Welcome to Texas

As I was waiting for the conductor to address the issue of the location of my bags, a man walked proudly along the train tracks waving a large Texas flag. He was yelling, “It’s all Texas. This is ALL Texas!” I wished I hadn’t been focusing on holding back tears of frustration during my conversation with the conductor, or else I would have taken a picture of this unexpected but much celebrated greeting to my new home, for now, state. “Your bags are somewhere else in Texas” the conductor assured me. I guess that means worse case they are only a few days away if they are noticed by someone who will send them back to Austin. Detachment from my belongings is a lesson I still need to learn; it was about six years ago that I arrived at Warren Wilson College for my first semester and lost all my possessions in a dorm fire my very first night. I don’t mind not having my things but it is awkward to take a shower with no towel and put on the same clothes I have worn on the train for the last three days. Luckily I haven’t lost anything but just have to practice patience.

My apartment is small, but my own. It is an efficiency, which means everything is in one room- but this is a step up from my room in Tacoma! It has it's own patio overlooking an intersection and the campus chapel. When I arrived in the apartment there was a lizard on my porch blowing a pink balloon from its throat. Strange greeting number two reminded me I am definitely not in the Northwest anymore. A neighbor took me grocery shopping; It feels so different to buy everything a person may need to cook and clean with and not have the safety of relying on a community to make ends meet and fill in the gaps. I am already missing the free, day old bagels from Starbucks and mystery meals delivered to Guadalupe House when no one was watching.

After months of anticipation I have arrived in Austin and after years of consideration, I can now call myself a seminarian. What a shift in lifestyle I have ahead of me! I can feel its impact already and I have only been away a few weeks, and in this apartment a few hours. Besides the humming of the fridge and air conditioner, there is stillness and silence that doesn’t come often in the Catholic Worker. There are no harmonies of screaming voices, laughter and footsteps above my bedroom. I will miss the flow of faces at our door, community meals and a shared vision and endless work. I am grateful for the opportunity to attend seminary and engage different parts of my being in different parts of the church- but I fear I will loose myself without the works that have filled so much of my life over the past several years. I have thought of myself as one who prays very actively through works. Please pray with me that I will find a new balance and discernment of God’s presence and work in myself and the world.