Feels like Fiction

I've been at Corrymeela just under a week and it feels as if I've been here a month. What can I say--I am living in a place where I step out the door and overlook the ocean from the top of a cliff covered in blackberry brambles and fuschia, where my primary obligations include leading songs and games and organizing closets. This week and next are our "induction" (Irish for orientation) and the past six days have involved lots of sitting listening to staff members from 9AM to 10 PM go over how to evacuate the building in a fire, rules and policies and how to assemble a tea trolley. There have also been some team building activities and training in how to facilitate experiential learning, which has been much more stimulating. The staff consist of a very warm and friendly group, from the center director, Paul, who reminds me a little of my college professor Tony, to Aileen, the volunteer coordinator who is our main go-to. There is also a couple in the position of "resource couple"--a married couple who generally stay for two years, live on site and perform a variety of functions around the center. Their names are Tim and Tiffany, they're from New Jersey and Texas, respectively, and they are full of energy and enthusiasm. There will be nine total long-term volunteers, those who will stay a full year, though one of them, from Cameroon, will only arrive in October, so it's only eight for the time being. My roommate, Jeni, is lovely--turning 20 in a month and just spent five months volunteering in New Orleans. She's from Northern Ireland, so it's nice to have her perspective. She cracks me up--we were talking about living as roommates on the first day and she insisted that the only thing about roommates that bothers her is when they don't squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom so the stripes don't come out clearly when the tube is almost empty. We have a lot in common--she also moved around quite a bit as a kid and also went to boarding school for her last year or two of high school. Jeni's dad is a Methodist minister, though she herself is not religious, so she has a pretty unique perspective on spirituality. Speaking of which, living as a Jew in a Christian community is proving to be both interesting and isolating at times. Similar to my experience living in Utah, people here are very curious about and interested in the Jewish religion and culture. Sometimes it can be a pain to feel like a Jewbassador all the time, but most of the time I enjoy being able to answer questions about things that many if not most people here have never had the opportunity to find out about. On the eve and first day of Rosh Hashana I gave short presentations about the holiday. On Wednesday I cut up apples and passed around apples and honey while i explained the significance of the holiday. Then i spent a little bit of time explaining the shofar and had even found a youtube video of a guy playing the four calls so they could see what it was like. Then i taught them my favorite Rosh Hashana song--Bashana Haba'a--in Hebrew! It was super fun, I had prepared a transliteration/translation of the song and also wrote out the lyrics in Hebrew so they could see the writing. The next morning I woke up to a sign Jeni had made that said Shana Tova and she had copied my terrible Hebrew handwriting to write some of the song lyrics on the poster! So cute.
The next day I said the Aleinu, sang Avinu Malkeinu and led a discussion about the Akedah (Binding of Isaac), the portion read every Rosh Hashana and incidentally also my Bat Mitzvah portion. The discussion went very well, especially because several people here really know the Bible and can draw references and connections that really add depth to the dialogue. Being here on the holiday made me miss my family but in a way I also felt glad that I was able to celebrate in such a meaningful, albeit different way. One of the midterm volunteers who is here until December is from Ghana and has never learned anything whatsoever about Judaism (he says that it's illegal to teach Judaism in schools in Ghana because it would be too confusing to teach it in addition to Christianity and Islam but he also doesn't speak English perfectly and often tends to think that if he hasn't experienced something it doesn't exist). In any case, the first question he asked was whether Jesus was our Messiah. I said no, Jesus was, in fact, Jewish, meaning that the religious tenets were already complete several thousand years before Christ was born. Not five minutes later, after I had answered a few more questions around the room, he asked me if Jews believe in John the Baptist. At first I wasn't sure if maybe he was kidding but quickly recognized that he was not, before explaining again exactly what I had just outlined. It was like he just couldn't wrap his head around having hald of the Christian Bible without continuing on to Christ, which must seem fairly illogical to someone who has never heard of Judaism. Still, it wasn't as bad as when someone asked me what "type" of Jew I was. He meant Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. I said A positive.
The dryness of the induction period is broken up by some lovely moments with the other volunteers and just by being in this beautiful place. Yesterday we had two hours off from 2-4 so a bunch of us walked down to the beach, a 20 minute walk at the most, just at the bottom of the cliff we live on. The sun was out almost the whole day, a rarity in a place that often rotates every twenty minutes between sun and rain. Even though the weather was only a little warm and the sea considerably cold, we went in, swimming in the shallows and gasping from the cold water. It was absolutely a delight, the adrenaline from the cold and the saltwater in my hair and on my skin. There is a bridge that juts out from the beach to the tidepools, which we crossed and explored. I couldn't help but wonder every few minutes: "is this my life??" On the way back we stopped every few feet to eat the wild blackberries that grew rampant on the side of the road, our fingers stained with the purple juice, every so often getting a particularly sour or sweet one. When we got back we had ten minutes to de-beachify ourselves before an intense fire drill that involved way too much running for my taste!
At the moment there is a youth group at the center called Face to Face/Faith to Faith. It's a program that has groups in Northern Ireland, Cape Town, Jerusalem and various places in the US for kids of different faiths and backgrounds to meet and interact. There are less than 20 of them, mostly Catholic and Protestant with four Muslim students (including a Turk!). Tonight I led "worship" to commemorate September 11, which involved having people share their stories and memories of that day, followed by everyone singing "Od Yavo Shalom" which it turned out they knew! Very nice way to end the day. That's all for now--sending love your way. xox