteer and that she liked that I had no agenda. As it happens, that's exactly true, and I told her, "my agenda is to serve." She said that's great and thinking that I was something special asked if I had a girlfriend. When I told her, she said "well that's good, and she's a really lucky girl". Yes she is!
posted by Neil Patel at 5:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home