For changing lives

In the Phillips neighborhood, there is a building on Park Avenue--newly built, bright, and modern. It was named the Center for Changing Lives--it houses a Somali-owned daycare, a Lutheran pentecostal church, an affordable cafe, Refugee Services of Lutheran Social Service (LSS), and other social services. I take my laptop over there from the main LSS administrative building in St. Paul every week or so to work in the space with Pastor Mary, one of my supervisors. We go there because, we say, we want to get our lives changed.



It is a space that reminds us of the immediacy and importance of the work we do in our grants office at our computers, on email. Here, people come and go from the surrounding neighborhood for the social services housed in the building. What I know in the abstract about a social service becomes concrete in the faces of people touched by and empowered by affordable housing, childcare provision, resettlement cases, education... 

This brings the work I do into balance; I must say it's extraordinarily motivating. Working for a mission-driven organization makes this internship meaningful through and through-- and it means that, although my 9-5 job is professional, distinct, and separate from the evening hours spent at home in Tangletown with my housemates, these two spheres are not dissonant. Values align between the two, and the mission of LSS echoes my heart's own call. 

Vocation, to me, is a lifestyle, a way of balancing and being present in all things; we promote social change by the way we live, move, and have our being. The tendency to compartmentalize our lives into separate categories, while providing boundaries to what we do when, can also allow those spheres to become maligned over time. LSS' "Abundant Aging" initiative, a philosophical shift of how we think about aging, should challenge me in my own life to think carefully about how I will take care of my parents when they age, and to intentionally form intergenerational friendships now. Our lives reflect our values and can inspire others in profound ways towards thoughtful practices.

I have been reading about leadership this week in a book called Leadership Without Easy Answers. It approaches leadership as an activity rather than a trait. When we lead, we adapt to certain situations in a way that helps communities reconcile differing values so that they can move forward together to face a challenge. Leadership empowers people to face difficult realities, ask hard questions, and include as many perspectives of the surrounding community as possible. This is the type of leadership that promotes positive, lasting change in people's lives, the kind of leadership we want to take as agents of social change.

Going to the Center for Changing Lives reminds me of the mission of LSS and the ways I live that out in my entire day, from morning to evening. The alignment of work and home, though distinctly separate, brings balance to the narratives I live in each place.