Community Experience

Yesterday, I volunteered at the Mental Hospital. The hospital is mainly for patients with struggles such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses. Every Sunday, the mental hospital recruits volunteers from different wards to take care of sacrament meeting. I ended up giving at talk while I was there.

For one thing, it was interesting for me to see the patients. I was sitting on the stand, which was a raised platform, so I could see the faces of everyone in the audience. At first, I couldn't really tell who the patients were and who weren't. For some reason, I some misconception that they would automatically look different from people that I normally associated with. I think this goes back to the idea that in our culture, we carry stereotypes of certain groups of people; when I hear "mental hospital", I automatically think of people that look and are crazy. In real life, however, I found that this was not the case. The patients were ordinary people going through a hard time. Upon closer observation, I could see the distress and tension in their faces and body language, but it was subtle. They were very, very human to me; I even wondered if maybe I could benefit from staying in a Mental Hospital.

It was also interesting for me to see the families of the patients. Not all the patients had family with them in the meeting, but a lot of them did. The main point is that all these people had different backgrounds, from very supportive to neglectful. I realized that I also had a stereotype that anyone with mental illness typically has a dysfunctional background. But everyone is unique, and just as no one should be treated the same, no one comes from the same place.

I also had the peculiar--or perhaps not so peculiar--experience of being the "other" while empathizing with their common humanity. I know what it's like to suffer from mental disability--I'm currently working through a case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder--and in my talk, I was able to relate to my audience pretty well. I didn't feel like the patients were ostracizing me or anything, in a some ways, I felt like I was accepted into the fold. At the same time, I wasn't familiar with the culture, and it made me feel foreign. For instance, even as i was sharing the experiences that made my similar to my audience, I wondered if it was ok to talk about how hard life can be. Do you talk to depressed people about life being hard? Or the fact that there were trained professionals there for a mere sacrament meeting. Or that we had to be very strict with time management, and people didn't stay after sacrament meeting to chat or linger.And besides the ward members that came with me, I didn't know anyone. Thankfully, the staff were good at giving me instructions.

As a teacher, going to the Mental Hospital was useful to me because as a teacher, I will have students with mental disorders. I'l have students that are depressed, bipolar, anxious, suffering from abuse, etc. I can recognize the mannerisms a little bit better now, and I also know better than to really assume anything now. 

Being the "Other"

Being the "other" was an interesting experience. As a Mormon at BYU for the past few years, I had forgotten what it's like to be the strange one that doesn't understand the culture. I went to Catholic mass (in Spanish no less) and though I felt very out of place, I enjoyed aspects of the experience.

The church building itself from the outside seemed out of place in Orem, Utah. It reminded me of movies set in Spain or South America in the 1800s. It was quite beautiful. On the inside, there were a number of chapels varying in size, as well as a gym and other rooms. When I was wandering around for part of the experience, I came across a room called "Cry Room #2"; later, I found out that it is a room for loud children and other sources of distraction. Everything was very neat, and though the halls and gym were very modern looking, the chapels had a very old feel because of the candles, flower decorations, ornate statues and paintings, and sandstone yellow walls. I would have taken more pictures, but I felt so out of place that I was a little afraid that they would kick me out or get mad at me if I did. 

I didn't actually manage to fulfill this assignment as well as I would have hoped. Even though I was only a few minutes late, the mass had already started when I arrived. And as I looked into the small chapel that everyone (excluding children and their caretakers) was sitting in, I couldn't see any seats for a stranger to fill...so I sat in the hall outside mass. I did see that some people were kneeling in their pews while other people were sitting down. I think that children were sent elsewhere because it was extremely important to keep a sense of quiet and sacredness. In the beginning, a young woman or child would say something, and everyone else would repeat what she said. This happened for a while, until everyone started singing Hallelujah. It wasn't like in a Mormon church where people sing parts, or where there is musical accompaniment; there was no accompaniment and everyone sang in unison, the same word over and over again. After the song, an older man started speaking. His voice had the tone of "we are all sinners before God, repent ye!" On the other hand, whenever people repeated after whoever was speaking, they sounded reverent but like they were in automatic mode. Whenever adults would walk past me sitting on my bench, they were wary and did not like that I was there; it also was obvious to me that I did not look like everyone else. I had dressed up more, and I didn't have black hair or dark eyes. The children were more friendly with me, probably because they didn't have the same sense of separateness from me that their parents felt. 

I felt really out of place, mostly because I didn't have the ability to speak to the people around me. I couldn't even ask people what I should do. And instead of just guessing what I should do, my first instinct was to avoid contact with the people around me as much as possible. If I can talk and communicate with the people around me, then I feel confident that I won't really offend anyone; because if I do actually offend someone, I can explain where I'm coming from, and people will usually give me the benefit of the doubt. But since everyone around me was speaking Spanish, I felt very limited. However, I really enjoyed the sense of quiet and stillness created by the mass. Because of the quiet and repetitious nature of the session, it reminded me of going to the temple. If I felt like anyone was going to draw attention to me, however, I felt a lot of anxiety. I didn't want to make anyone mad at me. It also helped me feel a sense of awareness of myself. My identity became more clear to me when confronted with something so different than what I'm used to. I was thinking about the fact that Mormon church meetings tend to be sort of loud and interactive, with lots of improvisation at parts. For instance, we talk about speaking by the Spirit so much that far from saying things words for word, people will deliberately not write their talks down before speaking. We are also an action oriented church. The Catholic church, on the other hand, is steeped in tradition, which would explain why rote sermons are so important.