Plotting hope.

Well happy 2011, friends!


After watching the ball drop with some lovely friends from camp (let's just say one of them juggles fire...), I headed to Montreat for College Conference. Technically my intern self isn't in college anymore, but the theme for this year was Wondering Wanderers...which I've gotta say, fits me pretty well. Having thought a lot about the topic over the few days we were there, I think the title can fit just about anybody. We're all somewhere on the journey, you know?


All in all, there were about 1,000 people there. Some were college students, some ministers, and others Montreat staff. Plenty of Presbyterians, but certainly not everyone was. At any rate...that is a LOT of people. Maybe not in the grand scope of the world, but for a three day conference in the mountains North Carolina? At Tuesday night's worship service they played a clip from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? during which  the movie's three main characters see a group of white-clad people walking towards a pond to be baptized, singing "Down to the River to Pray." (For your aural pleasure, here's the movie's version of the song on YouTube.) The three men are some combination of mesmerized and confused at the whole situation, and one of them eventually rushes into the water to be baptized himself. The point of this little story though, is that, without any instruction to do so, the entire auditorium started singing along. There we were, almost 1000 strong, sitting together singing. No words on the screen, so music leader up front, just singing because we could. It was haunting, in the best of ways. God was so in that place and in that time that it literally gave me chills. 


In addition to keynote speaker Brian McLaren and the other conference/worship leaders, the Resurrection Dance Theater was there. Based out of St. Joseph's Home for Boys in Haiti, these inspiring people have been spending time traveling the US and Canada in hopes of raising money to rebuild two of their three homes (which were destroyed in the earthquake that shook Haiti country almost exactly a year ago), and for continuing support of their mission. Find more info about them here. In addition to a keynote Q & A session during which a few members shared their experiences in Haiti and with St. Joseph's, there was a spectacular dance performance after worship one night...and that was definitely a highlight of the conference. Here's a group of men, all of whom were once orphaned on the street and have since been touched by St. Joseph's, dancing to glorify God. I mean, of course they share their dancing with different people in part to raise awareness and funding, but that's not why they do it. You could see it in their faces...the sheer joy as they moved to the drums and soaked in the thunderous applause. The fact that their faith is so strong despite having gone through far more than I probably ever will: it's incredible. One night at worship an offering was collected and dedicated to St. Joseph's. The wonderful part: it was $4,000. Combined with the proceeds from crafts and tshirts the Resurrection folks had brought with them, college conference attendees raised around $8,000 for St. Joseph's, Wings of Hope, and Trinity House. If you ask me, the fact that a bunch of college students gave that much over the course of a day and a half is pretty awe inspiring. 


All in all it was a fantastic few days full of really great conversation, worship, and fellowship. The tricky part will be to pay as much attention to God out here in the real world as I could with a thousand other wondering wanderers at Montreat.


Brian McLaren wrote about us on his blog, and the conference co-directors read this at closing worship:

Presbyterians love to make jokes about themselves (God's frozen chosen, declining in a decent and orderly way, etc.). But the 900+ young adults I met this week in Montreat, NC, exemplify an inspiring future for the Presbyterian church ... if they're taken seriously and listened to and encouraged. The quality of conversation and interaction was at the "wow" level. My level of hope and enthusiasm about new things breaking forth in Mainline Protestantism continues to rise. What a great way to start the year - with tremendous young disciples like these!

Apparently we Presbyterians can hold our own. :) 
Love,
Allison.

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...

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