Finding Emmanuel

So last night was my first real night out in LA since I moved. I've been to happy hour once with my roommate and her friends and then out for dinner for my roommate's birthday, but definitely the first out-to-a-bar-solely-for-drinks-and-socialness since the big move and the start of my job. My coworker Lauren and I headed down to Manhattan Beach to meet up with a few people I had met at a holiday party last weekend.

As we were driving down from the hospital (oh yes, we worked a 12 that day) to the south bay area, everything seemed perfectly natural. And yet, as I was sitting there sipping my fat tire, looking across the table at Lauren and next to me at Josh, our local guide to the dive bars of Manhattan Beach and my connect person from the weekend before who had graciously invited us out, I couldn't help but feel a little...whelmed by the situation. I say "whelmed" because I wasn't overwhelmed - struck down by the situation or paralyzed by any particular emotion - but definitely impacted.

Huh, I thought. I guess this is what the social part of life looks like now. And it's not a negative or really even a positive statement. It just is. For all intents and purposes, I pretty much avoided the college drinking/social scene until my senior year.

You see, I'm a collector of good conversations. I love stories. Human connections are what keeps me going from day to day. It's part of why I love being a nurse. I love hearing about my patients, their lives, their hopes and fears. I'm not opposed to alcohol. I love a good beer or a great glass of wine and i'll never turn down champagne, but while bars are great places to chill out, have a few laughs, and generally unwind, I crave the intimacy of a few close friends over for dinner.

Perhaps what I'm really trying to say is that I'm getting tired of small talk. When you're always the new person, when you're constantly meeting people and not meeting up with people, the same information - the interesting facts and important details - get recycled over and over like stale air in a plane. And when everything stays on a surface level, there's a heartbeat of intensity that is missing, leaving me feeling slightly dried out and those human connections - such a force of life - slightly dead.

From my childhood, from my years in college and my summers in various places, I should understand by now that community-building takes time. In fact, the larger the group, the longer it takes. The five or six of us volunteering in Sierra Leone fell into community quickly - the intensity of our experiences as well as the shared life and ample free time when we were restricted to our house easily facilitated strong bonds of friendship. In a city like LA, where you many only see any given person once a week at most, community is harder to construct. It feels rather like trying to cling to a handful of sand in the shallows of a beach while the tide whips in and out around you, prying the small grains from between your fingers. Let up at all, and everything's gone in an instant.

It seems a bit dramatic to throw in a line like "it's times like these that define our lives," but I can't help but feel the little bit of a challenge, the push to hold on tighter despite the pull of the sea - these tides of work, material culture, comfort. How much do I really care about community, deep and enriching? How long and how hard am I willing to fight for it? How far am I willing to go for it? How much traffic will I wait in to get to it?

Good questions all, and as I sit here on my couch, meditating on Sufjan Stevens' christmas albums, I ultimately find a core of inner peace, a center of perfect community that is forever closer than my breath and stronger to hold me together than fingers made of steel. Emmanuel, God with us.

coming to christmas

it's a rainy day in the city of angels. after a week of work (more about that later), i was all ready for a day off. plans for an afternoon in the park, maybe an outdoor cup of coffee or stroll on the beach. and now rain. it's funny how quickly i've adjusted to the general sunniness of southern california. i didn't even look out my window this morning and was absolutely shocked when i stepped out of my apartment to find wet. very, very wet.

but as it turned out, a rainy day was exactly what i needed. after a walk to trader joe's which left me thoroughly wet, i warmed up with hot tea and a warm oven, baking up a batch of christmas cookies - ginger oatmeal with fresh cranberries. yum. let's just say my apartment smells heavenly right about now. with over the rhine's snow angel record playing on permanent repeat, i feel a little closer to christmas, despite the distance from anything i am used to around the holidays. when i was away from home in boston, it was still easy to get into the holiday spirit with snow on the ground and huge decorations in store windows downtown. not to mention enough garland and holly on the campus buildings to dress a whole neighborhood. but here, it's been a bit different. very few homes are decorated, very few christmas trees make their way into shop windows. at work, we have one lone, artificial tree at the end of the hallway.

work, by the way, is going well. really well, actually. i am consistently floored by the warmth, encouragement, and support i have received as a new employee and a newly graduated nurse from the other staff members. my patients have all been lovely - all with their own quirks, of course. i find more than anything else, though, that the authority, decisiveness, and responsibility of the nurse that at first was so overwhelming and seemingly far off is becoming more and more a part of who i am at work, and i'm enjoying this new role quite a bit.

other things are coming slowly, a church community, a few choice hang-out spots. i am still exploring, and in a city like LA, there's quite a lot of exploring to do. :)

in case i don't happen to write again before the holidays, merry christmas! i really love this time of year, and while it might look a bit different this year, i still believe there is plenty of light, love, and laughter to be had and shared. many holiday blessings for your christmas and new year - i've got some twinkle lights to hang!