Playing Catch-Up

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything.  Some of this is due to lack of motivation, some is due to a lack of time to actually sit and write for this blog.  I'm also going to blame the cold weather because it's my favorite scape goat.  Now that it's warmer, I feel like I can actually be a productive human being again.    Here’s some basic life events that might catch you loyal followers up:

1)  I went to Washington D.C. over spring break and met lots of SSA alums who are working in the Federal government/public policy arenas now.  I now know that I don’t want to work for the government or in policymaking. 

2)  The president of McCormick cooked me and my roommate a three-course dinner that may have been the most delicious meal of my entire life.  Frank Yamada is the best.

3)  I joined the Chicago Metropolitan Association’s Radical Peacemaking Issue Team, tasked with building a peacemaking coalition for the CMA and the Illinois conference.  I’m excited to be part of a coalition/movement from the very beginning, especially in an area that is of great interest to me.

4)  Kind of along the same lines, I’m working with another seminary student to promote the South Side Trauma Center initiative in faith-based communities.  University Church will be the first member of this new faith-led organizing effort to bring much needed Level 1 trauma care to the South Side, preferably by expanding care access at the University of Chicago’s hospital system.

5)  Speaking of University Church, I was approved to be recommended for In-Care status by the In-Care committee!  This is step one to my ordination in the United Church of Christ.

6) I got to meet Andrea Smith and George Tinker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  No big deal.

7)  I was officially offered an internship position with the International Organization for Adolescents, working with their transitions initiative in Addis Ababa this summer.  I’ll be coordinating interviews and focus groups with young people who have grown up in institutional care (what we might call “orphanages”) to identify the challenges that they feel unequipped to face when they transition to adulthood.  This information will be used to develop curriculum that can be used with this population to prevent being caught up in sex/labor trafficking.  I leave in late June and can’t wait to spend the summer doing this amazing work.

I will be writing later this week specifically on my internship this summer, and then will return to (I mean it this time) weekly posts on what I’m pondering.  Thanks for sticking with me.