You don't even know

So yesterday a professor had us over to her house for an end-of-semester shindig. Not only did she not make us talk about syllabus additions, she also provided tons of food - ham salad, cookies, tea in adorable tea pots, even GF biscuits and chocolate cake. A+, Professor H. I'm always touched when professors act like they want to spend time with their students and are interested in their lives. Prof. H especially wanted to hear all about us girls' love lives, which was fun. 

Everyone hung around for hours, long enough to quit talking about next year's courses and start telling interesting stories. Since my volunteer year was the last time I did anything uniquely exciting, I kept referring to that. When I started out "So my house in St. Louis was a former convent next to a school..." I saw Prof. H's religious-historian eyes get wide. Oh, Prof. H, you don't even know. 

You don't even know what hard, fun work it is for 8 strangers to live in a former convent and try to create a modern spiritual community together. You have no idea how it was the most adventurous, challenging, weird, random year of my life, and how I am still figuring out what it all meant. In fact, yesterday was the first time I've been able to talk about one my negative experiences that year and not relive its emotional impact. I miss the service focus my life had then, and I'm still not sure how to stay connected to that as a grad student.

What's really crazy about living in a former convent with 7 strangers-turned-friends is that you are just one year of the house's life. Other groups will keep making new histories after you're gone, and you'll never really know how their community functioned. The groups that came before you have left all sorts of random stuff lying around and you have no idea what it means. At your moment in the house, you just make the best of what you can find. 

Like making an Advent wreath out of plastic greens and candles stuck in sand-filled shot glasses. I don't think God minded.