Drew Descourouez
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Drew Descourouez
In high school, I knew many teachers living their vocation as molders of young minds. One such teacher was a man that began his ethics lecture by striding between the desks in a war-bent, pug-nosed, up-in-your-face, impression of Socrates. He explained that this great thinker supposedly would sit for hours in the marketplace, challenging young people to think about the condition of the state, their role in government, the fundamentals of democracy. He was sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth” with his critical questions. He happily accepted his sentence, believing it would serve the betterment of society. Within this global economy, I think we have created a Socratic paradise – the greatest marketplace in human history, in dire need of more critical questions. And I think the best place to ask those questions is from the abused and underserved areas of this marketplace. In his book, Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson quotes the wisdom of his grandmother who liked to say “You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance…you have to get close”. I want to be critical and I want to be close in what I have come to consider “critical accompaniment” as my personal ideal for social engagement. Another way of thinking about this kind of engagement is seeking right relationship. In many ways, right relationship is the primary focus of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Sí. I think Socrates was hungry for right relationship and I think Bryan’s grandmother was telling him about the best way to investigate right relationship: go ahead and get close. When we get close to the margins of our global marketplace, to the places that have been underserved and abused, it is easy to see that we are far from right relationship, but we are certainly in relationship. Critical accompaniment can produce many things and I do not think it is a coincidence that social entrepreneurship is often the outcome. My experience suggests that critical accompaniment begs the question: “What is right relationship in a global economy?” and social entrepreneurship is the creative answer. I think immersion programs can be immensely informative and properly transformative if structured in the right way. That being said, I began to notice a pattern based on our meals with the Training Team in Zambia. The development of our relationships progressed in remarkably similar ways to those with whom I had worked at Destiny Reflection in the Red-light district of Kolkata. After late nights at Chili’s in India, and meals on the road in Zambia, I noticed that our relationships deepened further and faster than many week-long immersion trips allow. Creative, critical, and relational, these experiences convince me that social entrepreneurship is one of the best ways to engage the world. Ideally, this approach encourages dialogue about right relationship and then provides the tangible means to act on those terms. This kind of social engagement makes sense to me because it demands getting close, fosters relationship, and becomes concrete and ongoing. Insatiable curiosity, relationship-building, and organizational development are skills and desires that make social entrepreneurship the primary way in which I want to practice critical accompaniment. Choosing to postpone my senior year was a difficult vocational decision I made this year, largely inspired by the fellowship. The first night in Zambia scared me. I realize that I had been chasing hazy choices for a long time. The very visceral experience of feeling lost and unsure forced me to reflect on just how much I had been making decisions on half measures and with mediocre commitment. I was able to make this decision in a whole-hearted kind of way thanks to some key insights from the fellowship. The humblingly simplistic truth I ran into was that I am "no good when I’m not there" – meaning, that I had not been deeply committed to many of my experiences at Santa Clara and had not realized that before I was about to graduate. I think I had been mostly present to most activities, but the fellowship helped me hone my ability to trust my decisions and my commitments. A few weeks into the summer, James helped me see how some of my communication with family and friends was affecting our Zambian partnership and my ability to be present with him. This lead to meaningful conversations about how the quarter before our summer together had flashed by with hardly any quality time together. I arrived in Zambia thinking I needed to take a break, reassess and calm my frazzled feelings – an unfortunate beginning to a summer of ambiguity. In reality, the summer was remarkably helpful in helping me learn about focus. Spending most hours in a day with James helped me realize there were times I needed to retreat and read a book and that was not self-indulgent. At several different occasions James helped me let go of my preoccupation with external factors and focus on how I was feeling and what I needed to do to truly be “there”. This practice helped me realize that the best way to be at Santa Clara was to take intentional time away from classes, working on a project I believed in, before coming back to a remarkable education. Multiple parts of this fellowship helped me understand the adage: “Do what you need to do, to show up”. For me, that means working for a year before coming back to Santa Clara. The word “healing” jumps to mind every time I reflect on this fellowship. This feeling comes from a sense of reconciliation with self and God. I use the word “God” in the Catholic tradition to help me make sense of what I am feeling. In the letters of St. Ignatius he writes to Fr. James Miron about obedience, and the pressing need to dismiss any Jesuit unwilling or unable to heed their superiors obediently. “We see from experience that, not only with average talents but even less than average, men can often be the instruments of very notable supernatural fruit because they are completely obedient and through this virtue allow themselves to be moved and possessed by the mighty hand of the author of all good…talent may be seen to perform greater labor…[but] They achieve results proportioned to their own weak and feeble hands” (Young 281). Before the fellowship I had been worried that my actions were listless, potentially unconnected to my vocation and therefore a waste of everyone’s time. Through my conversations I began to realize the I was trying to achieve my vision of satisfying God’s will, trying to live up to phenomenal privileges and opportunities for education. Through that perspective I was encouraged to use God to sustain my goals, rather than lean on spiritual development and obedient trust to sink deeper into the present. The stories of entrepreneurs and mentors and even the decision to connect the fellowship with a year abroad, helped me realize that I am not as far as I think I am from the will of God or “flow” or vocation or call or whatever you want to call the exciting process of self actualization. A year ago I was sweating about declaring the right major, evidently convinced that I had yet to received God’s great invitation for my life. Thanks to the fellowship I am convinced that I am living into that invitation as long as I remain obedient to the moment – doing the next right thing as Thane likes to say. I think this new perspective means doing less (fewer things) and trusting those deeper commitments will produce more than I could ever imagine.
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