Static

I'm addicted to change. When things stay the same for too long, I get uncomfortable, restless. When I was a kid, I used to move the furniture around in my room all the time, because the thought of keeping the same things in the same places would make my skin crawl. If things were getting too normal in my life, I would act out. I remember one time, during a particularly bland stretch of road in my life's journey, I turned to a friend and said, "I'm going to have to do something crazy and reckless pretty soon. I don't like how things are." Of course that was during a time of rampant self-endangerment, so perhaps the ways in which I would choose to disrupt the status quo weren't exactly the healthiest of measures.

Yet the fact remains the same--I need change. I crave it. Change, to me, represents growth. If things stay the same forever, there's no potential for growth. It's just that simple.

I could never live in a sleepy country town. I could never do a job that required me to do the same mechanical processes over and over again. I couldn't do that job all my life. I couldn't then settle into a retirement community. I don't want to see the same people every day. I don't want to sit on a rocking chair and enjoy the golden years until I quietly bite the dust. In fact, whenever a conversation about death would arise, I would (only semi) jokingly tell people that I wanted to go at 126 years old in a horrible rocket-skiing accident. I figured that they would have invented rocket skis by then.

- - -

The point is I need change, don't you understand? And for this reason, I have a hard time keeping a group of friends, though I recognize it may be unfair to hold people to my standards of dynamicity.

Just last night, I met some old friends at an old hangout. I sat there, evermore thankful to God for delivering me from the past, from a cyclonic cycle I had fallen into that might have prevented me from reaching His purpose for me and satisfying my change addiction. Because as I sat at this bar-restaurant, I looked intently around. In the three years since I'd been there, there was no change. Same bartenders at the outside bar. Same waitresses. Same polo-clad patrons mixed in with prowling cougars and businessmen golfers. Same group of people that I used to work with at a banquet hall down the street showing up after their shift to drink the same drinks, feel the same feelings, only to wake up Saturday morning and start the same process all over again. Even when I stopped by my old work later that evening, it was like stepping into a time capsule. Same people, doing the same things in the same place I left them 2 years ago.

The absolutely egregious sameness of it all makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. To me, it's literally like sitting there and watching a TV set stuck on loud, blaring static.

Maybe that's why God has placed me in the inner city, working with youth. When I first started my internship at Urban Promise in Camden, can I be honest? I didn't particularly even like kids. I definitely wasn't one of those people who major in elementary or secondary education, hoping one day to fulfill their deepest passion of working with (gasp!) children! ...Not me. As a matter of fact, I scoffed at those people. 

"Suckers."

Well, God works in funny ways. I mean, I still don't really love kids. As a matter of fact, I tell the kids in my program all the time--"I can't stand you damn kids!" They love that, though; makes 'em giggle. 

What I do love about working with kids, though, is that they're never the same. They walk into our door different almost every single day, even sometimes hour to hour. And I think it's because they're still in their "growth period". They're changing, they're growing, they're learning. I like those things. I don't know if you've caught this yet, but the absence of which makes me lose my mind. And I don't know if you know this yet, but we "adults" have worked our way into this oppressive complacency, thinking that there's nothing more that we need to learn, no more growth necessary, and no change needed. I feel as though God feels differently. Anatomically speaking, you keep growing until at some point you stop and then start dying, albeit slowly. And a relationship with Jesus is all about transformation, undergoing constant, unceasing change: of heart, mind, outlook and otherwise. (Romans 12:2)

So whenever I explain to someone what I do and where I work, I fight to surpress an outlandish, self-righteous or even indignant reaction to the same old raised eyebrow and less-than coy remark of "Camden, eh?" 

Yes, I work in Camden, a place that (like these kids) is broken and imperfect, yet has so much potential for growth and change. No, it's not your static suburban existence, with your PTA meetings, soccer games, and Wednesday night tuna noodle casserole. Agreed, that might be all well and good for you, but it's just not for me. 

A place like that is comfortable, and comfort is the methadone to this change addiction that I have.

City in Transition

Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway under construction. Circa 1917