Quiet

Recently, I saw a video that the church I went to in college had up for their Advent series. I think their theme was “Enough”, but it started with some Christmas carol, then escalated to dinging and honking and chattering and all of this awful noise and finally ended with a dramatic black screen that said Enough! I thought it was a pretty darn good representation of the holiday season. Now granted, I am delighted this Christmas season to not have to study for finals or check out of my dorm, but still. I do not think many people have complained of having a December that was too slow or quiet.

Yesterday and today, two of my coworkers have been out of the office, and the others have been in and out, making for a quieter office than usual. At first, it was irksome, not having them around to ask “Which church in Bountiful do we need the email address for? And who the dickens is Hans?” but now that I think about it, it is quite nice to sometimes just hear the peaceful clacking of the keyboard as I check things off the to-do list and book my train home for Christmas. Especially as the building we are in rather reminds me of the house where I grew up in that if someone sneezes on the opposite side of the building and on a different floor, you can still hear it. Which is not a bad thing, though it is entertaining sometimes to drop in on conversations a few offices down! I mean, how often is this quiet time going to happen over the next couple of weeks as we all gear up for the celebration of the birth of Christ? So far, I have on my radar a UMW Tea this Saturday, Advent Bible studies with the Presbyterians, our Las Posadas procession remembering Mary and Joseph’s search for room at the inn that we are tying in to modern day immigrants and the homeless’s search for shelter and acceptance, and regular food drive deliveries that we are always excited to have!

Mostly, I just hope that there is the same sense our high school choir had when rehearsing every day for four hours leading up to our annual Christmas concert that yes, this is a ton of work and time and some of it is kind of unpleasant, but at the end we got a tangible reward in the beautiful music and sense of accomplishment and the magic of the evening (not to mention the traditional celebration with beignets and cafe au lait afterwards where we got powdered sugar all over our black dresses!). I got that feeling last Wednesday when we had our Epic Turkey Giveaway. It was near the end of the day, and I was sore and tired and cranky and I just wanted to go home to bed, but I was taking peoples’ numbers as they left and making sure they didn’t leave with 6 turkeys, etc. With most people going through the line, it was just the simple “Number please, thank you, happy Thanksgiving!” but at one point, I noticed that one woman told another who was about to walk down the stairs with a stroller and baby and turkey and trimmings “No, no! Let me help you with that!” and they headed on out, but I have to say that that was when I remembered “Oh, yeah. This is why we are running around like turkeys with our heads cut off unloading 18 wheelers of turkeys and bagging extras like mashed potatoes and corralling the line and the army of volunteers” which was, I think, important for me to remember.

I also hope that everyone gets a few moments of quiet to think about that evening in Bethlehem with the peaceful sounds of cows mooing and horses eating hay and cute little baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger and what that meant and still means for all of us. Perhaps it is at a coffee shop sipping a peppermint flavored beverage, or at a church service or musical event of some sort, or perhaps it is in those last few moments before going to sleep.

 

Thanksgiving

Unless I miss my guess, 95% of people will be vaguely thinking about what they are thankful for the next week. Until, of course, Black Friday, when deranged hordes of crazed shoppers stampede the poor employees at stores nationwide. There has also been the Facebook…thing the past couple of weeks of going through and listing one thing per day you are thankful for. I thought of doing that, but remembered I would probably forget four days in. So I figure I may as well fill up this blog with a list of things I am thankful for!

1. I am thankful that I am alive and healthy and that my immediate family is alive and healthy

2. I am thankful that I have an incredible job that keeps me busy and learning all the dadgum time and that I get to work with and meet some fantastic people.

3. I get to do things like move across the country and be a do-gooder for two years and not live at home and have a job where I would have to work on Black Friday.

4. Once I leave work, I’m done til the next morning. You know what that means? No homework! I get to read fun fantasy books the day they arrive and not feel guilty about neglected homework!

E. I am in an incredible (if separated by a lot of distance) community of fellow young adult missionaries.

F. The friends I made in college are pretty dang wonderful people. I just loved college.

G. I am supported by wonderful church families in Baton Rouge and Hattiesburg. I definitely would not be here without you!

8. Jesus. And yes, I fully admit that is a 3rd grade Sunday School answer, but that doesn’t make it any less true! We can learn a lot from the guy.

9. Baton Rouge Magnet High School. From people I have talked to, I learned we had it easy there. Socially speaking, not academically.

10. Parents who taught me how to cook, clean and do laundry (though the cooking I picked up on my own because it’s fun!) so that moving to The Real World was rather pleasant and not a nightmare of stained clothing, smelly kitchens and germ-ridden bathrooms!

11. The people who just donated four carloads of food and are sending more after Thanksgiving

L. That my sisters chose very well for their husbands and that I get along well with them.

M. That I get along well with all of my extended family. They are a pretty nifty bunch

N. Modern technology. Sure, sometimes it’s a real pain, but I just cannot picture my life without it. Even with more recent additions like the cell phone

O. Mountains. They are lovely to look at on my walk home from work and I still marvel at them! God sure did some good work when he got to Utah!

P. People who have the imagination and dedication to write the books that I read.  Seriously, I could not do life without them

17. All of my teachers from pre-school to senior year of college. That is another job I admire but could not do. So thank you thank you thank you to all teachers!

18. Coffee and all of the work that goes into the caffeinated goodness that gets me going in the morning (and sometimes afternoon)

19. England. I so want to go back! But I am thankful I got to visit it and cross a lot of things off my bucket list

Nineteen is a good place to stop. Much more and I would start grasping at straws and…er…saying how grateful I am for the person who invented straws and wheels and indoor plumbing (which I am. But still). But I do think it is important to  regularly remember how good you or I or whoever has it, even when you might feel like whining. Because writing, I realized I am kind of spoiled, which I do not mind in the least!

In any case, here at Crossroads, we are gearing up for the holidays and our ginormous turkey giveaway the day before Thanksgiving. We are planning for hundreds of volunteers and thousands of clients to show up, which I still cannot fathom. But I know that the day of, I will be trebly thankful for coffee!

This week, I told one of my sisters that I had gone to the Legislature three times (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) and had two meetings in different cities the same day (Thursday) and she informed me that I was a jetsetter! I thought it sounded pretty neat, too.

 

Community Organizing

Yesterday, as a sort of social experiment, I posed the question “When you see the term Community Organizing/Organizer, what do you think?” and got responses from the fairly predictable hippy/communist/doesn’t like to shower to references to Obama to really great descriptions like “walking the talk” “people from all community sectors working together for a common vision/mission” and “a good way to stay young”. I had only asked out of idle curiosity, but the answers I got definitely got me thinking. Community Organizing has as many definitions as there are organizers. What works with one city or block or group will not work with another. I am definitely starting to learn that here at Crossroads Urban Center. There are different tactics to working with the Coalition of Religious Communities than there are with the Homeless Opportunities and Rights Network or the Anti-Hunger Action Committee. All of the groups work for social justice and work out of the same building, but where CORC organizes religious groups to lobby their legislators all over the state on economic justice issues like regulating the payday lending and recruits mostly from churches or involvement fairs, AHAC and HORN work more with the food pantry clients and the homeless population in Salt Lake City on justice issues such as camping ordinances or food stamp accessibility on a more local level.

But when I was reading a book on community organizing the other week and talking to my friend who works at a church and was recruiting volunteers to teach Sunday School, it occurred to me that working at a church and being a community organizer have a lot in common: both have to constantly recruit new members and then cultivate those members into more active volunteers, both generally have to provide cookies and coffee at any events they host, both have members who will be rather cantankerous if said meetings run over time and can do things like install a clock within eyesight of the pulpit (I actually heard of this happening at a church. Ha!) and have to work toward making their community better, whether by promoting Jesus, justice, or both!

More general updates, I am making more friends here and even had some over for chicken tortilla soup the other day, I found out my dog that we’ve had since I was in elementary school got put to sleep, which made for a rough weekend, I went to a concert by the very cool Emma’s Revolution, I found out the grant my coworker and I worked on went through and we will get financial contributions toward our efforts to raise compassion for undocumented workers in Utah, and the holiday season is looming ever closer and, while stressful, will be positively delightful without finals! Currently, I am waiting on tenterhooks to read the final installment in the Inheritance Cycle, what addictive books!