From Minnesota to Newark: a volunteer’s trip across the country

Newark, New Jersey. I won’t mince words, dear reader: Newark can be hard. The cultural norms of the East are, at times, so totally and utterly different from the Midwest that it does indeed feel like an entirely different country. No one will give you a wave or a nod on the walk down the street; no one will hold the door. Students sometimes lie about completing assignments, and people drive as if their heads were on fire. Most of the creature comforts we have grown to love (or at least tolerate) are simply not present.

However, dear reader, I have fallen hopelessly in love with the East, with Newark being my introduction. The best way I have been able to understand my newfound love for a place to which I am absolutely alien is expressed in an analogy, and, intentionally, it is the very thing that makes the skyscrapers, vast roads and endless sidewalks of the city.

Cement.

That now-familiar, ever-present gray, reinforced with steel and iron, a conglomerate of sand, gravel, rocks and binding agents, all to form the very skin and bones of what makes Newark unapologetically Newark. What does it mean, if anything? I wondered, a naïve Minnesotan stumbling out of the plane many months ago. And now I surely know — it is far more than just a building material. It is the very soul of this place.

The Latin phrase “e pluribus unum” comes to mind immediately: from many, one. Countless are the stones that make the concrete; it is indiscernible how many millions or billions come together to form what is essentially one colossal, poured and formed rock. Yet it stands as one, a gem of gray, of sprawling unification.

But given that truth, with the acknowledgment that a very simple way of understanding Newark is in its strength and eager willingness to continue on, one must also see the forest for the trees, or perhaps, the city for the buildings. Indeed, the finished surface of this mystic, analogical concrete is rough and abrasive — for it must be. What is a rose with no thorns? Is a part of it not irreparably removed when its spikes are too?

The normalcy in what we (Midwesterners) might consider rudeness or crass behavior here, as I understand it, functions as a very basic first defense for the profound, meaningful and rare relationships that may be found within. It is sociocultural, generalized strength; it is the understanding that in the broader world of New York and its sister city, Newark, not as a group of people but as two locations on a map, people must indeed retain the capacity to simply be individuals.

Everyone here is bound together in some way, be it the status of “from the East Coast,” or perhaps something more grand. There is undoubtedly an effervescent nature between all those present. The ties that bind may be harder to see, but in my experience as a teacher, track coach and house parent (dorm resident assistant), even the immediate, assumed bond between me as an outlander and them as Newarkers is unlike any other I have experienced. They recognize that I am indeed the outsider, but the fact that I am, regardless, present and engaging in their push forward is more than enough to qualify me as one of their own.

I do believe therein lies the beauty of the Benedictine Volunteer Corps. It is in the grand monastery of Montserrat, in the ancient halls of Rome and in the Isla del Encanto, but make no mistake: Newark is just as prime an answer to the question, “Why the BVC?” So that one may, in perhaps the only time of their lives when they can, be a pebble in the colossal skyscraper that is Newark. So that one may render service wholly, with full dedication of heart and soul, and be proud of the unabated good they have done every night as they lay their head to rest.