365 Thanksgivings

Turkey Day, along with its delicious and indulgent culinary traditions, gives us the opportunity to outwardly express our thankfulness. Not that we shouldn't be thankful every other day of the year, but the fact that it's tradition, I s'pose, makes us actually really think about it and talk about it.

There's a website called Cool People Care that publishes "5 Minutes of Caring" everyday. (If you're interested, you can get it in email form every morning or just check the website.) Anyway, their 5 Minutes for today involves...wait for it....giving thanks! I know, big surprise right? At any rate, it's about being thankful all the time, not just on the fourth Thursday of every November. Start today, the article says, but don't stop after all the turkey's gone. Today write down a few things that you're thankful for, and then keep it up every day. At least think about them, if you don't make an actual list.

So here goes the beginning of my "Things I'm Thankful For" list...and after this, I'm going to try and include at least one thing I'm thankful for every time I make an entry on the good ol' blog.

I'm thankful for...

home

a loving family

Baxter

coffee

Camp Grier

Nashville

pumpkin flavored things

...and so many more things, but we'll get to those later.

I'm thankful to have so many things to be thankful for, and I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving, friends!

Love,

Allison.

Jesus Mints

Yes, Jesus mints. We'll get to that part eventually.

As per usual for a Tuesday, I went to Luke 14:12 today. Well, not Luke 14:12. As it turns out, now Tuesdays and Fridays are being run by a group called Isaiah 58, which is the homeless ministry of Belmont Church, where lunch has been taking place. At any rate, the same thing happens, just someone else is in charge.

Today I made a couple new friends. I met a woman who was also volunteering. In the process of getting ready to serve the meal for the day, we started talking and I got to hear a little of her story. As it turns out, through whatever chain of events, she was homeless for a few years, but is now back on her feet working as a cosmetologist (did you know that wool coats can damage long hair that rubs against it? Grab a scarf, girls!). She was so willing to talk about how God is working in her life, and how incredibly blessed we are. Then as we were pouring water and tea, she says: "You know, this is what we can do for others. We're pouring ourselves out, pouring God's love out. We're so full."

We. Are. Full. 

Really, we are. At least I am. I've been so blessed. While the whole quote in that last paragraph may not be precisely word-for-word accurate, that part is. Now I could've told you before I had this conversation that (in my opinion) God's love is in everyone and part of what we can do as Christians is to share it, whatever that looks like. But it struck me that something as simple as pouring water or fruit tea can have such a deep meaning. Talk about something to make your heart smile.

At one of our YAV vocational discernment times on a Friday morning a few weeks ago, I made comment somewhere along these lines: we hear so much about how God blesses those that have struggles in life (you know, "the meek shall inheret the earth..."), but I haven't had many struggles. I've often wondered where we that haven't struggled so much fall in God's plan. The man that was visiting us that week responded that perhaps the loving support system I have around me can be a basis for me to go out in the world and reach those that don't have one. Maybe pouring tea is part of that.

So, after all of this pondering and pouring, I was about to leave lunch and a nice man eating there walked up and handed me a mint. One of those Wint-o-green Life Saver ones...I mean, it could be peppermint, but you know what I'm talking about. Well, I looked down and the was a little fish-shaped sticker on the wrapper with "Jesus" printed in the middle. Again I was reminded of the liberation theology lecture I saw last week (check out the last blog entry to read more about that). That people that have so little and still make such an effort to share the love of Jesus (on a mint wrapper or just with a smile) is pretty wonderful.

Until next time friends. :)
Love,
Allison.

Theology, country music, and sports.

The father of liberation theology, an awards show, college basketball and the NHL...all in less than a week! Sorry it's been a while since my last update, friends. Life in Nashville has been pretty exciting lately, so here it goes...my latest Music City adventures, and in all likelihood some rambling to go along with it.

This past Monday I cashed in on the living-near-a-div-school aspect of my life and went with three of the other YAVs to see Gustavo Gutierrez speak at Vanderbilt. For those of you who don't know about Gustavo Gutierrez, he's a priest/theologian from Peru who's widely seen as the founder of the liberation theology movement. So I was pretty excited about it. I know Wikipedia is far from a scholarly source, but here's their page on liberation theology if you're curious and want to know more. One interesting thing that stuck out to me over the course of the talk doesn't even directly deal with the specific theology of liberation. It's more of a context thing: until this movement, really, theology was for the most part coming from the developed, Western world. Europe and North America, basically. Liberation theology brought with it studies of religious practice from the perspective of the poor and marginalized. Now, to be perfectly honest, this is not a population that I feel I can easily relate to. I do, however, think it's so important for bubble-dwellers like myself to try and see things through a different lens. One of the things Gutierrez mentioned is that it is not sufficient to just help the poor...that we must be against poverty itself. This sort of thing, if perhaps in different words, has crossed my mind more than once over the course of my life...volunteering at Luke 14:12 and in the other relatively few experiences I've had working with the homeless. Yeah sure, it's great to go serve a meal (seriously, it is), but at the end of the day I know I'll go back to my house, pick something out of the fridge for dinner, and go to sleep in a bed. (Toolshed or not, it's still here and it's still far more than a lot of people have.) Now, that's not to say that I necessarily know who to or would be able to start fighting poverty itself, but it's something to think about. Despite the severity and expansiveness of injustice and poverty in the world, the fact that those in its grip can still be so strong in their faith and in their convictions of hope for the future is truly and incredibly inspiring to me. I'm obviously not the most educated in the field of liberation theology and injustice in the world, but listening Gutierrez on Monday sure got me thinking.

Well, fast forward to Wednesday and totally switch gears: I got to go to the CMA awards! Definitely a different world than that of liberation theology, and not one much concerned with the "simple living" we YAVs in theory subscribe to (but our tickets were free, I promise). Through Mary Kate's friend's friend, we ended up with two tickets! We laughed as we were deciding what to wear though...I wasn't exactly planning on going to an awards show when I packed for my year as a volunteer! I'm definitely far from a die-hard country fan, but it was still super exciting to be there. I was all prepared to take my camera and document this adventure, but alas the tickets specified that photography wasn't allowed. Little did I know that everyone else would take their cameras anyway...oh well. At least I've got a ticket stub to prove I was there! Part of me couldn't help but feel guilty as we walk.ed towards the arena, passing right by homeless folks on Broadway. Granted, we weren't part of the ball-gowns-and-tux crowd, but there's still so much we have. But guilt or not, it was still a pretty exciting night

With Friday came more (free) tickets, this time to a Vandy basketball game! Our tickets came from the Presbyterian College side though (thanks again Mary Kate...), so we put on our blue and garnet and cheered for the Hose. Sort of. Those of you who know me well know that sports are not exacltly my life's greatest passion. But Beth and Sally got to see their alma mater play, and despite the fact that it didn't end so well for PC, it was still some lovely community bonding time. A couple pictures, stolen from Beth...

Nashville YAVs (minus Michael)

The Shed

As it turns out, there's this great website run by a group called Hands on Nashville (there are "Hands on..." groups in different cities, too) that has a giant project calendar of volunteer opportunities in the area. In the process of looking for things to do with PSF, I happened across a can drive for Second Harvest food bank that was going on a Nashville Predators (hockey) game. Turns out that if you signed up to volunteer, you got a free ticket after the game started! So off we went, four of us YAVs, to experience another part of Nashville. And I think I may have found a new favorite sport to watch. I was mostly joking when I said in the first period that I hoped it would go to a shoot out (and that we'd win of course), but as it turns out that's exactly what happened! And, in what I can only assume is the typical Nashville fashion, there was a live band playing music between periods. Admittedly, before this game the extent of my hockey knowledge came from the Mighty Ducks movies and Miracle, but hey...gotta start somewhere right? I actually took my camera and remembered to take pictures, so here's the photographic evidence of our Preds adventure...

Collecting cans/money before the game.

Bring it on Chicago...bring it on.

With Sally, Mary Kate, and Vic

Mary Kate and Sally are fierce fans...

Shootouts are exciting!

Preds win!!!

And despite the fact that little to none of this post has involved my talking about work, I promise I really am still working for PSF! We're going ice skating next week...maybe my new hockey experience will help me make less of a fool of myself in public? Probably not, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. :)

Love,

Allison.

Devo #2

Twice now I've written the devotion (aka devo) for PSF's weekly newsletter, and I thought I'd post them here too, for those of you that are interested but don't get the email. The first one was back in September in a post titled Grace. Here's number two:

Back in August before I had settled in to the YAV life here in Nashville, all of the Young Adult Volunteers had a week-long orientation together at a conference center in New York. The week was filled with plenty of worship, singing, and lectures providing us with the information we’d need to make our 11 months of service a meaningful experience. There was also ample opportunity for discussion with the other YAVs--what we thought our different cities and countries might be like, what we thought the challenges and rewards would be. In one of our large group discussions, one new YAV made a statement that still, two months later, stands out to me. 

“You will never go where God is not.”

Now just think about that for a minute. At first it took me a little while to truly appreciate the significance of that one small sentence. And sometimes, I think, it can be really hard to believe it. How is it possible that God is keeping a watchful eye over places consumed by poverty, natural disasters, war and other tragedy? Or even in that stressful week with two million tests and papers, when not a single thing seems to go right? I don’t know, exactly, but it reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Joshua 1:9. It says: “I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." (NRSV) The world in which we live may challenge that idea from time to time, but the notion that we're never going it alone can certainly be comforting as well.

Love, Allison