Saturday, September 1, 2012

This is *reality* Greg!

Readers, beware!  The title is meant to be a humorous foray into a heavier subject.  To get the joke, you have to know only two bits of context.  The first is that my father's nickname is Greg (which in no way resembles his actual name, but that's another story for another time).  The second is that the line is from E.T., near the end, when Elliot is getting one of his older brother's friends to help bring back E.T.

Elliot: He's a man from outer space and we're taking him to his spaceship.
Greg: Well, can't he just beam up?
Elliot: This is *reality*, Greg!

How does that relate to my day, you're probably wondering.  I hope you are at least wondering that now.

Well, my father and my mother both came to Kensington today with the remainder of the things I was not able to bring on the train when I moved down here.

They told me that when they arrived, before I was able to swoop down and collect them from outside, that they had seen two men shooting up down the street.  I would imagine it was heroin, but honestly, I don't know anything about drugs.  It's the only one I am sure involves a syringe.  At any rate, they were doing well, all things considered, but I could tell that any one of a few thoughts were running through their mind.

- This place is more dangerous than the place we left her last time.

- (My father)  I left the city so that my kids wouldn't live in such a desolate place.

- We're going to take her home, now.

- Rachel must be out of her mind.  How can she be calm right now, when we are trying to be calm and (so obviously) struggling to do so?

Alas, what I want to say to my father is: This is *reality* Greg!

I don't know how to communicate effectively my environment to people who haven't seen it without scaring them, or making them think I am disillusioned in any way, or making them think I have missed some fundamental part of the human experience by being here.  This blog is helping me navigate those waters, but it is far from the whole answer to how I will pass on what I have been a part of here.

Today, I want to emphasize one particular point:

Kensington is part of the human experience.

Every day on my way to work, I walk past dozens of people.  Real people, some of whom are addicted to illegal substances, some who are homeless, some who are single parents struggling to get by.  Soon, I may be sharing my morning commute on the elevated train with students running late to school because they are the parent figure in their house, and sharing my evening commute with nurses who have spent the day caring for the sick and struggling.  Each of the people I encounter is participating in the human experience.

Why then, is my father's human experience so radically different from the two men down the street, shooting up?  I respond with a line from a sign that was on our back porch area last year in Camden, from Mother Teresa.  "God does not create poverty.  We do, because we do not share."

There are so many layers to reality.  Kensington is only one of many of mine.  I invite you to consider which realities are yours.  How does living your human experience affect another's human experience, someone who you will never know?

Peace and all good,
Rachel

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