Ramblings On Thunderstorms

You know, I just can't figure my brain out. If it's all cloudy and gloomy outside chances are I won't be in the chipperest of moods. But rainy days? I kinda love 'em. Thunderstorms especially. I mean, I vaguely remember nighttime thunderstorms scaring the junk out of me when I was younger...but that was then! And the non-bedtime thunderstorm memories from home involve sitting on the screen porch or in the garage with the door open, just watching it rain. Chips and/or pretzel rods were usually involved...thanks for that, Dad. :) And as it turns out, despite my current lack of a screen porch and a garage, you can hear thunderstorms quite well when you live in a Shed. Laying in bed last night I could allllmost pretend I was in my hammock under the tin roof of a cookout shelter at camp, smelling the rainy air and damp forest. Mmmm...

I think there are different kinds of cloudy days, too. I mean, the ones that get me down are the ones where everything's just the same shade of gray. The ones where Mother Nature has no intention of actually precipitating, just of being gloomy. Then there are the thunderstormy cloudy days. You know what I'm talking about. The ones where you walk outside and look up at those huge, dark, menacing clouds and realize that the sky's probably going to open up aaaany second. There's something really mesmerizing and beautiful about the intimidation and anticipation surrounding those clouds, I think.

Anyway. Back to rainy days. I was walking from my car to the office this morning kind of bouncing from puddle to puddle with my flowery umbrella and lime green boots, and I realized I was just in a really splendid mood. Not to mention that, if you ask me, it's an incredibly spiritual something to look up and just let the rain drops hit your face.

Granted, I love a sunny day in the park as much as the next girl. But every now and then a day like today is kind of nice, so long as you've got a dry place to go at the end of it.

Love,

Allison.

A LOVEly Day Indeed

Hello once again dear friends!

February 14th is, obviously, Valentine's Day (or, depending on your current life situation, maybe Singles Awareness Day). Admittedly, despite St. Valentine's historical existence and the emphasis on love and other such sentiments, today's holiday is basically a commercial one. Red and pink balloons, cards, and assorted stuffed creatures take over pretty much every store out there, and romantic commercials launch a similar invasion of every television channel.

But I promise I'm not trying to be all bitter and cynical. Really. Despite all the aforementioned craziness, and despite the fact that technically I didn't have a "valentine" per se, today was such a lovely day! (See what I did there? Lovely? Valentines Day = love...) I woke up nice and early Valentine's morning at St. A's because PSF hosted Room In the Inn there the night of the 13th. After helping cook breakfast and clean up (I was on biscuit duty), I headed back to the Shed until my usual Monday lunch in the Commons (Vandy's Hogwarts-esque dining hall).

Thennnn Decker (fellow PSF intern) and I walked to Ben & Jerry's to celebrate the beautiful weather. There I was walking down 21st in my "Have You Hugged a Presbyterian Today?" t-shirt when all of a sudden this random woman walks up and says "I'm gonna hug a Presbyterian, because I'm Presbyterian too!" Of course then we hugged. Literally, it made my day. We went on our merry way and got some ice cream, after which I proceeded to park myself in Centennial Park within sight of the Parthenon. A glorious couple of hours were spent soaking up some Vitamin D, reading, doodling, and people watching. A staff meeting later I was back at the Shed for a heart shaped pizza from Papa Johns (an excellent use of community money if you ask me...) with the roommates. Back to work for the PSF interfaith study I've been planning (Greek Orthodoxy was the name of the game tonight) and now I'm home for good! At least until tomorrow.

Not a bad place to spend the afternoon.

I'm quite certain it was completely unnecessary for me to share this play-by-play of my day with the internet world. But the whole day I was just thinking about how incredibly content I felt. I mean nothing super remarkable happened but it was such a lovely day. And then I started thinking...what if it doesn't even matter if you have a certain special someone to be your valentine? I figured spending the day doing things I love was just as acceptable as spending it with a person I love. So off I went, sharing some love and breakfast, eating ice cream, being outside, and enjoying some pizza too. A lovely day, indeed.

Love,
Allison

Just in time!

Hey friends. :)

My literary adventure continues, and just in time for my two-books-a-month goal, I finished reading Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. Personally, I thought it was great. The book is set up as the account of a friendship between a pastor named Dan and his daughter's soccer coach/science teacher Neo. Now Dan and Neo are fictional characters, but the ideas are legit. Through a series of conversations, emails, and a sermon or two, we see pastor Dan (has anybody ever seen Raising Helen?), with Neo's help, basically redefine the way he views the church and our responsibilities as members of it. You really should read it, as my description probably isn't the best, but here are a few of my favorite snippets:

In one chapter Neo and Dan are on a walk discussing biblical interpretation and McLaren (through Neo) writes: "'What if instead of reading the Bible, you let the Bible read you'" (56) Shortly before this point in their conversation, Neo makes an interesting analogy regarding faith:

"'What if faith isn't best compared to a building, but rather to a spiderweb? Instead of one foundation, it has several anchor points. Those points might be spiritual experiences, exemplary people and institutions whom one has come to trust, that sort of thing. ... [the Bible] could be seen as one of the anchor points. Or perhaps every passage in the Bible that has affected your life could be seen as an anchor point. Or perhaps the Bible isn't only in the anchor points. Perhaps it is part of every thread of the web.'" (54)

Not sure what the hornet getting eaten has to do with the analogy,
but this is the only spider picture I have!

A hundred pages later, Neo is explaining that mission would be a major part of his ideal seminary. He/McLaren writes: 

"...more spiritual formation takes place in a weekend retreat than in six months of weekly meetings and...more spiritual formation takes place in a week of summer camp than in a year of weekly meetings. It strikes me that a retreat is simply a short-term monastic experience. It's intense--and intensity is an undervalued key to spiritual growth--and it's holistic: it's not a matter of just adding some Bible onto a busy, fragmented life." (150)

And lastly in my little chunks to share, Neo talks about churches:

"In my thinking, church doesn't exist for the benefit of its members. It exists to equip its members for the benefit of the world. To do that, it is about three things: community, spirituality, and mission--kind of a triangle, where each point is connected to the other two." (155)

No surprise, I suppose, that the last one there stuck out to me in the middle of my YAV year. 

Today the roommates and I headed to McKays, a used book store, and I found a few more of the books on my list. I think Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies will be next for me. Stay tuned for thoughts on that one.

Love,

Allison

Youth Sunday at 2PC

I'm not sure how much I've talked about my Nashville church home so far, so I'll start this particular post with a few words about Second Presbyterian Church (also known as 2PC). All of the YAVs in Nashville are funneled through 2PC's Nashville Epiphany Project (links to the right, if you're interested). So the basic, concrete facts are that the church provides my housing and writes the checks for my stipend every month, in addition to employing our lovely site coordinator Susan. (Technically, home sweet Toolshed resides on their property and I must say, the Peaceable Playground makes for a pretty sweet backyard.) On the intangible side of things, Second Pres is a welcoming and inclusive congregation full of incredibly talented and friendly people.


Anyway. Speaking of talent, and the reason I started this whole post... this morning was Youth Sunday at church. I feel like I should preface this with the fact that I'm fairly certain most of the high schoolers in Nashville are way cooler and talented than I will ever be. I say that with no great lack of confidence in myself or anything, but seriously! A whole handful of musical youth shared their talents with the congregation this morning...one of my favorites was a song called "All Who Are Thirsty." We've sung it at PSF once or twice and it's really just beautiful. In case you've never heard it, here are the words at least:

All who are thirsty

All who are weak

Come to the fountain

Dip your heart in the stream of life

Let the pain and the sorrow

Be washed away

In the waves of His mercy

As deep cries out to deep

Come Lord Jesus come

Holy Spirit come

As deep cries out to deep

Here I am again, finding God in music. But seriously folks. He was there and really speaking through the youth leading worship this morning. He was in the joy you could see on the faces of those sharing their music, and in the hearts of those of us listening and singing along. I mean all I'm saying is it takes a lot to get Presbyterians to clap. And we clapped more than once. 

The Old Testament reading for the day was Deuteronomy 15:7-11, the last verse of which reads: "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land." One student that gave part of the sermon commented that this verse has hardly (if ever) been debated; it's pretty black and white. "God doesn't ask us to be openhanded. He commands us," he said (or something like it). 

I think the thing that hit me the most about this morning was that there are all of these young people in our denomination committed to loving others and being open in general. And by "young people" I mean youth in churches of course, but also other young adults...the 60-or-so YAVs currently spread across the globe, a whole bunch of YAV alums, and plenty of other young adults not officially associated with any certain program. Eventually people my age will be the leaders of churches and denominations. If only we can spread that love and openness, some wonderful things could happen.

Love,

Allison.

Doodle is a funny word...

Hello dear friends!

On our retreat this past weekend (scroll down to my last post for a few retreaty words) we were introduced to a couple of new spiritual practices of sorts. One was journaling, which I rather enjoyed at the time, but just didn't stick. Another, however, is called praying in color and inspired by Sybil MacBeth's book of the same name. The book is far better at explaining it than I am, but basically, it's contemplative and spiritual doodling. By doodling the names of people we're praying for, we can lift up those names, but leave the wording and problem-solving to God. I mean, I don't know about you but half the time when I start to pray, it's like "Dear God, please help...man that sandwich I had for lunch was good...I wonder what I'm doing next year...I hope there's enough coffee left for tomorrow morning..." Next thing you know I'm asleep. Anyway, you get the idea. Doodling gives your hands something to do and your mind something to focus on--a most excellent thing for fidgeters like yours truly. The idea (MacBeth says that the doodle is only half of the prayer) is that in visualizing your doodle prayers throughout the day, you can remember those that need your prayers, and lift a little prayer up right then and there. For God, you don't need the words or attention span to form complete sentences. He gets the little green circles and squiggles.

A dear friend told me on Skype as she was going to bed for the night, after I'd explained this whole thing: "Go doodle with God. He'll keep you company." I really liked that. The idea of God keeping us company. I mean, God's always there...I don't think many religious folks would argue that some higher power isn't around all the time. But keeping us company. I feel like if someone keeps another company, it's a casual, friendly thing. "Oh, you're walking back to your room? Let me keep you company." "No one to eat lunch with? I'll keep you company." God's just hangin' out makin' friends.

In addition to doodley praying for other people, you can (says MacBeth) use the practice to learn Bible verses, make calendars (praying for a certain person/thing each day), and a host of other things that are at the moment escaping my memory. Given my newfound love of this form of reflection, I stopped by the grocery store on my way home from work one day this week and snagged an off-brand notebook in which to store my doodle prayers. One of my latest ones is rather introspective...it's a work in progress, but I feel pretty good about it. I think I'll move on the the coloring part, in hopes of being inspired with more words to describe myself and fill in the blank spots. That sounds potentially conceited, I think, saying I just want to describe myself. But it's been a good experience so far, having to fill up a big ol' box. By no means are they all good words.

I am daughter, sister, great-niece and friend. I am coffee drinker, Presbyterian, Furmanite and (part) pyromaniac.  I am judgmental. I am impatient, lonely, and I am worried.

I am a work in progress, and I am a child of God.

So off I go, prayerfully doodling my way through the rest of a year in Nashville, and (sometimes) blogging about it as I go. Stay warm out there, and happy Super Bowl-ing, friends.
Love,
Allison.

P.S. - Try as I might, the blog version of my picture wouldn't rotate. Just tilt your head to the right a bit and we'll be good to go.

On labyrinths...and other things.

I think I'm not very good at labyrinths. I think I just don't have the attention span. Staying on the path laid out by stones/bricks/whatever, trying to still my mind and focus on connecting with my own spirituality...it's hard!

I spent this past weekend with my fellow YAVs at an Episcopal retreat center called St. Mary's, near Sewanee. We did the labyrinth before we left today and as with my past labyrinth experiences, my mind wandered a little ("that was a cool sounding bird....man that campfire we had last night was fun...I think a bug just crawled across the path in front of me..."). And maybe I didn't have a mind-blowing, life-changing experience. But here are some of my thoughts:

The path's there, right? It is stone or brick laid out on grass or pine needles, paint on a cloth, or gravel in a church courtyard. Any way you look at it, the labyrinth tells you where to go. I don't know about you, but I never think far enough ahead to figure out exactly which turns it'll make me take to get to the middle. Eventually I'll end up in the middle, that's all I know. Now far be it from me to even pretend that I know what my life's "middle" is. And this idea probably isn't new, but out there walking around in zig-zag circle-ish shapes, I thought maybe that's a little how life works. Having the faith to guess that you'll end up in the right place...that God'll get you there, or whoever/whatever it is you look to for guidance will get you there. The journey may not make sense, but we're on it for better or worse! The path is laid out, but maybe we don't understand how the zig-zagging and back and forth will get us where we're going.  All that's left to do is embrace the journey. And I'm pretty confident we'll make it to the middle. :)

So those are my thoughts on labyrinths. Other thoughts on the weekend: I thoroughly believe that everyone should be required to spend a weekend in the middle of winter at a beautiful place when it's sunny and warm-ish outside. We spent a lovely Saturday afternoon hiking, got to make a fire Saturday night. It's so very wonderful a thing to get away from your day to day life for a little while and just enjoy being outside.

A couple pictures from the weekend...

The beginning of our hiking adventure.

Bridal Veil Falls

Sewanee

So I kind of stink at taking pictures with people in them. Luckily my friends don't. Perhaps more pictures once I pilfer some from my fellow YAVs.

Love,
Allison.

One down!

One book down in my literary adventure! Yesterday I finished Being Presbyterian In the Bible Belt. It was great, in my opinion. Really helps you articulate the ideas and beliefs to which we Presbyterians subscribe. And I mean, in one of the little boxes to the side it mentioned God being the God of the dance...ending with "God gets jiggy."

And as it turns out, reading about faith and learning and analyzing are very Presbyterian things to do. So I guess I'm on the right track! Now onwards to the next publication!

Love, Allison

A story.

My story, to be exact. Or part of it at least. Our theme for the year at PSF is "Connect," so once a month we connect through story telling, and someone offers a part of their faith journey, or some meaningful experience they've had. Tonight was my turn and in case you're interested, here's what I said (ish)...

Here I stand, somewhere around 4.5 months into my year as a Young Adult Volunteer. But instead of telling a YAV story tonight, I’m going to share a little of how I ended up here in the first place.

I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and my mom is what I like to call the quintessential “church lady.” She’s always helping with some project or another...delivering meals, knitting shawls or hats for various organizations, baking casseroles for those who need them. Each Sunday brought with it the mandatory trip to Sunday school, with “big church” to follow (we were not early service people...). For a good six or seven years, you could find me at choir practice on Sunday nights too. Once middle school came along, the church activities became less mandatory. Church on Sunday morning was still a given, but the other stuff was a little negotiable. I took up playing handbells, but fizzled out on the whole choir thing. I went to youth group off and on, but conversations usually (and understandably) revolved around school...which tended to be a little awkward, as I was one of a handful of private school kids in a youth group that mainly went to the local public school. Youth group was never an unpleasant experience, I just wasn’t exactly super involved. 

About halfway through high school, we got a new youth pastor named Shelli. She really made an effort to include me in things at church. This was probably in part because my mom, naturally, volunteered to host a welcome party of sorts at our house soon after Shelli moved to Davidson. Handbell rehearsal was at the same time as youth group, but I’d go to events relatively regularly, when I could. Still, I wasn’t the type that wanted to be on youth council or the pastor nominating committee or anything. I do, however, credit Shelli with keeping me interested and relatively involved, and since then she’s put up with countless emails and cups of coffee helping me process potential life plans.

Off I went to Furman. A few different times over breaks I went as a chaperone on middle or high school youth trips with my church in Davidson, but I never really got involved Furman’s version of PSF. I went once, but there were only four or five people there, and they didn’t have a weekly worship service or anything like this. That’s not to say they weren’t very welcoming and friendly, I just decided it wasn’t particularly my thing. I also definitely slacked on the whole finding-a-church-in-Greenville thing. I tried some, freshman year, but none of the places I went really felt right for me. It probably didn’t help that very few of my close friends were particularly outwardly religious. (But to keep the record straight, they were still lovely friends!)

So I continued on with college, all the while trying to be a faithful person, but without a real, concrete faith community. After junior year though, I found myself with a summer job at Camp Grier, a PC(USA) camp right down the road from Montreat. Now if you’ve talked to more for more than like 15 minutes, camp has probably come up. I’m still working on remembering the fact that not everyone in real life wants to hear a camp story every five minutes. But in all honesty, the fact that it so often pops into my head has made me realize what an impact the past two summers have had on me. That’s only four months total at camp, but I’ve made friendships that I’m quite sure will be life long, and it really gave me that faithful community I’d been looking for in college. 

Here I am, a lifelong Presbyterian with a religion degree who in all honesty really doesn’t know all that much about the ins and outs of her denomination. A girl that kind of went to youth group and volunteered at church, but never made it to a youth conference and until a few weeks ago had never been to a college conference. And despite these things, here I am spending a whole year volunteering for the PC(USA), directly involved in campus ministry. 

Funny how things work out the way they do. 

So there ya have it, a wee bit o' the life of Allison. It's nice being around at the beginning of the term and actually knowing what's going on. (As opposed to showing up in the fall a few weeks after school's started and taking a month or two to figure stuff out...) We're busy busy bees planning all sorts of things for spring term. (I just said busy busy bees...oh dear.) The Shed even has a brand new bathroom door! I mean, I'm guessing it's not brand new, but it's new to us. :) Instead of one of those sliding folding doors, Beth and I have a real life regular door! Whoo!

Love,

Allison

A Literary Adventure

I have read a shamefully small number of books regarding faith. Almost none, actually, excluding the Bible (which I most certainly have not read in its entirety). There are probably a couple reasons for that (none of which are particularly good excuses, really...), the largest of which is that until the past couple years, I don't think I've been one to really put a lot of thinking toward my own spirituality. I mean I read books for my religion classes, but none that were just for my personal, theological growth. And obviously I've thought about faith, but not really. There's also the fact that I didn't have a really strong faith community in college (also probably my fault...admittedly this year has been my first experience with a PSF type deal), until I worked at camp at least.

Anyway, as it turns out, when you work for a minister and she finds out the information in the above paragraph, you get a list of books to read. So, two books a month. That's the plan. And I figure if I write about it here, there's at least a little accountability going on. Plus I've realized that I kind of enjoy rambling on a blog. Here's my list so far...the first chunk of the list came from Jennifer, and the rest have been added by another friend's suggestion or my own. Feel free to comment if you've got another one to add!

Blue Like Jazz (Donald Miller)

Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)

Traveling Mercies (Anne LaMotte)

Being Presbyterian in the Bible Belt (Thornburg/Foote) [Thoughts]

Wounded Healer (Henri Nouwen)

The Inner Voice of Love (Henri Nouwen)

Now & Then (Frederick Buechner)

Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

A New Kind of Christian (Brian McLaren)  [Thoughts]

The Cloister Walk (Kathleen Norris)

Amazing Grace (Kathleen Norris)

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Eugene Peterson)

Praying in Color (Sybil MacBeth) [Initial Thoughts]
Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers (Donald McKim)
Jesus for President (Shane Claiborne)
Tribal Church (Carol Howard Merritt)
Take This Bread (Sara Miles)
A New Kind of Christianity (Brian McLaren)
Find Your Way Home (women of Magdalene, with Becca Stevens)
Awakened to a Calling (ed. Ann Svennungsen & Melissa Wiginton)
Love Wins (Rob Bell)

Reframing Hope (Carol Howard Merritt)

Is God a Christian? (R. Kirby Godsey)

Speaking Christian (Marcus Borg)

Follow Me to Freedom (Shane Claiborne & John Perkins)

There's not particularly an order to this...the first few I got from the library just happened to be near to each other on the shelf. And after a library book or two, I've decided that I like being about to underline, so I've become good friends with the local used bookstore. Time to get reading though, as I now have quite the collection of unread books...

Current literary quest: The Cloister Walk

So my plan is to keep updating this post, adding things to my list and crossing things off (Fun fact: I'm a list person), maybe commenting on the ones I finish, if I feel like I've got something potentially useful to say. 

Love,

Allison

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.