New CTS Building Anything But 'Green'

Published 10/14/09 at http://www.hpherald.com/pg4.html

Can a seminary really build a ‘green’ building while destroying a beloved community garden in the process?

Chicago Theological Seminary and the UofC will gather at 2pm, Thursday, October 15, to break ground on the new seminary building at 60th and Dorchester. A few weeks later, they’ll pave paradise in favor of a parking lot.

LEEDS, the ratings system for ‘green’ construction to which CTS aspires, specifies that a building not only be environmentally friendly in construction process and function, but also that it contribute to overall quality of life for its inhabitants and location. An active community garden which unites generations, classes, and races as the centerpiece of this block does well in this regard; looking out over an urban wasteland of empty lots does nothing good.

It’s important to know that when the Board of Trustees and administration of CTS had the opportunity to use their influence to stop this destruction, they chose not to do so, despite alumni pressure.

Throughout this decision-making process, CTS has operated as a silent accomplice. I can understand why community garden supporters might not want to challenge the UofC for its community development ethics; it’s an 800 lb. gorilla. But here is a seminary that is about to reap enormous gains from the neighborhood’s loss, earning fame for preaching its concern for creation and the world’s oppressed, and saying nothing about destruction done on its behalf in our own backyard.

Only a few students including myself ever went down to meet with folks at garden, local churches, schools, farmers’ markets, or the Experimental Station; the administration initiated no genuine efforts to do so.

This silence is not unique to the garden’s destruction. For years, CTS has been completely disengaged from the neighborhood--so much so that hardly anyone realizes there’s a seminary above the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in the first place.

Lest readers think I’m a chronically disgruntled alum, I used to love this school. I was editor of the student paper, student government co-president, student representative to the Board of Trustees. I worked in the Development office and gave generously of my personal time and money. I was even on a design committee and participating in LEEDs discussions until it became clear that accountability to the surrounding neighborhood would be no serious priority. At every step, I raised concerns for community preservation and neighborhood accountability, and my words fell on deaf ears.

We need to hold CTS accountable, and not allow their silence to protect them. The onus is on CTS to prove itself prophetic outside its walls. As this ‘progressive’ seminary leaves one ivory tower to build an ivory fortress south of the midway, it is up to the people who care to demand they shoulder the responsibility for what they’ve done.

Any institution can speak prophetically, and can even gain a little fame and fortune for doing so. It’s entirely another thing for the administration, Trustees, faculty, and students to walk their talk.

Rev. Le Anne Clausen de Montes
M.Div. CTS 2009

Notes from My Cell, April 13-14th

4/13

I am pretty comfortable in my cell, I hope not too comfortable, but after all, I seek out monastic retreats where I’ve just got a little cell to sit with myself, catch up on sleep perhaps, and write. I’ve been thinking of stripping my room down this summer to just such a situation. My room has been my office and my study for too long, and it does impact the quality of my sleep. This last winter I learned to spend time in my red chair, angled towards the window, where I got a little light and could watch the city and its people just go about its business. I think it began to click, that this was in some ways a spiritual discipline to be valued, earlier – before Christmas, when I got the opportunity to meet Martin Marty in his office and home in the Hancock tower. The whole world, it seems, is buzzing away below. (I especially liked the line of cars up and down all of Lake Shore Drive). But it does quickly give you a different perspective on life, floating above it like that. So that is what I try to do now also – take in that bustling corner of Hyde Park with its Metra trains and buses and people arriving and departing, the bank and the bookstore, and all.

For this reason also, I think, I am happy to have been bounced up to the second floor of cells in our block – where I can get a wider, “birds-eye” perspective on our daily lives in this jail, how we buzz about playing cards, helping one another, fighting with one another, all engrossed in a movie on TV, the crying and hand-holding by the phone, and the laughing at lunch table pranks. It also gets a little more sun during the day.

I think I’ve collected nearly enough information to begin a license investigation into the night nurse – the one who routinely refuses to distribute prescribed medication to inmates during her shift, or to tell inmates their prescription has expired – although the other nurses will show us that the prescription is still in place. One testimony I collected is from a young inmate who suffered a miscarriage late in her first trimester. When this nurse was on duty and called, she told the girl to “bleed it out in (her) cell.” That was about two years ago. We do apparently have a very good medical ward here, by most prisoners’ accounts, but it amazes me a nurse wouldn’t do anything. Meanwhile, I’m wondering just what this nurse is doing with all the drugs she’s withholding from her patients. (Worse is the girl who went into premature labor on an already high risk pregnancy this past summer; the nurse told her it was only a bladder infection. When the next nurse came on shift, she finally got to go to the hospital).
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9:15 and we are waiting for cell inspections – a daily ritual of checking our beds are neat and cells tidy, and no “contraband” lying out in the open. Today, I have two religious books – a Bible and a Qur’an, when you’re only allowed one; and I made a pencil-grip out of paper strips rolled, and secured with a sticky shampoo label. I also have too many photos and letters from the outside – when I finish with them, they’re supposed to go downstairs into my personal belongings container – but in my defense on this last one, I’ve asked three different guards so far, and none have bothered; they also didn’t touch it during shakedown.
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4/14
Monday afternoon, a beautiful sun shining, I can see through the window; I find myself especially at peace today. It is good to enter jail in late winter, when you haven’t experienced spring yet – in fact, it will be marvelous to step out into full bloom a few weeks from now. Then it may be hard to keep me inside to finish my studies the last two weeks of school.
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I just remember I forgot to call back the Witherspoon Society. Perhaps I can be of use to them still after my release. (A Presbyterian peace group).
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I confess the past several days I’ve done little more than read, write, and catch up on sleep – I felt a little guilty about this – I should be writing more! Reading more! But, on the other hand, it also feels like time well spent. Curiously enough, the whole ward’s been doing much the same. We’ve been quieter as a whole, too.

I answered some questions about religious life, training towards the pastorate, as well as formation as a nun; I explained what I could. I think often about bringing together various religious orders for a conversation with the New Monasticism movement, the Catholic Workers and the student cooperative housing movement, and I think also the interfaith youth movement. Here are five groups that have so much to share with one another and enormous potential to provide young adults something meaningful to do other than hope to work for good.

So many tears tonight – on the phone again – from those coming in tonight, and from those who are about to leave. It is a nurturing group of women here who look out for one another and its ok to cry around. I can see how it would be hard to exist on the “outside” world without this support.

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All I can think about tonight is food. The tv commercials are not helping – nor is my co-food-thinker who’s getting out tomorrow. You just don’t know how much that Dunkin Donuts commercial for coffee hurt to watch, especially the last scene with the chocolate-covered custard-filled – it’s a particular weakness… I am envisioning a day of pure comfort food when I get out, followed by many days of nonstop vegetables. No pasta surprise, and no beanie weenie for at least a month, okay? I also confess I dream of pizza. Fortunately, they do a nice treat for the inmates – they take orders every other Friday from a local restaurant, this week it will be a sub – we’ll divide up the ones we get for the women who have no money on their commissary accounts, just as we do with the candy. We’re charged a reasonable price, too – around $5. I am glad to have resources to share here. Also glad that when I leave my cellmates will have my things to share – shampoo, and things like this that I needed to order when I got here. Also hopefully a few leftover writing supplies, though I go through them fast.
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I’m beginning to think already of the time when I will be done here. It is coming soon.

Peace,
Le Anne

Ode to a Purple Washcloth

Ode to a purple washcloth in the second-floor shower
(First in a series of poetry on living in a co-op community)

O my purple washcloth, where art thou now?
Once again I leave you hanging high
High above my head, on the shower door
Out of sight, out of mind
in the morning rush.

You are not large of stature, unmissable
like the purple towel
You are not a risk for much embarrassment
like left-behind underpants
No, you are mostly benign
and too often thus you suffer my neglect

Hours later you are lying there
And I, unawares
Go to use the toilet and look up;
there you are
where I left you;
Memory jogged, I bring you home

Only to lose you again the next day.

Le Anne
(owner of a set of purple bath linens)