give yourself wholly

The Un-Preached Sermon

2010-12-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

So I didn't get to preach on the day after Christmas--imagine, 3 whole inches of snow in Charlotte! : /

However, I thought my manuscript would make a nice post for the Beatitudes Society blog, so here it is:

Back to the North Pole? I Don't Think So!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hunger Blog

2010-11-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

Hi all--if anyone is still out there. I've been absolutely terrible about posting--I hate that a whole month has gone by but it has been one heck of a busy semester. I hope I can post a little more significantly over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, but for now, here's the link to my latest blog for the Beatitudes Society:

Hunger blog

Don't Be a Sheep

2010-10-11T15:06:00.002-04:00

Check out my latest blog post for the Beatitudes Society:

Beatitudes Blog

how fast you were going

2010-10-09T16:18:00.000-04:00

i didn't realize how much i missed fall break last year. last year, of course, i only had class three days a week and had 10 hours less of work/internship a week. this year, with my weekly schedule planned down to the minute, it feels really great to take a moment to breathe.

last night i flew into jacksonville, FL, and am currently sitting in the living room of my dad's new house here. we walked 5 blocks down to the beach this morning and strolled along in the surf and sunshine for a couple miles. i slept solidly last night, had a delicious lunch earlier today, and now i'm sitting on the sofa watching unc play clemson and we're up by 7.

i also took a shower this morning in the master bath and enjoyed the warm spray of eight shower heads. it was rather glorious.

the last 18 hours or so have brought a welcome sigh of relief. but now i'm sitting here, in front of this football game, and i feel so guilty for having 3 hours to spend just watching it. so now i'm blogging, and i have a novel sitting on the couch next to me. i'm also planning to run upstairs and get my book bag to see if there's any light reading i can get done for school next week. i've gotten so good at doing multiple things at once that i can't do just one thing, especially one thing that is completely leisurely. and that's fine--i enjoy being busy and keeping myself engaged on multiple levels. what's not fine is that i feel guilty about it. i should be able to watch my first football game of the season without feeling the eyes of my book bag staring down my back.

i think a lot of it, too, is weighing the benefits of taking a complete break for 3 or 4 days and then making up for it later, or instead trying to balance the work throughout the course of the week. maybe it's just that i'd rather not make myself miserable with work and sleep deprivation later.

another thing i don't like about being so busy is watching the weeks slip by and egging them on towards weekends and breaks. i really prefer to savor every day, but when you're going, going, going, from one end of the day to another--it all slips by with a woosh that leaves your hair blowing in its breeze. suddenly another semester will be gone and my time at candler will be half over.

wow, it's funny how slowing down can make you realize how fast you were going. here's to a weekend at something of a a slower pace.

multitasking

2010-09-27T23:07:00.000-04:00

ah, a spare moment! how few and far between these so quickly become.

the end of september is almost upon us and i find myself wondering where the time has gone. i have two midterms next week. i turn 25 in less than a month. the season has (technically) changed and fall break is only two weeks away.

the pace to get to this point has been frantic. it turns out what they say about second year at Candler is true--it is chaotically busy. and, as with life in general, there are always things that "come up." take last week, for example. i had to drive to and from Charlotte in a 24-hour period. that's eight hours in the car, mind you, some of which were spent listening to the New Testament on cd--a graduate degree cannot be achieved without high expertise in multitasking, if you didn't know.

it was really good to see my mom, though. and i had a great appointment with the UMC conference psychologist for my assessment for ministry. i also went to the DMV and made it out of there in an hour with a renewed license and my wallet $32 lighter. the DMV is such a funny place--strangely equalizing: people from all walks of life sitting in the same sticky chairs, tapping our toes with the same impatience, resting our foreheads against the same eyesight-testing machine.

luckily, the DMV wasn't the highlight of my week, but i can, indeed, pick the moment that was: this weekend i went on a first Date! and yes, that is Date with a capital 'D'...because he brought me flowers and didn't let go of my hand all night. he took me to a wonderful restaurant and suggested fried green tomatoes as an appetizer (win!). we went to an art museum and he kissed me in an empty elevator. and i am hopeful that this was the first Date of many.

and in between dates and trips home, there is this thing called school. this good thing that can be so overwhelming and so enriching all at once. sometimes it feels like i am jumping through hoops to earn my degree, while other moments bring profound theological insight and soul-defining, ontological clarity. and then sometimes, like tonight, i am reading articles that i just don't know what to do with, because someone is comparing the Holy Spirit to placenta. yes, you read correctly: placenta.

just another day in the life of this seminarian. and tomorrow i get to do it all over again.

taking the pulpit

2010-09-12T22:42:00.000-04:00

it is no small thing to ascend the stairs behind a pulpit.

i walked up those two maroon-carpeted steps today for the first time at Haygood. and i shook with something other than nerves. if i was quaking for any reason, it was for the fear of God--the good kind--and my vast unworthiness to approach such a lectern and stand before the people of God . yet it is my calling to be there all the same. taking the pulpit is a privilege of the highest regard--imagine when I'm not just reading the words of Scripture, but preaching them! what an amazing thing to be called upon to do--truly a sacred task.

my voice was one thing that did not waver or falter (even as i questioned my decision to wear heels on those steps!). the first thing i did as liturgist was read from the Hebrew Bible as the opening collect. there is a power and an authority that flows from the thousands of years of tradition in those words, a power to which i am privileged to lend my voice--in this time, in this language, in this context, for these people. Hear, O Israel! Shema, Y'Israel! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad.

Indeed, it was the Shema that I was asked to read. This is the text that nearly brought me to tears when we sang it in Hebrew at the Shabbat service I attended earlier this summer. This is the text that is at the core of the Jewish faith, the text, too, that Christian children know from Vacation Bible School songs, the text that has initiated in me the practice of writing reminders of God's love for me on my inner wrists, the text that led me to hang the cross I received from my church upon graduating high school on the upper door frame in my room--a living reminder of the faith I carry whether I'm in my room or without.

it is no small thing to read these words. and as I did, I was reminded of the first time I ever read Scripture in church. as part of my sixth grade confirmation class, we each were required to read in big church. and though I didn't know really anything of its context at the time, I still remember that my text as sixth grade liturgist was Isaiah 6. it is poignant now, to think of reading this famous call narrative, not knowing then of the call I myself would come to answer. and like Isaiah, still even today as I walked up to the pulpit, I felt the truth of the words, "woe to me, I am a woman of unclean lips!"

yet we know God's M.O. in these call narratives: prophet complains, God offers reassurance. eventually we might get it, God--we will never be worthy of the tasks you call us to do. but still you want us. you cleanse our lips and put words in our mouths.

words are powerful things. proclaiming the ancient words of Scripture is one thing that we can nearly do without conflict or question (though the interpretation of these words is a different matter entirely). but the other words we employ--how important they can be! today I got to stand and lift the offering plate up before the altar as we sang the doxology; thus, for the first time I stood directly beside my pastor as we sang these words. in the past few months, I've taken up the practice of singing "praise God..." for each stanza in lieu of "praise him.." in the second and third iterations (for my thoughts on why, click here). It feels like a quiet little rebellion that really means something to me, but that I can do without making church-folk too upset (that I will save for a future sermon on such issues!). But today, I was so hyper-aware of my body position and my place of prominence in front of the congregation that I lapsed into the version of memory and went ahead and said "praise him." But my pastor, she said the "praise Gods!" She was doing it, too! This woman, who has to be 30-40 years older than me, was also promoting this little theological correction in her own worship, as I have started to do in mine. What hope!

Some other words I have been encouraged by today were not ones intoned in my church, but in the Methodist worship service just up the street. I heard from two friends who attend that they read the Qu'ran from that pulpit today. How timely, how prophetic! It gives me great hope to know that churches are taking risks of love and choosing to promote peace instead of hate. Though our attention-hungry Florida friend may be one of the very few that actually promote hate in an explicit form, I am convinced that choosing to remain silent is similarly detrimental to the witness of Christ's gospel in the world. Thank God, then, that the words of the Qu'ran were read today in a Methodist church!

While these experience of Sunday morning worship have been such concentrated little bursts of ministerial formation, I was reminded today, too, that the awesome thing about the kingdom of God is that it is everywhere among us. I can have church while I'm listening to Ingrid Michaelson in my car, because she sings the songs of my soul. I can have church while I'm sitting with one of my best friends outside at Starbucks, and we're talking about our frustrations with ourselves and with the church and with seminary. We say that maybe it's okay if she decides to someday walk away from the faith of her upbringing, that faith that was once so sure but now seems distant--it's okay because it's a part of the journey. And as we say those things, God is so tangibly near to us that I can taste it in the air (and I pray that she, too, will feel God again, soon, close enough to taste and feel and sense). And there we are, having church, just being friends and loving one another.

Emily Dickinson has a poem that talks about the worship that happens everywhere, all around us. Some might use such a poem as an excuse to not come to Sunday morning worship--a trend that is becoming all too real in our society. I think we need to be in church on Sunday mornings, worshiping God corporately and coming before God's presence with a bit of fear and trembling every now and again. But it is good, too, to see the God-force all around us. It is a reminder that yes, the pulpit is a sacred space of intoning the words of God before the gathered assembly, but (as any good Methodist will tell you) the world is our parish, and the words we say and the God we meet in our everyday moments, with each breath in and out, with those words we also can preach.

what is it, then, that I am saying?

f.y.i.

2010-09-11T17:34:00.000-04:00

what i learned in seminary, year two, week two:

Jesus is the cheese

Hellenism is McDonald's

training wheels

2010-09-06T11:35:00.001-04:00

yesterday was my first morning at Haygood UMC as official intern. having signed up this past Wednesday to be on the Sunday School roster as a floating substitute teacher, i received my first assignment as such with about 36 hours to spare. i excitedly accepted the task of leading the Fellowship Class, the oldest age bracket of Sunday Schoolers at Haygood, with the promise that a lesson plan would be forwarded to me via email.

as it turned out, the curriculum book stopped short of September, so i was next asked to come up with a lesson on the fly. no problem, really, but i have never attended this particular class before and felt slightly unsettled about teaching them without having met any of them. and then there was the added fact that this class, i was told, doesn't like interactive learning. so basically, i needed to prepare a lecture/sermon as my lesson.

what else is work in ministry but the call to dive right in, whether you are fully prepared with swimsuit and floaties or not?

so i joined the Fellowship class and was privileged to deliver a message to Haygood's oldest members. i felt so very humbled to try and speak about God to these 80 and 90 year old folks who know so much more of life than i do. but that's just what i did. they were so excited to welcome me there in the first place, and after Buddy, the class leader, led us in a few hymns and announcements, i took the podium. we looked at Psalm 62 and reflected on waiting for God to speak. i shared about my brief stint in Kentucky and how that failed experience led me, ultimately, to Candler. i sang "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" (because i love it when preachers sing in their sermons). i cross-referenced the Beatitudes and Mary's Magnificat and Job. i think i pounded the podium a time or two. and, as i closed with a reflection and prayer on 1 Kings 19, i felt coursing within my being the very presence of the living God and felt confident that God had answered my opening prayer to speak through me. it felt like one of those anointing moments, those times of reminder that yes, this is what you're supposed to be doing. preaching feels real good, y'all, even if this was something of a training wheels experience.

after the class ended, i robed-up and joined the choir for the first time. i am so thrilled to be singing again, and thankful to be able to serve in this way. the opening hymn for the service was "Here I Am, Lord" which is basically a call narrative song (a la Isaiah 6 or 1 Samuel 3). this is one of the hymns i remember from the church of my childhood. and the lyrics really just moved within me yesterday, simple as they are:

here I am, Lord/is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord/if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

the whole morning was a reaffirmation, a reminder of the path that i am on, of the call that i have answered. it was also an occasion of thanksgiving for the grace of God in loving me and using me despite my proneness to wander. but the voice of God calling in the night seems to be coming clearer and clearer as i progress through my time at Candler. i am confident, too, that my experience at Haygood will be incredibly formative in shaping me further towards that call. now, i know that every Sunday morning will not leave me feeling anointed and filled with the Spirit, as i felt yesterday, but there is so much space for growth in the course of this year, and i am eager to embark upon this journey. by the end of it, i pray and trust that my training wheels will be removed and I'll start pedaling on, steady and sure.

****

on another note entirely, remember when i said a couple of posts ago that i was thankful to stay friends with this guy with whom i have recently broken off any romantic inclinations? that plan has failed. after a week of spending lots of good time together, i found myself crying on the side of the road at 2am as a party that we were both attending began to wind down. i mean, i let out this cathartic sobbing, set off by i-don't-know-what, that showed me that being his friend right now just isn't possible. and that hurts so much--though i know it will be less painful in the long run. but i've just spent 3 months apart from this guy, who, at the core of our relationship, amidst all this unnecessary drama and these confused signals and expectations, is my best friend. i missed him for those 3 months, and now i have to impose another period of separation--that sucks. but, as the fray remind us, "sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same." for now. but here's what i am thankful for: friends who will let you cry on their shoulders, roommates who will come pick you up in the middle of the night, friends who bring you lattes and muffins and listen to you talk it all through. as i pick up the pieces of this ridiculous mess, i'm so thankful for the people in my life who've stood beside me and brushed my hair back as i've cried.

i've got these two nasty, deep scars on my arms from my crash-landing after riding the plastic tub down the staircase (at patrick's house, no less). i've never had rug burns this deep before, and they hurt, they won't stop hurting. and they're ugly. these burns have been these odd little physical tokens of the emotional hurt i've been going through. i acquired them from a shared, fleeting moment of joy, laughter, and pleasure. the crash landing was painful, but it took some time before the injuries fully manifested. and now i just hurt, no matter how many band-aids i use to try and cover up the cuts. i can forget about the pain for a time, but then i'll bump against something abrasive that makes it smart and sting anew. and there will be scars.

just like my skin is fragile and soft, so is the shell of my emotional being. i wear my heart on my sleeve. i give of myself wholly and fully in relationship .i trust. i invest and i care. so it hurts that much more when someone seemingly goes back on that trust, or can't return the emotional investment. that's nobody's fault really, especially not here, with him. he does care for me and hasn't tried to hurt me. it's just the risk you run when you love (in the platonic sense) so boldly.

like so many scars on our arms are our disappointed hearts.

free fallin'

2010-09-02T19:36:00.000-04:00

i did something completely absurd last night.

i borrowed a big plastic tub from a friend last may when i moved my stuff out of my house and into his (empty) room for the summer. i finally bought a craig's list bookshelf last weekend and was able to unload the books out of this tub. last night i returned the tub. begin scene.

patrick [standing at top of stairs]: you know what would be awesome? to ride in this tub down the stairs.

whitney: that would be amazing!

patrick: yea it would. [begins to walk downstairs with tub still in hands].

whitney: hey, wait! i was serious.

patrick: no way.

whitney [takes off shoes and gets in tub]. let's do this.

jess: here, let me get you a pillow to cushion your landing.

and with one swift push, a nanosecond-long ride down the uncarpeted staircase, a catapult-like ejection from the plastic tub, and a brief moment of flying headlong through the air, i found myself belly-up on the carpet, laughing hysterically and nursing a couple of serious rug burns on my elbows. and also one gimpy foot.

but in a week full of syllabi and schedules, readings and routines--it felt good to do something ridiculous, to scream and soar, to laugh uncontrollably with good friends. suddenly i was a little kid again, riding down the stairs (carpeted--lame) of our house in a sleeping bag (not nearly as fast as plastic). i was a teenager spending a summer's week in arkansas, jumping off the high bluffs into the lake below. and, as patrick was glad to point out, i was again the 24-year-old woman riding the upside-down fair ride with screams of sheer terror and delight.

things are busy. i've already burned the midnight oil to finish up a paper and it's only week one. it's been a long week one. i hope i can remember to keep taking time out to laugh and to not take myself so seriously. hopefully, next time, with a few less rug burns.

rhythms

2010-08-29T18:05:00.000-04:00

there is nothing more satisfying than the pound-pound, pound-pound of your sneakers against the pavement after you've managed to pull yourself out of bed for a morning run. the steady rhythm of running is unchanging and solid, no matter the pace, even as your breath skips and drags in syncopated time.

these little rhythms of life are everywhere. i love finding them, hidden, and discovering a new musicality in the everyday and the mundane. it's like some great symphony that we ourselves are playing, only so rarely do we realize it.

i was babysitting on friday and we spent the whole morning snuggled up in blankets reading and singing together. em had picked out several dr. seuss books. it took me a minute to get back into the swing of reading his rhymes. i tripped over my own tongue more than once before finally finding the rhythm of the words. and as the poetry began to feel like singing, i read faster and with greater pizazz, emphasizing just the right syllables, so that the girls would be lulled by the rhyming lines, able to truly experience the beautiful chaos of dr. seuss.

and then we really did sing. thank goodness i have a repertoire of Disney princess songs in my arsenal of audition pieces. i can be Belle or Sleeping Beauty or Ariel on command (and with the red tint to my hair,i can just about fancy myself to be Ariel). i'm also starting to introduce them to my other favorite princesses: Eliza and Eponine and Laurie.

but more beautiful than all of that is one-year-old Sydney's budding version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

rhythms of sound and lyric are not, of course, the only ones. more important are the rhythms of people, of lives. as the opening of the semester approaches, those familiar patterns and routines of graduate student life creep in: alarms are set, books purchased, lunches packed, highlighters made ready. the manic pace of the past week has foreshadowed the coming onslaught of syllabi, papers, unending pages to read, deadlines to meet, (not to mention) relationships to upkeep, exercise to squeeze in, sleep. it's hectic and insane, and somehow it feels normal and manageable--despite the seeming lack of control, i am still in control. i am the one juggling, the one smoothing the harmony of the different components: class and school work, church internship, student government, babysitting, another potential job on campus, time for me and time for my friends. i'd also love to serve on a worship planning committee for chapel services and get involved with two other school organizations: Sacred Worth and Social Concerns Network. maybe the creation care keepers, too. my approach looks to be: go until you hit tilt.

but coming back to school doesn't just mean a return to chaos. it also means a return to friends. i love the simple rhythm of an afternoon spent with my girlfriends, conversation easy and light, laughing and singing along to the radio. i love knowing people and trusting them, being myself and sharing life. these are the rhythms, the ones of people, that change so often, that come and go, but run throughout life like a sturdy bass line. these are the rhythms that keep us singing even when we've had a rough week, that come back to us after a long time quiet, that can fill the emptiness and the silence--or rather, remind us of the great beauty that is life. for there is Another to whose beat we dance.

for each other

2010-08-23T20:12:00.000-04:00

truth: breaking up sucks, no matter how amiable it is.

(want to know what else sucks? having another guy, whom one BARELY knows and has no interest in, approach said ex for advice on how to best approach freshly single self, because all previous attempts at interaction via FACEBOOK have been duly ignored. bah. )

BUT, this post aims to be about the incredible value of relationships. and you know what good relationships require? vulnerability. and what does vulnerability risk? hurt.

(this feels vaguely like some para-biblical version of Romans 5:4. i'm channeling paul, i never can help it.)

i'm wallowing in a bit of hurt right now, but have also been marinating in it for the last 3 months of my summer. and those three months, we both think, is what saved our friendship, though our opinions about being morethanfriends have come to differ. i would rather have a friendship with someone whom i care about deeply and who has not-so-intentionally hurt me than to push him away and lose not only a dating relationship but a really good friendship, too.

but it still sucks. for a little while, it will suck. end of story.

i've been doing a lot of thinking about relationships--about how we are deeply relational people. this fact has been thrown into distinctive relief by my return to atlanta. despite the community that i built during my time in DC, it feels so good to be home and among the people whose lives with mine are now interwoven. i spent friday evening with several good friends, and all night long, we just sat around, first on the porch, then in the living room, talking for hours. that's not always the definition of a party or a get-together--sometimes there's more, but there's never less than that. we spend time with people because we want to be with them. the simplicity of this gathering reminded me of that.

we also had a German exchange student join us for the evening. i wondered, as he sat with us, whether this was weird for him, granted, it was likely a bit awkward because we've all known one another for at least a year, and he is just beginning to make friends here, but i wondered more so whether this was a cultural thing or not. did he think we, young, fun-loving twentysomething Americans, would more likely be spending friday night out at a club or bar, where talking still happens but not quite as organically or intimately? or perhaps it was a glimpse into the closeness of our community, a promise of great relationships to come for him. i hope he felt welcomed into it all.

i also love all the new people i've been meeting--just 2 full weeks of being back, and i've already met and started to know more Candler peers--in my polity class and in the C3 (student government) events that i've been attending. and now, starting tomorrow, i'll be volunteering at Candler's new student orientation and meeting a whole class of new people. expanding the community is exciting and promising. what a neat phase of life, to be meeting so many people of such diverse backgrounds. hopefully, working in the church, this constant renewal of community will continue, with no less the degree of tight-knit-ness than we have among school colleagues.

renewal brings freshness,yes, but it also requires work. it demands change, a shedding of one skin to grow another.

all this to say, thank God for relationships. for the people who come into our lives for only a season and are gone all too soon; for those who hurt us and yet remind us of the need for forgiveness and of the incredible ability for healing; for lifelong friends; for "small-world" moments and connections; for roommates, for family. for messiness and brokenness and wholeness and beauty. for each other.

roach's last stand, etc.

2010-08-13T11:54:00.000-04:00

i've been back in Atlanta nearly a week now, and my experience has been a perfect mix of newness and familiarity.

my new apartment is fabulous. FAB.U.LOUS...despite the two larger-than-average bugs i've had to squash. one left me with a jammed finger (roaches, i believe, may survive the apocalypse. i had to give him an extra good whack). the other was such a satisfying smash that amanda had to get out the wet wipes to clean up the scene of the attack. pesky bugs aside, we're feeling much more settled. not everything is assembled, hung up, or even purchased yet, but it's becoming home. my room is light and airy and spacious. for the first time in my nearly 25 years, i have a walk-in closet and my own bathroom. these things certainly aren't necessities, but it's rather nice to spread out a bit. yesterday we had our basic cable and internet installed, we found our mailbox, and i've finally figured out the right combination of buttons to press to open the front gate to our complex. home sweet home, indeed.

i think what makes the apartment extra-fab is my roommate. sure, it's only our first week together (and fall semester hasn't yet begun), but it feels like a perpetual slumber party :) talking and laughing nonstop; watching gilmore girls, grocery shopping and cooking together; decorating our space.

one week of class down now, too. it feels really good to be back at Candler--very natural and comfortable. it feels good to be with my peers and colleagues, to learn, maybe even to crack the books again. UMC polity is alternately encouraging and overwhelming, but we have a very knowledgeable and kind instructor, and despite the 8am start time, i'm glad to be taking it.

only bad thing about the week so far--got stopped for speeding yesterday. thankfully, it was only a warning. 10 over. going down a hill. these cops were sitting at the bottom of the hill, around a corner, and just pulling over car after car that came by. there were literally 3 other cars lined up on the side of the road that i pulled behind. i suppose i am thankful for the lesson that this road i will be driving down frequently is, in fact, a 35mph zone. it's still an icky feeling. but i certainly don't need to be paying for a ticket when there are a hundred other expenses involved with moving into a new place and starting a new semester.

also, still looking forward to a lot of my closest friends moving back to town. but all in all, a good week one back home in ATL. celebrating with lunch at the Flying Biscuit this afternoon :)

small, small world

2010-08-09T17:55:00.000-04:00

though i should be reading about United Methodist polity right now, i wanted to give a brief update: i'm back in Atlanta and (partially) settled into my new apartment! we are still waiting for an installation appointment for our internet, so i may be a bit out of touch between times spent at various wi-fi hotspots. but i am having a blast living with Amanda already, our apartment is cute even though half of our stuff is scattered in boxes and piles, and i survived my polity class at 8am this morning!

CRAZY story i have to share: today at the post office i was standing behind a woman who looked very familiar. i finally recognized her as the mother of an INFANT i babysat in high school. little abby, who was 6 months old when i first started watching her, is NINE and started the fourth grade today. i feel old. i didn't get to see abby, but met her youngest sister, who was born after i left for college and stopped sitting for this family. but now, we're neighbors again--they just moved into the morningside neighborhood a week ago, which is right up the road from my new place. we traded phone numbers and i hope i can spend some time babysitting for them all over again! i LOVE moments that make the world feel this small.

okay, i really need to start this polity reading. but i'm so excited to be back in atlanta, back at candler, and back with my wonderful community of friends!

there is a great hope

2010-07-29T22:52:00.001-04:00

yesterday my Beatitudes Society summer cohort met for the last time. confession: i'm not doing so well with goodbyes this week--and i have a lot of them to say. i have met (and reconnected) with so many amazing people this summer and they all have beautiful souls that inspire me to live a little better myself.

but despite the bittersweet moments of our last time together, i was overwhelmed with a sense of great hope amidst our closing conversations. it suddenly dawned on me that we are the bearers of this good news, this Gospel message. and there are people who desperately need to hear it. as Christ's very ambassadors, it is our call to declare this hope to the world--a world that is suffering not only from hunger, poverty, environmental crises, corruption, (and the list goes on) but that also suffers from a diluted and perverted Christianity, from irresponsible leadership, and from strife between faiths that should be working together for peace. in all this--there is still a great hope. i think it has been buried; it has been hidden and people aren't hearing it and seeing it anymore.

which means we stand at a great juncture, with a great responsibility. we have a message of freedom. and if we can commit to being faithful to that message, despite the long, hard, uphill battle it may take to proclaim it truthfully, i think there can be a turning back, in our society and in our generation, towards life. there can be a freshness, a renewal, a light.

we have this message. what, now, are we going to do with it?

i began this reflection last night and was trying to pull my thoughts together without much success. but then this morning, as i was working on my final evaluation for the Beatitudes Society, i reviewed my application to the program that i submitted earlier this spring. i think my own words, before any of my experiences and relationships from the summer came to pass, best sum up how i felt during this dawning of hope yesterday:

In my personal and academic studies and spiritual disciplines, I have been led to vastly question contemporary Christianity's relationship to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Radicality has been lost in complacency and prosperity. We have neglected the message that speaks to society's downtrodden and have replaced it with a message that supports the gross injustices of an overtly wealthy society. We have become our time's Egypt, Babylon, or Rome with our false gods of patriotism, prosperity, and comfort . It scares me that the Gospel message has been deeply disguised underneath a cultural Christianity that carries little of the weight of salvific impact that Jesus intended to convey. I am still exploring what it means for me to live and practice as a true disciple of Christ, but I am convinced that it should be something different, something more than what so many are experiencing in American Christianity. It is possible to work towards a more genuine, progressive Christianity, but it is not easy and requires a definite pushing of boundaries and stepping outside of comfort zones. I have already experienced what it feels like to rock the boat within a more traditional setting and have at times been neglected instead of encouraged. There is a long road ahead, but it has been encouraging to know that there is a movement of people walking it together. When our goal is to recapture the essence of loving one another by emphasizing compassion, peace, and justice, what, in the end, can overcome us?

just call me alfalfa

2010-07-26T20:26:00.000-04:00

the good news: i am growing new hair! no, seriously. i have these little sprigs of fresh, never-been-seen-before hair growing right on the crown of my head. the bad news: peach fuzz is cute on babies. that's when most people grow their hair. it's not so cute when the majority of your hair is down to your shoulders and this one little patch is sticking up like somebody took scissors to it at a slumber party.

however, despite my newfound affinity to one Alfafa of Little Rascals fame, i am thankful for my new baby hairs. sometimes, it's the little things that put the sunshine in life.

but it's also the big things.

on friday night i saw the movie Agora. i think Rachel Weisz is divine and was intrigued by the story of a woman philosopher, Hypatia, who actively studied and taught in Alexandria during the 4th century. but (as is usually the case when i venture outside of the merry sunshine and rainbows of romantic comedies) i got a little more than i bargained for with this film. it was a deeply religious movie that highlighted the violent conflict between the Christians, the pagans, and the Jews living in Alexandria. let's just say that no one was portrayed as the "good guys" in the story, but the Christians may have fared worst. i can appreciate that if it reflects historical accuracy--no need to sugarcoat things, certainly.

however, my old friend 1 Timothy 2 reared its ugly head in this movie. spoiler alert: Hypatia dies violently. and the movie, at least, credits the cause of that plot to the reading of 1 Timothy. a tyrannical bishop proclaims this Scripture in church and accuses Hypatia of witchcraft because she has the Roman prefect under her influence and is decidedly non-religious and, of course, a woman. her voice is then silenced by the blind fear and merciless violence of a Christian mob.

who knows if this particular Scripture was actually proclaimed against Hypatia. but, i think it is safe to say that it has been used against plenty of other women. i am so thankful that i stand at a time and in a tradition that ordains women to ministry, that respects women as teachers, that defines our worth above and beyond childbearing, that allows us to learn in top seminaries, and encourages us in our call to serve God. how many before me were denied that right? how many were silenced, locked up, or killed because they wanted to pursue the source of this very fire that burns inside of me, too? i am so thankful. but it's a battle not yet won. and we can't just "highlight" some of paul's choice words in black permanent marker and be rid of them. but we have come an awful long way.

another dawning moment of thankfulness came yesterday afternoon. i went to tour the franciscan monastery and gardens of which i had heard high praise. my new friend shannon claimed it as her favorite spot in all of d.c., so i joined her and her partner aaron for a visit. let me say firstly that there is an undying seminarian-nerdy-bookworm type that lives inside of me, and, on occasions like yesterday's tour, she pokes incessantly at the inside of my brain and begs to be let loose of the polite, smiling girl in which she resides to wreck havoc on unsuspecting tour guides and the like who aren't paid enough to face her down in arguments over dates, biblical quotes, and geographic references. i keep her at bay. but just barely sometimes.

anyhow, this particular franciscan monastery is called the monastery of the holy land in america, which means that the chapels within the church building are modeled after famous sites in the holy land--holy sepulchre, church of the annunciation, church of the nativity, and so on. the altar canopy was modeled after the one at St. Peter's in Rome, and there are even "catacombs" down in the lower church modeled after the ones in Rome. it's a beautiful, beautiful place and i really would like to go back to the gardens when temperatures aren't soaring above 100. yet even during our short visit, i was overwhelmed again and again with gratitude for my opportunity, at only 24 years of age, to have seen the majority of the original versions of these replicas. i am so blessed. there are a million more places and things that i want to see, but even if i never travel another day in my life, i will still have seen more of the world than the vast majority of the population. especial thanks go to the mother who nurtured, encouraged, and supported such an acute sense of travel and adventure and a love for reckless exploration.

i have but 4 days left to recklessly explore DC! the highlights of my dwindling to-do list: attend a congressional hearing on the Millennium Development Goals, watch the Nationals take on the Braves, and kayak on the Potomac river!

Romans 12:21

2010-07-22T20:34:00.000-04:00

i do not remember a time when my stomach has turned so violently just from reading about a particular current issue. but i literally feel sick as i read about the protest by some Americans over the planned community center and mosque near ground zero in NYC.

what astounds me most is that our nation's leaders are vocally promoting this discrimination. do we not remember the principles upon which our nation was founded? religious freedom. people came here to escape the persecution they were facing because of their religious beliefs. how is this any different? how can we claim to be the land of the free and stand behind our first amendment rights when people are openly and publicly decrying the building of this mosque?

it infuriates me that people want to equate Islam with terrorism. that is stereotyping in its worst and most blatant form. we cannot allow ourselves to associate the actions of the very few with the intentions of the much larger group with which they identified themselves.

i understand that people are up in arms because of the new mosque's proximity to Ground Zero. however, i think we would better honor the victims by graciously welcoming the building of the mosque. if we reduce ourselves to an attitude of hate, we are acting out of the same irrational fear that motivated these terrorists. what have we learned from this terrible tragedy if we cannot choose to act differently ourselves?

Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.

this is our chance to show the world that we are not ignorant, selfish Americans. we can live up to the ideals on which we claim to stand. it is my deepest prayer that our Muslim brothers and sisters, especially those here in this country, will hear the voices that rise in support of them. that they will know that there are people who think it is sacrilegious to protest the building of a space of worship--in NYC, in Tennessee, anywhere. i

i think we--people---are more than this. i believe we have the capacity to love more than we have to hate. i believe we best express our faith in God by expressing our faith in each other. i pray that this situation will be peacefully resolved, in a way that doesn't involve the Muslim community feeling pressured to back down. i pray that our country will elect and support leaders that don't actively promote discrimination. i pray that we can learn from the past as we live in the present and look towards the future.

love wins.

i'm ready for my closeup

2010-07-19T21:48:00.003-04:00

did you know that i have graced two magazine covers? my mother proudly displays both on the wall right next to her front door, in the foyer.

i also gave an interview to the local news when i was in tenth grade. i won a writing contest for my school district, one that they hold every year for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. as a winner, i was asked to read my selection at the city's MLK Day service, along with my elementary and middle school counterparts. as we left, a reporter grabbed me to ask a few questions for the evening news. she sat me down and began asking questions. i thought the whole thing was just prep work--she never told me when the camera started rolling. all of the sudden, she was thanking me for my time. later i watched the footage on tv.

so unless you'd also like to count my time writing the academics beat for the South Meck High School yearbook, that about sums up my media experience.

however, after today, i will be ready when the world wants to hear my opinion.

the beatitudes society gave us the amazing opportunity to participate in a media training day. the workshop was presented by auburn theological seminary. its goal was to equip us, as faith leaders, to effectively give interviews (for tv, print, radio) that communicate a particular message and faithfully represent the organizations with which we affiliate ourselves.

okay, so clearly, right now, i am not fighting off the reporters with a stick. but we're also not necessarily talking about only NPR or CNN here. local news shows and papers are also a platform for communication. and people care what religious leaders have to say, especially on hot button issues. and, religious leader or not, we all know how one media misfire can ruin a whole career.

but having this kind of media training isn't just about making a career and a name for myself. it's about redefining Christianity in the public eye.it's about being relevant. it's about being a positive voice in the faith community and showing people that Glenn Beck isn't the only one who has something to say. we are the ones we've been waiting for, our trainer reminded us--how poignantly related to the point in my last post about making choices and living intentionally (and prophetically) right now!

we have a notebook full of great tips for preparing messages/statements and giving interviews. but the bulk of our day was spent actually composing a core message for a mock interview, and then giving that brief interview on camera. i chose to speak about child hunger. we were to have three supporting points for our core message: one religious, one social, and one hopeful. within the framework of those three there should be scriptural references, personal stories, and statistics. i planned a web with points about feeding the five thousand and manna, about food waste and school lunch programs, about bread's belief that we can end hunger in our time, about tax credits. the personal story i decided to include came from my time with YouthWorks last summer--we had a boy in Kids Club who ate the craft he had made out of a raw potato because he was hungry.

then you get in front of the camera, and try to remember it all: to repeat your core message, to lead with a story, to deflect off-topic leading questions, to smile and not fidget, to make eye contact...and (specific critique for yours truly) to not call the interviewer "sir." ("but we're from geawwwwgia," i retorted in mine and my fellow southerner's defense, doing my best miss scarlett impression.)

it was challenging, but exhilarating! our trainer did an expert job of trying to throw us off our message (as real reporters are wont to do), so it was such great training for internalizing and intimately knowing what it is that you have to say to the world, and then making sure it gets said: keep your own agenda, don't say anything that you don't want to say, be in control, be confident.

so if the ajc or the post ever give me a call, i'll know what to do. until then, i'll practice being articulate for my professors and for my umc candidacy interviewers. knowing what to say and how to say well will probably come in pretty handy then, too, i'd imagine. gotta pass seminary and ordination boards before becoming a bigwig, highly sought-after, darling-of-the-media religious leader, you know. it's all about keeping those ducks in a row :)

she headed out to change a few things

2010-07-18T20:46:00.004-04:00

i discovered something on friday: the national mall is much like the upper quad at UNC.

okay, okay, you might be fair to call me a UNC snob if i was insinuating that silent sam or even the old well are monuments of comparable stature to those that line the mall. and franklin street, i suppose, is no pennsylvania avenue.

but i get that same feeling on the mall, crossing precisely between the capitol and the washington monument, watching families taking pictures and friends playing frisbee--the same feeling i always got when walking from the old well down to franklin. the upper quad is the location of my nostalgia for UNC--nostalgia that i experienced even while i was still a student there. it was my "i love carolina" quad. i feel that love more intensely there: under the poplars, just past the azaleas, atop the worn brick walkways. the mall, in a similar way, has helped awaken my fondness for this city.

(a fondness that persists despite the unrelenting heat, the security guards that condemn favorite water bottles to the trash can, and the clenching jaws that are the doors of metro cars, which prey on mis-minded limbs.)

and here i am, only two weeks to go. and even though it's gone by really fast, i'm ready to head back to atlanta. i miss my life there. and i'm anxious to move into my new place, get settled in, tackle august term, assume my new leadership roles.

not to mention the task of reorienting my life and experience at candler around the things i've seen, learned, and done this summer.

the time is upon me in my life (young, transitional, largely unattached) to start making choices and decisions that will directly influence how i live. i am ready to be intentional about how i live so that my lifestyle and worldview will accurately reflect my values, beliefs, concerns, and opinions: what i know now about domestic and world hunger, what i know about advocacy, what i know about my body and what it means to me to be healthy and active. what i've learned from the people i've met. how am i going to choose to live? how am i going to frame my understanding of ministry? what am i going to lift up to my classmates at Emory?

let me ground this in a bit more specificity--one thing i've been thinking about is food (working at Bread, this should hardly come as a surprise). i think i'd like to commit to buying and consuming a more sustainable food supply: buying local, going to the farmer's market, eating vegetables out of the garden. along with that comes practices of composting, eating community meals, changing my habits of eating out, cutting back on caffeine and drinking more water. it's absolutely amazing to ponder the implications of such a choice: healthier self, stronger community, care for the earth--and the very worship of God that is inherent in all these things. the good news is, i think i have the community in place around me that will support me and journey with me, should i choose to start making these transitions and commitments.

but as i am inspired and dream big about being so intentional in my own life (and by association, i strongly believe, my ministry), i am reminded about my tendency towards idealism. i expressed my frustrations to carter (my supervisor at Bread) in a wonderful conversation we shared on friday morning at work. not so much around the issue of food habits, but around a discussion of church budgeting of all things. i spent all day thursday sitting in on a consultation for the 2011 version of the Hunger Report, Bread for the World Institute's yearly publication. there was a lot of talk about country-led development in foreign aid and what that means for the relationship between donor and recipient countries. carter, in her brilliance, translated this for me into an understanding of the relationship between churches and the organizations/ministries that receive their support. working at Bread, carter is often on the receiving end of such a relationship, but has had many years on the church donor side and spoke to me as a future church leader. how can churches best manage the relationships with organizations they support? how can they be good stewards of their funding and assure that good work is actually being accomplished through the ministry of the organizations receiving money? i was really moved by her insistence on intentionality...but recognized that familiar itch of "i can do this better that i've seen it done in churches." i confessed to her that lately i've started to worry that all of these things i want to be really intentional about and good at in my ministry (preaching biblically being the primary example) may fall to the wayside as i hit the reality of ministry on the ground. once it gets out of these planning and preparing and interning stages--will i be able to stay true to the commitments i'm making to myself now? will the ideals i want to hold up--of good preaching, of community, of responsible giving, and so on---withstand the demands of full-time ministry? or will i begin to let things slide as my plate fills with responsibility?

carter gave me such good advice, i was almost at the point of tears over her genuine concern and the mentoring relationship we have developed. you've got to dream big, she said. but don't wait until some day when you're in a church--these are the decisions that you have to make now. what's more, you're already making them! intentionality can't be put off for tomorrow. and how true that my life is my ministry--i'm doing ministry at bread, at candler, and more broadly in my relationships and in the way that i live---and life doesn't start tomorrow, it is happening right now. making these important choices--whether it's about intentionality and commitment in running a church or in food habits---can and should start now. idealism is great, but it has to be grounded. dream big, then act.

i'm ready to act. i want to live in a way that matters.

my feelings may best be summed up by the words on a plaque that i bought when shopping in downtown alexandria with the two mrs. teaters (i intend to hang this in a prominent position in the new apartment):

"she packed up her potential and all she had learned, grabbed a cute pair of shoes and headed out to change a few things'"

all we can do is keep breathing

2010-07-16T14:21:00.001-04:00

i started the day with an incredibly productive attitude and looked forward to getting a lot done in the window of time after lunch (that is, right now). that energy has been zapped. i need to get out a few thoughts and reflections before i turn myself back to my work.

today at lunch a group of us watched the second half of a movie called A Crude Awakening. it is a documentary made in 2006 about our world's consumption of oil and the impending "peak" of the earth's supply of oil. bread has a "green team" that promotes awareness and discussion of environmental issues such as this.

the first half, which we watched last friday, was informative and moderately concerning. it was good food for thought and i think we all left in a contemplative spirit. the second half, however, was downright apocalyptic. when the credits began to roll, we all could only stare at one another in morbid shock. here's the movie's message in a nutshell: we've over-exploited our oil resources and we're going to run out--in our lifetime. we've built our society upon the assumption that the oil would never run out and the infrastructure just isn't there to realistically deal with such a crisis. anything we might do to help---buying hybrid cars, carpooling, conserving, reducing our carbon footprints---is too little too late.

it certainly comes as no surprise that we've been exploitative in our use of oil. but the movie's doomsday predictions were harsh and hopeless. the interviewees gave no real viable energy solutions--perhaps solar, but the development isn't currently in place and the cost is high. so do we revert to simpler lifestyles? do we fight wars over oil until we kill almost everyone off? do we wait and see what happens and then solve it or do we beg our politicians and leaders to wake up and start dealing with it now?

i'm torn between calling the film propaganda and over-exaggerated scare tactics...or actually believing it. i want to believe so i can do something about it in my own life, but that was the most depressing part of the movie--there's nothing we really can do, according to these folks. it's like watching an implosion in slow motion--and the fuse has already been lit.

they really alarmed me when they started talking about population. the exponential growth we've seen in the past couple centuries is congruent with the rise of oil. there are well over 6 billion people on this planet--this is where things really got apocalyptic--and the interviewees seemed to suggest that the earth can only viably sustain about 1.5 billion on the oil resources that remain (or that will remain once we "peak" in the next 10-20 years). okay, so what happens to all those billions of people? how is that a solution?

will people read about us in history books 1000 years from now (if the world hasn't exploded or dried up or jesus hasn't come back yet) as the oil age (comparable to the stone age, iron age, etc) that ended in some catastrophic way, resulting in a Book of Eli-esque world that had to be rebuilt from the ground up--this time without societal dependence on oil? what are we working ourselves up to here?

sorry for the heavy thoughts--i needed to get them out of my brain quickly so i can try and make myself useful on this friday afternoon. lots of other, less depressing and non-cataclysmic things have been going on--sorry, too, for being remiss on posting. hopefully i can find time to play catch up sometime this weekend.

until then, as ingrid michaelson sings, all we can do is keep breathing.

why i love metro (today)

2010-07-06T18:43:00.001-04:00

1) dozens of faces stretching upwards to find a draft from the air conditioning like flowers to the sun

2) sitting down hard on the handrail of a seat. it's a pain like no other.

3) unintentional (?) molestation before 9am

4) excellent upper arm conditioning when standing and holding onto a hand rail

5) catching the gaze of a stranger and then awkwardly trying to avoid looking at them for the rest of the ride. it's impossible not to meet eyes again.

6) when sitting in a backwards facing seat, i can close my eyes and feel like i'm on the backwards-facing car on thunder road at carowinds (especially if the conductor is new at steering the thing)

7) the hand sanitizing industry should love me. i shudder to think about what all has touched the various poles, rails, and handles.

and despite all this, i do have one complaint from the day: please, sir-sitting-behind-me, could you refrain from trimming your fingernails on public transportation? i'd hate to go home and comb your clippings out of my hair, thanks. (i guess, though, it's really no different from the droves of mexican women who use spoons to curl their eyelashes on the train. me, i save my hygiene and cosmetology for home.)

and on a completely unrelated note, why i love my candidacy mentor:

"Whitney, not only do you have a low interest in caring for others, as your interest inventory demonstrated, your psychological assessment confirms you also have a flagrant disregard for the plight of human suffering. Congratulations.”

he envisions great things for me. (and that's as yet a joke about my psych eval--i'm not taking it until next week.)

like a child

2010-07-05T13:40:00.000-04:00

there's something equalizing about fireworks. about sitting on the ground with a bunch of friends and strangers, awed and wide-eyed like children. the sensory-overload of the colors and the noise and the smoke, the people crammed together, the sweat from the day still sticky on your skin, but a cooling breeze starting to blow through. i don't know any other response than to sit in wonder at the display. it's one of the few things human-made that might begin to come close to inspiring a nature-like reverence. i love fireworks. although i think i was mostly scared of them as a child...so knowing now that the big booms are harmless helps me enjoy them like a non disaster-paranoid child might.

the display in downtown d.c. was wonderful. we sat on the steps of the lincoln memorial and watched the show in the sky above the washington monument, the lights and colors mirrored below in the reflecting pool.

almost as awesome as the fireworks were the sheer number of people there. of course, i had been warned of this by all the d.c. locals, whose advice was to avoid downtown like the plague on the fourth. but really, getting there and finding a spot was rather uneventful. it was packed, though. every inch of space on the steps in front of lincoln was covered with bodies, and we could see across to the WWII monument, where the same was the case, and presumably it was so all the way down the mall to the capitol building.

the real chaos ensued after the show was over and everyone hurried outwards. i think i actually got lucky to get on the metro only a minute after i arrived on the platform. but the line to get down the escalators and into the station was outrageous, and the car was packed full all the way back to my stop at franconia-springfield, the very end of the line. overall though, very manageable mayhem and worth it, i think.

not only was last night a reversion to child-like wonder during the fireworks display, but i also revisited my youth when i went to the neighborhood pool and swam laps earlier in the day. i just got a pass for the summer to enjoy the pool and gym where i'm living, and this was the first day i went swimming. there's lots of time to think when you're swimming in circles, and i couldn't help but think back to my days on the swim team. of the giant pixie sticks we ate at meets between our events; of the three feet of water we dove into, off of blocks. and my favorite swim team memory: the time one of my contacts fell out as i put on my goggles right before my race. my friend's mother was standing next to me in the lane as a timer. "ms. street, ms. street! can you hold this for me? my contact just popped out." i gave her my lens, swam my race down and back. when i was back at the wall where she stood, she leaned down to me in the water and said (in her british accent, no less), "here, whitney, i didn't know what else to do to keep it from drying out, so i kept it in my mouth for you!"

another unavoidable childhood memory of being at the pool was of the utter devastation of hearing the lifegaurd's whistle blow every hour announcing adult swim. it still feels weird to be able to stay in for it, like having graduated into some special club that you almost can't enjoy knowing the anguish those 10 minutes cause for all the kids.

and today itself feels like childhood, enjoying a day off school: no work today in honor of independence day. certainly something worth celebrating.

thoughts from a Sunday morning

2010-06-27T13:40:00.001-04:00

this morning i went to the third church i've visited in my three weeks here: one CMA, one Baptist, and today, back home to the Methodists. i've been frustrated with myself a few times over the last year or so--as someone preparing for ministry, it is easy to be critical of church services when your eyes and ears are so finely attuned to what is (or isn't) going on. but this morning, i experienced another aspect of my sharpened eye. visiting churches is a chance to see how things really can be done. for example, the church service this morning actually included ALL of the lectionary readings for the day. yep, Old Testament and all. we even sang the psalter. i don't think i've ever done that in a Methodist church--heck, i didn't even know they were printed in the back of our hymnals.

i was also encouraged to see an African American woman as the pastor of this church. now i know it's 2010, but that's still really just something for me to behold and celebrate, especially in a congregation full of mostly older white folks. and the pastor, she came around to everyone in the pews to shake hands and say hello. she caught sight of me and asked if i was visiting. she made sure to get my name ("like Whitney Houston, right?") and my business in the city straight, and then during the announcements, she introduced me as a first-time visitor. everyone clapped and they brought me a goodie bag with a coffee mug inside.

also, today was youth sunday. as i read on their website beforehand, every fourth sunday is youth-led, not just one service a year. i am encouraged by that--what a way to raise up leaders and help youth feel comfortable and confident in participating. and it was in a way that wasn't overwhelming--sometimes once-a-year youth sunday can be frustrating because the youth minister pulls out all the stops and the kids are doing everything and that's great, it really really is...but it is such a radical change that people are left with the heads wheeling and can only comment, "don't the kids just have great energy?" and pat them on their little heads. but today, there were two youth as the liturgists and one who led the children's time. it was integrated into what i imagine is a typical service--not a something separate but youth being part of what is already going on.

so anyhow, it's nice to be able to take some notes on how to consider doing things in my own ministry one day. at best, i'll only be able to attend that church 4 more times. but i appreciate the chance to step outside of what has become ordinary to me and behave as a student, not a critic, in addition to a worshiper.

everyday is an adventure

2010-06-23T22:29:00.000-04:00

i have new favorite d.c. moment. last night, i joined betsey and luke for a nationals game after work. despite the oppressive heat, we scored $5 seats in the shade at the very top of the park. i even got my picture made with the racing presidents and collected a free t-shirt. we had settled in and watched 4 innings before the thunder began to rumble. we turned around to see the sky filled with black clouds. we noticed rain starting to fall and cascade over the awning above us, but we had shelter. then the wind started to whip and and lash raindrops at us horizontally. suddenly the sky let loose, the players rushed for the dugouts, and a huge tarp was unrolled over the diamond. as we stood admiring the swirl of the wind and water, getting wetter by the minute, a security guard asked us all to clear the bleachers and move down to the concourse. which of course involved going out into the thick of it. and once we got down there, the horizontal rain continued to drench us and we found ourselves shivering on a 95 degree day. shivering and laughing hysterically. betsey and i crouched under a stairwell for shelter while luke gave us updates on the downpour. almost as soon as it started, the rain was over.

the metro, too, continues to be an experience. in the heat, the descent into the earth is blessed relief and yet chaos. there are businessmen and summer interns and panhandlers and women with babies. there are kindles and blackberries and ipads and ipods. there is much haste and pushiness, which only makes the moments of kindness and thoughtfulness all the sweeter. today, one woman took charge of moving people toward the center of the car (as an announcement reminds us at every station, to which no one seems to listen) so more people could cram in. of course, once we had effectively fit everyone from the platform, the conductor came over the intercom to announce that we would have to sit for a moment due to a medical emergency somewhere on the train. so there we are, limbs contorting, brows sweating. on the world's stage, the metro is certainly the theater of the absurd.

everyday is an adventure.

but even as these dc-centric activities captivate my day-to-day experience, "real" life lies in wait not too far away. my UMC candidacy mentor asked me to call him on monday at lunch. i went outside to the sidewalk in front of my building and talked with him for about 20 minutes. we scheduled this call to discuss the personal interest inventory survey that i took several months ago. the good news: now that we've had this conversation, i can move forward in the process towards certification by scheduling my psych. evaluation--which is what will likely take the most time between now and december interviews. the bad news: the inventory determined that i have moderate to low interest in ordained ministry. hmmm. problematic for one pursuing, in fact, ordained ministry. and shane told me that the district board will have these results in front of them (among other things) when i go for my interview.

the survey did indicate that i have a 90th percentile interest in scholarship and academics. yes, makes sense. i've loved seminary and i've always done well academically. i love learning and reading and teaching. that's where my life was when i took the survey (and still is)--in school, in academia. of course i would display an aptitude for that.

my frustration comes in that these other areas of low interest are places where i am still (and very consciously so) discerning my call. and though i'm only 1/3 of the way through seminary, i've discovered SO much about myself and about my place in ministry with the Methodist Church. and the fact that i want to fight for this, to defend this call even though this survey--this snapshot of one point in a time of intense growth--might subtly suggest otherwise...that in itself is a huge indication of growth. check out my archived blogs from this time last year and you'll quickly recall my struggle with ordination. i've come so far, and i am encouraged to see that growth in myself. in fact, i think it will be a great point of discussion with the D-com.

some of the immediate areas of growth that i see in myself from the time of the survey to now: interest in preaching and politics, and an overall desire to explore parish ministry more closely. and i really have no interest or intent to pursue doctoral studies or teaching at the seminary level, which is what this survey seemed to indicate i might want to do. educational ministries within the church or parachurch sector? yes. but my time at Haygood next year will do me a world of good in experiencing parish ministry so i can grow my interest and my skills in that very important realm that is THE church.

one further thing i didn't talk through with my mentor regarding these results. i am working towards deacon's orders, which may allow me to push the boundaries of ordained ministry a bit more. like i've said before, i'm following this particular call because it is an ordination to work in the church and in the world. if formal pastoral care isn't high on my list of interests (shane so kindly read for me that the survey indicated that i have no interest in caring for people in difficult times. ha), well, it might still work out for me to have a more specialized ministry position, like in education, for example. and so on. not that all these skills don't contribute to one another, of course. teachers need a heck of a lot of pastoral care--it just may not come in nursing homes and by deathbeds.

so that's all simmering on the back burner. at the forefront of my attention has been my internship, of course, which is continuing to go well. i've received direction on another big project to occupy my time--getting church resources ready for the web--in addition to my work on bread for the preacher. the first edition that i worked on came out today! i also had the third meeting with the other d.c. beatitude fellows today, and i'm really starting to look forward to that time together. it's great to interact with people who are so similarly-minded (we laugh at all the same nerdy seminarian jokes) and who are going through such similar experiences as each other. we're reading this terrible book that is supposed to be defining for us what progressive Christianity is...we're all ready to re-write the thing ourselves because it's falling so short of its well-meaning intentions. yet it has sparked such fruitful discussion and i just LOVE talking and thinking about this kind of stuff--in the midst of doing it all at Bread at the same time.

now if only i can manage to keep my cool in this intense heat! i would so like to go for a run but am afraid i might die. literally. i'm thinking either the national gallery, the holocaust museum, or one of the smithsonians this weekend--something indoors, for sure!

busy bee

2010-06-19T22:09:00.001-04:00

nothing beats eating a cup full of frozen yogurt at the end of a hot day while strolling down the city streets with your best friend and her hubby. and that's just what i did this evening, even though our plans to sit with our feet dangling in the fountain at the sculpture garden were upended by its early closing hour. ah well--there will be other summer nights for strolling and wading and fro-yo-ing.

before that, the three of us spent some time wandering around the national portrait gallery/smithsonian art museum. i actually got there a bit earlier than the Teaters, and had some time alone. the portraits are all really interesting, and it was fun to play a game with myself to see which ones i recognized or not. but then, i came up a staircase and turned a corner and there were the impressionists. soft lines and colors, landscapes and figures out of the best kind of dreams. if we each end up with our own little piece of heaven, i think mine would look like an impressionist painting. some of them almost brought me to tears. i don't know what it is. so much beauty and life and hope and sadness.

before that, i made an appearance at a party for one of our bread interns who is leaving in the next couple of weeks. it was nice to see people outside of the office, to talk and eat and just chill. okay, 'chill' may not be the most appropriate word, because it was HOT. we were outside on this tiny little porch that, though shaded, was not catching any breeze. i finally decided to stop sitting with my legs crossed, because every time i moved, there was this disgusting sshtuchk sound as my skin unstuck itself and then suctioned back on again.

and before that, i slept in. GLORY. it has been quite a long week.

tuesday was lobby day--bread's biggest day of the year. we all gathered on capitol hill around 8:30 and spent the morning learning about the issue at hand: tax credits. after being adequately prepared, we split up into teams by region, then state, and went to the office buildings to lobby. i'll be honest, this is not something i ever saw myself doing. but i did. i went to my senators' offices, with my new friend Lloyd from Durham, and talked to office staff about tax credits and why it is important to help working families keep benefits so that they won't fall into poverty and have nothing to feed their children. it's really empowering to walk into a government office and have someone listen to what you have to say. it's quite poignant to be here, with this organization, after spending a year at MUST, eating a meal each Wednesday night with a group of people experiencing homelessness, and after learning about the importance of attacking root causes instead of just band-aiding situations (thank you, Dr. Jenkins!)--to really be doing it, a small part of it, working to change structures that cause hunger and homelessness instead of only giving out food and a place to sleep.

so tuesday was a solid twelve hour day (plus the hour commute on either end), after the reception and closing worship that followed our afternoon of lobbying. but all of us had to be in the office on wednesday morning, because there was a big announcement to be made that all the higher-ups had been keeping hush-hush for the last week. we gathered over catered chinese food and plastic cups of champagne, and learned that the president of bread, david beckmann, has been named a world food laureate for 2010. this is a big cause for celebration and a great opportunity to step forward for bread. after that announcement was made, i joined the other interns on my first hill drop--we had envelopes addressed to every senator and representative detailing the news about beckmann. so i took 50 letters to 50 senators' offices.

i was kept pretty busy on thursday, too--i had to learn how to supervise the tasks of two volunteer-interns who are coming in for two days at the end of next week. both the administrative assistant and my supervisor will be gone on the days these folks are here, so yours truly is in charge. 2 weeks on the job and i'm already management ;) hopefully all will run smoothly.

what's made the week feel exceptionally long is that the ugly beast of vertigo is back. i felt nauseous on the ride home on the train a couple of nights early in the week, then on thursday the dizziness started to wash over me just sitting at my desk at work. it's such a terrible feeling. after consulting with Dr. Paw-Paw (that is, my grandfather), hopefully i can scale back my caffeine intake, try to get into a more regular sleep pattern, and keep drinking plenty of water. it's no good getting motion sick when each day involves a long metro ride to and from work.

so all in all, life is quite full to the brim right now. i want to try and be better about taking sabbath on the weekend. so after church and lunch with mal tomorrow, i'm planning to take it easy, read a little, maybe even nap, watch some soccer, go for a run, and get myself ready for another week.

snapshot of life at Bread

2010-06-12T09:38:00.001-04:00

my friday started off in prayer with a group of colleagues.

after that, an impromptu and brief department meeting in which we worked to come up with a list of leadership attributes of female figures in the Bible. these were to complement a list of all male characters and attributes (the wisdom of Solomon, the vision of Nehemiah, etc). though i refrained from adding the licentiousness of Rahab, the precision of Jael, or the promptness of Jephthah's daughter to our list, i did manage to come up with the name of Timothy's mother as my boss pondered it aloud (Eunice, in case you're wondering). bible trivia at work? yes please.

just before lunch i had a meeting with my boss to review some materials i've been working on for publication. this started with a discussion of streams of eschatological thought and the question of whether bread's target audience are pre- or post-millenialists. it actually makes quite a big difference in the language i employ as i discuss bread's mission to end hunger. i mean, it's right there in the motto of the organization: have faith. end hunger. eschatology. matters. at my job. woah.

(i think this is the second blog post in a month that i have used some form of the word eschaton. that's impressive...or ominous)

making a list such as this immediately draws my mind to the lists i started keeping last summer of my sundry tasks as a YouthWorks site director. the most memorable? cleaning out a tub of rotting cucumbers. mopping twice daily. cleaning out sink drains. performing weekly as boots the monkey. cooking over a hundred waffles. don't get me wrong, i had a great time last summer, but so far this job sure beats rotting cucumbers.

ms. pierce goes to washington

2010-06-09T21:22:00.002-04:00

two words: dream job. today i spent most of the day with a Bible and lectionary commentary open across my desk. and i was not just pondering an exegesis paper for a grade or creating a new blog post, but i was working. and what's more, i'm working in ministry. people will read what i'm writing and piecing together and it will affect the way they plan a worship service or it will motivate them to advocacy or it will cause them to pause and reconsider some aspect of the divine. and sure, my supervisors will edit and whittle down my carefully chosen words and make it appropriate for the parameters of the end product. but a little piece of me, of my heart and of my gifts, those things will remain in everything i touch. that feels really special. it feels good to find something that fits.

that's something huge that's happened in just these first three days, this feeling of a perfect fit.(such a statement may be premature this early on--trust that i'll have a more fully developed opinion in eight weeks time.) i feel like i've finally around arrived at this crossroads where everything i'm passionate about and gifted to do has come together--church work and social justice meet at this place where i now find myself, the church relations department at bread for the world. i was sitting in on my first department meeting yesterday morning, introducing myself, and mentioned that i'm pursuing deacon's orders in the UMC. i dropped the phrase that the orders are for people who feel called to have one foot in the church and one in the world. the head of the department thereafter pointed out to me that this department is full of people who are managing that divide--many are ordained ministers within their denominations and there is even one Franciscan nun! it's a group of people who care deeply about the life of the church but have recognized a call upon their lives to work directly for justice and social transformation.

on another level though, several times i've stopped to ponder the sadness that this organization even exists and that i have a desk to sit at and work to do. this huge organization with all these amazing staff and a ton of summer interns running around, we're all here because people are hungry. because they are still hungry for needless reasons. it's ironic to love a job and an organization that we all hope we one day be rendered worthless when hunger is eradicated.

truth be told though, i think it will be a while before i get into the swing of a 9 to 5 full-time job. it's definitely a mind game with me--it is hard to be inside all day, usually in just one place, even if it is doing amazing work. and while i know i'll have to get over it eventually, graduate school, and get a more longterm 9 to 5, the one thing i hope i never have to do on a permanent basis is the commute. i've been leaving at 7:30 to get to the office by 9, and i know that a lot of people in the DC area have an even longer commute than that. something about sitting and riding and being underground that is just incredibly draining. and it's hard to come home and have just a few short hours before being ready to crash again, wake up, and start it all over. i can't always live on a grad student's schedule, i suppose!

but it's also mexico all over again, and ann and i are riding clear across the city on a train, plus two micro bus rides and a walk across a plank bridge spanning a green creek of trash and through mud streets to a tent full of children.

dc has its own set of peculiarities about it, green rivers aside. for example, everywhere you go, people are walking like the devil is chasing them. it can be helpful in catching a departing metro or sliding into your cubicle right as the clock strikes nine, but there are dangers, too: i think i swallowed a bug this morning in my haste.

all this and i've yet to really explore the city! unfortunately, this weekend i HAVE to devote most of my time to writing my final paper for my summer course. no sightseeing for me just yet. it's been fun, though, to be here as a working girl instead of a tourist, to feel like i'm a part of this big thriving mass of humanity that works inside and around the buildings that other people are coming to visit. and i think, at least for now, eight weeks will be just enough to be fulfilled and exhausted by this kind of life.

summer beckoning

2010-06-03T18:14:00.000-04:00

the air has felt so heavy lately. i've felt it weighing on my skin as it has slowed my breath and curled my hair. the clouds have been begging for release, and finally, last night as i was leaving atlanta for the summer, the rains came. i had a pretty steady cloud above me as i drove up 85, but never enough to impede my driving. the perfect summer storm, with lightning and dark skies and the promise of cooler air the next morning.

the next few days bring with them not only cooler air but also sundry to-do's and the anticipation of D.C. i'm sitting at barnes and noble, suspiciously eyeing a book entitled Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office 101 and an endcap labeled "Bestselling Christian Inspiration." I'm meeting my candidacy mentor here in a few minutes. I am determined to get an action plan put together in order to become a certified candidate for ministry before year's end and hope I can use these next few days wisely to that end.

The next appointment of the day: dentist. Far from the terror it inspired as a child, I'm looking forward to nice clean teeth for the first time in *coughhummphcough* years. As long as I can get past the inevitable chiding for the state of uncleanliness of my permanent wire retainer...that's really what I've come to dread about the dentist. This verbal scathing will be worse than the shot to the face I received at the dermatologist on Tuesday.

Besides double-checking that I have everything loaded up for D.C., starting to create a pile of stuff to take to the new apartment come August, and attending Wicked (!!) with the fam on Saturday evening, my only other major to-do is to try and get started on the final paper for my summer school course. We finished class yesterday by planning a hypothetical new interfaith worship space for Emory's campus (I was the Reform Judaism representative). I've really enjoyed learning about other faiths by visiting their worship spaces. We had a great talk with the imam at Atlanta Masjid last Friday. He seemed to really get interfaith dialogue; he was so willing and able to answer our questions about Jesus's place in Islam and about the relationship of our Scriptures. I also appreciated his views on "judgment" and the exclusivity of heaven, if you will. He reported that the Qu'ran teaches that all God-fearing folk, so to speak, will be welcomed together into eternity. Sometimes I just get weary of the fire and brimstone. I probably need to think on this more before I blow a rant wide open here...Regardless, I hope I can challenge myself to incorporate elements of these other faiths into my own discipline. I think the Muslim posture of prostration in prayer is incredibly humbling and would serve as a helpful reminder to me that in prayer I'm actually communicating with God and that's kind of a big deal. I also loved going to the Jewish shabbat service and chanting/singing in Hebrew. Singing the ancient words of the Shema in its original ancient language--that's really something.

Another aspect of this class that really got me fired up was our discussion about religious space in conflict. I managed to get a spot in the Jerusalem group; I don't mean to this sound trite, but what an exercise in creative thought the Temple Mount controversy is! There's so much to grapple with--politics, faith, nationalism, tradition. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle with so many pieces to fit into place. It also gives me a bit of the eschatological shivers. There are some major things at stake there. Anyway, this conversation was one of those moments where I could contentedly say, "yep, I'm in the right place studying the right thing." I'm also thankful for issues like this one that make me realize how important it is for me as a (future) Christian leader to be well-versed in issues of politics. I used to not care much. As with the question of our sister faiths, nothing is mutually exclusive. The better we become at building conversations rather than drawing lines, the more hopeful the future starts to look (cue pageantry music...sorry).

But speaking of politics, my thoughts are now really turning towards D.C. A little hint of nervousness has crept in as I stand in the face of the unknown. I look forward to having that first week under my belt, to meeting my host family and my supervisor, to learning that metro commute that I will know like the back of my hand at the end of the summer. I'm ready to get my hands into this work. I'm ready to see Betsey and Mallory, et al. I'm ready to spend a long Saturday getting lost in the art museum. In truth, I was a little sad as I drove away from Atlanta yesterday (too nostalgic for my own good, certainly), but am eager to embrace this awesome opportunity I've been given. And, as a well-meaning colleague told me on the phone yesterday, "even if you hate it (which you won't) and even if your job is terrible (which it won't be), you'll only be there for a few weeks, really." Ha. I'm quite hopeful, myself, that I won't be ready to leave by the end of my time there instead of vice versa.

see you on the other side of the Potomac!

wild like the sea

2010-05-17T21:39:00.002-04:00

via dolorosa. strange name for a road at the beach, don't you think, among the 'sand piper way'-s and the 'palm tree lane'-s. it felt somewhat appropriate today, though. it began storming this morning while we were all still in bed and the clouds have persisted throughout the day. rain at the beach. dolorous, indeed.

but not enough to keep us wholly indoors. it was kind of nice to walk along a largely deserted beachfront. strangely peaceful. with thoughts that have been tossing and raging like the waves against the sand, emotions rising and falling like the tides, a bit of walking through the light drizzle did me some good. the world was at once quiet and roaring. and i felt drawn back into nature, bare feet sinking deep into the sand and what is usually meticulously-straightened hair blown curly by the wet ocean wind, wild like the sea itself. or, if not one with nature, i might have stepped into a Dali scene, with beached jellyfish strewed about like melting clocks.

while all of life makes me want to write in prose, there is something about the ocean that makes me want to write in verse, to dance and to sing and to love life and to feel connected to the larger everything. it makes me ponder the Almighty, who created such bizarre creatures as crabs and set the moon in place to pull the tides, and yet it also makes me feel like a child again. a child who last night was scared to walk on the beach in the pitch black of night for fear of stepping on said crabs under the meager light of only a sliver of said moon. the child who handed a pretty shell to her mother as they were walking along the beach, because, as she said, mothers always have pockets.

we've been a delightfully odd bunch this week--one mother who always has pockets and who loves the beach almost as much as she loves her children. her endearing boyfriend, who says 'vehicle' instead of 'car,' 'eatery' instead of 'restaurant,' and who drank one margarita too many while cooking hamburgers on the grill. one sister, who has been avidly watching Lost and discusses theories on the meaning of it all with me ad nauseum. one brother, who, on the beach at least, is still a kid at heart despite the ever-increasing evidence to the contrary. his girlfriend, who has puffy bruised cheeks from wisdom teeth removal and has been gumming food pitifully but with increasing success. his puppy, who has kept us entertained with his constant attacks on his own leash and who has reminded us of the true sensory overload that comes with one's first experience of the beach. one grandmother, whose sweet tooth is one of the few that can out-eat my own and who gave a kind listening ear to my thought-vomit on the 3.5 hour drive down here. one grandfather who is the silent backbone of the family, and who is probably more like me than i can know.

and me, the one who can describe the rest of the eccentric bunch because, as Paul might say, of these i am the worst. perhaps another would peg me as the pale one who carefully monitors the placement and proportion of any exposed skin under direct sunlight, but still comes home with odd patches of sunburn at the end of the day. truly though? the only way i can fairly describe myself now is transitioning. here, but not fully. thinking thoughts of what's passed and what's to come: 2 weeks in Atlanta, 2 days in Charlotte, 2 months in DC. delighting in the adventure of it all while still catching myself longing for normalcy every now and again.

like the ebb and flow of the water, life swirls forward.

home(s) and family(ies)

2010-05-13T10:45:00.001-04:00

it's the little things that make me feel like i'm back home. stupid things, really--no maybe just quirky. yesterday, as i drove across the state line into north carolina, it was being surrounded by almost all NC plates again. it was hitting that stretch of highway where you can pretty much turn on the mental auto-pilot, because you've driven it so many times, and suddenly find yourself pulling into a familiar cul-de-sac, walking up a familiar driveway to a door that you trust will be open. and then mom's smiling face is there to meet you, as she comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. and something smells really good.

it's been nice to be in a full house again. i've been virtually alone in the atlanta house since arden moved out last week. i only saw courtney for a brief few minutes since finals ended--i think she stayed one night and kept mostly to herself. though i've been lonely without any roommates, it's helped me to remember two things about myself: 1) i should always live with people...i wouldn't do solo living well, and 2) if i ever do have to live alone, it shouldn't be in a house, especially not an old one, that creaks. there's still a lot of the little girl in me who is scared to be home alone. and now i don't have to be, for another week at least.

there's something odd about this visit home, though, too. i've decided to stay at dad's house, because things are a bit too crowded at mom's with her two roommates and my grandparents. it makes sense to be here where there's available bedrooms (and AC!). but this house never really turned into a home for me. and my "bedroom" here, which was a little more mine in high school when i still lived here every weekend, has since been converted into an official guest bedroom. what's more...the house is currently being prepped for sale. my dad just took a new job and will be moving to florida! so him and my stepmom are cleaning and consolidating, purging and reorganizing. there's a guy out in the hallway who is stretching out the carpet. soon the pseudo-home will belong to another family entirely and half of my own will relocate to somewhere that i'm sure will feel even less like home to me. let's be honest, in florida--it will be like a vacation home for me, with that weird mix of familiarity and specialness.

easy access to disney though? yes please ;) my brother did not seem to be quite as excited as i was by the proximity of the new harry potter theme park. he can stay home. fall break, anyone?

we're still missing the one member of the family who we're meant to be celebrating this week--she's still finishing finals, which seems rather unfortunate to one who wrapped up over a week ago.

i miss my atlanta family though, a lot. there are some quality people who're still in town that i'll be fortunate enough to see during my two weeks of summer school. but it's different to have the candler community somewhat disbanded--not seeing each other in class or meeting for lunch in the commons. even the sense of fellowship that comes from complaining together over classes is now gone. and most of my besties are gone. you know, i think there is something really romantic and appealing about being a wanderer, and i certainly do still feel exceptionally lucky to be at a stage in my life where i can still embark upon summer adventures and do something completely different with my life for 3 months of the year. but really, i think i need roots. i will be ready to plant them when that day comes. maybe that's just me being adversive to change. maybe roots isn't even the right word for it--or not the roots that go in the ground, but roots that plant in people.

i guess, really, i've got that now. roots in certain people. they're just far-reaching roots that stretch from atlanta to charlotte to arkansas to DC to chicago, and several places in between and beyond. that probably makes for the strongest tree, right? wide roots. sometimes it doesn't feel like it though. sometimes i just want to be back in chapel hill, in kristen g's living room eating homemade bread and laughing and sobbing with bets and rach. (insert other memories here). but i suppose that's why we spend weeks like this--with family. or why i'm so excited to meet michelle tonight for coffee and catch up. or why i'm over the moon about spending a whole summer in the same city as Betsey and Mallory, with Sarah only 2 hours away in Pennsylvania. those times won't last forever, but they'll be so good. it's what sustains a person, what keeps one loving life and seeking new relationships. knowing the joy found in each other, in sharing life. in being family.

shooting the breeze

2010-05-10T18:40:00.002-04:00

things accomplished during my week off:

slept in til 10 more days than one
enjoyed several mornings, afternoons, and evenings reading a book (of my choosing!) on the front porch swing
Shake at the Lake! Pat and I went to Piedmont Park one night to hang out and toss the frisbee around, and ended up walking by this makeshift outdoor theater with a crowd full of people nestled on a hillside. We went to check it out and learned that A Midsummer's Night Dream was being performed every evening that weekend. We couldn't sneak in then--tickets were given away at 10am each day. So, next day, we drive back to the park...but not until 11. The tickets were gone. We decide to come back to the park by 5 to wait in line for extras...and we got them! Sam joined us, and we had a great time! Even though it was hot, the show was wonderful. And a nice family sitting in front of us seemed to take pity on our lack of a picnic dinner, and shared their leftovers! Somewhat awkward, but most grad students I know have a hard time saying no to free food...
learned how to throw the above-mentioned frisbee in a new way. told i was a natural. took the compliment in the hopes that the supposed skills at frisbee would make up for my rather embarassing lack thereof at pool...
saw the year-end performance of the chapel choir here--it was excellent. made me miss choir singing very much.
spent my free $50 gift card at a fancy restaurant in downtown decatur and enjoyed lots of good food and good company
walked to the Target a couple miles down the road. felt very good about accomplishing three things at once: errands, exercise, and enjoying the nice day. of course, when i left target to walk the two miles back home...it was raining. fail. at least i had grabbed my umbrella...

tomorrow--haircut.

wednesday--home to see the fam, including the grandparents, and to celebrate my sister's graduation from college! congrats to all the other grads out there!

fleeting finality

2010-05-04T14:58:00.003-04:00

i have such a hard time with endings and goodbyes. and this week is really such a very small blip on the radar of life changes, but it is still a closing of sorts. my first year of seminary, done. i took my last test this morning--my Hebrew final. and that's such a silly thing to mourn, right? i mean, i enjoyed learning Hebrew, but I sure won't miss the flash cards and the homework and the weekly quiz on Fridays. but i will miss my quirky TA who loves Job a little too much and the intimate feel of a five-person class and those intermittent passing realizations that this really is holy stuff we're mucking through, this beautifully biazare language.

of course, there are many other, more significant things i will miss now that this school year is ending. my roommate, arden, moved out this morning. it was weird to say goodbye and to wish her a good summer. it feels final somehow, even though i'll see her in the fall. it also doesn't feel like it's quite summer yet. having a whole week to myself though, to just hang out in atlanta and do a whole lot of nothing--that'll make it feel like a break. and i think it'll be just enough. i'll head to charlotte at the end of next week to see my sister graduate from college. then we'll spend a long weekend at the beach with my grandparents and it should be lovely. then summer school will start. like i said--just long enough to do nothing. after summer session, i'll head up to DC.

it's hard to be thrust head-first into this period of transition. people are leaving town and making summer plans, saying goodbye and wishing one another well. the fact that we've all been pushing so hard over the last few days to get through the end of finals week makes us realize all too suddenly that once the tests and papers are done, it's time to move on. it feels like standing up too quickly.

i'll miss this porch swing. i'm sitting on it now, writing, because it's cooler here in the shade than it is inside. this is my favorite place in the world right now. it's sunny and quiet, except for a few birds chirping, and there's a little girl swinging in circles on a tire swing down the street. and it's perfect. i have another month in this house, and there are certainly some things i will not miss about it. but this swing is my rose. last night, a few of us got together for margaritas and my sweet friend Say asked us all what our rose and our thorn were from the year. i decided all the times that i've spent out on this front porch, with lots of friends or with just one, or even by myself, like right now--those have been the best moments. studying or sleeping or laughing or just sitting. a lot of things have happened in my life this year--almost all really good things--but sometimes you just need to sit on a porch sweet on a warm southern day and sip on a glass of sweet tea (if you're lucky) and let life just slow down a bit.

but, like Qoheleth said (and as I correctly identified on my OT final last Friday!), to everything there is a season. summer always seems to be one of change. what i dislike the most, i think, is having to leave people and places and routines knowing that when we try to pick it all back up again in the fall--everything will be different. and that's good, really. my friends and i may come back together as different people and have to work to readjust to one another, but i hope that i change and grow from my experiences this summer--and trust that they will, too. but it's hard. it's a disruption. but i guess life wouldn't be much of anything if it wasn't for the disruptions.

so for now i'll say my goodbyes. i'll sleep in every day for a week and i'll watch gilmore girls reruns and start packing and planning. i'll rejoice that i've completed a whole year of this privilege that is graduate school. i'll rejoice to know that i'm in such a good, different place than i was two years ago, that i'm a different person with a new set of life experiences and a new community than the person i was just last year. and thank God for that. for no matter how good we think we've got it at any particular point in our lives, there's always the promise of more to come. gotta take the bad with the good, but there's always more to come.

pidgin Christianity

2010-04-22T17:51:00.004-04:00

today was my last class (save the final exam) in a yearlong course on the Old Testament. i cried a little. no, seriously.

it was one of those rousing moments of intellectual glory when Prof. Strawn's last power point flashed across the screen and he gave a modest nod of his head--we all jumped to our feet and applauded, hearts warm and minds willing to put the thought of that final final aside for a few seconds at least.

that was not when i teared up. that was a moment of basking in the glow of the celebrity that is the notorious BAS, who has drawn me even deeper into the mystery and wondrous beauty of the OT. no, i got emotional over linguistics.

in his points of closure on the year, Strawn returned to an analogy that he made long ago, but it really hit its mark this time. if you've ever studied linguistics, you'll have heard of pidgins, creoles, and language death. a pidgin is a simplified form of a language, a creole is that pidgin adopted by a new generation as their functional language, and language death is when an original language literally falls out of use because it has morphed into something else entirely. a language can die over the span of only one generation. that's twenty years.

the canon of Scripture is our original, full language--the high dialect of Christianity. but the ill-use, misuse, and under-use of the Old Testament has changed that fullness into a pidgin form. we are speaking high, holy, sacred Scripture as a pidgin, a modified/commercialized/reductionist version of God's word when we neglect it in preaching and teaching, when we simplify complex biblical figures to superheroes, when we assume that we already know everything it has to tell us.

but what if it's not just a pidgin? this is certainly not a problem that has emerged just now in our generation. so what if the full language of Scripture, of the OT specifically, is dead?

this is when i cried. i mourned that loss. my eyes blurred for the way that we, as humans, time and again, take something beautiful that God has given us and twist it and manipulate it and neglect it until it is unrecognizable. and isn't that what the world sees? the atheists and agnostics, those abused or alienated by the church--they're only seeing and hearing a pidgin Christianity. they can't see it in its fullness because we've let our holy language die.

my every prayer is that i can be a minister of the Gospel who is faithful to the voice of the Old Testament. this class has given me this fire in my belly to preach--to preach these beautiful texts and witnesses because they aren't being preached. mediocre books that we written in the last 5 years are being preached, vaguely-relevant video clips are being shown, overused Bible verses are being passed out like fortune cookies, stupid jokes and gimmicks are being dreamt up while the Bible lies dormant. it lies dormant when the stories and wisdom and truths held inside could knock the pants off a thousand goofy/poignant sermon illustrations.

"O Book! infinite sweetness! let my heart/suck ev'ry letter...
Thou art all health...thou art a mass/of strange delights, where we may wish and take...
thou art heav'n's ledger here...heav'n lies flat in thee/
Subject to ev'ry mounter's bended knee"
-George Herbert

i know a lot of classmates have been looking forward to New Testament and Jesus. those red letters are coming! and having class with Luke Timothy Johnson won't be too shabby, i suspect. but it's surprisingly painful to leave this world of the Old Testament behind. i am determined, however, that i will only be leaving the OT behind in the sense of this classroom. i am determined to play my role in the attempt to revive this abandoned book of treasure and to bring the language of Scripture back into its high and holy dialect.

hey soul sistah

2010-04-10T11:55:00.001-04:00

i've been doing a lot of thinking about femininity this semester. one thing we've discussed repeatedly in class is the importance of women's lived experience, particularly in the shaping of one's relationship with the divine, but also in relationship with one another. deep calls to deep. yesterday, i had three soul sisters speak to my deep from theirs in a glorious intermingling of experience and humanity and solidarity. one is famous, one is fictional, and one is the next closest thing i've got to a sister after my own blood. anne lamott, carrie bradshaw, and the wise mrs. betsey teater.

my friend susannah called me yesterday to invite me to hear anne lamott speak. i jumped at the chance, though i have not yet read any of her work. several friends have raved about her, though, and told me i would love her stuff, so she was already on my reading list for the summer. i arrived at the big baptist church in decatur about 20 minutes before she was scheduled to speak, and i walk into the foyer and there she sat herself, pen in hand and no real line of people before her. i made my way over to the book table, bought traveling mercies as an investment for the summer, and walked right up and had it signed! no waiting. i mumbled something stupid about how we had read excerpts from her essay "shitty first drafts" and that i really enjoyed it. then i think i said the word "revolutionize"--as in, "your essay revolutionized my writing." she smiled and nodded, vaguely appreciative, largely uninterested. dumb. i realized immediately that she hears that stuff all day long, every day. even as unfamiliar with her work as i am, it was an odd, writer-girl-crush moment where i aimed to impress with a statement that wasn't even true. her essay was fabulous, but it didn't revolutionize anything for me. i have been writing shitty first drafts for years--i resonated with it. i just had this image, though, of standing in line backstage at a hanson concert (insert your favorite teenage celebrity crush here-this merely was mine, and [un]fortunately the following sequence of events never actually took place) and finally approaching the table where these 3 musicians sat, wearing a crazed smile on my face and blurting out something about how their music changed my life. they nod, sign, take a picture, and move on. i've always been weird around celebrity--seeing newscasters and weather people in public makes me slightly giddy. i thought i was being so smooth with anne lamott. i guess we never grow out of some things.

anyway, my blundered one-on-one moment with anne lamott is not why i call her my soul sister. a lot of things she had to say were about raising children. obviously, that does not speak to my own experience, but it broke my heart and made me think about the youth i do know. for example, she talked about the incredible transition in little girls, who at twelve or so seem to have this flip switched and suddenly they care about boys and boobs and measuring themselves up by the popular girls. i think i ached because i remembered how true it was for me. when i was home for Easter, i gave a quick hug to one of the youth of our church, jessica. she had served communion during the service, and i marveled at how much she had grown up. she was in my class of 2nd and 3rd graders when i first started helping out with sunday school. and now she is 14 and gorgeous. and she has a good strong head on her shoulders, i can tell. but that's what lamott kept saying--even those good kids can find their way into the bad stuff. so i pray for
jessica, and all other 2nd and 3rd graders of the world who are growing into teendom and wrestling with this stuff.

susannah also said lamott's shared experiences made her nervous for parenthood. well said.

there was just one phrase, though, that really stuck with me from the talk. lamott kept describing herself as a "reading girl." at one point she said, "i am an embarrassingly devout christian, and it is books that 'saved' me." she chastised the kindle users of the world and flipped the crisp pages of her new book into the microphone. i am such a reading girl, too. i kept flashing back to my childhood and the books that were my world. i tore through them, and even that wasn't enough. my friends and i played boxcar children (using the hatch of my parents' boat as our boxcar) and american girls and little women. and then i came to know hester prynne and jane eyre, juliet and elizabeth bennett. beyond that, even, was harry potter and the midnight movie premiers with stef, complete with a lightning bolt scar drawn in eyeliner on my forehead. i read narnia as a college student, and loved it more than i think i would have as a child. and now i get to be a reading girl as my pseudo-profession for these 3 years. as much as we complain about our weekly page count, it's not a bad deal.

after the reading, i had to bail on susannah and the rest of our evening--a wine party at her boyfriend's place. i went for a long run yesterday afternoon and the inordinate amount of pollen i must have sucked down was starting to catch up with me. so i did what i haven't done in a long time: put on my pjs, climbed into bed, and had an early evening together with the ladies of sex and the city. (the lazy evening theme persisted--i also slept for a solid 11 hours last night, which has been a long time coming.) the episode i watched was from season six when carrie dates "the russian," and in this particular vignette, she had decided to take him as her "love-uh." charlotte kept calling the russian her boyfriend, but carrie insisted that she was in it for the casual trysts. he was an international man, after all, someone she would only see occasionally for romantic evenings and that would be that. of course, after she sleeps with him, she decides having a "love-uh" is not her thing after all. she sits at her computer and relays some scientific discovery about women's bodies releasing a chemical after an intimate encounter with a man that causes them to desire emotional attachment, commitment. her computer screen question for the episode was, "when it comes to men, even when we try to keep it light, why do we wind up in the dark?"

good question, carrie. though my experience is hardly so over-sexed, i am currently struggling with the anomaly that is casual dating. i think whatever pheromones that carrie was referring to may have been released in me over hand-holding and kissing. isn't casual intimacy an oxymoron??

fortunately, i have my final and most genuine soul sister, the nearly two years-married betsey teater. we were g-chatting yesterday morning and giving each other some brief life updates. when i brought up my struggle with definition in this relationship, and most specifically my own frustrations with my over-analysis of everything, she said that she and her husband, luke, actually had a conversation over that very issue. obviously, they've got a pretty well-defined relationship ;) (and one that i think the rest of us would be lucky to emulate half of what they've got), but still struggle with his under-analysis and her over-analysis of different actions and words said or unsaid. i told her that i hated to find solace in her hardship, but it is somewhat comforting to know that even a wise, solid married couple still struggles with these things.

thank goodness we have each other, or we'd never get this life thing figured out.

small joys

2010-04-01T22:26:00.004-04:00

today was one of those beautiful days when you can't help but feel thankful to be alive. warm sun, blue skies, promise of spring.

and i've really been doing some of that living this week! 2 big checks off my bucket list: i ran my first 5K last saturday! it was amazing. i made my goal of under 30 minutes and felt great throughout the whole thing. it's definitely addicting--i'm ready for another race and should probably sign up for one soon to keep myself accountable.

secondly...i had my first ride of the back of a motorcycle! very exhilarating. ready to do that again, too.

now, the task that lies ahead of me is to write the first exegesis paper of my seminary career. due on tuesday, which will make what is already, for many people, a jam-packed holy weekend even busier. plus, our campus library is closed for the holiday. problematic. i, however, will be in charlotte for a quick visit. hope to get some writing done before i leave and then again after i get back. i am a little worried that we have a ten page maximum because i could probably write at least that much on just the first two verses of Isaiah 55. but once we get this paper turned in, it's a few quiet weeks, then finals. when did that happen??

i have some more things to say, about footwashing and comparing holy days to sporting events, and rubber bands(...) . but i should either devote my writing energies to exegesis, or sleep. since i was up til 2 am folding laundry at the homeless shelter last night (...), i choose sleep.

sorry for being cryptic (...), more to come soon. happy easter.

making plans

2010-03-22T20:03:00.002-04:00

how much of my life do i live in the future?

there's always something to look ahead to, always something coming up, always a deadline around the corner. there's always a decision to be made, always a life to plan.

i'm pretty good at making plans. i love my planner. i love filling things in, then crossing them off again. to-do lists are even worse. i have gotten to the point where i feel compelled to write down every little thing i may need to schedule during my day. the calendar feature on my new phone is not going to help. eg i recently set a reminder for myself to send a text to a friend at a certain point later in the week. what does that say about my ability to be a good friend? i can't remember in the moment that i need to send someone a head's up to say, "hey, i'm thinking of you," in the middle of their big day?

and that's just trouble with all this, of course--constantly looking ahead leaves less time to live in the moment. and then moments pass and time continues on and you're left with nostalgia for the past. why does it always have to be looking forward or reaching back and never just being?

it's a product of the culture we live in, i know. and i've done well by that culture. i've been rewarded for my efficient planning and my attention to deadlines and my skills in time management. but my success within that system has led to believe that being anal about planning ahead is the only way that i can function. i think i can't make it through a day if i don't have a to-do list--i'll forget something, and it will probably be something important. and if i'm not ahead of the deadline, then i'll miss it completely.

but despite any fledgling desire to live in the moment, my social location within this culture continues to make it hard for a twenty-something woman in graduate school to be in the present. i have to plan for a career and build a resume and gain experience and decide where i want to live one day. i do think it's important for me to be consistently probing and reevaluating my call, but sometimes i think i forget to enjoy being just where i am--being a student and appreciating the privilege of learning and being in this amazing community with other learners.

and goodness knows, society reminds me, i have to think ahead to getting married. that's certainly not something that just happens overnight. but then it can be hard to just be in relationship. i find myself constantly analyzing and thinking about the future and putting everything in the schema of the big picture. can a moment ever just be a moment? and then there's the tick of that certain special clock that all young female adults know too well. conveniently, like captain hook's ticking crocodile, it shows up at all the wrong moments, tick-tick-ticking in your head until you've forgotten what the sound is for and you're merely conditioned to respond with one thought alone--will i beat the buzzer? (forgive the comparison of babies and sports sounds..it is march madness, after all).

sheesh. well, on a lighter and less psychoanalytic note, what brought all of this on was my afternoon spent making plans for next semester and for my upcoming summer in DC. those are both good things to look forward to--i have the feeling that DC is going to be a really good thing for me. and they also both do require planning in advance, otherwise i won't have a place to live for the summer or classes to take next semester. but again, the problem with all this planning is that it takes my attention away from right now--what i'm doing this semester, the classes i'm taking now. i've sat here this afternoon, charting the course of my second year of school (which, as everyone keeps reminding us, is the hardest one) and i'm looking at two semesters of at least 16 hours each, and i'm trying to cram in all these great classes. should i not stop and reflect about how i was excited for some of the classes in which i am currently enrolled? instead of just living in the excitement (and concurrent anticipation) for the future, shouldn't i try and rediscover the excitement of the now?

there will always be next semester, next summer, next year, next major life event. but, and i say this at the risk of being extremely aphoristic , there's only one right now. and this is going to sound like a bad country song, but it does seem that only looking ahead will accomplish nothing but an arrival at the end of my life without having enjoyed everything fully.

i think i've gotten a little bit better about all this in the past few months. i have friends who help me realize that it's okay to get a little bit behind on schoolwork or not get everything checked off my to-do list for the day in favor of having coffee or watching a silly movie or making dinner together. and the relationship that i'm starting right now is much more focused in the moment than the one i was pursuing last semester (mostly because this one has some tangible 'now' stuff to enjoy, versus the other which was mostly just me waiting around to see if he wanted to start something--ha). and as i work to relinquish control (ah, there's the lurking beast), i start to see that my life doesn't completely fall apart if it's not planned down to the last minute, if i miss dotting a few 'i's and crossing a few 't's.

so here's to trying to live in the now. maybe for tonight, i'll start by refraining from crossing off 'blog' from my to-do list :}

chicago-bound

2010-03-09T10:03:00.000-05:00

it's been about time for a new counting song. you know what i mean--the most famous example being brian mcknight: "one, you're like a dream come true; two, just want to be with you..." and now the plain white t's have revived the genre with: "there's only one thing to do, three words for you, i love you."

now tay swift's new song, "today was a fairytale" has come on. as much as i (admittedly) love her, i always feel a little scornful when this song plays. of course a day in your life can be a fairytale when you look like that, like one of the princesses in the picture books. and also, is it not time for us to get away from this fairytale metaphor for love? it's not exactly building positive self-esteem or good relational health in young girls--it didn't take too long for women's studies to figure that one out. i guess it's still what we all want though, isn't it?

and to think that i really should be devoting any writing energy towards a paper due next tuesday. but if i was being responsible, you would have been deprived of that brilliant social commentary. and who can really do homework on this first official day of spring break, when it is a gorgeous, warm atlanta day? i may be creating a miserable situation for myself come next sunday and monday, but so it goes. today's procrastination is tomorrow's late night. i'll take it.

i'm sitting in my room with the radio on (obviously), because i can never seem to pack without some kind of background noise. i feel like a member of the Price family from Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible: trying to carry as much stuff on my person so that i won't have to check a bag. so i'm going to have cake mix in my pockets, if you'll allow the allusion. it's seventy degrees today but i'm going to wear my furry boots and my puffy vest with a scarf, and i'll be carrying my brown peacoat. my chucks are shoved into the front pocket of my bookbag, which i'm hoping still counts as a personal item. and thus the contents of my purse will be redistributed throughout the bookbag and suitcase. i have also been trying to decide what liquids i will bring in travel size (i paid the $3 for a mini bottle of mousse, which seems to be a comparable price for many full-sized bottles...), which i will hope to use of Kristen's, and which i may try to sneak through. my facial moisturizer is what is still giving me trouble. it's one ounce to big, but really, a lotion isn't a liquid, TSA. it's a completely different consistency.

sigh.

---

i made it! i flew into a foggy chicago last night and have woken up to a warm sunny day (thanks for welcoming your southern friend well, midwest). made it to the airport early with the intention of finishing this blog post...only to find out that ATL airport charges for wi-fi. lame. so i actually was productive, which was my original intent, and read proverbs and did a little work on that paper. flight was okay, except for these two obnoxious girls sitting right behind me. two words: social cues. when trapped in a confined space surrounded by people who have no way to get away from you if necessary--please keep it down. i can't tune you out when the stewardess keeps coming by with a death stare for otherwise obedient passengers who just need to keep the iPod on as long as possible even if we are taking off or landing. lest you think i'm just being a jerk, here's an example of their banter. first of all, they were doing a crossword puzzle out loud together. and failing pretty miserably. the guy next to me got out the same magazine and whipped through the same puzzle, almost as if to prove that humanity hasn't fallen as far as these girls would make one believe. they determined that one clue's answer was odor, which prompted the question, "how do you spell odor, o-d-e-r?" and they had these grating northern 'a's. i really thought i had come a long way with northern accents, after living all summer with michigan and wisconsin. i even started saying 'pop' for coke, and that, friends is an achievement. but, ewww, those 'a's. needless to say, i bolted out of that cabin as quickly as possible, and was even happier to see KWood than ever.

and now we're about to adventure out after a good breakfast (with the promise of chicago pizza for lunch!). i woke up at 8:30 this morning--which i though was 8:30 central time, and therefore 9:30 my time, a perfectly acceptable hour. but no, it was in fact 8:30 my time and 7:30 here. so i'll sleep well tonight, especially after a day of getting to know this city!

these are my confessions

2010-03-04T15:35:00.005-05:00

the finish line is in sight. i am officially done with the double-whammy, two-day History of Christian Thought midterm. Old Testament exam, also done. tomorrow is Friday. I have a Hebrew quiz. then, a week of freedom. and even better, a week of freedom that I get to spend in Chicago with KWood! it's so close i can taste it. and it's been a hard-fought, exhausting battle to get here.

thankfully, though, in the midst of this stressful week, the two hours of class time that i typically detest the most (con ed reflection) were spent in a much more useful, enjoyable, even cathartic manner this past wednesday. a little background: this reflection group is a 2 hour weekly meeting that i have with my fellow classmates and MUST volunteers. we are a pretty tight group because we met every week last semester as well and are obviously sharing a lot of the same experiences. however, this reflection time has become a source of extreme frustration for a lot of us (and i would put myself at the top of that list) because we feel like nothing much is being accomplished within those 2 hours. we haven't been able to process our experiences at the shelter, we haven't been able to honestly share our feelings, and sometimes we haven't even been able to make our voices heard. so some of us (again, myself included) have chosen to silence our own voices entirely and sit there stewing contemptously instead.

this week, our faculty advisor, Dr. B, led the group solo (usually we have three ministry leaders/mentors for the class). we knew Dr. B in a different capacity last semester, but she has become a part of this reflection group as a leader in conjunction with our two supervisors from MUST. throughout the semester, we each take a turn to lead an opening devotional, and it was Dr. B's turn to lead this week. she did two things well to get us started off on the right foot: one intentionally, the other less so but which proved fruitful for the rest of the session. at the end of her personal sharing around a Scripture passage that she had selected (Phil. 2), she turned and directed her topic--vulnerability--at us in relation to our experiences at MUST. one of our chief frustrations as a group has been that we have not had the space to talk through our experiences at the shelter, and she created the perfect space to talk about MUST in a way that was common to all of us: how do you feel vulnerable there? this was a question that allowed each of us to open up, and we were able to understand one another's vulnerabilities because of the common context, but at the same time, the discussion wasn't limited to any one person's specific experience at the shelter that usually only serves to alienate everyone else who wasn't a part of the conversation. we had a beautiful, honest time of sharing.

the unintentional fruit of this discussion was the blossoming of that safe space for honesty and vulnerability. i actually had the task for this session of leading the next segment of our time--the 'theological discussion,' as we call it, which is essentially a conversation around our assigned reading for the week. these, too, have become rather dry, not for the fault of any of my classmates, but for the de-contextualization of the readings, the repetition of the thematic discussion, and for the way the conversations always turn into armchair theological musings (or, for the pejoratively-inclined, we sit around and shoot the theological s--t: which is all well and good, except that is something one should do on one's own time with friends over coffee or beer, not during a required two hour class that has the capacity for much more intentional and productive discussion). last week, the girl who led us started us off with a movement exercise (we did the salsa!), and in the vein of her innovativeness, i decided to create a mini-liturgical service instead of just tossing out questions to the group. i started with two Scripture readings reflective of the spirit of the assigned reading, then i had planned a time of confession, a song of response, a time of prayer, a "homily" (this would be our discussion), and a benediction. we read the Scripture together, then i read an excerpt from Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz with which you may be familiar: the confession booth experience Miller and his friends created on his college campus. if you haven't read Miller, the catch of this confessional that they set up was that the Christians would be apologizing to the people coming in to confess their sins--the sins of the Church and the Christian community would be confessed. so i offered that as a framework for our time of confession as a group: the chance to communally, if anyone was willing, confess how we've fallen short in our service work at MUST, followed by a time of silent confession.

i wasn't sure how open people would be about confessing communally, but i wanted to allow the space for it since they would likely be shared 'sins' in relation to our site work at MUST. people began to take the floor, sharing deeply and honestly about how volunteering at MUST has become a burden, another check on the to-do list, etc. the conversation also morphed into larger communal confessions about our experiences at Candler in general. we really started rolling around in it, seconding one another, supporting one another. everyone spoke. i was moved to near tears at several moments. at some point during the space of this conversation, i realized that we had hit on just what we needed. i had several other things planned for my discussion, but i realized that they weren't at all important. this was the place that God wanted us to be for that time. we needed to hear each others' confessions--we needed to say our own. we needed to remember that we can trust one another and trust our shared experiences and trust in our communal humanity and brokenness. we needed to just talk and say that we don't have it all together, no matter how much we are forced to pretend that we do. it was such a sweet, sacred space. i got God-bumps (some alternately call them goosebumps)--when you can feel the tangible spirit of God in the room and know that God is working among you, that together we had stumbled upon the place where God wanted to bring each of us. it was nice to toss out an agenda for once. it was raw and poignant and real--vulnerable, just like Dr. B had unintentionally prepared us to be.

after we all confessed, i left those couple of minutes for silence before God, then played Bethany Dillon's "You are on Our Side" by way of absolution. her chorus says, "when You could just be silent and leave us here to die/still You sent Your son for us/You are on our side."

-----

and now, i have another confession of sorts. this morning in OT, the always-innovative Professor Strawn led the class in an excursus on the Bible and the modern media. our lecture had been on Proverbs, and he wanted us to examine what kind of things we as a culture are teaching our children these days. Exhibit 'A' for our consideration: the music video for Pussycat Dolls' "Buttons." my confession is this: i wanted to vomit after watching it. it was sex on overdrive, women being grossly objectified. i was literally squirming in my seat (the gist of the video is this--nearly naked women dancing around provocatively and groping themselves as they ask an intended male listener to "loosen up [their] buttons"). the myriad of issues surrounding this video was overwhelming in itself--Prof. Strawn had hit his mark. this is the moral instruction of our generation? i was made doubly uncomfortable by the fact that i was sitting next to the guy i've been dating for about a month now (you'll have to call me for that confession!). clearly this video was going to be perceived in very different ways by men vs. women. i recognized that all the men in our class, while hopefully being intellectually and moralistically repulsed by these images, were still certainly more susceptible to being turned on by them as well. so this stream of questions whirled through my head as i sat next to him throughout the video: does he think those girls are pretty? is this kind of whoring still somehow attractive to him? is this making him wish that i looked like those girls? does he realize that i will never look like those girls? am i still attractive to him despite the fact that i don't look like them?

you never know what you'll get in an Old Testament survey course these days, huh? self-worth and anger and disgust all rolled into one big knot in the stomach. you best believe i got myself straight up to chapel once class let out. both the experiences i have described here definitely ended in the worship of God through my desperate need of coming into a place where i can meet grace, a place that i know is safe, a place that equips me to walk back into the brokenness and the sin where i can continue to both hear and give confessions.

God our Mother

2010-02-23T18:18:00.004-05:00

this weekend, in the middle of a two week discussion on God and gender in my 'Images of God' class, I attended church on Sunday morning at Haygood UMC, which is where I'll be serving next year for my contextual education internship. As we progressed through the traditional elements of the service--the Apostles' Creed, the doxology, the gloria patri---I was starkly aware of the proliferation of God-language as father. I mean, this should have been pretty obvious (even in the title of one...gloria patri = dead giveaway) and this is the language that I've always heard and been perfectly comfortable with. But it's funny how focusing on the overuse of masculine language for God in classroom theorizing will immediately highlight the reality of it in practice. My question on Sunday was why? There's no real reason for the creed to say, "I believe in God the father, maker of heaven and earth" instead of, "I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth."

Where does this imagery come from? Certainly it's legitimate--I'm not questioning that. Jesus called God, "father" (abba) , and in our traditional trinitarian understanding, God is father to Christ the Son. Yet a deeper look at biblical imagery will certainly reveal a God that is not all male. For just a few examples, consider Wisdom-Sophia, consider the maternal imagery of second Isaiah, and of course consider both male and female as the imago Dei in the creation account.

the key point is this: all these images for God are just that--images, metaphors. God is beyond comprehension, beyond definition, beyond gender. When we assign these roles to God--father, mother, and so on--we are only trying to conceptualize the inconceivable. The danger comes in focusing too heavily on any one of these images. Recall the second of the ten commandments: you shall not make for yourself an idol. What else are we doing when we focus exclusively on one image of God, which is, again, a mere means for representing the divine--what else are we doing but creating an idol? God is father, yes, but not just that. God is so very much more. We are limiting God by calling God only father. It is an idol of our understanding, of our tradition, of our patriarchy.

I willingly admit that I have trouble with this. I am extremely comfortable with calling God, "father" and have never had problems with imaging God as male. I find it challenging to picture God as female, to call God, "her" or "mother." But it is this very discomfort that awakens me to my own idolatry of God as male and challenges me further to enlarge my understanding of God, to draw closer to the holy mystery by exploring other metaphors and images of God.

The practical question is this: how, as a future church leader, can I bring this notion into a congregational setting? You can't just up and pray in front of a roomful of unsuspecting parisheners, "God our mother" or repeatedly drop "She" as the divine pronoun. I think it would be healthy for us to get to a place where we do feel comfortable making those adjustments, but you can't make such a drastic shift without losing everyone in the process. Pushing these boundaries of our understandings of the divine can't happen overnight. I wander where to start though--I imagine it will be in one-on-one conversations or smaller group discussions. There's plenty of things I would want to do if I were to go home and plan/lead a service at my home church, but I might be chased out with torches and pitchforks and dropped into the lake with a stone around my ankles. We discussed this particular challenge at a recent religious education retreat I attended, and one solution is called innovative traditioning. You've got to start with what people know, and then tweak it.

I may not probe too deep into this next issue right now (I've got OT midterm studying to do that I've been expertly avoiding thus far), but another big part of this discussion is how exclusivist male imagery for God has become oppressive and subordinating to women. We are cast as the 'anti-image' of God and cannot know fully what it means to share in the divine being if God is father. I do not think this is a biblical intent, but it has certainly become a historical reality. And while we explore different metaphors, images, and language for the holy mystery, the divine other that is God, I hope, too, we can return to Scripture and look at it with new eyes, with the lens of patriarchy removed, and find in its pages a God who deeply cares about all people, not just white males. I say this because a couple of weeks ago, someone in our class suggested wishfully that we should just rewrite Scripture as a means of correcting these gender imbalances. It was almost funny how my body instinctively reacted to this proposal--I got hot and my face turned red and I had to take a few deep breaths! I don't think we're in any place to rewrite what has been given us. We just need to start treating it as the holy word that it is, instead of as an instrument of exploitation and oppression.

-----

on an unrelated note: got oddly excited about two things today: (1) discussing our upcoming exegesis paper for OT and (2) giving a mini-presentation in class...which included standing behind a lecturn and writing on the white board. future in biblical teaching? yes, i think so. good to get these confirmations every now and again. though i also am thinking more and more that i'm going to need a job that will also allow me to preach. sometimes, i fantasize about preaching...as in, i write sermons in my head and imagine myself giving them. the book on top of my summer reading list? Ellen Davis's Preaching the Old Testament. She, in fact, embodies everything I want to be--teacher, preacher, OT scholar. Good news, Mom and Dad! I've finally figured it out: I want to be Ellen Davis when I grow up!!

all girl

2010-02-16T18:13:00.003-05:00

Today in my 'Images of God' class, we talked a bit about gender socialization and discussed in small groups our personal responses to a journal prompt on this topic. When it was my turn to read, I shared about my upbringing and how I was pretty much all girl, all the time. I told my classmates about the hand-crafted dresses that my mother made for my sister and me, complete with a matching bow for everyday of the week. I loved dolls and always colored with a pink crayon, I said. I made the transition into how these behaviors have shaped the woman that I am today. I laughed as I pointed out the headband I had on:

And then my classmate pointed to my notebook lying open on the table.

Yep, pink pen. Still the little princess who likes to play dress-up I guess.

There are so many more things I could say about this subject (including whether or not it's now a good thing that I like to play princess and how systematic theology may betray more patriarchal biases than one might immediately notice), but for now, the pile of homework beckons (as it has for the past several weeks--sorry that the blog has been one thing to cut out!) I will share one more quick story though. During our discussion, I was reminded of the little boy in my preschool class last year who loved to play dress-up and wear the sparkly blue Cinderella dress. He absolutely came alive when he put on that outfit (not that he wasn't a lively boy without it!) and went straight for it every morning. But my co-teacher finally got to the point where she was uncomfortable enough with it that she hid that dress and we had to dig out the army hat and the doctor's scrubs for him to play in from then on out. She was afraid his dad would catch him in it when he came to pick him up, or that the other moms would see, or that our director would walk into the classroom. How sad that this poor three-year-old couldn't play in a way that made him happy because of the gender roles we all have been assigned from birth. Interesting to ponder what it is that shapes us (and subsequently our understandings of God).

tefilah

2010-01-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

My Hebrew instructor always starts class with an opening prayer. Funny how all the instructors here at seminary manage to pray such impacting prayers. This one from today touched me especially, so I asked if he would share it with us. I want to share it with you:

Another week's end before us and,

with it, another month's end and

nonetheless you continue, paying no attention.

Your continuing interrupts

our constant glances at clock and calendar.

The choppiness and hustle bustle

of our scheduled and compartmentalized lives

is interrupted not by another part

begging for our attention

but by a foreignness through which we think

we sense a whole.

By the grace of your abiding presence

may our parts be counted also as your whole.

In the name of that part which we confess whole,

Jesus of Nazareth, alpha and omega, Amen.

about the Boy--or rather, the girl without him

2010-01-21T22:48:00.004-05:00

(this post is going to be rather a lot like me sitting on the couch of an extremely close friend, pouring my guts out and writhing around in a mess of deep feelings. basically, i'm about to get vulnerable. if you've never done that with me--well, here's your chance. if you have in the past, it's probably been far too long, so welcome back and pass the chocolate)

On Sunday night, I finally told T--. that I had feelings for him--after months of crushing on him, after countless daydreams about how perfect we were for each other, after endless hours of girl-talk and advice from Mom and my friends--I told him that I liked him and he turned me down. My feelings were not reciprocated--and that was hard to hear, though he said it very kindly and maturely. It did sting quite a bit (and still does) to be rejected after being so sure that there was a connection there. I think I could best describe my immediate reaction as a state of shock--over the falsity of everything I thought I knew, over the time I spent pursuing him, now for naught.

I did decide pretty quickly, however, that I really have no regrets over the whole thing and I have nothing to be embarassed about. There are, of course, those little daggers of rejection that are now waiting to stab and tear apart my already fragile sense of self-worth. But I have come to feel strangely liberated. This weight of trying to build a relationship with T--. has suddenly been lifted--and its absence has made me realize how such a weight should never have been there in the first place. I think I dug myself deep into this hole of liking him--and at some point I stopped thinking and just kept digging. And then I was down so deep that I didn't know how to climb back out--the only ending I could foresee was us together. I was blinded by my own stubborness, I think. I didn't want to admit that I was frustrated with him for all the right reasons--reasons that should have signaled to me that it was time to give up and move on. I deserve better than some wild-goose-chase of a relationship, and that's really all it ever was, despite my continued self-delusions of otherwise.

I am most liberated now by the realization that I had been defining myself by my pursuit of him. I lost who Whitney is as I only became Whitney-who-likes-T--. I tried to become, at times, the girl I thought he would like. I always had to say the right thing, wear the right clothes, smile with just the right mixture of flirtation and shyness, be just the right mixture of aloof and engaged, of innocent and experienced, of principled and unrestrained. What an exhausting facade it has been, to never fully be myself! But how natural that I should fall into that behavior as I struggled with my first semester of seminary. My notions of God and self and people and call and community were all being rocked and instead of being brave enough to take a stand and redefine myself within this new context, I chose to hide behind something that was a distraction in so many ways--a distraction from who I am, from who I want to become, from other relationships, from God. And now I have before me the scary task of having to face those questions I pushed aside and instead I must try and remember (or redefine) who I am and then be it boldly, for me and for the God who brought me here, for the God who never stops screaming through all of creation that his great Love is what defines me--my identity, my worth, my purpose. I have been hiding from this truth and from myself within it.

Thank goodness T--. had the audacity to tell me the truth. Imagine if he had felt the same way and we had started to build a relationship on this false sense of self that I had created for myself! Sounds like the perfect recipe for a disaster. So everything I thought I wanted was only a dangerous illusion, and the last words I wanted to hear from his mouth have now lifted me up instead of crushing me flat. Our ironic and sovereign God! He truly is Lord of the sneaky deep.

All this is not to say that things will not be awkward with T--. at school, or that hurt feelings won't linger from the rejection--I'll still have to work to keep those self-worth demons at bay. But I am so thankful to not feel embittered or vengeful or depressed. Instead I feel hopeful and free. It's funny how one moment of honesty can change your whole perspective on yourself and your interactions and your world. It's funny how in one moment everything is about a Boy, and in the very next, it's not at all. I'm glad it's not anymore. I'm glad it's over.

And there's always tomorrow.

a face from the crisis

2010-01-17T13:10:00.001-05:00

(the following is an email I received from a lay leader at my church in Charlotte):

I Have been involved with a mission in Bayonnais Haiti, OFCB ministries, for the past 11 years. The ministry is located about 90 miles NE from Port Au Prince. The mission compound is safe.
13 students from OFCB ministries were sponsored to college in Port Au Prince from OFCB ministries. When I learned on Wednesday that 2 students were missing, I knew Actionnel, the pastor of OFCB, would take the 5 hr trip to PAP. After all his name is Actionnel.

Additionally, yesterday, he used a OFCB school bus to take people from Charlotte NC visiting Bayonnais to the airport in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The trip took Actionnel 10 hours. Thank God the Charlotte people will arrive home tonight.

Following is a brief email from Actionnel. He is exhausted and overwhelmed. I can't imagine being a pastor in Haiti. What a burden he is carrying.

Please keep Actionnel in your prayers.
Tom

Friends,
We got home,Bayonnais, at 10:11 last night. It was truly a miracle. We had no access to any fuel from the border to Bayonnais, going through Gonaives.
News keep coming into Bayonnais about death cases. Our two Journalist students are still missing, Jodes Milliacin and Madecene Alcius. We have been told of at least 6 others who have been dead in four different families. Please read Jeremiah 31: 14-17. It is exactly what is going on for the whole country, as well as for Bayonnais. Right now at 10:26 am here in Bayonnais, there are lots of cries for news telling about a young woman,a cousin of ours,who died with her daughter.

Jeremiah 31:14-17 NIV
I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with my bounty,” declares the LORD.
This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.”
This is what the LORD says:“Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,” declares the LORD.“They will return from the land of the enemy.
So there is hope for your future,” declares the LORD.“Your children will return to their own land."

Gas stations are empty. Means of transportation or distribution is impossible. Food is getting more and more scarce at the market places. Prices for everything have gone up rapidly.
We have heard that 50,000 or 100,000 have died in PAP. But, from what I saw on Wednesday, 200,000 death cases in PAP only will not surprise me.

Please, Kevin,Eddy,Jame Blane, Allen Smith, Eyleen make yourselves heard.

--Actionnel from Bayonnais hearing people crying everywhere.

kicking off 2010

2010-01-15T14:45:00.000-05:00

in lieu of actually trying to string together coherent paragraphs and witticisms today (as much as i want to, i've just felt a bit dry lately), here's a top ten of life so far in oh-ten:

10) it was SO cold here last week and finally snowed on friday. my snow-day experience: listening to the wind howl like a banshee while a woman shouted directions to a man in a car stuck over an ice patch on the road outside my window. i was curled up under my electric blanket for most of the day, though i did venture out once. first i had the extremely gratifying feeling of crawling back into bed after checking my email at 7am and learning that Emory had called for a two-hour delay in light of the snow--didn't have to be there until eleven. naturally, i decided to leave the hourse a little earlier than usual so i could drive slowly and carefully. i make it to school in plenty of time, despite a traumatizing near-wreck on one of the side roads near the University. thankfully, I was able to dig back nearly 10 years to driver's ed, and something inside me screamed out "turn into the skid, turn into the skid!" I did, and came to a soft rest at the end of someone's driveway, grateful that I didn't land a few feet forward (against a giant rock) or a few feet back (into a couple walking down the sidewalk). Of course, after I slowly navigated the rest of my route and starte walking towards the theology building, I was informed by a fellow Candler student that Emory decided to close for the day. Apparently, an email with this pertinent information was sent out about 10:30, by which time most of us had already left to make it to campus. So we missed our test and went out to breakfast instead.

9) Summer is approaching rapidly--at least, the deadlines for things to do this summer are approaching rapidly. I've got most of the work done for a fellowship program I'm applying to with the Beatitude Society. There's one internship in DC and one in Cali (!) that I am interested in--both would involve writing for social justice-based organizations. That's definitely on the top of my list for how to spend my summer. But I've been somewhat preoccupied with searching out back-up plans; I have no idea how competitive the fellowship program is. I've spent some time online looking for other opportunities and have come up blank so far. I thought about reapplying to YouthWorks, but have finally decided against it only because it runs so far into August. But I've realized that I'm blindly searching for these other elusive opportunities really to just build my resume--I don't feel like I can fairly spend a summer just doing "nothing" when I'll be on the job market in another couple of years. I'm caught up in the train of thought that tells me I have to do something impressive and skill-building and prestigious and practical. Those aren't bad things, but I may be searching for them for the wrong reasons. So I've started to gain some contentment with the idea of staying in ATL this summer. I could take a summer school course, earn some money, maybe do a little travel or family vacation time, attend a retreat with church, possibly attend the Western NC UMC conference in June, and just 'be' in this community--make it even more of my home. And I've decided that unless something else amazing just falls into my lap, I won't apply for anything else--I won't go seeking it out. It might be nice to look for some church work in ATL if I end up here--even if it's just volunteer-based.

8) I've been sucked into the world of Lost. It started over Christmas break--which actually was nice because I had a good bit of down-time in Arkansas to just hang out and be lazy. But the show is unrelenting--it sucks you in. Plus, the final season airs in just a couple more weeks and that puts a good deal of pressure on trying to get caught up in order to watch it live. I've slacked off a bit this week--just needed to take a night to watch some basketball, something else :) I'm not quite halfway through season 3. I've got some work to do. Of course, I now also have reading. It's going to get ugly when I have to make the decision between reading the Bible for class the next day and watching another Lost episode ;)

7) I'm planning a trip to Chicago for spring break & I think it's actually going to happen! I haven't seen K-Wood in way too long and I've never been to Chicago. Plus, a mini YouthWorks staff reunion may be in the works and I would give just about anything to see those three (or any combination therein) again.

6) Since I last wrote, I started and finished my J-term class on the history of Methodism. We had class for 3 hours a day for 8 days--and it was an absolute breeze. Even after the snow day, we got out of class early most days and I actually made a 100 on the midterm. Some in the class (namely someone who actually watched Lost in closed caption during one of our class sessions) questioned the integrity of the course--I mean we did learn but it wasn't very challenging. Many others of us were fine with that :) I think theology of Methodism will be what really matters anyway.

5) i started back at work this week and it's been going really well. the woman who was my immediate supervisor last semester has transferred offices, so now i'm working directly for the VP of Emory! i really like him a lot and felt very productive this week. one thing i've been doing is putting together an email list for the distribution of an upcoming university report, and administration officials at other universities will be receiving it. so today i made it to UNC on the list of schools, and got sappy and nostalgic looking at the website and all the beautiful sunny quad pictures of Chapel Hill. will I ever not miss it? (though after this week's ugly loss to Clemson, i was almost ready to disavow my affiliation...)

4) I'm still enjoying my new-found running hobby, though a few friends were unable to convince me to sign up for a half-marathon with them this spring. Blair & I did try to register for a 5k, but the website kept declining my credit card :( I don't know if that's a sign from God or what, but I'm still determined to run one this spring.

3) the Boy. oh, the Boy.

2) Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:13 that people were calling the early Christians "out of their minds," but that he was cool with it because he was out of his mind for God. I meditated a lot on that verse this past summer. And now I am back to it as I begin a course in lexical Hebrew! Ok, sure, plenty of people know biblical Hebrew and study and do just fine, and I've always done well in language study. But there is something that feels vaguely insane about studying it--especially since it was more of a choice than an explicit requirement. I am both nervous and eager to dig in. There are only six people in my class, so I think that will make for a pretty good learning environment. And Arden felt during her time studying Hebrew at UNC that it was strangely satisfying, different work--much like working simple math problems or diagramming sentences. We'll see...keep this one on your prayer rotation :)

1) many candler students will be attending a luau tonight. yes, a january luau. that should make for some interesting stories for next time!

the simple life

2009-12-23T14:37:00.003-05:00

Do you remember that show "The Simple Life"--our first ridiculous introduction to Paris Hilton and her schemes toward some kind of legitimate celebrity? Well, Arkansas is not all like that. And I don't know of many other families besides the Duggars who have enough children to man a football team. But things are a little bit simpler here. It's probably the lack of school work and schedules. And the fact that we're in a house in the woods at the end of a gravel road. I feel like I'm stuck inside a Taylor Swift song--here is a place where the moon shines like a spotlight on the lake and you might actually get away with calling it a one-horse town. I think it's also my grandparents. They remind me of a time in my life that was simpler. And they are simply good. Paw Paw makes us a decadent breakfast every morning and refuses any help. Grandma lets me sit with her while she curls her hair and tells me how nice mine looks, longer and with bangs, thicker somehow (sharing hair woes with her reminds me that I am somebody's baby--my mother's thick mane makes me look like an adopted child). The two of them, my grandparents, they really do fight--no, just live--like an old married couple. It's nice to be reminded that relationships (of any sort) really can work. People can complement each other and finish each other's sentences and be cranky with one another without really minding and live together for over 50 years.

Last night we went to the movie theater downtown. It was free popcorn and coke night--just because, they said, every Tuesday is free popcorn and coke night. Our tickets costs just $6 each. We parked our car right out front, on Main Street, without fear of returning to a boot on the tire and a $50 fee. Paw Paw reflected upon a simpler time even further away, a time when he had young granddaughters to take to see Disney movies about princesses falling in love. We all took a trip back to that time last night--it was at my request that we see the only movie playing at the one-house Gem: The Princess and the Frog. Of course, this time on the way home, the twenty-four year old granddaughter noted scornfully with her mother that Disney still had their modern princess swept off her feet by the prince in a matter of hours, to be married within days, despite attempts at the beginning of the movie to make her an independent woman. I don't think the four year old Whitney would've minded that quite as much.

Two nights ago we soaked up a little more local culture. My grandparents operate a free health clinic in town and their church has been producing a Christmas play for the last three years as a fundraiser. Afterwards, Mom and I experienced our first round of introductions to some of the church folk. When we told one woman that I went to school in Atlanta, at Emory, she nodded wisely and asked, "Candler. That's a good conservative school there, now isn't it?" "Well, no ma'am. Candler actually tends a bit more towards the liberal end of things." After pausing for a moment of thought, she concluded, "That's good. It's good to have somebody on the inside that can change things." She also said to me, earlier in the conversation when Grandma first said I was a student at divinity school, that she "loved divinity." I was struck dumb momentarily, not sure whether this was some way unbeknownst to me for expressing one's personal devotion to the Lord, or if this woman was a particular fan of divinity schools in general. Apparently, as I was told later by my grandmother, divinity is some form of dessert. Hard to believe that there is a dessert I have not yet met, but it seems that my face did betray a bit more of my cluelessness that I had intended. Perhaps I can make it up to her by bringing Candler down from the inside.

Liberal or conservative biases aside, it has been nice to take a break from school work (though not from theological ponderings altogether) and return to a few simpler talents of my own: shopping at WalMart (thank you, YouthWorks), doing a little cooking, singing in the church choir. Reading. I finished Donald Miller--darn him still for making me want to write. Everything has become a story--I start narrating my life inside my head as it is happening (well, I do it more than usual), constructing clever sentences about the silliest little things, remembering conversations and things people say because it might make for a funny reenactment in a memoir about my life. Here's one that I had to write down:

Phone rings. Paw Paw answers. It's the preacher from the church, he says, as he hands the phone to Maw.

"No, I don't want to play at the New Year's Eve service," she says by way of greeting.

Pause. "Well now don't start in with all that God-talk or you'll make me say yes. What would I have to play?"

Pause. "Well of course I can play that--I used to be a Lutheran."

Of course, in the end Grandma agrees to play at the service. I am left laughing and mentally scribbling this scene into my memory and am encouraged to know that Donald Miller may be onto something--that real life may be funny and poignant and meaningful, whether you're traveling through painted deserts or sitting around the kitchen table in Heber Springs, Arkansas.

I also want to hike the Grand Canyon now. And watch the sun rise. I don't know if I've ever just sat and done that. That makes me pretty sad.

There will be a few more days in Arkansas to do that. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, the family is coming. There will be food and bustle and awkward conversations until things settle in and we're comfortable with one another again, for these few hours at least. There will be cousins with boyfriends and babies, reflected by the increasing number of stockings across the fireplace mantle. I stop for only a minute to wonder when my stocking holder will have one with a name done in puff paint tucked next to it, then decide that right now, this is just right, where I am. I've got stories of seminary and Atlanta and future plans to retell again and again. The independent princess.

On Monday I will fly to Texas to see old friends, one of whom is getting married. She asked me to lead a Scripture reading in the ceremony, and I think sentimentally how that is much better of a gift she is giving me than the utensil holder I bought for her off the registry. But I've been awful sentimental lately. The day before I left Atlanta, I woke up in time to catch the end of Mona Lisa Smile on tv and I sobbed and sobbed as Julia Roberts left Wellesley and all her students behind, but all the girls jumped on bicycles and chased down her car and waved her off with tears in their eyes. I realized then how much I hate goodbyes. I think that's why I am soaking up every moment here with the grandparents I see only once a year, why I'm excited to see my friends next week but already heart wrenched to leave them again, why I'm planning a trip to Chicago in March to end that period after your last goodbye with (several) someone(s) when you're left wondering when it is, if ever, you will see each other again.

That's kind of life though, isn't it? Even the simplicity of Arkansas can't change some things. But I've gotten dreadfully long-winded. I hope you have a merry Christmas, simple in joy and hope, wherever you are celebrating.

time for a breather

2009-12-17T18:37:00.002-05:00

home again. it's been delightful so far. i got puppy kisses and brother hugs the moment i walked in the door. last night we sat in front of the fire and finished a puzzle and drank holiday beer all together. i slept in late this morning, then went for a run with baxter--it was a beautiful, crisp morning. i straightened out some things with my candidacy process after lunch, then headed out for my first round of christmas shopping. i'm not done yet, but i actually have gift suggestions from everyone in my family--a rare occurance. tonight we're eating homemade chili and potatoes for dinner and tomorrow it may snow! (slush?)

but i'm also sad to have left atlanta. i think it's because i don't like getting thrown out of rhythm--even if it is for a break and a trip home. it is nice to exhale, however, after the end of the semester. i have a feeling school will only get harder from here, but it's also weird to think that we just have 5 semesters left! i know, i know, that sounds like a lot (and it is), but i love it so much that it's hard to already scratch one semester off the list. this is such a precious time in my life, and i want to savor every moment, even as I count down the days of reading and papers and tests listed on syllabi as i go along. our OT professor has reminded us several times this semester (usually before a big test) that we should count it as an extreme privilege that it is our full-time job to study, and to study what we love at that. (for another take on grad students, click here). i actually had a moment of realization during my OT final that i was enjoying writing an essay on the exile. that, friends, is a pretty good sign of being in the right place.

but for now, it is time for a brief break from the OT and from all day study sessions at caribou coffee and from counting the number of not-pants worn by undergrads in the library. i've got only a few days at home in charlotte before jetting off to arkansas and spending christmas with my grandparents and extended family. then it's off on a mini-trip to texas for ashleigh's wedding before heading back to charlotte for a few days. j-term starts on the 4th back at emory. if i could squeeze anything else in, i really would like to go skiing--maybe a day trip up to boone would be feasible? we shall see.

one of my to-dos over the holiday break is to figure out what i want to do this summer. there is an internship or two that i want to apply for, and i'd welcome any suggestions of jobs or programs to apply for if anyone knows of any good opportunities. i'd really like to be a traveling vagabond this summer, but barring a lottery win (made even more unlikely by the fact that i don't play the lottery), that probably won't happen.

i would also welcome any suggestions for books to read over the break. i need to finish the donald miller i started on a whim midway through the semester, and i'm sure i have a list a mile long i'd like to work on--if only i had ever taken the care to write that list down. unfortunately, i may have to start reading my history of methodism book soon if i want to avoid being overwhelmed during j-term. but we'll see...

i pray that your christmas season is filled with joyful expectation for the coming of Jesus our King. watch for him like the coming of the dawn on a black, cold night. wait for him as a people in exile and defeat wait for the hope that they know will one day come.

warning

2009-12-12T13:41:00.002-05:00

note for the future: combining allergy medicine with situations of extreme mental fatigue and nervous anticipation may have hazardous effects.

if this happens during finals week of graduate school, combined effects may lead to nonchalance over studying for the last exam of the semester. may cause delusions where it's okay to eat chocolate ice cream and 7up for dinner.

combination may be lethal if said anticipation is over both finals and a boy. may lead to over-reactions. will require heightened dosages of romantic comedies and episodes of 'say yes to the dress.'

catch my attention

2009-12-03T18:20:00.002-05:00

in recent years, there's a prayer that i've started to pray that is somewhat dangerous.

Lord, catch my attention.

truth be told, God could answer that prayer in many ways. so let me clarify. i pray this prayer from a place of complacency. of frustration with myself or with a system in which i am embedded (America, the Church, my family).

catch-my-attention prayers don't ask for blessing. they do ask for healing, but healing through brokenness. these are prayers that ask for something "bad" to happen in order to wake me from my blindness to what is really happening. to jolt me out of the routines and habits that have become destructive without my awareness.

so i should clarify even further--this is a prayer i'm trying to pray. when i'm honest with myself, it's not something i'm really prepared to ask for. but i'm thankful that my eyes are being opened to why i need to pray this way.

the first time i prayed in this way was during undergrad. it was the end of my junior year and i was trying to decide (yet again) whether or not i should change my major. i had several long phone conversations with my parents, and out of this context came a revelation from my father that he was unhappy in his job--and nearly always had been. he does extremely well for himself, and for the family by extension, but the long hours and the lack of fulfillment had begun to pile up, i believe. of course, i saw this as a nudging from the God my father doesn't know very well, a nudge towards something of greater significance. out of this, i began to pray that my father would lose his job--or that something would happen that would drive him to quit. (we're getting honest here). i knew that there was no way he could just up and leave a job of such security and benefits for our whole family. but i grew to see that such a thing might be the best way for my father to find fulfillment and find God. how true is it, sad or not, that so many people meet God when they're forced to their knees or in their last hour? it's that jolt out of complacency and comfort that makes the bubble pop and lets us see that there is much more to life than the idols we have created--there is a God who loves us, there are family and friends who love us more for our money or our accomplishments, there is a beautiful world full of beautiful people brimming with potential.

my dad is still with his same job, and i know that i benefit from his success immensely--and always have. i know that if this prayer were to be fulfilled, i would lose a lot of the things in which i have grown comfortable. an upheaval in the family of this sort might then serve two purposes: to lead my father to a place of fulfillment and to snap me out of my reliance on the material things he has always provided for me.

i actually started thinking about this post today during my last Old Testament class of the semester. we've spent a lot of time in this class discussing the theme of land in the OT--how central it is to the relationship between God and Israel, how it is gift, it is covenant. the Israelites received their law codes while they were yet outside the land. the Deuteronomic sermon was given just on the other side of the Jordan (putatively at least). as the Israelites stood on the brink of landedness for the first time in their existence as a people, on the brink of the Abrahamic promise fulfilled, God issued a warning: things are different in the land. when you settle down, build houses and towns and get comfortable, don't forget that this land is a precious gift from God. don't get complacent--you're not going to have to collect manna everyday from now on, but remember where you're blesings come from. as my professor aptly put it, it becomes very tempting to forget that it is God who provides when there's a Walmart up the street. and of course, what happened? the Israelites did forget. they became complacent in their blessings and left Torah behind. and God caught their attention: exile.

there's a lot of implications here that i won't go into, because the point i want to make is that there is a glaring analogy between the people of ancient Israel and contemporary America. we are complacent in our blessings, in our Christianity! we have little respect for the land--it is exploited instead of appreciated. we have Walmarts and Starbucks and iPods and SUVs and all the rest of it (please know i implicate myself in all of these things). our earth is dying, our ("national") faith is a facade, and we can hardly distinguish God from Santa Claus, from President Obama.

how does God need to catch our attention as a nation? that is one heck of a scary question--and i'm terrified to pray it. but i'm also convicted--America is hurting. American Christianity is moving further and further away from biblical principles to self-help mumbo-jumbo. we are certainly due for an "exile"--we've long since broken covenant. how will God respond? and how can i pray for our nation to be knocked down off its high horse a bit while still embodying love and goodness? what will it take to grab our attention, and what will it cost? i don't know the answer, but i think it's something i need to start praying for.

habakkuk 1:5--Look at the nations and watch--and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.

Are we prepared to take God up on that? are we ready for this to happen in our generation?

as i said before, i am every bit as wrapped up in american consumerism and the like as the next girl. maybe i'm even worse off, because i'm starting to recognize these flaws and still fail to really act--to stop shopping at Walmart and drinking fancy lattes and filling my closet with too many clothes.

i have other catch-my-attention prayers that i've been praying for myself, most of which revolve around my new seminary experience. i've been lulled into a place of what has felt at times like spiritual complacency (though as mentioned in my last post, Pastor Shane may disagree by the simple fact that i'm in seminary, but it's still how i feel sometimes). so i pray for God to catch my attention, to grab my spiritual heart--again, not knowing what that will look like (it's often in the form of Psalm 51:10-12). maybe seeing something like the awesome power of nature (hmm, the Atlanta floods??) or having to rigorously defend my faith. another, more concrete example has been my struggle with perfectionism. i've considered praying for a 'C' (or below?!) on a paper or even in a class so i can see that nothing will be chucked out the window if that happens--not my faith, not my career, not my friends and family. stepping out from under the shadow of a 4.0 GPA might be really nice. it might be really nice not to feel compelled to live up to the pressure i put on myself to maintain that at Candler. that's not why i'm here.

praying these prayers genuinely, i think, is going to next require moving to a place where I'm prepared and truly willing for God to answer them.

thanksgiving break post

2009-11-28T12:15:00.005-05:00

as i first drove into my neighborhood in charlotte this week, it felt like i had never left. i've been in atlanta since august, but it's funny how home is always there. some things change: there is a new stoplight on elm lane, the picture frames in the dining room are arranged differently, the walls of my room are much barer, but somehow everything still looks the same, smells the same. the air is the same. it's nice to be home. i feel though, that this year i've finally made that transition. coming home used to be a literal coming home, returning from college as if it were some extended summer camp adventure, and charlotte was where i still really lived. but now, atlanta is definitely home. i love it there more than i could've imagined. i have friends--a family--there, a home there, work to do there. so now coming to charlotte for the holidays is a visit, a brief return to former things, a chance to catch up with what's been going on in the lives of the people i seem to know the best and the least all at once. it's a start toward that weird place of home not really being home. i've always wondered how it is for my mother to only see her parents very sparingly, and feel, at least somewhat, like we do, that grandma's house is a vacation getaway of sorts. this is a place to rest, to refuel. a place to leave again.

apologies for falling so naturally into the thanksgiving vernacular, but being home has also reminded me how very blessed i am. my family is great--maybe even a little less dysfucntional than i last remembered. this truth is thrown into sharper distinction by my recent viewing of the movie Precious. in short, the main character is abused in every way by her biological family. i come home to a family who has been eagerly awaiting my return. my mother changed my sheets and made my bed for me, complete with chocolate on the pillow! she remembered to turn the heat on upstairs hours before i arrived so i that i wouldn't be cold. she has cooked more food for us than one would think humanly possible (this morning it was banana pancakes--yum!). it all makes me stop and wonder what accident of birth allowed me to have this kind of life. no, we're not perfect, but i have always been loved, and loved well. at my dad's house, where i usually spend much less of my time when i'm home (the years of back and forth have led me to settle at mom's and stay), he followed me into the kitchen when i wanted a bite of dinner one night. he opened the refrigerator door and proceeded to show me all the grocercies he had bought because he knew they were things that i particularly enjoy: good salad lettuce, pineapple, apple slices. he didn't even know that i would be there to eat those kind of snack-like foods, but he bought them just in case. my dad's love through provision has so often reminded me of God's abundance: the extravagance and the detailed, intimate knowledge of the recipient. i don't always agree with the lifestyle of extravagance my dad has chosen (and works hard to enjoy), but this year i've begun to see that providing for his family is the way he best knows to show his love. and there's something really beautiful in that. sometimes life is just about doing the best that you know how.

***

one of the first things i did this week in charlotte was to meet with my candidacy mentor. we've only met once, and i've been pretty slack in pursuing my ordination requirements thusfar, so i wasn't entirely sure what to expect. we had such a great talk, though. of course, there is much to catch up on, since i've completed almost an entire semester of seminary (and my first one at that) since last speaking with him. he really spoke to the fears and frustrations i've experienced in the last few months. i've been craving this conversation--someone to mentor me through this process--so i was more than willing to be vulnerable, and he was very willing to push me even further into those places. i admitted that one of the things i've struggled with this semester is my lack of personal devotional time--in the Word and in prayer. this has led to a feeling of distance from God. he reassured me that God is close even when i don't feel God there, when i don't have all the warm-fuzzies. God is bigger than emotion and God certainly doesn't rely on my compliance in the relationship for the existence of the relationship (if that was true, we'd all be in trouble). God wants me to spend time in devotion, but that doesn't define our relationship. right now, i am obeying God by being in seminary. this is the place God has led me to, and i am being faithful by doing the work of seminary. it's a different kind of faithfulness--not necessarily a complete one (if there is any such thing), but a step toward a maturing relationship, i think. it's moving further beyond the Sunday school ideal of God to one that has a little more practical experience.

pastor shane also reassured me that i am, in fact, engaging in discernment already this semester, moving closer to the place to which God is calling me. he asked me who the greatest teachers in my life have been, using those examples to say that great teachers are passionate about what they teach. as an aspiring religious educator (or pastor or what have you), my primary job is to love Jesus, and to let people see that. a true passion of that nature will have to impact people, in one one way or another. i can see how this might sound like a cop-out for the real work of ministry that needs to be done, but i don't think that's how he meant it. his point was to say that the best thing we can do is to just love God and be passionate about the Gospel--all the other work we do is God working through us, anyway.

***
a few closing notes:
1) i am in love...with my new puppy nephew
2) my iPod is in the ICU, and i'm only hoping it will make it through a few more workouts before christmas. now the question is...iPhone???
3) christmastime really makes me miss singing. sometimes i miss it like i would breathing--singing so often was something i did all the time, and it was my life. i may already be annoyed by the christmas stations on the radio (i mean really, there are more songs and versions than the rotation of about ten songs they all seem to have), but i can't WAIT to sing christmas carols in church.
4) i also miss dancing. that was almost ALL i did for workouts last year. the absence thereof in Atlanta has led me to significantly improve my running game (me and Baxter, said puppy nephew, went a couple of miles or so on the greenway together yesterday--also the occasion of the iPod coma), but being home, i was able to attend a cardio funk class on wednesday night. i danced myself into something of a muscle paralysis as i am now experiencing it. i can barely move for the rediscovery of some of those muscles and dance moves, but it was great. there is a class tomorrow at 5, which i expect i will attend despite any lingering soreness, between panther football and tarheel hoops!

home on monday. one more week. 3 papers, one final. then done. when did that happen?

it's not much..

2009-11-18T18:39:00.002-05:00

i haven't felt the need to say anything lately. a head full of thoughts, a heart full of feelings and nothing to say. hmm. but i miss writing. and i'm having one of those nights where i feel angsty. i don't want to sit in my room and read or clean up around the house or check my email anymore. i want to break out of the routine a little bit and go do something. i'd like to cuddle up under the stars with good friends and just talk all night. i'd like to sit down with my mother and have one of the completely ridiculous and wonderful conversations about boys and football and life that we've gotten so good at. i want to bake and bake until i'm up to my ears in dirty dishes and then have a dinner or a party where i can go to share my cookies and cakes. on nights like this, i could probably jump out of an airplane. but maybe i will go to the gym instead. i usually run the longest when i'm feeling this way.

that's all i've got. hope to find my voice again soon.

thoughts from a sunday morning

2009-11-08T13:22:00.004-05:00

this morning i sat on my front porch eating slightly burnt blueberry muffins, breathing the strangely warm fall air, reading through painted deserts by donald miller. i've been saving that one--the way i saved the sixth of jane austen's novels, not wanting to finish off an author. how interesting that there is a joy in leaving something unread, in hoping that you'll crack it at just the right time. this morning, miller's author's note caused my eyes to mist as i gazed blearily off into the distance, listening to the children playing across the street and wondering where the story of my life is going.

i know i got weepy because his preface is about leaving--a segment that was included in our youthworks devotional book this summer, over which i sobbed and i journaled, thoughts which i accepted and i rejected all at once. but the preface is also about dying, it's about living, and writing and reading the story of your life. this summer, i was in a place of transition, coming and leaving several times from several places in the course of a few months. now i'm not in a position to be leaving anywhere for awhile, and i'm happy about that, i'm happy about being here. but i do want to make sure i'm living, before i end up with the thickest part of my book in my left hand, as miller puts it, about to close it for good.

deep thoughts, and i'm not really sure where to go with them. miller said he started pondering death once he hit 30. maybe i am six years too early, or maybe it's this being in grad school business, but i feel like the time is upon me to start living intentionally, more so.

donald miller is the kind of writer that makes me want to write. to sit and ponder a phrase until it perfectly (and wittily) captures some truth about the world as you see it. doesn't that sound better than trying to write for the way some professor sees the world? maybe. i think there's an art in both.

i don't really have much else to say. i just felt compelled to write something, after reading that.

vertigo

2009-11-05T22:05:00.003-05:00

on tuesday night, i was innocently sitting in the living room of the Women's Shelter at MUST. i turned my head to talk to my friend and shelter resident Emma, when suddenly the room was spinning. my breath was just taken away--i was so dizzy. i drank a bit of water and the feeling passed within a few minutes, though i still felt woozy. fortunately, i carpool to MUST with a friend and classmate, and he was able to drive us home in my car. it's a long drive--and we had almost made it to his house when the vertigo swept over me again--much worse than before. i ended up having to rest for a couple hours on the couch at his house--i just had to get out of that car (though i could barely walk up the steps on my own). eventually my roommate came to pick me up, and though the car ride back to our house (about 10 minutes) nearly did me in (i threw up afterwards for the FIRST time since sixth grade. i'm disappointed to have broken that long-standing record), i was very thankful to be in my own bed. mercifully, i slept well.

i had hoped that all would be well in the morning, because, wouldn't you know it, the wednesday and thursday of this week contained the most jam-packed 36 hours of the semester: two presentations and a test. but after getting up to shower,etc for about 30 minutes, i was forced to admit that i wasn't going anywhere. i settled back into bed with tears of frustration and began composing the series of emails required to excuse me from the day's activities. i had to miss a group tour of MUST--probably THE one day of this class that i woul prefer not to miss. of course, i felt bad for skipping out on my group, but they were all very understanding and my professor was extremely gracious. i didn't really expect anything less, but it's so hard for me to do that--to show a bit of weakness, to admit that i can't do something, to let people down in any way. my body was screaming against my fear of all those things, though, and i just couldn't ignore it.

thus yesterday, i had a sabbath day. a forced one. what does that mean? not to fall too heavily upon the old "everything happens for a reason" adage, but i have to wonder, honestly, about the timing, severity, and unexpectedness of this vertigo. admist all my running around and my pushing of my limits, my body said stop--and i couldn't control it, couldn't talk my way into a different solution. i had to be still. i had to let go of a little control over some of my classwork, over my studying for my test this morning, even. i had to recuperate, to take care of myself. i don't think i do that enough otherwise. it's scary that something like this has to happen for me to really get that message.

it's also been a real blessing to see how well i'm cared for here in atlanta. of course, the first person i called about the vertigo was my mother, who has experienced the same thing, but when it hit, i was with a classmate who i met only a couple of months ago. he got me home and let me crash pathetically on his couch. he held onto me when i could barely put one foot in front of the other. then my roommate, who i met in march, but have again only really known for a couple of months, drove across and back from our house to his, leaving her studying at 11:30 at night to get me home. the two friends who i had planned to study with in the morning brought me dramamine and insisted that i call if i needed anything. everyone else who heard was so kind in asking after me and wishing me well. i didn't know any of these people only 3 months ago. that is a beautiful witness of community to me. i am well cared for :) it's nice to know.

this morning, blessedly, i woke up feeling fine. 24 hours and it's done. completely debilitated and then back to normal--just in time to take my second OT midterm this morning and participate in my RE presentation this afternoon. my head has hurt a little bit, but i was able to concentrate on my test and operate heavy machinery again, which is good! and it's been pretty nice to just crash on the couch tonight for some more recuperation. the scary thing is how unexpectedly and fully the vertigo hit me--now who knows when it might happen again??

it seems that there is some universal ordering that causes me to be sick in this way during my first year at a new school. so for your antecdotal entertainment, here are my previous experiences with vertigo:
1) freshman year at South Meck in Charlotte--it was show week for the school production of Bye Bye Birdie, and our rehearsals had been running until 11 and 12 at night (doesn't sound that late now--but my bedtime was 9:30 at 15). school started at 7:15, so i was up everyday by 5:45. i believe it was opening night, during school hours still, and i was exhausted. i started feeling quesy and asked to be excused from class. i walked outside across the quad to reach a building with a bathroom, and i passed out against the side of a brick wall. i eventually made it to the bathroom and lulled in and out of consciousness on the floor of the stall. the episode was complicated by the fact that my recent bellybutton piercing had been giving me trouble and i had been messing with it that day. gross.
2) freshman year at UNC, i gave blood for the first time. i went in worried about the needle, and that ended up being no big deal. so i had a false confidence about me during the rest of the experience. when i was all done, i popped up out of the chair and the next thing i knew, i was coming to with several people around me and my feet up in the air. apparently, i got up way too fast and went down just as fast. the technician leaned over to me and whispered, "next time you donate, don't wear a skirt!"

thursday musings

2009-10-29T21:58:00.007-04:00

last night, for whatever reason (i usually can't identify the causes of my mood swings), i climbed into bed with a "i want to crawl into a hole and die (read:hibernate)" mentality.

you'll never guess what finally snapped me out of it: it was another moment in my religious education class. almost every week in that class i feel like i'm hovering outside my body and my mind, as if an outside observer, and asking myself what the heck is going on. trust me, if you ever walked into our class, you would be terribly confused and probably quite amused.

but what an experiment it has been! here's what pulled me out of my funk today: at the end of class, we all laid down on the floor (as we do quite frequently) and sang to ourselves "twinkle twinkle little star." first we sang in a normal voice, followed by opera, country, and rock star voices. yes. but wow, it's such a release. to just be stupid and laugh at yourself and laugh collectively and to not think for a few moments.

another highlight of the day--i checked out a new small group tonight. i was a bit wary because it was described to me as a group of "mostly twenty-something marrieds, with a few singles." red flag. but i desperately need to know people outside of candler, i need another community. it was so bizzare, though, to talk about the Bible without other students of theology. the church i've been attending has been working through a series on exodus, and the small groups are reading through the same. of course, that's also just what we've been studying in OT, so it was really good for me to hear theological thoughts and perspectives outside of those belonging to Candler students and professors. it was also good for me to realize that there are some conversations that happen with Candler classmates and teachers that shouldn't happen in more of a lay setting. again, i felt like i was having an out-of-body experience--there i sat, with all this "knowledge" about the exodus and the ten commandments (which we discussed tonight) but i couldn't just barf it all out and sound like a smarty pants seminarian--or just completely irrelevant. i had to hold it all in tension and respond to people, engage in what we were actually interested in talking about instead of just launching into a lecture of sorts. i need that, to remember that not everyone is a seminarian (nor should they be). we need to come out of our ivory tower of academia every now and again. i'm glad i got to tonight.

learning to float

2009-10-25T22:21:00.005-04:00

good day today. really good day.

it's been a good weekend, actually. despite the fact that friday started off with 3.5 hours spent on the top floor of Woodruff library, huddled over old copies of Faulkner novels, searching, searching, searching for quotes that are NOT on the same page in the first editions as they are in later versions. and then i worked another couple hours in the office, since i took monday off for my birthday--nothing wrong with that, i definitely had the time. but my office computer can turn 20 minutes of work into an hour because it moves at an absolutely glacial pace.

friday evening made up for it, though, and i can sum it up for you in only a few words: falafel, cat, twilight (if you really know me, of course, that is less weird than it sounds. or maybe just as weird but justifiable). i spent the evening with my friend amanda, and after having a really great conversation and realizing that we might be seminary soulmates (in that we're struggling with a lot of the same issues), we went for mediterranean food before heading to her apartment, where i met her cat, who spent the rest of the evening in my lap. then we turned on twilight and giggled like teenage girls. there is no mental break better than a few ridiculous hours spent with edward cullen (rivaling, in fact, the ridiculous mental break that was the stone mountain laser show last weekend...another story for another time, indeed).

saturday was nice and included a great morning workout, a pumpkin latte, an amazing vegetable dinner with fro-yo for dessert, and a dog pee stain that was successfully removed from my new boots!

today was an absolutely beautiful fall day and i started it off by spending a chilly hour out on the front porch with a mug of tea (sent for my birthday by dear Liz Kool--and i even drank it in my victory tankard!), a blanket, and henri nouwen. i've decided to take a break from morning church and just attend the night service i've been going to. i've never solely gone to an evening service, so i've wanted to see how i feel about not spending sunday morning at church. it definitely feels different, but i felt like i had my own little church out there on the porch this morning--just enjoying the beautiful creation and delighting in the crisp breeze, reading a less dense but still spiritually compelling book.

i needed church tonight, though. and a good word was preached, one that i really needed to hear. the current series is based on exodus, which has been frustrating at times as we simultaneously study it in OT. but God gave me an open and willing heart to receive the message tonight. the passage of Scripture was the ten commandments, and the pastor centered his sermon on the first verse: God does not begin this law code with a command, but rather with a call to remember what He has done. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Ex. 20:2). it is the grace of God that ALWAYS comes first, and His desired obedience is but a natural response to that grace, to that incredible gift.

the ten commandments are not, then, a to-do list, but a call to first receive. the pastor set up this great metaphor about new swimmers, who panic, thrash, and flail in deep waters instead of simply floating. this remembrance that God sets at the beginning of the decalogue is a reminder to float--God carries the bulk of our weight, while the arm strokes and kicks of our learned and eventual obedience begin to take us somewhere. but the first step is to just float.

how ironic that i have been a long-time swimmer, with brief stints as a competitive one, but i have never been able to float well. how is it that i can butterfly up and down a lane, but i start to sink when i simply lie on my back? that's just like me--doing and doing and doing until i don't know how to just be. that's going to be an especially hard lesson to learn here at seminary, where taking time to just be is quite the luxury and i often feel as though i'm thrashing and flailing about, wasting my energy and making a big watery mess. but i can already sense that God wants me to get that and let loose a bit. He even started teaching me that this summer! such a doer, so stressed about the work of ministry that i sometimes missed the purpose of ministry, the joy.

tonight during the service, we had a blessed 5 minutes of prayer time at the end of the sermon. we were offered the opportunity to reflect upon the things that God has already done in our lives, that lead us to the place of joyful obedience but more importantly call us to TRUST* Him, to rest in the knowledge of Him. not only was this 5 minutes good for the actual process of relecting and engaging with God, but it was good for me to realize that even 5 minutes of intentional, focused time with God can be exquisitely rich and meaningful.

i think i can start finding 5 minutes to float in the midst of my thrashing, treading, butterflying days.

(*in one of the books i read this weekend, the author named trust as the church's holiest of holies. i thought that was just beautiful.)

i am

2009-10-22T18:54:00.003-04:00

tonight i am missing mattamuskeet. mostly the people that became my family there.

i am wearing my carolina sweatshirt and preparing to devote a full three hours to watching football without feeling guilty about ignoring the pile of reading for next week. three hours of football--with a 30 minute break for The Office. there is nothing better for closing off the school week than a good dose of Dwight Schrute.

i am strangely uplifted by the end of my religious ed class this afternoon. for the last 5 minutes we stood in a tight circle and improvised song, noise, harmony. i could've kept at it for an hour. i love using my voice, like i've loved using my body and movement, as release, as an engagement with God and the world and people that doesn't involve quite as much thinking.

i am relieved--next week will be relatively easy, perhaps the easiest week of the semester. i want to use it to relax a bit, to catch up on phone calls and sleep and exercise. because the week after that, it's gonna get ugly.

i am nervous about signing up for Hebrew next semester, but came to the conclusion today that it is what i want to pursue.

i am 24! hearing so many of your voices and reading your birthday wishes truly brightened my day--and it was a long one. i am blessed to have you all in my life.

i am spending my day with William Faulkner tomorrow. work study sure isn't retail or waitressing (thank goodness).

i am wishing that it hadn't been so long since i picked up my guitar in the corner. i feel like i don't make music as much as i used to. i miss singing. i might even miss glee club...

i am still looking for a new way to reconnect with God. i wish i wasn't so greedy of my time. i realized that it's hard for me to sit down with God in the Word right now because i spend most of my time reading. but how many more ways are there to worship, to build a relationship, to grow? there are plenty--and i need to discover them, take the time to discover them.

i am losing a little bit of what it is to be me. minor identity crisis...which i think will be good in the end because i will come to a more solid understanding of who i really am.

i am still seeking. and i am beginning to find.

ready to refocus

2009-10-12T17:57:00.002-04:00

sometimes it seems that just when you think you've got it right, someone goes and throws a spoke in your wheels. john mayer has this song called "something's missing." here's my version of his last verse: friends--check. health--check. job--check. house--check. family--check. church--half-check. opposite sex--well... okay, point of the song being that sometimes you can have all your ducks in a row, but something is still missing.

i'm filled with this incredible angst some days--not a feeling of fear, just one of anticipation and uncertainty, like i'm on the edge of something great, like something big is about to happen. i don't know what that could be--there are a lot of things that are about to happen, that could happen as i live in this liminal stage that is grad school. maybe the liminality is what causes the angst--caught somewhere between school and career, between child and adult, between the faith i've been taught and the faith i must come to own. it's like i've been given a small glimpse, a taste of the world and the life that i might live one day but i'm still caught in the process of getting there. it's an assurance that i'm on the right track, but sometimes all the reading and the class or two that i'm not really interested in taking makes me feel as though i'm wading through this swamp of molasses. it's slowing me down. isn't that strange though? that's why i'm here--classes and school and writing. and i do still enjoy it, and maybe i'm still just settling back in. maybe i've gotten too focused on all that is waiting on the other side, in the midst of my ordination decisions and class discussions about call, so i start to forget that my education is not a means to end. it's a beautiful, self-forming journey of thought, refinement, and discovery.

and wouldn't you know that the first thing that goes out the window is my personal spiritual discipline. where is God in seminary? you can't assume that God's there. several times over the course of our opening weeks here, deans and professors told us that our time at Candler is a time to focusing on the loving of God with our minds. for awhile there, i was commited to that idea--i'm going to throw myself into my studies at the expense of all else and that will be my worship even if i don't feel as connected to God, as passionate about my faith. fortunately, the revelation that that is not going to work came quickly enough. Love of God, like love for others, is holistic. yes, the mind is the focus of school, but that cannot continue to be at the complete expense of the heart, the soul, the strength. it's causing me to lose who i am. it's no wonder that i've been doubting my self-worth and moping about and using more curse words that i ever have before ;) last night at church we heard a sermon on the exodus, and what really stuck with me was this idea of remembrance--being in Scripture as a way to remind us of all that God hass done so that our hope can be in Him even in times of struggle or doubt or fear. i need to remember what God has done both in my life and in the life of our corporate faith story. and then LAST week at church (i think i may have found a good one, huh?) the speaker posed the biblical question, what good is it to gain the whole world yet forfeit your soul? that became for me a question of, what good is it to gain the whole world that seminary has to offer, yet forfeit my soul? i have been letting my personal faith, my spirit suffer at the expense of this seminary world with all its appeal and bells and whistles. BUT studying God is not knowing God.

hmm, all this goes to say that i am, as ever, continuing to reinvent myself, to define who i am as a daughter of God and as one called to the ministry. again, i've only been here for a month and a half, so i don't know if this angst and this spiritual wandering will continue or if i'll snap out of it and commit myself to what's really important. will i be refined by fire? almost certainly, yes. as long as i don't leave this place as the same person that came in. and hopefully, that'll be for the better.

first semester slump?

2009-10-11T22:54:00.002-04:00

i've been in seminary for a month and a half. and i already need to go in search of Jesus. he's not in my life right now and i can't blame that on the fact that we're studying the old testament this term.

who knew that seminary could pull you away from God before you've really gotten started? (probably most graduated seminarians...)

more soon. bed now.

ps--ultimate church pet peeve: back rubbing, fondling, and cuddling. there are people in the pews behind you and we're trying to center our hearts on God. cut it out.

new worship

2009-10-02T23:55:00.003-04:00

some of my most poignant worship moments this semester have not been in chapel or in personal devo time--instead i have been learning to worship with my body. my instructor for religious education is writing her dissertation on play, and we spend a lot of time doing active, body-centered exercises to start class and to give us a break in the middle. for example, yesterday we met on the quad after our break and ran around to funny music. people were staring, but there really is something to the group mentality, huh? it was great. but the more contemplative exercises we do have been so worshipful for me. yesterday at the end of class, we did walking meditation. you just walk, very slowly, concentrating on the feeling of your foot hitting the floor and the exact moment of weight shift. it's amazing how slowing down the steps that you take thousands of every day can be a chance to wonder at the brilliance of God's creaton of feet and balance and movement. we also do a lot of hand dancing and shape making. isolating movement and putting everything else out of your mind except the movement is so freeing and beautiful. iif you want to try it, just turn on some music, lay down on the floor, and raise one hand over your head, and allow it to move to the music. don't feel awkward or weird, just clear your mind and watch how your hand can move and create. it's absolutely transcendent. i've enjoyed dancing in the past, but i want to seriously consider getting involved in liturgical dance because i have never been so aware of how beautifully God has created our bodies to move and function and dance.

i also think i've enjoyed those times so much because almost every other moment of my week is spent using my mind. reading. and this week, the studying begins. we have our first exam (excuse me, "celebration of learning"--it's become an elaborate metaphor) in OT on Thursday, and the first year class is in a pitched fervor. i think it'll be just fine--just a bit of quality time with Wellhausen and Abraham and Professor Strawn's power point presentations.

i've got a new hobby to relieve the stress of all this thinking. i am slowly becoming a runner. i never thought it would really happen, but all of a sudden, i'm motivated. i'm starting to feel the addiction--i quite frequently catch myself thinking about when the next time i can run will be. it feels so good to be out on that pavement (or sometimes, the treadmill), feeling the strength of your body (again) and the breath in your lungs. i've set the goal for myself to run a 5k this spring, and i'm feeling good about progress so far. a friend told me that a half-marathon is just one step further than the 5k, at which point i laughed hysterically, but i think i can do the 3 miler.

things are definitely staying busy, but i'm settling in more and more, and still just love atlanta and my new developing community here. it feels good to feel so at home.

mad, mad world

2009-09-24T23:13:00.003-04:00

i am wasting time on facebook (as ever) and off to the right there, where the powers that be are usually trying to find me an atlanta apartment, convince me of a favorite new artist, or sell me tickets to hear rob bell speak, there is a t-shirt ad. these pop up every now and again, as i'm sure you're aware, but i think you crossed the line this time, fb.

there is a girl with cute, curly red hair looking off to the side coquettishly. she is wearing a t-shirt with your typical, arms-spread-warmly depiction of Jesus...and the letters 'BRB'

i am in seminary now, so i have an official licence to joke about things that border on sacrilegious, but come on.

my question is--is that somehow based on my interests? yikes.

another sign that the world's going to pieces--i'm at the gym the other day, working out on the elliptical (which apparently is making my butt get bigger, in fact) between two emory undergrads. and we three are all positively ENAMORED with the ridiculous MTV show 'parental control.' this was completely unintentional on my part, but i couldn't not look away from the bad accident of humanity. here's the scene: girl takes girl (who is dating another girl) on date where they cover themselves in animal feed, lie down in a pile of mud, and let various species of livestock walk all over them and eat.

what?

phrase turner

2009-09-22T09:49:00.005-04:00

i just received back my first paper from our mandatory first-year course that has been alternately referred to as a remedial writing class or a waste of time. i actually have been nervous about this supposedly silly class because i'm not familiar with Turabian citations and this first paper prompt was too broad for my liking and i've just generally been feeling like a little fish in an entirely new and overwhelmingly large academic pond.

but the feedback i received from this paper included the nicest academic complement i think i have ever received: "Whitney, thank you for your paper. It's an absolute pleasure to read your writing--you turn a beautiful phrase." i think i like that so much because it puts to words exactly what i try to do when i write, whether it's here on the blog, in a school paper, or even in a letter or email.

i've been needing that confidence boost. sometimes i really do feel like i'm in over my head--and i probably am. but if i can stay afloat on the preliminary assignments, hopefully i'll fare better in the future. and i won't have to ask myself, "now why did i come back to school again?" quite as frequently.

this is actually the second time that a teacher has thanked me for my observations, for my work. how nice is that? is that a grad school thing? how great to know that your contributions are appreciated, not just another notch in the gradebook.

alright--i need to get back to it. we've been given a window of studying opportunity due to our OT lecture being cancelled on account of the flooding. apparently our professor is trapped in his neighborhood by a river of water across the road. perhaps God is trying to teach Gen. 6-9 by object lesson instead of by lecture...

i like the word 'diluvian'

2009-09-20T23:43:00.004-04:00

bulletins.

i've realized that i don't like them. i like church without bulletins. both churches i attended today (still being extra pious) didn't have an order of service handed out at the door. a couple of years ago, chapel hill bible church, though usually they hand out such a bulletin, did not one sunday as part of a bigger effort to engage in a worship service likened to the early church of the disciples. ever since then, i've really latched on to that idea--worship being free-flowing and natural and following the Spirit. now i know that these services today DID have things planned out, and maybe their reasonings for not passing out bulletins are as simple as saving paper & minimizing copying costs. but it's so much better to not have people flipping and turning pages in unison during an otherwise somber moment during the service, to not have noses buried in announcements.

it's weird that i don't care to know what's going on, that i don't like to have a structured plan laid out in front of me. i'm generally so structured, so organized--i like lists. i make many of them to keep my life in order...and what is a bulletin but a list for the service? hmm, but i like the idea of God being the chaos in my life--how could any aspect of His majesty ever be captured and put into a box or a list? He is unorderable. i try to keep myself ordered and neat and together--i try to plan things (my future, for instance) and then God often comes by and knocks things off center. a beautiful collision. there is definitely beauty in God's chaos.

i think that's it for this week's installment of the continuing saga,"Is Whitney a Methodist?" i've got at least one friend now labelling me as a "non-denom-er." and i talked with a newer friend tonight who is looking for a church similar to what i am, so i think we might journey together. (she attended vintage 21 in raleigh, which is worthy of a Jesus video shoutout. please click that link--it will make your day a little better, i promise).

--------

it has not stopped raining here for days. does anyone else find it ironic that we've been reading the flood narratives in OT?

in need of a good squashing

2009-09-14T21:11:00.004-04:00

good news! i don't have bronchitis (anymore), pneumonia, OR H1N1! i went to student health this morning to get checked out because i've been coughing & wheezing for a month, and of course by the time i finally made it to the doctor, it had worked itself out. apparently they don't treat bronchitis anymore anyway, you just have to tough it out. but i hate the feeling of sitting in the doctor's office with the doctor looking at you as if to say, "why did you just waste my time? you're not sick." but it is AMAZING news that the wheezing is indeed gone & i can breathe & talk normally & exercise. i look forward once again to the prospect of attacking life with ferocity :)

the weekend was good--lots of reading, of course, but so far, it's being managed well enough. i just put down a book on the history of the Biblical world, which i'm sure will be a great resource. but the chapter i read was basically a rehashing of my undergrad course in Ancient Near Eastern archeology--a course i would liken to running your brain through a meat grinder. so that was enjoyable to relive. paolo friere's pedagogy of the oppressed for my religious ed class has been great though, a really foundational read. my paper for our "remedial writing" class, however, was not quite so enjoyable, but it's done.

other points of interest for the weekend: i got asked out for sushi via facebook chat at about 6:30 Friday evening...for Friday evening. let's not abuse our technologies please friends. did not go but might take a raincheck. (any and all dating advice is always welcome :) arden & i found our go-to local sketchy Chinese place. and church! sunday was an epic day of church--did double-duty. in the morning i went to St. Mark's Methodist downtown with a group of friends from Candler. random fact: first church choir i've EVER seen with men far outnumbering the women. it was a good service--great message--but i've got A LOT to think about as far as worship style goes. i can't do traditional, not right now at least--at best i'll have to grow into it through chapel services. but in the larger scheme of things, not being able to do traditional put me at odds with the vast majority of UM churches. that's not the only reason i'm considering exploring and searching and finding out where i truly am called within the Church...but it is one more to think about. fortunately sunday night service was a little more like what i'm used to and definitely what i needed. we sang some crowder AND "All Creatures of our God and King" (albeit crowder's arrangement...), we read a creed of sorts aloud together AND had space and quiet to reflect and pray alone to God. and it was casual and natural and worshipful. so i'm getting there--finding a home. it's such a search, and it should be i think.

and now, a reflection. (warning, i may be getting back into the constant reflection mode since i'm back in a education class again...shudder). i think i've been having some self-worth issues lately. we did this exercise in said education class that started with a complaint about a ministry each of us is/was involved in. i decided to complain about the "Hotel YouthWorks" mentality that accompanied our evals this summer--not really the point of the exercise though. next you go through a series of steps that shows you where your real commitments lie and ultimately what big assumptions about life and the world and God you hold onto. my big assumptions from this exercise are as follows:

others' impressions of who I am define my identity
being successful at my job means that I'm a good person; failure means I shouldn't be in ministry

Needless to really say, those assumptions are quite off the mark of God's truth of who I am. but it just hit me like a ton of bricks--i still don't get it, not really. these are still the ideals i operate underneath, despite the saving grace i have receieved in Jesus. i'm thankful that we did this exercise now, during my second week of seminary, because clearly those are not good foundational thoughts on which to build a lifetime of ministry. i think it's time for the clay of my assumptions to get squashed by God's hands (jer. 18:4) so that He can remold me into someone whose identity and worth is based in Him, not in my own actions or on other people's opinions.

relatedly, i've really been tough on myself lately on the body image side of self-worth. just when you think you might be moving past that junk...it rears its ugly head again. sure, a YouthWorks summer was not extremely kind to my figure, and my complexion is still a bit temperamental, but i've definitely grown a lot in love for myself and the person God created me, just me, to be. then i come to Candler and am meeting all these new people...and okay, i'll just say it, i'm meeting guys. guys that i am interested in, that i am attracted to. and when i ask myself, what if? what if he likes me, too? i stop and think to myself whether or not it would be possible for someone to like me. am i really pretty enough for him to notice me? am i skinny enough? is my hair too thin, are my clothes okay? and some days, the answer to those questions is no. i could wax poetic here about how wrong and detrimental these ideas are, because i know those things, i do (come on, i HAVE read captivating *stifled gag*) but that's where i am, unfortunately--still.

it's funny, isn't it, how seminary won't be as much about the making of a minister as it will be about the making of a person, a child of God.

enough heavy thoughts for now--i might have to turn towards bed soon and read myself to sleep with a little more friere. tuesdays are epic.

spinning

2009-09-09T19:43:00.004-04:00

maybe i should just blame it on the cold medicine, but lately i've been feeling a little bit disembodied. i feel like i'm going through the motions of all this seminary business, this new life in Atlanta--but my feet aren't on the ground, i'm not rooted yet, i'm not grounded in what's going on. i'm just spinning somewhere up in the atmosphere amidst all the assignments and the meetings and the requirements and the new faces and friends.

everything is so good, it really is. sure i miss friends and UNC and family and my preschoolers and YouthWorks--but this is good and right. it is a lot though. i know i've only been out of school for a year, but i think that's a part of my disorientation. i had to redefine my identity as a non-student last year (though i still used my student ID at the movies, shh don't tell), and here i am again, shoved back into that role and having to relearn certain things. like microsoft word 2007 on my new computer...what IS that?? and a whole new system for source citations in papers. and what it means to put aside books that i want to read for books that i have to read.

and oh, good grief, i've got a headache over all this UMC ordination stuff. there are so many hoops to jump through and i'm not sure i even want to do the jumping! i'm not sure if i'm all in on the methodist church. as far as i know, i'm on board with their doctrine and theology--but mostly because it's what i've been raised to believe. i don't know if i'm ready to tie myself to a denomination so permanently. what does it mean that i feel more at home at a nondenominational, organic church that i attended this weekend over all the traditional services i've been going to lately? as we were leaving church this sunday (it's called veritas and i will definitely be going back), arden commented on how she missed the prayer recital and call and response elements in the service. i had just been thinking earlier in the week, during chapel, about how uncomfortable those recitations make me feel. i like the idea of the congregation reading as one, and of course they're always beautiful, Scriptural prayers. but i don't feel like i'm talking to God when i'm reading off a sheet of paper someone else typed up for me. maybe that's a personal fault and a way for me to grow in worship while i'm at candler.

the main points on my 'pro' side for going through with ordination have been things like standing up as a woman in church leadership. and my scholarship...i just can't kick that reason. and there're some really dumb 'con' reasons, too--like not wanting to restrict myself to living within the Western NC conference. maybe i really should make a pro/con list. that might help me. it's hard to feel like i've got to make all these HUGE decisions when i'm definitely not ready, and for goodness sake, i'm just a clueless first semester first year.

last night i spent my first shift volunteering at MUST ministry. it was great--i'm so excited about spending a semester there (though i was DEFINITELY feeling disembodied due to a pounding sinus headache). some hard stuff went down right away though--a young guy got kicked out of the shelter for failing his drug test, and he had nowhere to go. a family of 4 didn't have $16 to pay for their mandatory drug tests. what a seemingly insignificant amount of money, that i easily would blow on a new top or a nice dinner out--and they didn't have it. with 2 kids. i wanted to simultaneously melt into the floor and dig out my wallet to sneak them a twenty. that's going to be a hard lesson to learn--you can't loan everybody a few bucks. i think it'll be a life lesson in ministry--MUST is in the business of teaching the man to fish instead of handing him a fish, of repaving the road to Jericho so the no one else gets beat up and left for dead along its path. fortunately for this family, some of the other residents chipped in and they had a place to stay for another night.

with all this going on, i guess i shouldn't be surprised that i'm spinning, trying to catch all my juggling balls and sort them neatly into piles. i hope that happens soon--i hope i settle. hmm, if you'll allow me to shift my metaphor slightly, i feel a bit like Peter who has seen Jesus walking on the water--he's had this vision, right, he's seen something clearly. but as he scrambles out of the boat and makes his way forward, he looks around at the wind and the waves, and overwhelmed by it all, he begins to sink. how quickly he forgets that Jesus is standing there--i mean, Jesus is right there! "Lord, save me!" he cries out. "You of little faith," the Lord replies.

so whether i'm floating overhead or swimming with the fishies, i hope the day is soon coming when my feet will be on solid ground, walking next to Jesus on this journey. somehow, though, i feel pretty certain that this spinning is a part of my growth process here.

***

PS--today in my scary class, our professor, in his continuing efforts to build community in our classroom (which would probably work beautifully except for the fact that he's got half of us shaking in our skin and the other half sitting paralyzed for fear of sneezing too loudly) asked each of us what skill we felt, uh, skilled enough in to teach someone else to do. my reply was blogging. i felt it would be kind of cliche to say 'Bible study' in a seminary class (though someone else did say 'Greek') and that potty training would be a little too much information, so there you go--blogging. is that my skill? hmm, i do LOVE it, but i'm somewhat useless, aren't I? my life has been an adventure in mediocrity in a lot of things, which is okay with me. a little soccer here, a little theater there, throw in a couple of years of flute playing, some amateur baking, some pretty sweet zumba moves and i'm a well-rounded gal, no? maybe i should change my blog title to adventures in mediocrity...i kind of like that :)

back to school

2009-09-04T18:50:00.004-04:00

i did it! first week of grad school down! and despite the lingering symptoms of bronchitis (at least it's not H1N1...), the dangers of Peavine parking garage and Atlanta traffic in general, the disappointment of not making the chamber choir at Candler, and one broken television set, i think it was a pretty good week--i think i remember how to be a student. plus the promise of a 4 day weekend for the rest of the semester, not just Labor Day, is not too shabby in itself.

right now i'm enjoying my Old Testament class the most. of course, we haven't even gotten to the actual Biblical texts, but our professor is so dynamic and engaging and funny. that is, he's funny if you're a seminary student and can laugh at jokes about the spirit of Marcion possessing disgruntled church members as they wade through Leviticus during Disciple Bible Study. which i can. it's good to know that reli studies degree is good for something.

i have two classes that span across an entire afternoon--3 hours long. the good news is that both will be managable! the first may be my most difficult, taught by an extremely intimidating man...but there is a cute boy in there, too. (yes, i am still in middle school.) the second three-hour course is my religious ed class, and we'll be doing a lot of "movement"--stretching & releasing our bodyspirit & interacting with one another on somewhat odd terms. i'm excited about it--who doesn't like a class that is different from all the others? plus, we're discussing education, which is my career of interest (at least at this point), so i'm eager to hear what our teacher has to say. something tells me it will be better than all those three hour Ed. classes at UNC...

i need to pause here for a moment to say how exceedingly impressed and inspired i am by all the second career/later in life folks who have become my classmates at Candler. one of the men i met at Leadership Candler--his wife had a baby this week. a baby. during the first week of classes. and they have two others! another woman i spoke with during one of our ordination sessions--she has 3 kids under the age of 5 and her husband is also a first-year MDiv. and they live 1.5 hours away! there are countless other stories like these among my classmates, and i just have to stop and admire their faith and courage and dedication...and also remember the others who have done it, like my own mother, when i was one of the kids waiting at home instead of one of the students.

we've had two chapel services thus far, though one was technically convocation. i love the idea of worshipping with my classmates every week--taking communion together. it's really beautiful, and so new for me. and, get this, our professors pray before class. yes, it's true. i love that! but again, so different. it's part of getting used to this new environment i've stumbled into. one of our pre-class devos included a prayer for the sojourner--asking God to help us remember in situations that are new and unfamiliar, when perhaps we feel like strangers, that we are in fact but strangers on this earth. i know that Candler and Atlanta will soon be home, will be comfortable and dearly loved, routine and familiar--but then eventually I will again be on to the next thing: more new relationships, perhaps a new city, a new job. we are always sojourners, watching the seasons change, moving ever onward to Home.

i;ve also had another day of work: i spent 3 hours reading a 26-page essay on the development of African American studies at Emory, then summarizing it for the book introduction. i don't know if it should have taken me that long (it did--i wasn't wasting time, but perhaps being too thorough??) but my boss wasn't there & that's all i was left to do. then she got back 10 minutes before i was scheduled to leave, and starting handing me more essays to summarize. i had to awkwardly excuse myself, just as i had to do last time--it will be nice to establish my schedule so we can be on the same page, the two of us. but i still enjoyed myself, really--i'm not quite sure how i happened upon this overwhelmingly literary job, but in a lot of senses, it's just perfect for me. and i like having my own little desk, and working with purpose, and hearing the clip clop clip clop of my stilletos on the tiled floor of the President's Office hallway. it's something to get used to, this being a big girl ;)

tonight there is a "invite a first year" party that i am intending to attend. something about the terminology makes me feel like i should be walking around at Hogwarts in the world of Harry Potter. but don't worry, i won't make the classic movie mistake of showing up in costume. hopefully i'll just meet some more fun people :)

seminary, day one

2009-09-01T19:48:00.002-04:00

the day is here: i am an official student of theology. a grad student. a seminarian.

and it is so where i'm supposed to be. sure, it's just the first day, and i know things will get much harder & much less easy to love, but i really do love it right now. talk theology to me all day long. it's good to feel that rightness, that sense of being in just the place you should be--and i think at the graduate level, you have to love it that much. this is it--you picked a speciality and you better be all in.

also today--my first shift at the Office of the Pres. i thought it was just going in to fill out paperwork, and by some miscommunication, ended up being asked to stay for the afternoon. that was fine in that i didn't have anymore class, but i was totally unprepared mentally to go in & get started, and i was superbly underdressed for parading around the offices of the university bigwigs. but when i finally got down to work for an hour and a half, again, i loved it. i sat there with two manuscripts, and each had an edited copy and a revised copy. my task was to check the revised copy against the edited one to make sure all the revisions had been made. simple, easy, fabulous. i poured over 30-40 pages total and could've kept going. my little red pen was marking away where things were missed--what a feeling of power, no? and the promise of being the one to make the edits in the computer somewhere in the near future--even better.

the two things i've learned about myself (confirmed about myself, more like): i am a dork for both theology and grammar. go figure.

nothing routine about it

2009-08-30T16:13:00.005-04:00

i'm still reveling in the fact that the laundry machine in my new house is just steps outside of my bedroom. it seems weird for it to be so easy to wash clothes, after spending a summer hauling a bag full of YouthWorks shirts 1.5 hours to a laundromat. it's amazing how quickly we can slip into new routines--or new versions of old routines.

as it happens, there are many new routines i am trying to establish. the newness and novelty of life in Atlanta certainly haven't worn off after one week, though i do feel like this is home now. some things i've already gotten down--like setting the security alarm and loading the dishwasher and sharing a bathroom. others i'm still working on--finding the best route home from Emory, deciding what to buy at the grocery store now that it's just me, knowing where the best gas station nearby is located.

and there is one routine, one pattern that i want to establish in my new life here, that i know is still a long time coming--church.

it's a daunting task, really. a huge, Southern city full of churches. it's more than just one on every corner--just up the road, we have Latter-Day Saints, Orthodox, and Lutheran worship buildings right in a row, with a Primitive Baptist church across the street. there are big churches and small churches, Methodist and non-Methodist, contemporary and traditional.

so what is it, exactly that i'm looking for? i wish i knew. the truthful answer is that i'm looking for God and a community of people with which to seek after Him. that doesn't necessarily narrow it down--and then, on top of that, i know that i add the qualifications of worship style, age demographic, theology. and, as with most anything, i'm waiting for that 'it' factor.

i do know that where Arden & I went this morning was probably not it. we decided to try a big Methodist church in Decatur-traditional service. i have to preface our experience by saying that today was children's Sunday, which we both understood to be a bit of a hindrance in our actual experience of the church service. today was atypical. but what i can say is that it was huge--too big, i think. and a little too "high church"-y for me (Catholics and Episcopals might laugh at my threshold for high church tolerance, but what can i say? i haven't really been in a hymn-singing, liturgy-based, doxology-and-gloria-patri-filled church since i was in middle school. my experience of church as an adult Christian has been "contemporary").

i'm going to buckhead church again this evening, to get a second impression. i'm not sure if it's exactly what i'm looking for--might be a bit too big, a bit too trendy. however, the preaching was fantastic (hologram though it was), the "flavor" and atmosphere are more of what i think i'm looking for. hopefully, as class begins this week and i begin to meet more second- and third-years, i can stop searching websites and start asking people where i might find all of these things.

this process is made especially difficult by the fact that the past experiences of "church hunting" in my life ran fairly smoothly. after leaving the church in which i was confirmed, my mother & i stumbled upon our current church with relative ease, and felt at home almost immediately. it wasn't a hard decision for us to transfer our membership there. at UNC, i spent my first year attending a traditional Methodist church based on the sole factor of distance--i could walk there. when i acquired a car sophomore year, i attended a kick-off event at Chapel Hill Bible Church in September, and decided to call it home after only a few more visits. i got plugged into the college Sunday school class, volunteered in the nursery, fellowshiped with a local family that took in college students as their own. even this summer, in Hyde County, we knew almost instantly that Swan Quarter Baptist would be our church family--and they truly were, in every way.

is it supposed to be easy, though? seeking out true community and a place to worship and meet God and experience life change. i guess we're lucky if we ever find that, much less multiple times over the course of our lives.

the really good news is that i think i'll have all of those things in my faith community at Candler. two days until i'm an official student of theology!

i'll also have one more routine to learn--and that is the routine of things at my new job! yes, i finally landed a work-study position. i'll be working in the office of the vice president. i applied for the position of office assistant as it was listed on Emory's job bank. the posting mentioned possible work on a new book on the history of Emory. as it turns out, that seems to be most of the work i'll be doing! as a former literary editor of the South Meck High yearbook, it's right up my alley and completely unexpected. i had to complete a little quiz of grammar during my interview and i guess i still have a knack for it because i was hired mere hours later. it feels good to be wanted, you know? more about that as it, too, becomes part of my routine.

atlanta's newest resident

2009-08-25T19:52:00.002-04:00

well, here i am, sitting on my bed in atlanta, taking a look at the world from my latest vantage point. it still all feels a little surreal. i mean, only two weeks ago did i leave birmingham after youthworks debrief. which means that only two & a half weeks ago i was still a fully functional site director--hosting a group of 70 in Hyde County. experiencing a new level of sleep deprivation, living in a middle school, and interacting 24/7 with my amazing friends & fellow staff. and now i'm here. in a house in atlanta that is my own. today i went to the first day of grad school orientation. yesterday i had an interview for a job here (which actually helped me process a bit more through the YouthWorks experience--they kept asking me questions on it & I sure had plenty to say!). tomorrow we'll have to fight the Atlanta morning commute. next week--class begins! really, really am I back in school? i'm still not sure. i bet when i sit down with my first mound of reading--then perhaps it will feel real!

i cannot fully express how thankful i am that i participated in the leadership candler event back in the spring. from that experience, i have a great roommate (arden, for future reference). last night we went out to dinner with a group of 8 of us. today at orientation, i saw familiar faces again & again. it is so comforting to have a bit of built-in community here in this new place. it's so scary to pick up & try to dive into life in a new city because, more often than not, you're completely alone. making friends is possible, but it takes time. here, i've got a core group of friends from the get-go. maybe we'll be tight all three years at Candler, maybe we'll all find our own niche & group of friends elsewhere. but for now, at least, it is the hugest blessing to have friendly faces.

and let's see--the house! it's pretty amazing. i am mostly settled into my new room and it's nice to have a new environment. i also like moving in that it helps you downsize in some ways. right now, i know exactly where everything is & know that it's only stuff that i need (well, mostly). we have an amazing front porch, extremely well-furnished and well-decorated common areas, a kitchen with every gadget known to man (including a dishwasher that achieves such heat levels that it melted my youthworks water bottle :( not okay!!). we're in a cute neighborhood that is green & hilly & full of beautiful & eclectic homes. it feels so good to be in a house. and our third roommate/landlord, Courtney, seems really great. She's about 3 years older than me, and works in the area. She is super friendly & clean & organized I went to church with her on Sunday morning. She's quite the social butterfly, so it's almost the best of both worlds--we'll get to spend time with her around the house & when we plan little house dates, but it's also nice that we don't all 3 have to always be in each other's hair & spending every waking moment together. i'm sure it will eventually be nice to have someone outside of our Candler bubble to talk to about it all. i think things are really going to work out great.

speaking of church, the place i visited on sunday with Courtney is called Buckhead and it probably falls on the mega-church end of the spectrum. It is a satellite/daughter church/church plant of Andy Stanley's main campus in Alpharetta. The santuary space is the huge auditorium--no crosses or artwork of any kind, just a very neutral space. The worship band was amazing but we only sang two songs & it felt a little too rigid for me. In the past, when I have experienced this "rock band", super loud style of worship, there has been a feeling of complete abandoment among the worshippers. I didn't really feel that in this space (not a judgement & certainly not necessarily accurate of how anyone else was feeling) & it was just cut a little too short as well. There followed an amazing baptism ceremony of a 30-something couple, and a great sermon by Andy Stanley himself. Come to find out, however, that though he was slated to preach that day, he was broadcasted in. And they didn't just play a video up on the screens--they had a life-size version of the recording projected onto the stage space...almost as if it was supposed to look like he was really there. Weird. BUT nonetheless it was an amazing message. They're currently doing a series called "Losing Your Religion" and he preached on Acts 17, where Paul gives his famous Mars Hill discourse. Beautiful stuff. And I loved how he gave a great exegetical sermon--very tuned into the word itself, and referencing the Greek all over the place (quite inspirational for an incoming seminarian). His main point was that Paul was making it clear that Jesus did not come down to be another option on the list of religions or idols. Religion is man's way of seeking the divine, reaching out for the unknown--manifested in all the ways we see today, and in Paul's time, in all the temples and different gods that covered every base, so to speak. Yet God chose to end the process of man seeking the unknown through religion (since so much was off the mark) and came down to us, in the person of Jesus--God in the flesh, emmanuel.

So--GREAT teaching, but still a lot to figure out. One advantage of such a huge church is the amazing things they're able to do with community ministry. There is a (groan) "singles" ministry that actually seems pretty cool. You sign up & they intentionally stick you in a group with people you're likely to connect with. Then you just have several Sunday evening gatherings where the point is simply to meet & mingle. Christian speed dating? Perhaps--but a great way to meet people in a relatively safe way. There is also the opportunity to get plugged into more traditional small groups. So I'm sure I will visit there another couple of Sundays & possibly get hooked into those ministries. Depending on how I'm feeling, I've considered going to multiple churches on one Sunday (several I've looked at have night service anyway) so this "shopping" (another groan) process can go a little faster. But I suppose trusting in the Lord to lead me into the right place is the best option. I know that there is a community of faith here that I can belong to (the nice thing is I've already got one at Candler!)

Final updates:
-I really may have a touch of bronchitis--my whooping cough is quite fierce & wheezy. Nonetheless, I'm auditioning for the choir here next Tuesday. So excited!
-My dad got me a new computer for school as an early birthday present. It really is great & I can already see how much better & faster it works than the old one. But...I miss the old one. A familiar story: missing what is comfortable & familiar when CHANGE happens to bring along something new. It's just that all my favorite websites are preset over there, and my pictures are on the screen saver, and don't even get me started about trying to switch my iTunes library over.
-It feels a little weird to shower every day...without shower shoes on. But I think I'm slowly & surely acclimating back to real life post-YouthWorks.

I apologize that this is not a terribly poetic or thoughtful post--just a few updates on my new life here. Call me anytime to hear more--there is plenty more going on!

LORD, you have assigned me my portion & my cup;
you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me.

Psalm 16:5-7

body in rebellion

2009-08-21T16:51:00.005-04:00

my body is sounding its rebel yell. last night i was up from 3:30 to 5 hacking up a lung, tossing & turning (i seem to have caught the whooping cough from Liz across time & space). i think my immune system is just freaking out, really. i'd been trying to exercise every day between arriving home & moving to Atlanta, and yesterday i had to admit defeat. i missed my last chance at cardio funk. that's serious business. and i've been so tired--this week, nearly every night, i've slept almost twice as long as i did on a normal youthworks night.

and that frightening fact, my friends, is what caused the following realization to dawn on me: my body has every right to go haywire on me as i've been trying to shift it back to normalcy after a youthworks summer. for those of you who don't know, being on staff with youthworks caused the following to happen to my body:

no (intentional) exercise. not only is exercise, obviously, a way to stay in shape, but it is my primary form of stress release. i had an outlet for neither on our schedule.
not only was i unable to relieve my stress through exercise, but instead i began eating my way through it. and it wasn't just stress--i ate my feelings. tired? have a 11pm bowl of cereal. frustrated? here's a peanut butter & honey tortilla wrap. angry? poptart. sad? bag of Doritos. impatient? animal crackers. you get the idea...
Martelle's, the Johnsons, David & Anita, and Beck's (good enough to slap your grandma, but way too many calories)--all the local favorites kept us saturated in grease & sweets.
i think i've established that a lot of junk was going in (4 pounds worth, as it turns out. grr) but there wasn't a whole lot of good stuff mixed in there with it. we had salad out every day--but it was iceberg lettuce aka water in leaf form. occasional fruit & fresh veggies (Sunday afternoons were our salvation), but not as much as I usually eat. just a general lack of variety in diet.
Hyde County water. affectionately referred to as "poison" or "cancer water." we purchased a well of salvation (that is, a Brita filter) but couldn't drink from it 100% of the time.
we. didn't. sleep. we had to push & push & push our bodies far beyond what they'd normally endure, and as everything inside us called out for rest, we had 6 more hours to go before the day was over. "tired" headaches became a common occurrence--a literal pull behind the eyes, the brain trying to shut them, which had to be ignored& thus developed into a headache.
inhalation of bleach fumes.

it really should come as no surprise, thus, that i'm currently in such a state of disarray. i've had over a week of rest & recuperation (which is a good deal more than at least one of my teammates) but i feel like it's all just beginning to hit me--not good for the big move tomorrow. i want to be 100% myself as i dive into this new life, this new adventure.

another after-effect of the summer: continued numbness. right now, all my possessions are packed into my little Focus & ready to drive off down I-85 tomorrow morning, where 4 hours hence everything will be unloaded into my new house. my amazing new house. where i will be living this year. and attending seminary. i'm excited--i am. but not enough. the same thing happened at the end of the YouthWorks summer--it kept drawing nearer & nearer until finally it was the last week, then the last full day, then we were saying goodbyes at 5am next to airport shuttles, and it still wasn't real. i still don't think i really have gotten that the summer is over, that YouthWorks is over. i mean, i get that--i'm sitting here in Charlotte, not Hyde County, on a couch, not a classroom floor. but i haven't felt it. the first half of the summer, i kept wondering how it would feel--how sad or bittersweet it would be--to drive out of Hyde County for the last time. then when that day finally came, it just happened. we just drove away & that was that. and now, i'm about to move to Atlanta and earlier this spring I was bouncing up & down with anticipation. i know, i KNOW that is all buried down inside me, because I am thrilled to be attending seminary, but i still just can't feel. being on staff at YouthWorks requires you to repress so much--you're "on" all day long. so no matter how angry or upset or frustrated or elated you are about one thing or another, you've got to keep going. so you push it all down. you swallow your feelings (often times washed down with an oreo or poptart, as mentioned above) and plan to deal with them later. but it never relents, there's never time or space to deal with it. so we became numb.

there was a point during the summer when the staff was very seriously considering following through on our pact to get tattoos. okay, so it didn't happen (lame, i know--but i'm still up for it if anyone's in!) but at one point i turned to katy & commented that getting that tattoo would hurt--and that would be a feeling that couldn't be pushed down or ignored or swallowed for later. i wanted that pain, that hurt just so i could feel.

i know eventually everything is going to hit like a tidal wave. all the emotions & feelings are going to well up until they burst out in a "david after dentist"-esque scream of pain & release & confusion.

clearly, just like my body is rebelling, my emotions are going to be a bit scarred for awhile, too. i want to feel all the joy & anticipation & awkwardness of this new Atlanta/Emory/seminary/big grown-up adventure instead of just wading through--wanting to experience everything in its fullness but not being all there.

i think it's going to start when i get on my face before God. i know everything i experienced in His ministry this summer is stored up inside me somewhere--and i just can't tap into it yet. i want to so badly. SO MUCH happened and i want to feel the rush of it, the overwhelming presence of God in & above & around & through what i just went through with YouthWorks. i'm still waiting on that. that's a tidal wave i'm ready to get lost in.

i'm ready, God. open me up again.

some other beginning's end

2009-08-18T22:20:00.008-04:00

i've spent an inordinate amount of time looking through old journals & blog posts today. it's funny--when i'm writing, i rarely ever flash forward to think about some future version of myself reminiscing over the words i choose to express my feelings & circumstances in that present moment. writing is a release, a way to process, a way to communicate--with God in my journals, with friends & family on the blog. but i've been reading back over past entries (the oldest being from 2001) and doing that reminiscing all the same. i think the fact that all my thoughts are written without that intention of necessarily being read again and are composed instead fully in and for that moment alone--that lends itself to a more honest rendering, a 'me' who was more vulnerable, more candid, more real. i read recorded prayers from my high school self saying thanks to God for an awesome weekend with friends and for a forgotten homework assignment that was conveniently postponed by a particularly intimidating teacher. that's where I was with God at that point. and then i read journal entries from college, from the very midst of my struggles with changing majors. it was beautiful to see how engaged i was with seeking the Lord's will & living for His kingdom--how those things mattered more than anything else in making these HUGE decisions. i read blog posts from this past year about my preschoolers and my Sunday schoolers and about my cat and about applying for grad schools and not knowing where the future was headed.

it's interesting to remember who i've been and where i've come from as i ponder where i am going--where life is about to catapult me head-first, no turning back now. but sitting here on this crux of transition, mere days before i move to Atlanta & begin another life, it can be hard to prepare for what's coming when i still miss what's behind, when there are still days where mourning the endings overwhelms anticipating the beginnings.

today i talked with one of my very best friends--a friend i haven't seen since february (that's not okay). but what are we supposed to do? we live in 2 different states now, not just 2 different dorms. (how sweet that long walk across campus looks now, huh?) and that's how it is with everyone--friends are in California or Boston or DC or Chicago or New York. and we have full-time jobs and husbands and lives outside of the UNC-bubble. and we miss each other. what a radical change it is to have all your closest friends living within a 5 mile radius of one central campus hub, and then suddenly you're scattered across the country, across the world. admittedly, this summer it was hard to hear my YouthWorks teammates make plans for going back to school & seeing friends & getting back into leadership roles on campus. i had home to come back to...and next, a completely new place to get to know. i have phone dates. not real dates. i like real dates so much more.

but there is also a time to look forward. so here's to new relationships (without the loss of old ones) and to a new niche on a new campus and to a new community, a new church, a new house, a new place to discover whoever it is I am becoming.

God's got a mean headlock

2009-08-14T18:28:00.003-04:00

there's something about rainy afternoons and hillsong and setting your toe against the starting line of a grand adventure that will set your soul a-whirling.

i'm antsy. and still swimming in a sea of emotional upheaval from life post-youthworks. and i had a little wrestle with God this morning. a little throw-down over this ordination business. and wouldn't you know, i walked away limping. and without any real clarity. God just doesn't like easy answers, does He?

you see, today was my first meeting with my candidacy mentor. and though it was far less formal than the interview i had with the UMC-Charlotte district superintendant back in May, somehow today i was all torn asunder inside. so i walk inside this ridiculous church (apparently the biggest Methodist church in the whole southeast) and meet this crazy pastor man with a southern accent and a Carolina class ring and a theology library bigger than that of my wildest dreams. and he tells me his story, about how his family is broken and he flipped burgers and did drugs for a while before heeding the call. then all through seminary he fought doubts and uncertainties and personal shortcomings and unworthiness. then at one point in our conversation, he turned to me and asked, "so are you thinking about ordination?" my jaw metaphorically dropped open so wide that you could have shoved his complete collection of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics down my throat. excuse me, what? you mean i don't have to be all in at this point? and you understand that? you're okay with that? and so i answered honestly--i'm here to check it out. i want to know why i would need this for whatever ministry the LORD ends up leading me into.

i couldn't bring myself to open up just yet about the role my scholarship plays in all this--that my $7000 stipend a year is a big reason i was sitting in that room today. earlier today, talking with God, i was ready to march into the Emory financial aid office and declare that I was tired of fighting this internal battle with myself and tired of wrestling with God Himself over this ordination stipulation--so they can just take their money back & i'll figure something out. perhaps God is teaching me how to depend on Him for resources & calling me to faithfully give up $7000 a year. but i feel like that is the easy way out, crazily enough. so i'm going to walk this path for awhile, and see where it leads. i have the feeling that my world is about to be up-ended when i move next saturday. and when i begin orientation for grad school in less than 2 weeks. when i become an official student of theology on September 1. so despite the fact that i needed to have this meeting today in the midst of my emotional overhaul (dangerous enough) , i think i'll refrain from making major decisions of any kind within this wonky in-between phase.

but let the wrestling match continue...

re-entry, day 2

2009-08-13T21:48:00.002-04:00

i'm not tired--it's a novel feeling. i have slept so much & done a whole lot of nothing over the past 2 days, and i think my body is thanking me. it's also thanking me for the exercise (one class each of zumba and cardio funk--yes!!) and the non-youthworks diet.

but i keep turning around and wanting to tell things to katy & liz & jake. and they aren't there. who else would understand about the underwear on the clothesline or the Boots face or the million other things I want to tell them? because i was telling them anything & everything nearly 24 hours a day for the last 2 months. even surrounded by family, i feel lonely without my constant companions.

and i have to remember to lock my car doors. and know that i won't be at Swan Quarter Baptist on any more Wednesday nights. no more waffle Thursdays or Martelle's on the weekends. if life inside Hyde County is crazy & eccentric, being shoved back into life outside it is just as insane. why won't anyone wave to me as we drive past one another on the road anymore?!

but readjustment is good in many ways--my eyebrows are plucked! i'm moving to Atlanta next Saturday. i've got an interview for a work study position as an office assistant with the American Academy of Religion. i'm getting my haircut on Saturday. i've been to the gym! i talked to my 2 best ex-roomies today & am having breakfast in the morning with one of my closest & oldest friends. i got to laugh with my brother over dinner last night. i'm starting grad school in less than 2 weeks & i'm getting excited about it again!

life just keeps moving, doesn't it?

back to life

2009-08-12T11:31:00.002-04:00

so i don't know whether it's the large pile of mail, the 3 or 4 bags to unpack, the laundry scattered across the house, the phone calls to make, or the 2 week time span remaining until i MOVE to Atlanta and begin GRAD school--but there is rather a lot to do to get back into life. i did a lot of sleeping yesterday, but suddenly the several days that i planned to just lie around & watch movies seem a bit unrealistic in the face of all there is to do. hmm--funny how that happens when you pick up & leave EVERYTHING behind for 2.5 months and expect to somehow start again where you left off. a lot has happened while i lived life in the YouthWorks bubble.

now that bubble has popped, and the task of re-entry is looming. i'm still in a state of disbelief, of numbness. feelings are slowly beginning to penetrate my consciousness--realization that i'm about to start seminary, sadness at leaving behind new friends. and i have so much talking to do with God.

so i'll be back here to verbalize through a bit of all that. for now, i'm just taking some time to remember what it's like to watch TV and pay bills and find food in a normal, one-family sized kitchen. it's good..but still weird.

winding down

2009-07-29T15:03:00.002-04:00

it's hard to believe, but we've only got a week and a half left in Hyde County! next Saturday we'll be pulling out of here on the way to Birmingham for summer debrief, and then home. back to real life--what's that going to be like again?? and i'm starting grad school in a month, what?!?

there's still a lot to be done in our short time left here. we've got an awesome group this week & we still have a couple days left with them. this weekend we'll be working on saying our goodbyes to community members & church congregations. then next week it's one last hurrah for our final week of youth before packing up our site on friday & saturday. oh, and did i mention the end of summer paperwork? there sure is plenty of it. as with everything this summer, it's funny how that week and a half can seem so short & so long all at once.

it feels short in the time i have left to spend with the staff team here--my new family! soon we'll be scattered across the country again
it feels long when my alarm goes off at 6-something every morning
it feels short when i think about going to Swan Quarter Baptist for the last time this Sunday
it feels long when i look at the pile of evaluations and information packets and building checklist forms and inventory lists and...
it feels short when i look back on how far we've come this summer

but time will go on as it always does. this may be one of our hardest weeks of the summer & we're already past the halfway point! (wednesdays are our favorite days, too--pasta dinner, church at SQB, and of course, my time off & chance to blog!) this week is hard because we've come to the end of our strength & are so close to crossing the finish line...but we've still got one left. we've still got to do it all one more time. it seems that the general consensus among the staff is that we're doing okay mentally & emotionally--we can make it in that sense. but it's so weird when your body starts rebelling--from the lack of sleep & exercise, from the weird diet, from being pushed to the extremes of what it can handle. so we get headaches & our eyes beg to be closed & our stomachs hurt--but yet we press onwards. we want to continue giving our all to the participants coming in & to the community here & to each other, but it's so hard when physically you've reached your limit.

Yet God is a God of strength. He does not grow tired or weary. In Isaiah 40 He promises to give strength to the weak & weary--the strength to keep running the race, such that we'll fly on wings like eagles. Every morning I wake up with a prayer for the strength to make it through the day--it's actually pretty amazing to know that you're not making it from sunrise to far past sunset on any of your own ability. i'm solely running by the power of Christ in me--this body, this person called Whitney has nothing left, it's empty. but that's the God we serve--He demands everything but He gives everything. the tough part is figuring out that we can survive on what God gives and not just what we think we need. That we can live outside our comfort zones & away from our families/friends & everything familiar, and go 11 hard, long weeks without much sleep, and still come out praising His name. I got angry at God a little bit there in the middle of the summer--angry at Him for demanding so much. But I'm here to say that I'm still in this. Jesus, I'm in. I'm ready to run the race set before me. This summer has been an uphill climb on that race of my life--but I know the light & momentary troubles & struggles are achieving an eternal glory--lives have been changed over the course of this summer, including my own. I'm so thankful that this job in this place with these people was set apart for me & that God would ever look my way & choose me to be His instrument. I am a broken one that still needs a lifetime of reshaping & molding, but I am in His hands.

We're not quite done yet--and your prayers would still be greatly appreciated! All my love <3

post-week 5 update

2009-07-18T12:40:00.002-04:00

greetings from the Outer Banks! my goodness, I've been waiting a long time to make this post. We seem to have had our main internet source in Hyde County blocked, and the computers at the school, of course, do not allow access to certain sites. I could make it the rest of the summer without facebook, if I had to, but without blogging?! So here I am, using the earlier half of a cloudy day at the beach to catch up on life outside the YouthWorks bubble. I hope you are all doing well!

We had an awesome week of programming wrap up yesterday--our first week where everything truly clicked! And I don't think we could've asked for a much better bunch of youth and adult leaders. Talk about servant-hearted! I mean, taco Tuesday dinner was served early--that's a group that comes ready to work in any way they're asked. And please ask me about a game called "bunny bunny" sometime--we'll have to get 20 of our closest friends gathered in a circle & we'll play. Trust me, it's fun--I certainly couldn't have been playing it at midnight on Thursday night if it wasn't.

In all seriousness, I think my body is starting to rebel a bit more over the extreme levels it's being pushed to this summer--very little sleep, weird diet, little exercise. It's craving rest. On staff, we've all decided that our first couple of days at home will involve nothing more than lying in our pjs and alternately sleeping, watching movies/mindless TV, and otherwise doing nothing. I'm looking forward to that--about 3 weeks to go. But besides wanting to rest & recuperate, I think we're going strong. 3 weeks is not a long period of time (well, unless it's measured in YouthWorks days ;) and truthfully speaking, it's a lot of good time to do ministry). this past week absolutely flew by. we're all a lot more settled into our roles, so for the most part, the days flow smoothly (except for the unexpected bumps along the way). and now, especially as site director, it's time to start anticipating end of the summer tasks--such as planning community member gifts, preparing as a staff for the upcoming transition, etc. with these additional to-do's in my day, i know i'll continue to stay busy. and even as 6:15 feels earlier each morning, even as the repetition of certain meetings & activities starts to wear me out, even as i begin to count off the days until i never to put on a YouthWorks staff shirt again ( i mean that in the literal sense--I'm sick of those shirts!)--I think we'll suddenly wake up & it will be time to leave. i want to anticipate that because even with the chance to consider it ahead of time, it's going to be insane. we're going to be messed up for several days and/or weeks. so it may take me a while to get in touch with you all personally--i'll need some serious processing time before i can somehow communicate to you what happened this summer. but i look forward to that--i've missed you all so much & miss knowing what's going on in your lives. YouthWorks is truly an alternate universe, a parallel dimension, and I'm sorry that I haven't been better about keeping in touch with the real world. But I think about you all often.

Okay, now it's story time! I decided this week to write down what a day in the life of a YouthWorks site director looks like. Let me start by saying--no two look the same. Nothing is truly predictable. I did this for 2 of my days in the past week. I don't have the actual full-length list with me right now, but here are some highlights to whet your appetite:

wake up at 6:10, get ready for the day in a middle school bathroom, and proceed to lead a team of 12 youth in preparing 100+ waffles and other breakfast & lunch items
wash a load of dirty kitchen rags & footwashing towels--and reconcile my weekly finances in the $18,000 budget I manage while I'm waiting
clean out a tub of several dozen rotting cucumbers
play a game of Apples to Apples with a group of youth
listen to a history talk--twice-- on Lake Mattamuskeet as part of an evening activity
mop. lots of mopping
drive 20 miles to "town" and visit with my friends at Dollar General, the post office, and the Red & White (grocery store) as I run errands
clean out pre-wash bins & sink. i am afraid of no disgusting food particles. egg shells, soggy cereal, lettuce--all have passed through these hands.

There's rarely a dull moment, I will say that.

And now for one final story--I am thankful that we weren't washed away in a flood last night! There was an absolute torrential downpour yesterday. We've had more rain this week than usual, and the sky was definitely threatening yesterday as we left for our 1.5 hour drive to WalMart. The cool thing was, the rain came while we were inside shopping, and had finished by the time we needed to load up. When we got back to the school, again we had just enough time to haul everything into the kitchen before the skies opened up again. However, the actual drive back was quite the experience. It was not the worst rain I've ever driven through, but it was close. All I could do was watch the reflectors in the middle of the road to know I was staying on course, and pray that the lightning striking right next to us would avoid hitting the car. What a metaphor for life--for this summer, at some points! But we made it home safely. And then laughed about it this morning when "Flood" by Jars of Clay played on our mix cd.

The sun's coming out! We're off to the beach :)

All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God was making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:18-21)

best pics so far

2009-07-11T16:30:00.004-04:00

i'm sitting at starbucks in greenville, nc, and i'm not thinking much about YouthWorks at all today. it's so nice to step outside that bubble for a little while. i've been away from home for 7 weeks, in Hyde County for 6 weeks, and hosting youth groups for 4 weeks. we have 4 weeks of programming left--in fact, my flight home leaves one month from today. this weekend has been strange in that sense. i feel as though i'm perched on a precipice, having made the long climb to the summitt, and now i'm waiting to begin the descent. but until the new groups arrive tomorrow night, i'm just watching & waiting. and second half of the summer will not be "downhill" in the sense that it will be a breeze--it will be as tough of a climb down as it was on the way up, i'm sure. but we've crossed the halfway point. i think we're all a little unsure how to feel about it. is it going to fly by? or as we get more tired & home/real life draws closer, is time going to start dragging? will we be able to keep our energy up to serve the last 4 groups as well as we could the first 4? i'm not really sure what to think or how to feel. so for now, i'm just perched here, watching.

here's a few of my favorite pictures from the summer:

youthworks week 4

2009-07-08T14:32:00.002-04:00

this will be a short update because i'm nearing the end of my time off this afternoon! plus we're planning for another day in Greenville this weekend, which means Starbucks and/or Panera, which means wireless internet, which means laptop, which means I can finally upload some pictures! and more blogging, of course.

this week has been so much better than last week! first of all, we're at about 54 participants compared to last week's 72, so that's just a nice breather for us. we took what was constructive criticism from our evaluations last week and have worked to improve those areas. but the biggest sigh of relief this week comes from having adult leaders who are on board. it makes a world of difference.

this week i've had a hard time avoiding the urge to count down the days we have left in the summer. after this week wraps up, we'll have completed 4 weeks of programming with 4 weeks left to go. when i've been frustrated or tired or unable to see the fruit of our efforts, i've thought to myself, "only 4 more times do we have to manage canoeing," or "only 4 more weeks of dealing with the insurmountable task of keeping this kitchen clean." in those moments, it's easy to get lost in the to-do's and forget that ministry is happening in all of it. it's been a real blessing for me to remind myself as i mop or set up tables or empty garbage cans (etc) that this, too, is work for the glory of God. Psalm 84 says, "better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. i would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked." sometimes our work is as doorkeepers--maybe not the top of the line or a job that is gratifying or a position where effective ministry is immediately apparent. but it's work in the house of God.

and sometimes it feels like a YouthWorks day is as long as a thousand elsewhere ;) i've really been learning just in fact how much sleep you can run on.

this past weekend my mom came to visit and we all together spent the day at the Outer Banks! it was fabulous! we climbed the Cape Hatteras lighthouse & sat on the beach there for 2 hours & watched fireworks on the top of Jockey's Ridge. pictures definitely forthcoming :)

youthworks week 3

2009-07-01T15:15:00.002-04:00

another week gone by. it's interesting really--the days are interminable but somehow you wake up & realize it's already wednesday & there's just one more day of ministry before things wrap up. it's been a bit of a rough week & i'm not entirely sure why. maybe we're stuck somewhere between the excitement of beginnings and the rhythm of mid-summer. we're toward the end of week 3 of 8, but overall we've reached the halfway point. factoring in a week of training & two weeks of prep is how we've gotten here, but it's been bizarre to be filling out mid-summer paperwork when things have really only begun to gear up.

another note on the week--my vague references to something big happening last friday can now be uncovered. we had to let go one of our staff members. on the same day that happened, our new staff, Liz, joined us...and we still had to finish Friday paperwork & shopping. it was quite the day. so it's been a transitional week with Liz learning her role & our site. she's been fabulous all things considered! i'm very encouraged for the rest of the summer--even though she's just arrived, we feel like more of a team already. responsibilities evenly shared. through this situation i think God had a lot to teach me about leadership through conflict--which is definitely something i was scared of as i trained for this job. and i got a huge dose of it. i think i'm stronger for it. and i was thinking today that the way this experience is preparing me for the future will only be revealed in months & years to come, but i know that i'm growing in ways that i don't even realize.

the hardest part of my week was definitely Monday afternoon at our adult leader meeting, which i lead each day. i actually really enjoy my interaction with the adults & have been glad that it's such a big part of my role as site director. but the meeting Monday turned into a complaint-fest. one of them started & the ball just kept rolling. quite a few of the ladies acknowledged after the fact that they had been overly crabby, and things have definitely been better since then. but it's led to a continued discussion about how YouthWorks does and does not encourage missional living. this is a mission field we're working on here. and to an extent, certainly, the youth groups know that because they are coming on a mission trip. but only some of them really get it. complaining about the water pressure in the showers & other little nit-picky things like that is extremely frustrating. sure, it's an inconvenience. but being missional is world away from being comfortable. and it's really dependent on the youth leaders' and groups' experiences and spiritual awareness of missional living--you either have an understanding of it coming in or you don't. so how do you teach it to those who don't? you can't snap back at an adult leader with, "well, we're trying to live out the Gospel here & Jesus probably wasn't focused on the shower pressure in Him ministry" or "you know, think about all the people in the world who don't have running water. consider what a blessing it is to even be able to bathe! no less on site and in private stalls." i hope that some of these concepts will work their way into participants' worldviews, but we may not see the fruit of it during this week alone. one of my fellow staff, Jake, & I have also been talking about the usefulness of our end-of-the-week evaluations. in making sure that we're doing our job--enough food for everyone to eat, safety, programming, etc--they're extremely helpful in keeping us on track. but Jake said he felt the evaluations were partially asking, "how was your stay at Hotel YouthWorks this week?" and neither of us felt that's really what it should be about. it's hard to walk the line between serving our participants & catering to them.

just fyi--this blog may serve as a venting outlet :) a lot of things have been going very well. we've had great energy at worship this week & a lot of focus during our times of reflection & teaching. most of the youth have big servant hearts & have gone out of the way to help out. we have an awesome adult leader who was actually a YW staff two years ago. she's been a huge blessing--mostly because she understands what it's all like behind the scenes. we're getting better at the less fun aspects of the job--Friday inventory & shopping, leading meal & clean-up crews. I laughed today, thinking how once we get it all down perfectly, it will be time to pack up & head out for the summer.

My focus verses this week have come from 1 Corinthians 13. I have been pursuing the most excellent way:

If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy & can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (vv. 1-3).

yes, i'm still alive!

2009-06-25T09:19:00.004-04:00

well, it's been a while, hasn't it? i'm sorry that i've been so out of touch--both here on the blog & also over the phone & email. i'm going to try & use my free times (like right now!) to better communicate with everyone, in addition to getting some extra rest :)

rest is one thing i definitely need. my body is learning to function on less sleep, and God Himself fills me with the energy & strength needed to make it through each 18 hour day. the beautiful thing is that while i'm tired & drained physically, i am so filled up by this work! what a blessing that is---because if that wasn't the case, there would be no way to make it through this summer. it is intense. i do thrive on the busy-ness for the most part, and love being able to serve every waking moment of the day. my servant leadership has grown in leaps & bounds in just a few short weeks out of sheer necessity. there is always something to do & someone to help. i am so thankful for the opportunity to function as a team & to serve multiple categories of people--the staff, the youth, the adult leaders, the community members. and how richly God is blessing us in that.

but on to the specifics! we are in our second week of programming here at Coastal Carolina--and I can hardly believe it! is anyone else shocked that it will be July next week? we have 6 weeks left here, and it alternately feels like a lot and a little yet to go. we had an AWESOME group last week, hailing from Minnesota, Kentucky, and Delaware. They were a great first group to start things out with--all the leaders were on board, the youth were hard-working & spirit-filled. The first week of programming is called "early bird" in youthworks terminology, which basically means that it is another week of training for us. another staff team joined us for the week & my supervisor acted as the site director. it was helpful to learn by doing finally. i was a bit nervous for the transition from 9 staff down to just us 4 this week, but it really hasn't been that tough. it feels good to finally handle things on our own. our largest group that's here this week has been frustrating, though. several of the youth did not come with hearts to serve (though i pray when they leave their servant hearts will have grown in some small way) and the main trip leader is completely doing his own thing. i've barely spoken with him all week and he chooses not to attend the daily adult leader meetings. he lets another of his leaders (a woman) handle all the paperwork & the communication & the finances. he wants to play by his own rules & really just isn't respecting what i'm trying to do for the most part. he's got a big heart for Jesus & for his youth, but he really just can't function with the YouthWorks framework. so it's been hard. the rest of our leaders are great, and i've really enjoyed the fact that my job as director involves lots of direct interaction with the adults.

here's what being on YouthWorks staff is all about: problem solving, flexibility, proactivity. there's a lot that comes at you in a day, and being anticipatory and flexible are the only ways to keep things running smoothly. what a task it is to feed 70 people for 5 days! even more so in Hyde County where you can't just run down the block to Walmart. i really do love it here, but it is hard in those situation where you just need to get to the store. i can drive 20 minutes one-way down to Engelhard & get what I need between the Dollar General & the local grocery store. but i spend a lot of my day doing that when i have to--so it's super important to plan ahead & shop well on the weekends. speaking of the weekend--we had a great first one off! it was so nice to SLEEP IN! my air mattress has been treating me well, i just haven't seen enough of it :) so we got to rest, and we spent some time in the community (eating LOTS of hamburgers/hot dogs!) and got to check email. and i registered for classes at Emory in the fall! it's been hard to get excited about that & still be fully present, so I'm definitely trying to keep Emory on the backburner until August as much as I can. the last thing i want to happen is to start egging the summer on because I'm so excited about school. our weekend also included some time with another amazing family in this community. the pastor of Swan Quarter Baptist & his wife & 10 year old son have completely taken us in--we are their children. they've fed us & offered us their home unconditionally for laundry & showers & just a place to hang out. i've enjoyed being in fellowship with them so very much, and their son Archer is an absolute riot! we spent last Saturday shooting him with nerf darts & laughing til our sides split as he proceeded to die over & over. they pastor the church where we bring our groups on Wednesday nights to services. they serve us & bless us so fully with their hospitality & servant hearts. it's wonderful to have family to quickly away from home.

things are getting better with our principal. the last couple of interactions with him have been stellar, almost black and white from previous weeks. but let me lay out one more story for you. last week on Thursday, a male youth approached our staff with a confession. 3 guys had been playing in the gym, throwing a football through narrow window slits at the very top of the gym wall. they would throw it through, then run up an off-limits staircase to retrieve the ball. well, as luck would have it, a couple of times the football got stuck in the window. so they decided to climb on top of this equipment shed/room that was a separate enclosure in this upstairs space they had been invading. long story short, they fell through the roof of the shed--obviously breaking a hole in the sheet rock. guilty consciences led them to come forward, and in a whirlwind of about 15 minutes, i was sitting in the principal's office discussing the incident with him. it was rough, but God showed me how he truly works for good in all situtation. Kyle, the youth who came forward, was so honest & mature & kind in the face of this tough principal, who had every right to be fuming in this situation. i was so so proud of him--it really displayed the content of his character. later, the boys all wrote notes of apology to me & to the principal. it's my belief that Kyle's letters, which touched me deeply, may have affected Dr. Lattimore & warmed him to our cause. it is my every prayer that this is so. i am kicking my own butt to keep the school clean & the kitchen sparkly--no sticky floors! as you can imagine, that's not easy when you're hosting dozens of teenagers!

alright, i'll wrap this update up. send me an email if you have any more questions about what i've been doing--and i'd love to hear what's been going on in your lives! i do just have one more prayer request--something big is going to happen tomorrow. it's going to be a pretty rough weekend consequentially & some things are going to be changing. i just ask that you would lift up our site and our team tomorrow (Friday). i promise for less vague details in a future update.

i love you all! rejoice in the work God is doing!

greetings from the end of the world

2009-06-07T15:50:00.002-04:00

well, i may not be at the end of the world...but you can see it from here! so said one of the first people we met in Hyde County. mind you, that quip was made as my team & I ended our roadtrip from Birmingham, AL. We had spent the last few hours watching civilization slip away as the countryside grew more & more untouched. we were officially welcomed to our home for the summer by a roadsign that read "Hyde County--The Road Less Traveled." That, apparently, is their motto. But here at the edge of nowhere we have been welcomed by some of the biggest hearts in God's kingdom. We've been well-fed, showered, quartered, and informed by a cast of small town characters that we'll never forget.

First there was David & Anita, whose home we stayed at for our first two nights here. Anita fed us until we were fit to burst, then offered us more. David took us on a ride down the dirt road on the wildlife refuge & pointed out every single living creature. When we returned, he showed us his garden & we ate asparagus & broccoli & mulberries straight out of nature. David throws out more one-liners that we can write down to remember.

Next we met JH, the pastor here at Soule UMC where we've been staying & will stay until the youth participants arrive next weekend. He may be simultaneously the nicest & craziest man I've ever met. He & his wife have opened their home to us every single night to let us shower. They've also cooked us a delicious dinner & took us out to the only restaurant in town another night for dinner. This morning we heard JH preach at one of the most laid-back services I've ever attended--and yet we sang hymns and the men wore ties. JH is leaving in another 2 weeks, because Soule can no longer support a full-time pastor. We're going to miss him so much...and we've only just met him.

The community here is surreal. The may actually have Acts 2 figured out. No one's door is shut, no one's table is full, no one's shower is too personal to let a herd of sweaty kids pass through. And they love us instantly. I can walk into the grocery store or the post office and as soon as someone spots my YouthWorks t-shirt, they start talking about how excited they are that we're back & can't wait to send their children over to our Kid's Club. Or they know someone who needs help with their home. Or they can get us a connection with free produce or eggs for feeding our youth groups. The lady at the post office remembered which box the YW staff used last year, and rented the same one to me. The man stocking shelves at the grocery store stopped me because he had never seen me around before & wondered whether I was new in town. God has totally side-swiped me with this wealth of community, which I would not have experienced so fully had I been in a more urban area, as I had hoped, this summer. We are isolated, that's for sure, but we're also surrounded by people who loved us before they met us.

There is one person whose welcome was not so warm. The principal of the school we'll be staying at this summer has it out for us. YouthWorks has been in this community for 6 years, but he's only been principal for two. So basically the task of housing YW participants & collaborating with the staff was dumped on him--and he was ready to not let us come back, but the community wouldn't have it. And did he ever let us know it---that we're an extreme inconvenience for him. He was rude & sharp & ready to watch us fail. He set up hoops for us to jump through and is prepared to kick us if we fall down. After we met with him, I cried. But now that I've had some time to process along with my team, we've come to the conclusion that God has given us the task of loving this man. Loving him despite his disdain, loving him despite his lack of love for us and our mission. That's going to be a huge challenge for me. Would you pray for me as we fight to overcome evil with good? Meeting with him was the only downside of an otherwise AMAZING week. I don't want my weekly check-in with him to be the same way. I want to be so filled with the Spirit, vision, and purpose of Jesus Christ that nothing he says will affect me negatively. I believe we can love him so much that he'll have to stop and ask why. And hopefully we can speak some truth into his heart that is so clearly hurting.

We have exactly one week until our first bunch of youth show up. Some sites are starting their programming today. Though I'm ready for prep week to be over & for the kids to be here, it would've been near impossible to get everything together in just one week! Granted, we've spent a lot of time shooting the breeze with community members, and we aren't yet in our official housing site for the summer (and won't be until the night before the youth arrive, thank you again Mr. Principal)--but there is still much to be done. I look forward to sitting on the other side of this week & diving into our youth ministry. We're in for quite a ride :)

learning to juggle

2009-05-29T18:21:00.002-04:00

so i realized today why i am more nervous about the next 2 weeks of the summer than i am for the 8 weeks we'll have with actual youth participants on site. i have a rather lengthy list of to-do's that need to be checked off over our 2 weeks of preparation...and it's up to me to build structure around that, to establish routines & patterns. once we have everything ready to go, i'll run like a well-oiled machine. but it's that state of stasis that is my adversary. there are a lot of balls to juggle, a lot of small details to set into place. so i'm learning to juggle at the same time that i'm leading others in the juggling act.

God has given me a lot of confidence this week, though. when i wrote my last post, i was riding a roller coaster of emotions. but over the last 3 days, i've asked God to help me focus on one day at a time--to live fully & full of fire each day. Jesus tells us that we shouldn't worry about tomorrow, because today has enough troubles of it's own. and i've been thinking about and working on living in the present for the last couple of months. and that type of focus has really filled me with great energy & purpose, without letting me get overwhelmed. but it's also been a delicate balance, because this whole week has been about thinking ahead, preparing, mapping out 10 weeks of upcoming summer programming. but i know that even more so in the next 2 weeks will i need to close my eyes on the day without having the mental rolodex whizzing. God will give me work to do one day at a time, and it will get done one day at a time without me needing to stress & worry over day 10 on day 2.

okay, taking a break from the deep thoughts for a moment--i've gotten a lot of cool stuff in the past few days! i just received 5 YouthWorks t-shirts to wear for the summer (we'll get 4 more on site!), a YW ballcap, a necklace, a water bottle, a cell phone, a credit card, and countless binders of training manuals and site information. plus my team has 2 sweet rides for the summer--a '99 minivan and a '09 Chevy Cobalt rental. yes, be jealous :) but we've also got to drive those bad boys from Alabama to the coast of NC over the course of the next 2 days, so be happy that you don't have to do that.

(PS--YouthWorks partners with a really awesome ministry to supply t-shirts to staff & to sell to youth participants. It's called Youth Enterprise and the ministry gives high schoolers in Minneapolis a chance to learn business skills while working on screen printing tshirts. They have also boosted graduation rates by huge percentages & offer tutoring as a part of the students' work days. The students are also discipled. Go to www.getyourshirton.com)

We roll out tomorrow at 7:20 am (I've already gotten better at functioning on low levels of sleep!) and drive to Fayetteville, NC. Then on Sunday morning we have another 4 hours or so until we reach Hyde County. Please join me in prayer for safe travels, and for our initial transition into the community.

I would also ask for prayer on continued team bonding & trust, my leadership during these 2 weeks of prep, and for all of us to carry our weight & work efficiently during this time.

Here's a few verses from Colossians that I'd like to share--this passage has really been focusing my heart for this ministry I'm preparing to enter with my team:

Therefore as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtures, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3:12-17

and so it begins

2009-05-26T17:47:00.002-04:00

i'm writing this to you from my home for the week--a Sunday school classroom in Moody, Alabama where I'm undergoing training for my YouthWorks summer. i'm currently propped up on my air mattress, awaiting dinner, and was excited to find a wireless connection :)

it's really good to be here & get this process underway--it's nice to have anticipation & expectation meet reality. i've met my staff team--Katy, Jake, & Cameron. I think we're going to get along well. We determined today that we're all neat (clean) people, which gives me great hope :) It's funny to begin interacting with people who you know you'll be super tight with in a couple more months..yet right now it's still a bit awkward & new. I look forward to getting to know them better & watching their strengths & gifts come out in our ministry this summer.

as for me, i've been fluctuating between confidence and nervousness, uncertainty and surety. this week is all about information & modeling what a YouthWorks week will look like on site. so we're just hit over the head with info again & again, and that can be both overwhelming & daunting. i trust fully that God has chosen me for this position & will equip me (and all my fellow staff members) for my job. when i rest in that knowledge, i feel so great & so pumped. but if i drown myself in all the details and my inexperience in this particular setting, etc--i am overcome with anxiety. it seems like a lot of people are feeling this way, so i'm thinking that the abstract nature of our preparations may contribute to this feeling. i look forward to the time when we're all set to go in our community & have our first groups arrive. that is still 3 weeks out! i know we need all this prep time, but i'm ready to get my hands dirty & stop fretting over how it's going to happen and just let it happen.

i had a really sweet moment last night when i was weary from traveling & a long day of mingling and was just ready to go to sleep. it was 10:15 pm (11:15 Eastern time, where I started the day!) and we were moving into a time of worship. as our leader prayed to begin the session, all i could ask was, "God, just keep me awake." He did that & more--I felt so lifted up & fulfilled by the presence of Jesus. it's so beautiful to realize how fully & truly He is our sustainer, our very life. it is all about Him, He is so so worthy. that is my center and my purpose for this summer.

i hope to keep the updates coming, but still am not sure how often i'll have time to get online once our summer really gets underway. but i'll try to blog once a week, at least. tales of youth adventures to ensue!

whirlwind

2009-05-20T23:08:00.002-04:00

i feel like a chicken with my head cut off right now! between finishing school (at least there's no exams...), packing & preparing for YouthWorks, trying to get a handle on details for Emory this fall, and squeezing in a 3 day trip to the beach with my fam--i feel like my life has exploded everywhere! it has, at the very least, exploded all over my room.

but once i get to the beach tomorrow night, hopefully i can take some time to seriously relax before the onslaught of my intense and wonderful summer experience. relax and not think about what i have left to pack & how the heck i'm going to fit it all in one suitcase.

it may be awhile before i post again--and i really don't know how often i'll be able to do so this summer! so here's all my love & the very briefest of updates (sorry!). no one hesitate to call me over the next few months--i want to keep up with what's going on in your lives as well :)

revelations on Revelation

2009-05-13T18:36:00.004-04:00

i've been a bit stand-offish with God this week.

which i attribute entirely to the fact that i've been reading through revelation for bible study tonight.

for me, revelation has nice bookends. but the stuff in the middle has really yanked my chain this time around. and i have been completely blindsided by my present irritation with this text. i thought i had made a lot of peace with it. probably because last year my beloved disciple-ee sara wanted to work through rev. together--and as the "leader" of that discussion, i imagine that i squashed down many of my own questions and frustrations to seem more knowledgable and to focus on what she wanted to discuss. and not having studied personally through rev. since then, clearly i was left with a false sense of security--like i owned Revelation. most people are confused by its symbolism and wild imagery, but no sir, not me. i mean, i guided someone else through the book, c'mon, i know what's up.

yea, right. now i've got all these questions swirling around about rapture and "Left Behind" and Darby's dispensationalism and pre- vs. post-milleniallism. it's a feast for the mind of a reli major..

but more significantly, i'm mad. angry because somehow all these wrathful images in Rev. don't correlate with the God I know. i'm vaguely Universalist, i admit it. (though i was somewhat pacified by John's commentary that the earth dwellers suffering through the great tribulation were nonrepentant despite the plagues and killings and death. talk about hard-hearted).

but if i'm honest with myself, it's not just thinking about all those atheists and buddhists and unreached people groups perishing in eternal flame (note the slight sarcasm...i think), but it's questioning where i fit into the picture of eternity. part of that hinges on the unanswerable: will i be alive or dead during the eschaton? and then...am i one of the 144,000? the great multitude? am i taken up in the rapture? is there a rapture? do i have to wait for 1000 years while the martyrs reign before i'm risen in Christ? i consider myself a Christ follower and believe that my salvation rests in Him, but have i messed up too much for my name to be written in the book of Life? am i unworthy to receive His seal on my forehead?

i want to believe, with everything inside me, that the answer to those last two questions is a resounding "no!" but that's what Revelation does to you! it messes with your head.

i guess i should imagine how John felt ;)

today i decided that i would rest in the knowledge of the love of my God and Saviour. the questions may swirl around, but they sure aren't going to be answered by anyone on this earth. Not by Darby, not by the "Left Behind" authors, not by my pastor at bible study tonight. and so we wait. for Him. for Him who loved and died for a people undeserving.

Come, Lord Jesus!

week in review

2009-05-08T15:17:00.002-04:00

i'm on the verge of drifting away into an afternoon nap right about now, so it might not be the best time for blogging. but here goes nothing.

this morning was spent at a baby shower for one of my coworkers. followed by a brief meeting about our last 2 weeks of school.

two weeks of school. that's it. no more kiddies, no more Kelly, no more Charlotte, for that matter. my YouthWorks summer is rapidly approaching. and as i expected, now that my time is dwindling in the life that I know and change hastens, i am starting to mourn the passing of this year and the things i will not be here for this summer. but all sentimentality aside...ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT! YES!

as for the baby shower, it was nice. we ate cake at 10 in the morning. i watched in wonder as the mom-to-be unwrapped a gift of ringed ice packs...for one's breasts. the other ladies in the room were stunned at the advance in mommy technology over the past 10 years. i, of course, was stunned by the need for such mommy technology. indeed, i listened all morning to birthing stories, pregnancy stories, breast feeding stories (you get the idea).

in other news, this past week was teacher appreciation week. which i think should be renamed teachers get fat off oversized candy bars week. no joke. if you have a chocolate craving, come visit me. we also received beautiful fresh flowers that i happily dispersed in vases around the house. and for the scrapbook--"a picture of my teacher" drawn by the three-year-olds. priceless.

this week was also eventful in that i met with the district superintendent of the Charlotte United Methodist Church. this was the first real step in beginning the "inquiry" process for ministry candidacy with the UMC. it was an intimidating interview, but I never got truly nervous, and it ended up being just a nice conversation with a dear man. though i wasn't able to run right alongside him in name-dropping professors at duke and emory, i did leave the meeting feeling good about entering this process. i also think i discovered the reason why the process scares me a bit--it's being under the thumb of the Methodist church for the rest of my life. which in a lot of ways could be a good thing. and with the deacon track (which i am 95% sure i want to pursue), i'll have the freedom to work in social orgs or schools, will be non-itinerant, and won't be bound by district-ordained geographical assignments. that helps me breathe easier...but it leaves me asking, am I ready to sign on with the UMC for good? to be so denominational? to let them have, at least in some way, control over who I am as a minister, a worshipper, a disciple? maybe that's a little extreme--but i think it's where my fear stems from. which is why i'm thankful that i have a year-long (at least) inquiry process before me. so i can inquire.

i was thinking today that it's kind of funny for a Christ follower to be so intimidated by the idea of relinquishing control of certain things to the Church. because that is what Jesus calls us to do with our entire lives--hand over control, to Him, the head of the Church. but i'm starting to see what that looks like, what it means practically--i'm working in rural NC this summer, with teenagers. i'm inquiring into ordained ministry. those things definitely were not my ideas ;) but i already have glimpses of what great experiences will spring forth.

God pushed me rather unexpectedly into another endeavor this week, albeit rather small. my pastor asked me to lead b-stud again this week. our assigned readings were quite short, and i was hoping to develop a creative way to extend our discussions. As I sometimes do, one night I pulled out my guitar before reading the Bible to spend some personal worship time before God. And I was overwhelmed with the urge to lead worship at our b-stud. Let me remind everyone that you can only call me a guitar player if your definition of "to play" is quite broad. I know the basic chords. I can't really strum (whether because I am entirely self-taught and need some professional help, or because I am a leftie playing a right-handed guitar, or both). But God pushed me, and I think it was not only because our small group has been completely devoid of musical worship and it would be a refreshing and uplifting change, but because music is a huge part of who I am, and a essential medium through which I meet with God. And I would really really love worship leading to be a part of my ministry someday, in some capacity. So God said, "ok then Whitney, take this guitar I've given you, these chords I've helped you to learn, this voice I've given you to sing, and just do it. Make a joyful noise. There will only be a few people listening besides Me." So I did--I stepped out on a limb to minister and it was beautiful. Beautiful in that God was among us, being worshipped...not necessarily in the chords I was hitting ;)

this week i said good-bye to my Sunday school class. i won't be teaching anymore, since i'm leaving soon. i know i brag about these kids a lot, but i'm going to some more. this week we talked about Iraq and September 11th (they're 4th and 5th graders--mere toddlers in 2001!). and they managed to get from a game of 'Mother May I' to our as yet unintroduced virture of the month (obedience) and from there to our Bible story (Jonah). they are smart, intuitive kids. and i'm so glad they're coming to church, because in the vein of a question in previous months ("you're telling me Zeus isn't real?!), I was questioned about God's true sovereignity over the storm--"wait, what about Mother Nature?" and they are only beginning to learn that running from God ("heck no I wouldn't go to Iraq even if God spoke to me out of the sky!") is how we end up in the belly of a big fish. or covered in that fish's vomit when God decides to spit us back up.

speaking of the big fish, we had a lot of debate about whether it was a whale or just a big fish. one dear boy proposed that someone should just gather up all the Bibles from all over the world and see how many said "fish" and how many said "whale." aren't they clever? love it. he'll probably be a Bible scholar one day...

holy anger

2009-05-01T13:49:00.003-04:00

While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness...I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger. Shane Claiborne

It was extraordinarily fitting that I read these words last night because yesterday I was pissed off. Pissed off at American Christianity that has become a subculture which, to quote myself, throws in the nice parts of the Bible, bits of the American dream, promises of a comfortable lifestyle and an island paradise for eternity (6/30/08).

What makes me really angry is the fact that we're indoctrinating ourselves with this belief. And it has moved to the Church. To my church.

I receive a weekly email from our church administrator that includes that Sunday's bulletin announcements, order of worship, etc. Although I no longer work for my church officially, I still enjoy looking over these files to see what's going on in the life of our church. This week, I noticed that the song "How You Live" was listed as the offertory piece.

I hate hate HATE this song. I usually try to avoid using the word 'hate' in any context, but I mean it about this song. I mean my stomach has started to churn again just thinking about it.

To quote myself again from that same blog post I linked above, here's why it makes me so mad:
I'm afraid we're growing comfortable in a culture that ignores the costs of servanthood & relaxes in the blessings we've been given. The Christian radio's playing songs that say "wear your red dress, use your good dishes, go to the ballgames, go to the ballet, turn up the music" and we're tapping our toes right along. I agree with the underlying message of this song--but it's not scriptural and I don't think it corresponds with Christ's main message. But when we begin to equate this and similar songs' mantras with Christianity, we find ourselves in a cultural-religious hodge-podge that throws in the nice parts of the Bible, bits of the American dream, promises of a comfortable lifestyle and an island paradise for eternity. I'm just not entirely sure that's what Jesus meant when he said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (john 10:10). I mean, really, not every Christian can afford to go the ballgame, let alone have at least 2 sets of dishes. C'mon, Jesus was eating with whores and thieves--hardly the types to have "good dishes." I bet Jesus would gladly eat off your floor if He were to drop by for dinner tonight and you hadn't yet started the dishwasher.

You can read the rest of the disgusting lyrics here. My other favorite lines include "have what you want" and the obligatory "give to the needy" thrown in on the last stanza. In my opinion, this song could be the anthem of America's cultural Christianity: spend enough on yourself to live the good life and remember to think about those less fortunate every now and again so you can feel good about your charitable contributions. God Bless the USA.

(I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "USA bless God." Preach.)

Now back to the part about me being pissed off. I've made it clear that I hate this song--but I don't think that's enough to warrant a true state of holy anger. What gets me so upset is the fact that we're going to sing this song in church...(here's the real kicker) after my pastor preaches a sermon on Matthew 6:19-21. In this passage Jesus recommends that we store our treasure up in heaven.

So the service will run something like this: Part 1) don't horde your treasures on earth where moths destroy and thieves steal. Part 2) Live life to the fullest! Spend money on a new red dress, tickets to the ballet or the ballgame. Have what you want! We've been blessed so make sure your enjoy every minute of it! Part 3) We take communion together--with the idea being that we share in the body of Christ with our brothers & sisters around the world. Our brothers & sisters who sure as heck aren't going to the ballet or using their good dishes.

To me, this is straight up spiritual warfare. My church will be sending subliminal messages this Sunday (I think it is a fortunate occurrence that I am teaching Sunday School this week and won't actually be in the service). We've become so blinded to the difference between a life of discipleship as described in the Gospels and a life of comfortable Christianity as described by American pop culture that we don't even realize it when the very word of God is being contradicted in church. Satin has found a way in. My pastor will preach a good word based on the very words of Truth, then the prince of this world gets his sermon in as we sing a song about complacency, about comfort.

Does that piss anyone else off? Literally tears of frustration and anger welled out of my eyes last night as I was discussing this with my mother. Just thinking about it again has caused my muscles to tense up and my heart to pound. This is serious friends. The gospel of American Christianity is finding its way into the Church. We're being told that it's okay. It's okay for us to spend money on ourselves. It's okay for us to give to the "needy" instead of building relationships with them. It's okay to have a nice house in the suburbs with multiple sets of china while half the world is living on less than the coins in our change purses.

THAT IS NOT OKAY! What happened to the Gospel?? Where did it go? What the heck do we think we're doing, and how dare we call it Christianity?

Will you join me in this anger? And pray with me that this anger leads to a genuine embrace of true Gospel living in our own lives, and to the pursuit of a ministry that seeks to eradicate the heresy of American Christianity.

matthew 25:35

2009-04-28T23:02:00.003-04:00

i met Jesus on the street today
and i've finally learned
how NOT to turn away.
"Ma'am, can you help me out?
I need some change.
I'm pregnant and I haven't eaten
in two days."
we walked together to the corner store
but there our eyes met no more.
she grabbed some chips,
a drink or two;
i easily paid what was due.
i gave her the change from my five,
touched her arm and said,
"good luck with your child."
i added as we parted ways,
"i'll pray for you,"
and i turned away.
as i crossed the street into the church
i thought, how will that heal the hurt?
my heart, i believe
was in the right place--
but is this how i should treat Jesus
face-to-face?
it felt rushed, it felt trite...
but God was still there.
He's making me into someone
who does actually care
about the faces on the street,
those of His own,
so i can say with much praise
that my love for the poor--
the meek, the forgotten--
has grown.
still i felt shaken up
as i walked in to praise
the God who has poured
so much blessing on all my days.
"what can i do, Lord?
how can i be
the same Jesus to these people
as they are Him to me?"
i thank God that He's brought me
from where i have been
and also that He's working on me
until i find perfection in Him.
as i left the service tonight
He gave me one more chance
to love a brother on the street,
to give more than a glance.
a soda was all he asked of me there,
and i happily smiled, saying,
"i've got change to spare."
but this time as we walked
to that same corner store
i asked his name, took his hand--
loved a bit more.
one dollar oh-six was all his drink cost
but i saw in His eyes
the man on the cross.

not for brevity's sake

2009-04-26T20:18:00.006-04:00

it's been a busy couple of weeks and here, for your reading pleasure, is a long overdue update!

i'll start with the most recent events and work backwards. this morning at church was quite...interesting. i was innocently fixing a cup of tea at the beverage table, when a dear sweet little woman, who i thought knew me somewhat well, asked me how my plans were coming. "oh great," i replied, prepared to launch into a discussion about my recent affiliation with either a) Emory or b) YouthWorks. "So you've set a date?" she asked. PAUSE. frantic mental scrambling...for moving? for job training? "um, for what?"--"well, aren't you engaged?!" I believe my exact response was "God no!" haha. sure, I've had a lot going on lately...but that one is still on the to-do list ;) She made up for a supremely awkward moment by wishing me well on finding a hubby at div school. i actually fear the day when i do come home with a boy on my arm or a ring on my finger. they'll be vultures. and speaking of a boy on my arm...this was the same woman who discreetly asked who the cute gentleman was that accompanied me to the Easter service. that was my brother, thanks. after all this excitement had passed, i was very nearly put to sleep in the service by a sermon on sex (who would believe it, right??). in all fairness, this wasn't our regular pastor & the sermon wasn't actually on sex...though it was supposed to be. i'm not really sure what he talked about for 20 minutes. but occasions like this help confirm that i'm heading in the right direction with my MDiv--i wanted to get up & preach myself!

yesterday i took an all-day journey to Atlanta with my mom. i wanted to go check out a few housing possibilities for the fall. we had 4 stops and as we left the third, i was feeling unsure about which was the best option. and then, we arrived. a dream house. the perfect living situation. stop number four was in a picturesque neighborhood with a lot of older, beautiful houses. we were going to meet the roommate of the renter (who was out of town). we pulled up to an adorable house and excitedly noted the abundant plant life and porch swing (!) with high hopes. we walked in. we fell in love. we asked, "where do i sign?" this house is immaculate! i mean...it has a piano. that is cool. it is decorated exquisitely and looks like something out of a home living magazine. and the (antique!) furniture in the bedrooms stays for our use. Arden (my roomie) and I would share a bathroom, each have our own room, and our renter would be the third housemate. Like I said, she was out of town, so I am awaiting a return call from her early this week. Our only hope is that she's willing to begin a lease in August. It is such a great find that I'd almost be willing to pay rent for June & July if she's not okay with waiting ;) I mean, it's that good. Hopefully, you all will see exactly what I'm talking about when you come to visit me in Atlanta next year! I'll keep you updated...

as for work--this week went by very quickly. but i am overtly cognizant of the four weeks remaining until i'm done. so let me go ahead & say it--i am sick of little children. for the first time in my life, i want to get away and be involved with some other age group...perhaps, in fact, until i have children of my own. and it's not that i don't adore my preschoolers--i truly do. they are amazing. i've been especially impressed lately by their retention of the Easter story (the big rock! Jesus moved the big rock! He is risen!). but i've just had enough. i think there's more to be said for my creative energies & my intellectual capabilities than what i'm using right now. plus, the kids i babysit for are starting to wear me thin--my 1 year old has developed a tendency to cry unless i am holding him. crawling machine turns clingy. i still have my secret weapon ("zacchaeus was a wee little man") but singing one song on repeat as your arms slowly give out has been frustrating & tiring.

fortunately--change hastens! like i said, 4 short weeks until i begin my sojourn with YouthWorks. Last weekend I was in MinneSOta for site director job training. Let me start by saying that I haven't slept on the floor of a church in quite some time! So needless to say, it was an exhausting weekend! We were hit with a lot of information--which is ultimately very empowering as we prepare for our summer, but it was a lot at once. I was also on this roller coaster ride all weekend about whether I was content or angry about placement, about whether I felt confident in my ability to do this job or unsure. That was draining as well, believe me. But looking back reflectively, I believe we've been well-equipped for this site director position (and have an ENORMOUS binder full of training material to study). And though I still have moments of, "gosh I wish I was headed across the country," I feel more and more secure in the idea that I gave my summer to God and this is where He put me. I will be serving regardless of my physical location. I am laying down my life for the glory of His name this summer--and that doesn't involve hand-picking my destination and my situation.

I actually had a talk with the guy who was placed in Denver. We were waiting for our flights at the airport & debriefing on the weekend a bit. With us was a site director from my "area", Jessica, who will be stationed in Taylorsville, NC. The two of us really hit it off because she also requested an urban site for the summer & was extremely frustrated with her rural placement. Matt, the Denver SD who has worked for YouthWorks in the past, graciously pointed out that often the youth groups coming to rural sites are the kids who are more committed to service. They aren't looking for a vacation in Denver, or Boston, or DC, with a little bit of work thrown in on the side. If you're coming to rural NC, you're coming to paint some houses & minister to some kids--to grow in your discipleship. That was encouraging to hear from him--and reminded me once again that I am not looking for a vacation destination this summer! Though numerous people did come up to me at the training and expressed how much they would've loved to be at Coastal Carolina. It does have a nice summertime ring to it, I suppose :) I have faith that God will bless each of us where we're at, and will use each of us to bless the youth and the communities we'll be serving.

oh! i almost forgot! and here i was thinking this post was almost over. i may have lost all my readers at this point, but if you're still with me, i must pass along word of my epic battle with 1 Timothy 2, round two! My pastor asked me to lead our Disciple class this past Wednesday while he was out of town. Conveniently enough, we were reading the pastoral epistles for this lesson (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus). I shuddered briefly, remembering oh too well round one with this text: flashback one year or so, to UNC IV Women's Life group. Scene: Carribou Coffee, Rachel & Whitney wrestling with the idea of childbearing leading to salvation. With women being silent. With prohibition from teaching and assuming authority in the church. With how the heck we were going to present this to our girls in an empowering light. I, personally, was prepared to stand up at our small group meeting, rip out the page of my Bible containing 1 Timothy chapter 2, and move along to our study of proverbs 31 (no, wait, i want to rip that one out too..kidding! mostly). eventually, our beloved mentor & friend Kristen spoke some peace into our hearts with an article she had that offered a different interpretation on these controversial verses. I used this very article for our b-stud last Wednesday, and planned to devote half of the 2 hours to those 5 infamous verses. And friends, God moved! I started by opening the floor for complaints & frustrations these words brought about. Everyone aired those out, even the lone male of our group. We were angry, confused, wrestling. But then I explained the alternative interpretation as given by Kristen's article...but perhaps I shouldn't say alternative, but deeper/more thorough (I can forward it along to you if you'd like--give me a shout). And my group members were satisfied. They left feeling calmer, more at peace with God and His Scriptures. And we closed with good, reliable ol' Galatians 3:28...and were able to find some forgiveness in our hearts even for Paul. Though we pondered and mourned together the centuries of oppression that have arisen from these verses.

Understanding where there was frustration, peace where there was discord--that is why we should do Bible study & text interpretation...another confirmation for me that I'm heading in the right direction with the MDiv, and that includes the looming Greek and/or Hebrew language study ;)

Judea

2009-04-15T23:33:00.002-04:00

before He ascended into heaven, Jesus left His disciples with these words:

"And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8)

Sometimes He calls us to witness in our own cities--at local churches, in local ministries, among our neighbors and co-workers.

Sometimes He calls us to the "ends" of the earth--in my case Mexico City; for others of us Haiti, Ireland, Kenya, the Phillipines, and everywhere in between.

but the imperative idea is He calls...

It's not a question of where I want to go, where I think I'd best serve, where I discern people who need my witness. He does the calling, He does the sending. He is God, after all.

So this summer, He has called me forth to serve & witness in my Judea--Hyde County, NC. With YouthWorks I'll be working in a rural, coastal community across the water from Ocracoke Island.

And while the other end of NC is not on the top of my list of a far-off summer adventure, it's not my adventure that's in question. It's the adventure of service, leadership, & love that He's taking me on, and I'm absolutely thrilled to know that this location is not gratifying any of my perceived desires--God is making sure this isn't a vacation but a mission. I was thinking urban ministry--He had other plans. I was thinking the other side of the country--He kept me in Judea.

And I have great faith that my experiences serving a community of fellow North Carolinians alongside the youth participants will be fruitful, and that by the end of the summer I will leave a piece of my heart in this rural coastal community.

Tomorrow I'm off for my first round of training--back to Minneapolis. So there will be plenty more to share come next week. With this and several other things (mostly grad school-related) swirling around in my mind, would you pray for peace & trust in God through my upcoming decisions & experiences?

thank you, Shane Claiborne

2009-04-15T11:47:00.003-04:00

it's been on my to-read pile since December, and on my to-read list for months before that. yesterday, I finally started it--The Irresistible Revolution.

I'm one chapter in & I feel like someone has given voice to my soul--to what I see around me in American Christianity, to what I want my life & my generation to become. How refreshing. I'm not (yet) snarling like I was at Francis Chan about 'all heaven all the time', because Claiborne talks about a Christianity that "has as much to say about this world as it does about the next." Yes! At the end of every sentence I think, 'yes!'--even when he's making me blush by using terms such as 'spiritual masturbation' & by talking about Jesus's poop. What's great is that he has an extremely valid point in both these examples & in the many other instances where he says what people aren't used to hearing. It's what I've been waiting to hear.

at some moments I'm ready to pack my bags & move to Philly (well, maybe after Emory) & join the Simple Way. but when I stop to think about it realistically, I'm left with the burning question (the same question that's been burning in my soul for a year or so)--what does this look like in my life? How do I live like Jesus? How can I truly be a Christ-follower? What things have I not yet given up or sacrificed to walk in the Way?

And those are questions without easy answers. Which is what I believe Jesus meant when He said the path was narrow.

I'm thankful for a book that is going to challenge me to live radically because it resonates so deeply within me. I feel like Shane Claiborne is speaking what's been on my heart, but I've been too afraid to say. Or too afraid to live out. But he's just one author, one man living for Jesus. I can sit here & gab about how much his book resonates with me, but that's won't get me anywhere. I need to be empowered by the knowledge that there is a revolution happening in Christianity that I've been yearning to be a part of--and then take up my cross & join the mob.

I think I'm going to get a chance to live like that this summer. I'll be sleeping on the floor, eating the same meals every week, living in intentional community, giving every minute of my day to a greater mission, exhausting myself with living the Gospel. It's going to kick my butt, but I am so ready. (I say that now--please hold me to it come June or July).

anticipation

2009-04-11T13:28:00.003-04:00

I'm at a very strange juncture in my life--I have these two awesome experiences laid out before me, and much planning to do for them both. But I keep reminding myself, "live in the present, live in the present" because I know if I don't, the present will slip away. And these last few weeks at home, though I've been counting them down for months, will be the end of an era in my life.

My faraway & more long-lasting upcoming experience is, of course, at Emory. I've officially signed my scholarship papers & have started the very early processes of apartment hunting. Any suggestions here? I lived on-campus all 4 years of undergrad & was practically whisked stress-free into a great summer sublet. The good news--I have a potential roommate :)

The more immediate experience I'm preparing for is with YouthWorks--I was officially offered the job of site director! I leave for training this Thursday, which is so funny to me because some people have been hired since the fall, according to their website. I think it will be good for me to not have a lot of time to brood--I'm such an over-analyzer. I do have a lot of training material to look through in a week's time, though! (A whole website chock-full of pertinent information--oh, I love the organization!) At the same time, I totally don't feel rushed into this decision, or forced into it as my only option. I had to turn down a job with a similar organization, which was hard, but I believe God has catered this experience to where I'm at in my life right now. It's going to challenge me deeply in areas of leadership & ministry, but I delight in thinking about the person God will mold me into, the places He will prune away to make room for new fruit. I say with confidence that this job will be absolutely ideal for my summer before seminary. And I consider it a great privilege to be a part of this organization that will be hosting over 30,000 youth this summer! Thankfully, in the midst of all my contract-signing & whatnot this week, God gave me a moment to pause & imagine how many people would be impacted for Christ through these mission trips this summer. And He has asked me to be a part of that! I'm so pumped to see the work God is going to do in & among these teenagers.

And, you may be wondering, where exactly will I be working? Well, I'm still wondering that, too. I should know before I arrive at my training next weekend--which, like I mentioned before, is a lot shorter of a wait than many of the other hired staffers. So I could be pretty much anywhere in the States, from as close to home as Raleigh/Durham, to Atlanta where I'll be spending the next 3 years anyway, to California! I feel really good about not knowing though--the other organization, I basically picked myself where I wanted to be out of their six city options. And that choice was based primarily on me thinking that city would be a nice place to spend a summer. So now I get to leave it up to God & see where He would have me--and that's scary, but exciting & sure, and definitely more faith-centered, which is a centering I'm trying to focus my life around more & more.

the earth is filled with His glory

2009-04-08T16:51:00.003-04:00

Last night I finally made it to CharlotteOne with Blair! This is the young adult fellowship in Charlotte that meets each weeks & hosts hundreds of young worshipers. I learned about it back in August, but through different circumstances haven't been able to attend until this week. I know God had a reason for keeping me away up til now, but I hope I can go for the next few weeks. I was challenged by the message (relationships! sex! ah!) and met God in the atmosphere of worship. The second song we sang was Chris Tomlin's "Holy is the Lord"--which normally draws a groan from me. It's an awesome song, but SO overplayed. But isn't it funny how God can speak to us through the walls we put up? I was overcome by the phrase "the earth is filled with His glory."

oftentimes in worship, while I'm singing with my whole heart, I'm asking things of God. God, what does it look like for the earth to be filled with Your glory? How can I contribute to that? Lord, make it true of me, that I need nothing but Your love. Make it true of me. What does this look like? I think when we're truly honest with ourselves and God, worship becomes more of a prayer.

So as I was singing "Holy is the Lord," I was thinking what it tangibly looks like for the earth to be filled with God's glory. It's in the multiracial faces of my preschool children--it's when they recite their Bible verse, "He is risen!" It's in the way we serve one another--those we don't know, those we know, and those we don't like. It's in our churches' youth who ask the tough questions because they're looking for real answers. It's in this gathering of young adults who come together to worship God as a generation as countless millions have done before them.

Then I was struck by an image--Franklin Street on championship night. Chapel Hill was filled with the glory of UNC basketball. An absolute stupor of celebration, victory, exuberance, passion, unity.

Where in our lives are we doing this for our God? When are we so passionate for Him that we're willing to stay up all night, jump over bonfires, scream at the top of our lungs, and slap hands with random strangers? I was challenged to take my part in celebrating the Lord's glory on earth as whole-heartedly as I have celebrated such temporal, trivial things as the NCAA championship. Stay up all night in prayer, walk by faith, preach the Word, reach out a hand to the least of these. Fill the earth with His glory.

One day we'll dance in His streets of gold, before His throne.

palm sunday paradox

2009-04-05T20:19:00.002-04:00

This morning I attended Palm Sunday service at Chapel Hill Bible Church. Isn't this one of our favorite church days, when we get to sing "Hosanna" and smile as little children process through the sanctuary waving their branches?

Well, there were no children bearing branches at CHBC this morning, but lots of" hosannas." I love this word-save now! But as I lifted my voice, surrounded by three of my dearest friends, in a sanctuary that felt like home, I was overwhelmed by the irony of this celebration. And suddenly I don't truly understand it.

I mean, I get it--it's Biblical. straight from the Bible--waving branches & singing praises. all we need is a donkey. and Jesus is the One we call upon to save us.

but, we also know the end of the story. it's as familiar as the celebration itself--those same people who so cheerfully welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem on Sunday were shouting "crucify" by Friday.

so are we supposed to be truly jubilant on Palm Sunday? because today I felt like we were part of a sham. like--oh yea, Jesus, here we are singing your praises. but our sins are going to nail you to that cross in just a few days. so remember the smiles on our faces.

i mean, is that the point? are we supposed to be cognizant of the fact that we ourselves are hypocrites, as were the Jews during that first Holy Week? That we cry "Savior" in one minute and indulge in sin after sin in the next? I've never considered Palm Sunday in that context before. And within that frame of mind, I wasn't sure whether I should be celebrating or mourning.

But Sunday is coming. Hallelujah.

----

So just when I was gaining some closure and accepting the fact that undergrad has ended & my Chapel Hill days are but a fond memory, today I walked around campus in the beautiful spring weather, having spent time with many of my very closest friends, with national championship hysteria hanging in the air. And I longed to still be there. I guess UNC will never not be a part of me.

Emory it is!

2009-04-02T15:45:00.002-04:00

I've made my decision--I'm going to Emory for divinity school this fall! I feel so confident and sure in this decision, and it's a great feeling!

Boston just wasn't it, and very clearly so. It's a neat city & a great school, but just wasn't the right fit for me in terms of what the school had to offer and other incidentals (ie THE COLD)--though being in close proximity to Kristen Greenholt almost persuaded me ;) And of course, while I was in Boston, Princeton Sem. finally sent me a letter...but in the words of one of my peers in the same situation, you snooze, you lose.

I was also given great peace, as I was sitting in the chapel service at BU, about pursuing ordination. All at once, God just quieted my anxious heart. That's not to say many hours of prayers and tears, and many steps of faith aren't ahead of me, but I have started to let go of my fears and embraced the future God is planning for me.

It's so exciting to know where the next three years of that future will be spent! ATLANTA!

ridiculous.

2009-03-27T17:40:00.002-04:00

so.

i just received a call from my friends down at Emory. apparently they have an extra scholarship lying around. and they want to give it to me.

that would be a scholarship + $7000 a year. quite comparable now to my offer at BU.

the only catch is, this scholarship is for students pursuing ordination--which, in my application to Emory, I did not indicate as one of my vocational goals. I've mentioned in a previous post that I wasn't excited enough by my ordination discussion with my pastor to consider beginning candidacy, and didn't feel that my career choices would be limited by remaining a lay minister. that being said, i certainly wasn't intending to completely rule out ordination. before this phone call today, i was planning to keep an open mind in the fall, trusting that my experiences in seminary would open my eyes to specific vocational opportunities and make clear to me the benefits of ordination. in that time, i obviously would listen for the call to ordination to become stronger.

and that's what i told my admissions friend on the phone today, not wanting to lie my way into seven grand, obviously.

my stipulation, then, is this: to contact my UMC district superintendent and begin the early steps in the candidacy process for ordination.

also, i haven't accepted this scholarship, just been offered it. it is my thought that Emory knows the specifics of my offer from BU (I passed along the generics of it) and is leveling the playing field. for which i am SO thankful. i really want to go to Emory. i am visiting Boston this week, and was going to try the visit from an unbiased perspective, but now, quite frankly, BU is going to need to knock my socks off to win me over. which is how it should be--i can compare more comfortably on the scholastic level without $8000 lingering over my shoulder and whispering in my ear.

my question is this--is this God nudging me, not only to attend Emory without any regrets, but also towards the pursuit of ordination? or am I allowing myself to be forced into a decision that I'm not fairly prepared to make? I also wonder, what happens if I still, after undergoing the candidacy process, decide that God truly isn't calling me to ordained ministry--as far as the stipulations of the scholarships dictate? Do I have to pay $21,000 back? And these questions feel so icky to me--mixing God's call and finances. Blech. I pray I will find it in me to make these decisions with a clear conscience and trust the path down which God has again turned my feet. What a beautiful wide open future I have before me! Despite all the decisions to yet be worked out, I rejoice most fully in that!

And I know that, should I accept this scholarship, a lot of these questions can & will be answered. But I ask for your continued prayers & support as I ponder them myself. I'm off to Boston on Monday--so perhaps by this time next week I will know where I'm going to spend the next 3 years of my schooling & my life!