Regeneration

Today was my last day as a US-2 at Crossroads Urban Center. We had a great potluck this evening, and it was the perfect sendoff! I made some rockin’ banana pudding and got to say goodbye to a lot of wonderful folks. My dad comes tomorrow and we pack everything up and hit the road for the Great American Roadtrip: Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, the source of the Mississippi in Minnesota, Milwaukee, Chicago, and then back south to Baton Rouge. We will most certainly be taking the scenic route! It is going to be epic! And with moving to Washington DC for seminary, there is a lot to look forward to on the horizon.

But.

Every time I move cities (which, to be fair, I have not done a lot of, but still), I can’t help but think of this bit from Doctor Who when David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor, regenerates into the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith (for the sake of not posting a bunch of separate videos of all of the doctors regenerating, I am just sticking with the one regeneration for this example). He is still basically the same guy, but he has different friends and different adventures and looks kind of different and wears different clothes. And he cannot un-regenerate. That I am aware of. You never quite know what the writers will think of next, but that is not germane to this discussion!

And so with moving and starting school and everything, I see it as a regeneration of sorts for me. Granted, I do not think I will start shooting golden light out of my hands and changing faces or hair (still won’t be ginger!) when the minivan passes the Salt Lake City limits, but I will be with new friends and having all sorts of new adventures. And I will not be able to un-regenerate into the Marjorie who is the US-2 at Crossroads Urban Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Which is a good thing, but I do understand the Tenth Doctor’s reaction of “I don’t want to go!”

Which in a way, is very good. It means I have made friends and done a lot of wonderful things while out here, but it also means that I will miss having zany conversations with my amazing coworkers and walking to the best dadgum library in the country and looking up every day to see the gorgeous mountains!

In short: it has been a wonderful two years here. They certainly zoomed right on by! I hope the next two are even better and I look forward to seeing what Marjorie, the seminary student in Washington, DC will be like!

PS: I still can’t get over how weird it is that I won’t be living in a state next year. Crazy!

 

Plans and Such

Hello folks! How have y’all been since October? I have been good! It is finally starting to thaw out here in the frozen wildernesses of the north. I know I have quoted this before, and I will certainly quote it again (and embellish it quite a lot) but in the month of January, we had more snow than in 17 years and it was the coldest January in 63 years. If I recall correctly, it got down to about 3 degrees. Brrrr. It also snowed a bit yesterday and the day before. I do not approve!

 

Anyhoo, next year I will be attending Wesley Theological Seminary in DC to get my Masters of Theological Studies with a focus on missional studies and then hopefully get plugged in to the Methodist nonprofit universe and, you know, work. Unless, of course, I get sucked in to an alternate reality and marry the Earl of Grantham, move to England and live at Downton Abbey. I could go for that, too! Of course, one never quite knows. I was chatting with my friend earlier this week about what Freshman-Year-of-College Marjorie would have said if she had known she would be going to seminary in DC in a few short years. I seem to recall freshman year Marjorie had vague plans about either being a lawyer (I’m not entirely sure why) or a History professor (I think I just wanted to wander around college campuses and be eccentric and wear tweed). Good news Freshman-Year Marjorie! You can totally be eccentric! I know you will be thrilled about that! 

I am definitely looking forward to the next couple of years and living in such an exciting place. And learning more about the Bible and Jesus and all that fun stuff. But dad gum! It is so weird that I will be leaving Salt Lake City in July! How has it been so long? But I suppose it is as odd as snow in mid-April….

 

Change of the Seasons

Surprise! I’m still here! And it has been since June since I posted here. My goodness! I suppose this is more of a quarterly blog now. So let’s see. Since June, I’ve been camping with my folks, to DC for the 60th anniversary of US2 shindig, NYC for US2 midterms and Denver for a UMW conference. One could say I have been busy. Or forgetful. I’m going to go with both.

Anyways, it’s been over a year since I started and I am a year older. And maybe even a year smarter. Which means it is about time to start figuring out where I will be going next year. Thankfully I have a decent enough plan: masters of social work. Somewhere in the south. Hooray filling out applications! But it feels good to have a plan. And as always I have my backup backup backup backup plan of being a truck driver. Good old plan Z!

So as the title says, there is a change in the seasons. Partly because it dropped 20 degrees between yesterday and today and partly because it is time to think about the next season of where I am going. Very strange!

Also, this is going to be a blog entry and a half. The half entry is What Marjorie Thinks about The Casual Vacancy. It’s sort of relevant. Ish.

In case you have been living under a rock, JK Rowling wrote a new book called The Casual Vacancy. It came out about a month ago. So as background, I went to the midnight releases of the Harry Potter books as far back as they had them. I dressed up. Have read them all at least four times. I got my picture taken at Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station.

So I think JK Rowling is the best. And yes, Casual Vacancy is jarringly different from the squeaky-clean exploits of Harry, Ron and Hermione. But there are very clear connections. The Dursleys are everywhere in Pagford, the village where everything takes place. There are small-minded people who fear The Other and are frankly rather petty. There is also child abuse, neglect, drugs, sex and other Shocking and Scandalous things.

But there is also redemption and honesty and goofy teenagers doing goofy teenager stuff. And her characters, as always, are spot on! So all in all, it is a good book. Not fantastic, as my sisters might tease me, but good. The one element that is missing is humor. There’s no Fred and George. No Professor McGonnagall whispering to Peeves “it unscrews the other way!” But no book is perfect, I suppose. Still. It didn’t have to be that dreary! But it is an intriguing look into how Nice, Middle Class People deal with things that are not nice. Like the death of a council member and the various scandals surrounding it. Or the slums and rehab clinic in their district. So much small town drama in one book. Which brings me to the end of what I can say without spoiling it, which I have a habit of doing. So if you do read it, let me know what you think!

 

Public Transportation

So things have been going well lately. Not too much excitement (which has resulted in slacking off on posting here. Oops). Although I did go to Portland for a conference about a week and a half ago. I could rave about Portland all day, seeing as how it is a place I had always wanted to go and it lived up to my expectations: chilly, rainy, lots of hipsters, beautiful flowers, great quirky local businesses, free and easy to use public transportation, Powell’s Books, where I wandered around for ages and had the time of my life. I was also able to wander around the Saturday market and look at all the cool art and food booths and I was even able to make it over to the Rose Festival Parade (complete with about 80,000,000 marching bands, people dressed in Star Wars Costumes and to my delight, a Mardi Gras float with some flambe’ people and jazz!). And, you know, the conference was great, too.

Anyways, one issue we have been working on is the public transportation system here (called UTA). Which has gotten me to thinking: what makes a good (or even great) public transportation system? I think my personal favorite is London’s, but that could simply be the polite British voices telling me to Mind the Gap! Is it a system that is free/low cost? Is it a system that reliably gets you where you need to go without long waits or walking? I don’t really know.

When I was growing up, I never knew anyone who took the bus. It always seemed sketchy, but at least we saw buses tooling around the city. In college, I think I saw a city bus once. And I remember saying “Really? They have buses here? Huh….” So Salt Lake City’s bus and light rail system has been fun to use. But for whatever reason, few people use it. I have been on more than one bus where there have been three or fewer passengers which is just a waste (even if it means I get to set my stuff on the seat next to me and not feel like a jerk)!

Something to think about, I suppose, while waiting for the next bus to arrive…

 

Blog Entry for the GCORR People

So, I think I am going to be a bit lazy right now and just repost a blog that I just sent to the General Commission on Race and Religion about what we have been up to in regards to our work on immigration. Some of it (like my name) is slightly redundant, but always good to have a reminder, eh? So here goes.

 

I, Marjorie Hurder, am a US-2 Young Adult Missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church at Crossroads Urban Center, a National Mission Institution in Salt Lake City. Part of my job is working in the food pantry and meeting all sorts of people from all sorts of places and providing them with the basics of food, some hygiene items, bus passes and the like. We help everyone from senior citizens on fixed incomes to homeless people on no income to families of ten struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We also work on issues of social justice, such as immigration.

 

This past December, we joined with churches in the downtown Salt Lake City area to celebrate Las Posadas, the commemoration of the Holy Family’s search for room at the inn. In the brisk weather, we processed around downtown Salt Lake City reenacting Mary and Joseph’s search for room at the inn, cantankerous donkey included. While on our brief journey, we recalled Mary and Joseph’s being turned away from shelter, and in so doing, remembered those in our community, such as undocumented immigrants or the homeless population, who search for shelter but who are turned away.

 

We used this event to kick-start the “Drop the I Word” campaign here in Utah. We brought this discussion to Utah as a response to divisive and derogatory discourse by political candidates who went as far as to call children of immigrants born in the United States “anchor babies” as if having children was some sort of covert strategy to avoid being deported.

 

We continued our push towards the elimination of such dehumanizing language by encouraging boards and church councils in the area to consider the pledge to Drop the I Word. So far, the boards at Crossroads Urban Center and First United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City have signed on.

 

This prompted the Salt Lake Tribune to start a discussion of their policies of how to refer to undocumented immigrants, starting with this article http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/53756205-90/alien-church-correct-illegal.html.csp about First United Methodist in Salt Lake City’s pledge to Drop the I-word. They also interviewed those who believe that illegal immigrant or illegal alien are the legally correct terms for someone who is undocumented (even if said person has not been proven to be here through unauthorized means). A group of advocates from Crossroads Urban Center, the ACLU, and the Catholic Diocese met with the editorial board to discuss their newsroom policy. They said that they follow the Associated Press style guide and wanted to be accurate in who they deemed “illegal” versus “undocumented”.

 

I think we need to have more of these sorts of conversations about language and how the words we use affect other people. We might not like the responses that we get. For instance, in the comments section of the article in the Tribune about First United Methodist’s stance, there were some vitriolic comments about immigration and the language I saw was appalling. But there were also those who applauded First United Methodist Salt Lake and were glad to see that people were taking a stand.

 

The Drop the I Word message got a more enthusiastic response this past Saturday at the Utah Sub-District Meeting of the United Methodist Churches in the area. There was also a presentation about starting a Justice for our Neighbors clinic here in Salt Lake City to work with our neighbors who need help navigating the profusion of immigration law. This is, of course, only the beginning of creating a more welcoming Salt Lake City for all of our neighbors, but it is a beginning nonetheless. Hopefully this conversation will continue to evolve into positive action. I pray that some day, the difficult conversations we need to have about immigration can happen without either side throwing stones at each other.

 

 

 

Legislature Legislature Legislature

So, to my surprise this morning, I woke up and it was March! In addition, there is now only one week left in the Utah State Legislative Session, for which I am thankful.

So here are some observations I have had about this particular State Legislature (since I came into it having only taken political science classes and listening to NPR and reading the New York TImes and listening to my Dad talk about the news).

Yes, there are some legislators and lobbyists who are kind of unpleasant and don’t really care about the 99%, but there are definitely some who do. And they are really wonderful.

The people who work at the Capitol make my day. Interns, maintenance people, the security guys in the green coats who pass in notes to the legislators, cafeteria workers. Seriously the best group of people.

Standing waiting for legislators to come from the House/Senate floor to talk to you is really dull, but great for getting to know the people around you.

People have some goofy ties! Loony Toons, polka dot, musical instruments. Fun to keep an eye out for!

The cafeteria food really is not bad.

The rush of adrenaline running from seeing a bill you’ve been working on come up on the board and rushing to get your coworkers and sprinting up the stairs to the gallery to watch it is only matched by the sigh of annoyance when said bill is tabled and not going to be voted on then, rendering the rush of adrenaline rather pointless.

More to come at the end of the session which ends a week from today!

 

Onward to the Legislature!

I suppose I have been a bit lax in updating my blog the past month and a half or so. Oops. But I had a lovely visit home for Christmas seeing family and friends, and then a hectic few weeks at work. Most of what we have been up to has been preparing for the Utah state legislative session that starts tomorrow. (Tomorrow?? Aack!) This past week, I don’t think I spent more than maybe 2 hours at my desk. Just enough time to make sure I didn’t have really urgent emails or what have you to answer.

This past Tuesday was a lot of fun, mostly because my coworker and I went over to the soup kitchen to interview the line of folks about homelessness and employment (to promote and gather information for a bill we are supporting to have a tax credit for employers who hire homeless people), and I have to say, it was a very neat experience. Not to mention, talking to the people whom the bill could help if it were passed made it make all the more sense to me. Why not have an incentive for people to hire those who most need work but who might not appear to be prime candidates? And, ok, it might have been a bit of a boost for the old self-esteem when the first fellow I interviewed thanked me for gracing them with my beauty when I thanked him for participating in the survey.

Then, Tuesday evening, we had our Anti Hunger Action Committee meeting where we discussed our Super Schmoozer Contest that will be held this Tuesday. (Permit me to brag for a moment, but I did suggest the term Schmoozer. And then my coworker did the rest. I still giggle at it, though). The contest is both an individual contest and between groups (Anti-Hunger Action Committee, Homeless Opportunity and Rights Network, and the Disabled Rights Action Committee). I mean, who wouldn’t want the chance to win a Schmoozie? We have flyers that we will hand out with the rules and all of the legislators’ names and tiny pictures on them and point values assigned according to what committees they are on and various leadership positions. Hopefully this will prevent any instances of “It’s the committee chair! We’ll get seven points! Get him!!!” Also, it will be a lot of fun watching the legislators and the Average People meet each other. Especially since we had our Regular People Lobbyist Training the other day, and I have to say, a good time was had by all.

Anyways, that’s about it for now. It’s an exciting few weeks coming up. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate more than it did yesterday. “Winter Mix” is just plain nasty weather. But thank goodness the sun is back!

 

 

Christmas Craziness

Coming in to this week, I knew that it would be have its fair share of seasonal madness, but I think what I forgot was that all of this stuff is pretty darn fun! For instance, Monday, I went to a Presbyterian Bible study and had a little talk that I prepared for it about what social justice is why it is a good thing (in my opinion) and what we/they as a church can do to help further it. I was so worried about finishing my talk and I think I kind of psyched myself out a little, but at some point on the drive over, between admiring the mountains, fighting with the elderly Crossroads truck to stop drifting in the lanes and belting out Christmas tunes, I forgot about the nerves. So once I showed up to the church, they fed me and we talked and we just had the best time! They also were interested in what I had to say and we had good discussion about it so we did do more than eat cookies and giggle at the pastors’ kids’ antics and eat cookies left over from their cookie swap (although there was plenty of that)!

Yesterday during work, I was terribly antsy and infected with holiday cheer, which really just made me gaze out the window at the snow going “Ooooooo look at all that snow going by” and getting hypnotized. I am sure I did something productive, but I cannot remember exactly what. That evening, we had our Anti-Hunger Action Committee (AHAC) Holiday Potluck where we ate yummy food (these folks take fighting hunger seriously!), sang Christmas carols (with various levels of success) and made this video:

It is a montage of various AHAC members saying facts about the Utah Food Stamp program and how they have not used stamps in years, so isn’t it time to change the name? I, with my directing prowess, encouraged them to use their best game show host voices, which got a good chuckle out of most of them. Hopefully, the video gets a good chuckle out of most of you!

Today was another listen to Christmas tunes, giggle with coworkers, semi-productive day. Although I did have fun calling folks to remind them about one of our meetings tomorrow. Especially the lady named Marjorie because I get to say “Hello Marjorie? Yes, this is Marjorie!” and we both giggle like little schoolgirls. Also, it was the new social work student worker’s first day, so I am no longer the new kid! It’s also a plus to have another person to work with. Not to mention fun. And my coworker and I did some more planning of our Las Posadas procession. We have the donkey, the songs, the hot cocoa, the snacks, the candles, and Mary and Joseph lined up! Not to mention, the educational literature explaining why No Child of God is Illegal to discourage people calling other people Illegal. All in all, a fun day.

So I suppose, besides having a brief recount of what I have been up to, I am writing this to say that Christmas stuff can be rather enjoyable. Sure, the traffic may be bad and sure, you may have just worked for 8 hours, and sure, some of the folks might get on your nerves, but in the end, all of that nonsense doesn’t really matter. It’s that moment when you’re laughing at the rubber duck wearing sunglasses sitting on the phone or when you remember the words to the second verse of Joy to the World just in time to really belt them out so that everyone else can remember and sing along, too, or when your coworker’s kid comes up to you and says “Tag! You’re it!” and you spend a giggly few minutes racing around the downstairs after each other that are the moments that do matter. So go out and have fun this Christmas season! Have the really yummy food, even if it’s bad for you, drink peppermint flavored everything, suck on a peppermint until it’s really pointy and stab your neighbor with it, go to a Christmas concert, hum along to the Christmas songs playing at the grocery store (hey, if you can’t beat them, join them!), watch the Christmas classics (Christmas Vacation, anyone?), go to the midnight service on Christmas Eve, even if it is bad weather, but dadgum, just have fun! I hope everyone has an appropriately meaningful and solemn Christmas, but also an enjoyable one.

 

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.