Last weekend, the five ABQ YAVs had the opportunity to tell stories at the Presbytery meeting held at Ghost Ranch. The idea of being willing, confident, and vulnerable enough to share stories is important. For many, storytelling can be what the church sometimes fails to be: a means of forming deep, meaningful, life-giving relationships. Stories are simple, but they can have a deep impact. For me, this story highlights a part of me that has been present for a long time, and a part that continues to affect how I live and process during this YAV year. (Bethany, me, Claire, Audrey, and Ana after telling our stories at Ghost Ranch) —————————————————————————————-- Here is my story of living in a state of tension: As I pack my backpack for the day, my host mom, Doña Fátima, reminds me “Las dos fuentes más importantes de la vida son el sol y la solidaridad.” “The two most important sources of life are the sun and solidarity.” I ride my bike down a beaten up road in rural Costa Rica. I pass fields of crops and grazing cows with spectacular mountains towering behind them. I arrive at a small pulpería, a convenient store, with a pottery workshop in the back. A man named Shaggy greets me with enthusiasm and immediately begins to teach. “We gather clay from the mountains and add natural spices to give the paint its color”, he tells me. He guides my hand as I shape the pot with an olote – an old corn cob harvested from his neighbors’ fields of heirloom corn. I rode to the town of Guaitíleach morning that week, learning each step in the process of throwing pots. Learning how a handful of fifth-generation artisans are fighting to keep alive the practices of their ancestors, the Chorotega Indians. Learning what it looks like to be a people who truly live from the sources of the sun and of solidarity. ---------------------------------------------------------- I told this story to Luke (YAV Site Coordinator) and to Drew Henry during my interview with the Albuquerque YAV site in March. I told this story while sitting in the teachers’ lounge at the high school where I was student teaching. For the first time in over three months since I returned from my semester abroad, I told this story – Shaggy’s story. My semester abroad was life-changing in that it forced me to see the world with wider lenses. Lenses that showed how God is so diverse and yet so the same, lenses that showed how complicit I am in a system that harms the people I now consider family, and lenses that showed me how much I have to learn. My semester abroad was an abrupt awakening, and yet I came home and immediately re-integrated myself into school-life and buried myself in my work. I didn’t make time to keep seeing with those wider lenses. As I think about being a teacher, I often forget that some of the most impactful experiences that I have had as a student were times when there wasn’t a lesson plan, but the times when God opened up space for me to learn in a new way. It is in this realization where I feel a strong and ever-present tension. How do I work in a system that values grades and achievement while intentionally making space for God to step in and teach? How do I encourage students to challenge and grow their worldview and not just their vocabulary or problem solving abilities? How do I learn and teach while being responsible to society and to God? After meaningful experiences like the time I spent in Guaitíl, my initial question usually is “What do I do next?” And when I don’t know what to do – which is pretty often – I am reminded of a piece of advice I was given abroad, “Hay que vivir la lucha con alegría”, “You have to live the fight with happiness.” Maybe if I lean into these harsh truths and paradoxes with joy – realizing that is a privilege and a gift to struggle and learn – I will be able to more consciously depend on a spirit and on a God who is walking right beside me in the process. Perhaps my next step is not an action, but rather a state of being. A state of tension, of confusion, of discomfort, and of trust. To read more of Taylor's stories, click here.
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October 24, 2017*This weekend, we had the opportunity to attend the Presbytery Meeting (of Sante Fe) hosted at the beautiful Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM. We were also able to partake in Story Telling, as we told a small story that focused around our discernment into this year of service. Below is the story I shared…*
“But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.” – Francis Chan, author of Crazy Love I used this quote at the end of my discernment process, in a blog-draft I was writing to detail and capture my reflection and thoughts. The one about Answering God’s Call, as I asked my dad if this quote sounded to bold to accompany the announcement that I had just accepted my YAV year placement to Los Angeles, California, where I’d be serving the population of people experiencing homelessness. Yep, Los Angeles. I knew then, that God doesn’t call us to be comfortable, hence why I had intentions to go and serve at Skid Row. But I hadn’t quite experienced what it meant to put myself in situations where I’d be in trouble if God didn’t actually come through. I wrote this quote before my plans got turned upside-down, before I got the call two weeks after graduation that informed me I would not be going to Los Angeles as a YAV and that I’d need to start the discernment process again. Two of my spiritual mentors shared words of healing and affirmation throughout that day: The first was: “Your change of location, does not mean a change of call from God.” And the second was: “The Lord gives you a vision, the Lord kills the vision, then the Lord gives you the faith for the vision.” In the moment, each of those were great and profound. But, it wasn’t until I found myself telling another mentor later that day that “what makes me the most disappointed is all the hope and anticipation I had in going to Los Angeles, that was no longer anything… like I had really envisioned myself there, in that community, serving those people,” and in that very moment in the middle of sharing that, I was mentally picturing the notes that I had written at church the very day before. “Living with Expectations VS. Living in Expectancy” Expectations represent the hope and anticipation, which have an end-value, like all those real things I had imagined and was also really hung on up. When actually living in expectancy, requires an authentic level of surrender and faith in the unknown. And from that moment on, I had a change of heart that has brought me here to New Mexico and has affected how I’ve answered the countless “Well, what are you expecting now? What are you hoping for?” questions since then. This experience has allowed me to be present in the journey, filled with peace and trust in the moments of uncertainty, and the ability to recognize the times where one truly needs to embrace the need for surrender… The importance of learning to be comfortable in it – in the midst of situations, where the average person IS afraid we’d be in trouble if God didn’t come through. For more stories from Claire's blog, click here *This past weekend, the other YAVs and I were prompted to share our experiences on how we decided to become Young Adult Volunteers at the Presbytery of Santa Fe meeting in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Below is the story I wrote and shared.*
“We are here; We are here for all of us. We are here for all of us. That’s why we are here.” I’m standing in a giant worship space in Montreat, North Carolina with about 1,000 other people, all joining in praise through this song. I had just learned about the YAV program and felt strongly about researching more into this ‘Year of Service’. “We are all here for each other”. I let these words seep into my being and in this moment I simultaneously found the most profound strength, courage, and peace. I felt the parts of my mind that laid dormant before this moment, now opening to new possibilities of serving God by serving each other and felt a realignment happening with my purpose of being. We are all here on this blessed earth, living together and influencing one another way more directly and consequently than we will ever understand. “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Another song comes forth from the crowd, bringing forth within me this courage and strength to follow God where God knows to take me. Was it merely a coincidence that my relationship with God and the alignment within my mind, body, and spirit is at it’s healthiest, most pronounced that it’s ever been, right as I am learning of the Young Adult Volunteer program? Was God already preparing me for this year of service that will undoubtedly impact and transform the rest of my life, before even a day goes by after learning of this program? When I arrived back home from this retreat, I immediately grabbed a whiteboard and marker from my room and wrote these two phrases down from these songs, in order to remember these realizations and continue to live energetically with the Great Spirit. Fast-forwarding 7 months later, after the interview process with Luke and being accepted into the Albuquerque site; after surviving student teaching and graduating with a Bachelor degree in Music Education; and after saying final goodbyes to my loved ones, I attended the final service at my Church, before heading off to orientation for the YAV program. There I was, sitting in the pews, reminiscing of how this church, how these people have played such a dynamic role in helping me to become and realize who God is calling me to be, when suddenly, I hear a familiar tune rise amongst the congregation, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love; and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” What an affirmation to hear this message from God, that all is well and all will be well. I was, and still am, right where I need to be, completely and overwhelmingly present with the Divine Spirit.” |