Moving Into the World

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were as much of a blur as the first few days, but we shifted gears one last time to preparing our hearts and minds to go out into the world and be critically culturally competent, thoughtful, respectful, open-minded, and willing to learn from and work alongside our new communities. Thankfully there is pictorial documentation for your pleasure as well!

Welcome to sunrise canoeing! This is how a few of us started our Friday morning.

I have no idea what lake this was, but it was somehow three pools linked by culverts (see off in the distance the bridge with the arch underneath for canoers and kayakers.

This is a photo taken by one of the other canoers - I'm actually just cut off on the canoe to the right, but the girl in the front of my boat is Amy Beth - one of my Tucson housemates-to-be! This was good bonding and a jump start on learning to work as a team.

 

Remember those culverts? Our group took the last one on as a collective challenge, and after linking three canoes abreast, we discovered that many could indeed fit through the culvert together! And we managed to fit half the kayak with us as well, and Mark, the YAV with the most wilderness and canoeing experience had gotten stuck without a partner so he graciously took our picture.   

Another sunlit view.

A bench on which to enjoy life.

  

Lovely new friend Tara with a water lily she brought back from the journey.

The lily again thriving in the collective bowl upon our return. The simplicity of this beauty was refreshing as we continued to learn more about how the Presbyterian Church's goals for international work and its office in the United Nations are advocating for social justice for all God's children in whatever iterations they can. The world is made up of moral guidelines, individual cases, gray areas, and gradients in my book, and figuring out how to love others to the best of our abilities all of the time is complicated. In order to resist the temptation to oversimplify complex matters and human interactions, sometimes it helps to take a step back and just appreciate the beauty in a small thing.

Each night, the setup for vespers was a little different, but there were always candles "To remember who we are and whose we are."

Two things were different about Friday's vespers: first, it was to be followed by a surprise ice cream party put on by the program, and second, once people started finding out I am a Zumba instructor, they asked me to offer a session so I made an announcement at vespers and a number of us burnt off our ice cream with a Zumba class! Both activities were so wonderfully therapeutic, in very different ways of course, but small things that helped us practiced self-care and rack up some endorphins before rest time.

Saturday morning we got some nourishment into our systems and we were off to the races... intellectually at least. From our seats in the auditorium we did our final bible study with Rick and then moved into one of the most helpful pieces contextualizing our social justice work within the forces of globalization. Rick Ufford-Chase first clued us into some of the amazing work he has done, other than serving as the General Assembly's (the highest governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA)) youngest moderator and founding this interfaith intentional community and retreat center. What I was not aware of previously, while he had mentioned involvement with U.S.-Mexico border work, was that he got into the field through a Witness for Peace (an organization I've been involved with for three years now) delegation to Nicaragua as the organization was just beginning and was focused on peaceful presence by U.S. citizens to witness the U.S.' role in supporting oppressive regimes and armed conflicts in Central America, he then ended up working on the ground on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the Sanctuary Movement's underground railroad for undocumented refugees fleeing those wars, and then he was one of the founders of BorderLinks, the organization I will now be working for! There are so many amazing ties to the work I have done and will do, and I hope I get the chance to talk with him about it sometime.

Anyways, through a very helpful visual skit he walked us through how the forces of globalization, interconnected economies, and free trade policies have resulted in a Catch-22 for many Latin American countries as our policies have trended towards undercutting their economies and especially traditional food production methods, thereby destroying farmers' livelihoods and still closing our borders when people's last resort is to migrate for better possibilities of feeding their families. As many times as I have gone over these push and pull factors in studying International Relations and Latin American Studies, this overview was still helpful for me too, and I am thankful the whole YAV crew will walk into their year with more insight into how a whole host of well-intentioned people (because let's be real, economic theorists, banks who are responsible to their shareholders, family-owned businesses, small farmers, etc. are largely all well-intentioned people who are responsible for the needs of others) fit into a system that perpetuates and exacerbates oppression and lack of opportunities for many involved.

The communities we will be working with will have experienced these forces of globalization, either directly or indirectly, at a more visceral level than many of us have, and especially as I walk into border work, understanding the reasons people are fleeing their homeland in droves and facing such hardship to come to this country is so fundamental to even begin the discussion on working in solidarity with border communities, but I'm glad others will have a deeper understanding of this more specific context as well.

Sorry for all the heaviness there! During the afternoon we moved into rotations of advice sessions with alums on topics such as culture shock, relationships, and conflict (a much-discussed topic in relation to intentional community), all good things to keep in mind for the upcoming year. 

Speaking of intentional community, here is me on the right with the three lovely ladies with whom I will be living in intentional community: meet Heather, Arial, and Amy Beth. You'll hear more about them in the future for sure!

 

The night's silliness included a talent show, for which Amy Beth convinced me to sing and play guitar with her, and we also looped in Kalyn who has a gorgeous voice and had joined us for some of our guitaring-for-fun sessions the past few nights. It was such a hard time choosing a song that we all knew and would be the perfect one for these circumstances, but Amy Beth was inspired by the intentional reflection on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington that she suggested "We Shall Overcome," so away we went with our hour of free time to choose harmony and melody parts and perhaps practice a couple of times. And then, funny story, our music leader for worship also chose "We Shall Overcome" for a very moving part of vespers that night! Other talent show acts included some amazing music and poetry, as well as some pure entertainment. With our addition YAV just got a double dose of this incredibly powerful spiritual. Though I will probably be forever uncomfortable getting in the spotlight to sing and play, I'm so thankful Amy Beth convinced me to do it for the experience of blending our three voices and to share that song in particular in this supportive crowd all working for justice.

Photo from a YAV in the audience of Kalyn, Amy Beth, and me.

Following the talent show, someone had the brilliant idea of throwing on some music and doing a silly dance party, which was a hilarious way to cap off the night with this crowd of Christian kids who had basically been bonding non-stop for six days. More good rest was had.

Sunday morning we were all split into groups of four or five and went to over fifteen different congregations to share about our program and be commissioned into service. My group went with Pastor Abbie, who basically organized all of these church connections, to her congregation, Greenbush Presbyterian. It was an adorable, 200-year-old church with a tiny congregation of about twenty, mostly 80-year-old women but including an adorable, inspiring couple who have been together for 67 years. It was so nice that they all invited us to their church home, to participate in the service, to bless us for our YAV year, and to invite us to stay for coffee hour so they could ask us more about our work (or in the case of one woman, tell her everything we had said during the service because she's hard of hearing and didn't want to miss what we said!).

Pastor Abbie then took us out to show us a little around Nyack, an adorable town with a number of unique stores and streets that lead straight down to the Hudson River, and treated us to lunch. Here's Tara, Pastor Abbie, Jackson, and Rachel with our New York-style pizza that we obviously had to get while in NY!

I even got to have New York-style pizza myself because they had a gluten-free crust option!

Well-fed, we walked down a hill and through a park and - boom - there's the Hudson River! Here's the bay.

Putting my feet in the Hudson to say I have.

 

The crew doing the same.

Groups arrived back at the Stony Point center at different times, so we just got to hang out for the afternoon with the time we did have. Since we had literally all been sharing the same orientation experiences and activities for the past week, it was fun to talk with others about their different church services, and I also got time to just be with new friends like Sarah (my roommate!) and Mark (who I now consider to be a brother!) (photo by Maegen, my small-group leader).

Stealing Mark's hammock to call my parentals.

Free time transitioned into our final small group reflection. We have been meeting with this crew every day at least once to process, emote, and bond at least once daily, and I'm amazed how close I feel to some of these new friends! I'm so thankful for them, their thoughtfulness, and their openness, and especially those qualities in our leader Maegen as she shared openly with us about her struggles and joys with the program in addition to facilitating our processing. All while she was supposedly studying for upcoming ordination exams next week! Here's our silly self-taken group pic.

 

A blessed sky over our reflection walk.


We got back to the main building with time to spare, so I made sure I finished writing on the Prayer Wall - one of our projects throughout the week has been to write messages to all our fellow YAVs and YAVAs (YAV alums) to take with them for their year, which means we were challenged to meet every single person in this group of about 70! This is a program photo, but here's my small group leader Maegen again!


I snuck this picture prior to our final worship service, with all of our name sheets from the prayer wall now adorning the communal table.

I cannot believe how quickly this week has flown and how quickly we all leaped into caring for one another. In our final vespers service, we did all songs we had been learning and singing throughout the week, some joyous, some more reflective. There was much dancing, and hugging, and swaying with the music. And with our hearts hopefully primed for the experiences to come,  the YAVAs and program directors sent us out with words of blessings and encouragement, especially guiding us through the words of Ephesians 5, to go out and be children of light to others - a positive spirit, a boundless energy, and a huge heart for others. I just love this program photo as we all extended ourselves to our new brothers and sisters for worship one last time.

2013-2014 YAVs, it has been such a pleasure to get to know you and now call you my brothers and sisters! Now "live as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth" (Ephesians 5: 8-9). May you find your way in this world to best put your gifts and talents to work for justice for all God's children, and know you are never alone on your walk!