This blog hosts articles contributed by members of the Chicago Zen Center. For news about events at the Center and in Chicago, please visit our Doing Jail Time
If any of you ever ask me, "where were you on Thursday night?" I would say, in a half joking voice, "in jail." But it's no joke and the jail is the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center, where children younger than 17 are held after arrest for possible felonies and misdemeanors. I go in once a week for two hours as a volunteer for what is a listening ministry. This is where the orderly Mary Jeanne comes up against the chaos of juvenile life, mostly from the most impoverished and dangerous places and situations in Chicago. These children learn they are in jail because they have made choices. And I am there because I also made a choice.
I had been teaching a course at DePaul University that we call a community-based service learning course, for which students need to do 25 hours of service with a community organization. After several years sending students out for service, I began to sense a slight oddity in my teaching this course--I did not myself do any direct service in community organizations. So I began thinking (note the word 'thinking') about what kinds of service opportunity I might like--tutoring immigrants for the citizenship test or others for literacy, since both situations would fit my hope to open up opportunity for others. Fate did me a turn, however, and I ended up walking into jail one day to work with kids of an age I had wished to avoid my entire life. I met Fr. Dave Kelly from the Precious Blood Center for Reconciliation at a presentation inviting volunteers to work with incarcerated youth, mostly from the south side. I did not refuse the invitation. At first I could work only with the boys, but after a few years I also began talking as well with the girls.
This is an odd ministry in many ways: I usually have no idea if I have any effect on the kids. As many volunteers experience, they might see a kid for a couple weeks and feel a connection developing and then the kid disappears back to their lives. We see how much is not in our control--or not in anyone's control--even though it should be. But these are lessons we can learn in any situation new to us, especially in those places and with people unfamiliar to us. These times and places bring us to the edge of our practice, remind us of the need for our practice, send us screaming back to our practice. And this is not because we want just to bury ourselves again in the quiet peacefulness we might find there, but because our practice needs to be there at those edges of life, edges of growth, edges that help erode our small ego's desire to hold on, to be in control.
So my challenge to you is this: find a service opportunity. Just anything will do at first-as long as it will take you even one small, seemingly insignificant step out of your routine, your usual round of activities. In your decision to do Zen practice, you have already taken a step out of the routine our society expects. So now take your practice to the streets, as it were. No one is too busy to find a service opportunity, for example, perhaps only one two-hour period here and another in say 3 months. Some will be ready to check something out and commit to one time a week for so many weeks. And guess what I found in the 12/26 Sun-Times: web sites for volunteer opportunities. So you have no excuse! The Sun-Times has the full list, but just try these: Chicago Cares, Volunteer Match, Idealist, Chicago Volunteer, Nonprofit job board, Youth Outreach Services. If you live outside Chicago, google for voluteering in your community. So get out there, give yourself to the moment, and be grateful if it feels good; in any case your practice will never be the same again.
Mary Jeanne Larrabee
I had been teaching a course at DePaul University that we call a community-based service learning course, for which students need to do 25 hours of service with a community organization. After several years sending students out for service, I began to sense a slight oddity in my teaching this course--I did not myself do any direct service in community organizations. So I began thinking (note the word 'thinking') about what kinds of service opportunity I might like--tutoring immigrants for the citizenship test or others for literacy, since both situations would fit my hope to open up opportunity for others. Fate did me a turn, however, and I ended up walking into jail one day to work with kids of an age I had wished to avoid my entire life. I met Fr. Dave Kelly from the Precious Blood Center for Reconciliation at a presentation inviting volunteers to work with incarcerated youth, mostly from the south side. I did not refuse the invitation. At first I could work only with the boys, but after a few years I also began talking as well with the girls.
This is an odd ministry in many ways: I usually have no idea if I have any effect on the kids. As many volunteers experience, they might see a kid for a couple weeks and feel a connection developing and then the kid disappears back to their lives. We see how much is not in our control--or not in anyone's control--even though it should be. But these are lessons we can learn in any situation new to us, especially in those places and with people unfamiliar to us. These times and places bring us to the edge of our practice, remind us of the need for our practice, send us screaming back to our practice. And this is not because we want just to bury ourselves again in the quiet peacefulness we might find there, but because our practice needs to be there at those edges of life, edges of growth, edges that help erode our small ego's desire to hold on, to be in control.
So my challenge to you is this: find a service opportunity. Just anything will do at first-as long as it will take you even one small, seemingly insignificant step out of your routine, your usual round of activities. In your decision to do Zen practice, you have already taken a step out of the routine our society expects. So now take your practice to the streets, as it were. No one is too busy to find a service opportunity, for example, perhaps only one two-hour period here and another in say 3 months. Some will be ready to check something out and commit to one time a week for so many weeks. And guess what I found in the 12/26 Sun-Times: web sites for volunteer opportunities. So you have no excuse! The Sun-Times has the full list, but just try these: Chicago Cares, Volunteer Match, Idealist, Chicago Volunteer, Nonprofit job board, Youth Outreach Services. If you live outside Chicago, google for voluteering in your community. So get out there, give yourself to the moment, and be grateful if it feels good; in any case your practice will never be the same again.
Mary Jeanne Larrabee
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