Reason(s) for the Season

Well friends, I hope you all had lovely Christmases this year, wherever you spent them. Even though it started out just cloudy and rainy, we ended up getting a little bit of white stuff here in Davidson. :)

There's no doubt Christmas is a hectic time of year, but also inevitable are the requests to remember the "reason for the season." (Namely, the birth of Jesus of course.) These reminders are good, I think, since it's awfully easy to get wrapped up (Ha. Wrapped up? Like a present? Anyway...) in the excitement of Santa, gift-giving, and the host of other secularized traditions. I've been thinking about it though, this year...maybe all the hooplah still has it's benefits. I mean, don't get me wrong, I avoid malls as best I can in December and sometimes all the money people spend on each other seems a bit ridiculous. But Christmas Eve after church, I sat in the kitchen with my parents and brother talking about random stories from our childhood, thinking about how nice it was that we all were sitting there doing that. I feel like even though obviously the reason Christmas exists is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, maybe the not-so-religious traditions can be a benefit of the season too. I'm of the opinion that God means for us to be in community with each other, so having a big turkey dinner (or a brunch, in the case of this year for the Wehrungs) can't hurt, right?

This of course assumes that one has a family with said traditions...or that one has a "family" (whatever that may mean) in the first place. Over at Preston Taylor Ministries (roommate Mary Kate works there), they substituted their traditional angel tree for a "nativity store," where parents of kids in their programs could come pick out gifts and buy them (for a small fee). The idea was to empower the parents, and to eliminate the need for them to rely on the charity (at least as far as Christmas is concerned) of other people simply giving them gifts. We YAVs went over to help with one of the stores on a Sunday night, and it was really incredible to see how much the parents appreciated it being able to be actively involved in what their kids would get on Christmas morning. Maybe if this whole idea of gift giving every December 25th had never been thought up, these parents wouldn't have gotten to experience that. Of course this doesn't mean all of their hardships are solved, but it's something, I suppose.

So maybe this is all just me rambling, but it's just what I've been thinking about these past few days.
See you in 2011!
Love,
Allison

Baby, it's cold outside.

Disclaimer: I realize that I still live in the South, and that the snow I'm about to talk about is not "real snow."

But it's snowing in Nashville!!! Has been all day actually, and with a high of 19 tomorrow, I'm not thinking it'll melt very quickly. Anyway, the winter weather makes for quite the cozy feeling in the Shed, so long as you stay under your blanket and keep sippin' hot chocolate. Here are some pictures from the adventure Beth and I went on around the house/block.

MB's not used to this!

Some YAV lovin' for the winter weather.

Home sweet Richards Street

One advantage to living behind a church is that you get to see how pretty it is in the snow...

Decorating the 2PC parking lot.

A little decoration I added to the porch. :)

All of this snowy fun aside, as we were wandering around the block with the snow falling around us, I couldn't help but think about all of the people that don't have a constant roof over their heads. Fortunately there are programs like Room In the Inn, and some churches in Nashville (like 2PC) volunteer to be extra hosts on certain nights when the temperature drops below a certain degree. It still makes you think, though, when in our minds a snowy day means running around in the cold for twenty minutes and heading back to our houses. As drafty as the Shed may be, it's still a house to be thankful for.

All my holiday love,
Allison.

Getting my learn on.

I went to another lecture at Vandy this past Sunday night (confusingly enough, they too have a Furman Hall), this time on what the Bible says about homosexuality. The evening consisted of a showing of the film Fish Out of Water and was followed by comments from and questions from Vanderbilt professor Dr. Amy-Jill Levine (who also happens to be a famous New Testament scholar whose work I read in several classes at Furman).

If you want to know more about the documentary, check out the link above, or watch the trailer on YouTube. It discusses the seven Bible verses most commonly used against homosexuality, and and has clips of interviews with people on both sides of the debate. This is obviously a controversial subject, and it's undoubtedly a biased film. These things aside, I personally enjoyed seeing it (perhaps because I agree with the side toward which it leaned) and I've been thinking about it on and off since Sunday.

I know this is a touchy subject with a whole lot of people, but one of the comments that Dr. Levine said stuck out to me: "The Bible should help us ask the right questions. It's not an answer book." Now, I do think that there are some answers to be found in the Bible. But I also think there's something to be said for challenging things and asking questions. As Dr. Levine also commented (forgive my paraphrasing): the people on both sides of this argument are just trying to live out their lives the way that they believe God wants them to.

I think I enjoyed seeing this film partly because I've never really known specifics about the arguments on either side of this debate. And whichever of those sides you fall on, I think it's worth seeing.

Love,
Allison

12 Days of YAVness, and other thoughts.

Last night 2PC's youth had a talent show fundraiser and Sally, Mary Kate, Beth and I contributed our rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas. Complete with sparkly Santa hats and tinsel scarves, we sang our lil hearts out. Unfortunately (or...fortunately?) there is no photographic/video evidence of this performance, but for your reading pleasure:

On the twelfth day of YAVness, Susan gave to us:

12 country songs

11 community nights

10 days discerning

9 honkey tonks

8 pounds of coffee

7 nonprofits

6 free dinners

5 (pretty/smart/beautiful/compassionate/brilliant/perfect/kind/modest) girls

4 Presby churches

3 brown recluses

2 smelly boys

A Cabana and a Toolshed

And yes, I did just sing that in my head as I typed it. I hope you sang as you read, as well. And just fyi, the adjective before "girls" changed each time five came along. Luckily the audience seemed to think our lyrics were as funny as we did. :)

Today, Westminster Presbyterian Church had an Alternative Christmas Market that was basically their version of AGF, except all of the nonprofits there were organizations that are supported by Westminster's outreach. So, PSF was one of them. Looking around the room, I realized that most of the groups there had been represented at AGF, and all but two organizations that have YAVs this year were there. As I talked to a couple different people, I realized that there's this little nonprofit world where people know each other (even if it just means saying hello at various alternative gift giving events). Kinda cool if you ask me.

Also, it snowed for the better part of the morning. None of it stuck at all, but I don't think I've ever lived in a place where it snowed in early December! I'm fairly certain that this is just a few days of legit cold, and then it'll warm up a little bit. But it's still next to be cozied up with a fleece blanket. Leeeet it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Love,
Allison

Adventures of a Non-Baker

Well friends, I think I might've found a new hobby. :) PSF's been helping sponsor this even called Alternative Gift Fair, which happened today. It's a super cool event during which 22 Nashville nonprofits congregated in St. A's, and people could come "shop" for intangible gifts by making donations to the organizations in honor of friends/family/whoever. As part of our contribution we decided to chip in some baked goods in the form of cookies. Two students and I headed to a former board member's house on Tuesday to make the dough (which Jennifer and I would bake later) with the expectation of the standard chocolate chip business. But by the time we left to head back towards campus, we had seven different kinds of made-from-scratch dough! We only ended up baking six of them (the last is going to make an appearance at our PSF Advent party Tuesday night), but AGF-goers got to enjoy sugar cookies (in the form of green and read Christmas trees), lemon glazed ginger snaps, crescent cookies, thumbprint cookies with raspberry jam, gingerbread men, and molasses spice cookies!

Now, those of you who know me will probably know that the extent of my baking ability has up to this point largely involved boxed mixes that just involve adding some combination of eggs, water, milk, and/or oil. Why would one think to ask for an egg separator when you can just crack the whole thing into a bowl and pick the yolk up with your hand? While it definitely took some trial and error to not completely mangle my Christmas tree creations, and I may or may not have scorched the bottom of the first batch of molasses spice, all in all it was a lovely experience! And obviously I was obligated to eat the cookies I broke taking off of the cookie sheets. Oopsie daisy. So, who knows if I'll actually keep up this whole baking-from-scratch thing (there'll always be a place in my heart for break 'n' bake), but I've quite enjoyed my latest culinary adventures!

I ended up leaving my camera (and phone) at home today, but here's some documentation of yesterday's pre-AGF baking...

All sortsa dough, complete with baking instructions. :)

I rolled out the dough and everything!

Molasses spice.

Reject trees and experiments. A.k.a. the best cookies all day.

Day one of baking adventures: four doughs down!

More festive happenings coming up this weekend: Christmas lights at Opryland and Elf tomorrow with PSF! Oh how I do enjoy the holidays. 

Love,

Allison

UPDATE: A picture of the finished products, courtesy of Jessie, one of our lovely dough makers. :)

We did not, in fact, make the apples from scratch...