'Twas the week before Christmas break

Well… it is safe to say I feel like the past three months or so have literally flown by. Here I am writing my reflection looking ahead to just one full week remaining before heading home for Christmas. Just like the last week of a semester, I feel like my final week in Booneville is tightly packed with all kinds of things that didn’t get done in previous weeks. This mostly due simply to the timing, but it leaves me with a solidly packed week nonetheless.

Among the things that will be keeping me busy:
-My usual weekly activities of square dancing, Boys and Girls Club, BHDC, etc.
-A monthly lunch meeting with the priest from my church and another member of the community
-Good Fellows (ministerial fellowship Christmastime outreach)
-A trip to Heavener, Oklahoma, with Rachel to experience a midnight service and Morning Prayer for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
-A Christmas-themed open house at our house
-A trip to Ft. Smith for a play and bonding time with fellow interns and FUMC (First United Methodist Church) staff
-Christmas potluck at Church

This is just a sampling as I am sure there are many many more things (included, but not limited to packing and saying see you soon’s). While I am not looking forward to the cramped schedule, I must say I much prefer it to projects, exams, presentations and papers. I just hope that, like with school, I do not get too wrapped up in the excitement to go home that I mentally check out of Booneville before our van is headed northbound.

The First Sunday of Advent; or in other words, a new beginning

Today was the first Sunday of Advent; the start of a new liturgical year; a season in which we prepare for the birth of Christ. I find this hard to believe since the high today was in the 70s. I also find it hard to believe that today marks somewhat of a fresh start (liturgical calendar speaking) as there are just over two weeks left until we as interns will take a break, pack our things, and head up to Minneapolis to fly home to our families for the Christmas holiday.

Despite all the doubt and confusion in my mind, I take this new beginning (beginning is actually a synonym of advent) as a reminder that there is always a chance to start over, always an opportunity to try harder. Maybe I haven’t been spending as much time on daily devotions as I would like to … that doesn’t mean I can’t spend that time from this point forward. Maybe I haven’t done so great with meeting our neighbors … but the year is not over, and I can still continue to grow deeper in the relationships I have begun. Maybe I don’t know every Republican, Democrat and some independent candidates stances on all the issues … but I am still learning. (These are the three main goals I have been working toward over the months.)

“… you know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” —Romans 13: 11

Time is constantly passing and we are always moving forward, but that doesn’t mean I am stuck in my actions and choices of the past.

I pray that the Lord awakens me from the places I have been sleeping these past eleven weeks whether they be in my spiritual life or in how I can be serving the community of Booneville to the best of my abilities.

Today is my new beginning.

Giving thanks

Lately I have been somewhat in disbelief at how quickly time is passing. Leading up to Thanksgiving I could not wrap my mind around the reality that it was already late in November and just a handful of days until December. I attribute this mostly to the lack of cold weather and snow in Arkansas, as most of my life the entire month of November included cold weather and snow. And while it is getting much cooler, I am yet to see even a single snowflake.

This week we began reading and discussing our new book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Quite appropriately, giving thanks daily for small things is major idea in the first chapter.

Bonhoeffer writes, “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives big things. We prevent God from giving us great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.”

I, too, am guilty of looking for something bigger or better to be grateful for. So, as a reminder to myself to remember the small blessings in my life: I am thankful for having a family willing to let me move to Arkansas for a year. I am thankful for having a family, period. I am thankful for the friends that I have. I am thankful that I have been blessed with safe travel for all I have done in the past six months or so. I am thankful for heat, and for waking up morning after morning, for the generosity I have experienced in Booneville, for being a self-sufficient human being and for all the other little things that God has blessed me with that are so mundane and taken for granted that it would bore you to read them all. I hope and pray that from this point forward I can spend my time rejoicing in the small blessings in life rather than get wrapped up in asking for something bigger and better. Everything is a blessing.

I thank you, LORD, with all my heart;
before the gods to you I sing.
I bow low toward your holy temple;
I praise your name for your fidelity and love.
For you have exalted over all
your name and your promise.
--Psalm 138: 1-2

A day late and a buck short... except not really

I feel obligated to tell you that I’ve never really been a fan of prewriting or rough drafts or outlines. I’ve always been a fan of just jumping in and getting going on the writing. Despite that, the following is what came after a hand-written rough draft — so maybe things change sometimes? You be the judge if this is for the better.

Also, on a quick side note: It appears that along with the vanishing of whatever sickness has been ailing me, my writer’s block has lifted as well. Praise God!

But anyway…

In the lull between GreaterWorks assigned books, I’ve found myself with a little more time to spend with a book I’ve literally been trying to read for years. I received my copy of Ilia Delio’s The Humility of God over two years ago during an internship at St. Anthony Messenger Press in the book department. Between school and other books and life I never really got around to starting it until this summer in South Dakota. For anyone who knows anything about YouthWorks!, you might suspect that this is not the best time to start a highly anticipated, long time coming book. Your suspicions would be largely correct. Since then I’ve managed a chapter here or there, usually around bedtime… but nothing too consistent.

So this was the first week I’ve really sat down to read it. I’ve struggled up to this point to really connect with the book despite finding the ideas behind it very interesting. It is funny how God works. The chapter I read this week felt like it was written for me right now. I would read and reread paragraphs just to make sure I hadn’t missed a single point.

I especially appreciated a quote from Thomas Merton (who I may be slightly partial to as he once was a professor at St. Bonaventure):

“What we are asked to do at present is not so much to speak of Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us.”

This is how I view what I am doing here in Booneville. At the Boys and Girls Club or the Booneville Human Development Center or wherever else I go, I am not necessarily speaking of Christ so much as I am striving to let him shine through what I am doing.

Today I had the opportunity to travel to Little Rock with the junior high students from my church for a rally, which ended with Mass. During the homily, the priest discussed the idea that everything we do is a testimony to our lives as Christians and our faith — the question is: are our choices and actions a positive or negative testimony?

I feel like in a small town such as Booneville, it is highly likely most of the population has some basic idea of who I am what I am doing here. Now my challenge is to make sure my choices and actions are a positive testimony to Christ and to what I am here for. How am I choosing to live my life? After this year, what will I take with me? I am not exactly sure how to answer the latter question just yet…

But I leave you with a particular passage that caught my interest from The Humility of God and challenge you to think about it in the context of your own life:

“If we truly believed that Christ is the center of our life and world, that each of us is a member of the body of Christ, and that body is incomplete without us, that the fullness of Christ encompasses all peoples, all races, religions and cultures, indeed the entire universe, would we harm our neighbor? Injure or abuse the earth? Kill our enemies? Ignore the poor, the homeless or the outcasts of our society? Pursue wealth, power and control? If we really truly believed that all is Christ, would we continue to crucify Christ? Or would we act according to the law of Jesus: love, mercy and compassion? Would we be willing to lay down our lives out of love for the sake of the other? If we truly believed that Christ is the center of the universe, would we be so private about the good news we hold so sacred?”

Easy questions with simple answers, right? Or are they? What would our lives answer?


Becca

I've stood on the highest point in Arkansas

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it.” And so it happened: the earth brought forth every kind of plant … and every kind of fruit tree … God saw how good it was.
—Genesis 1:11-12

While I wish I could say I have some deep, profound topic for this reflection … I cannot. To some degree I try to think through what I will write over the course of the week. Sometimes I have the reflection practically written before I touch a single key. This week my thoughts are loose ideas. Unfortunately I’m not quite over last week’s writer’s block.

I have had the opportunity this week to see some of God’s beauty in creation. Last Sunday, thanks to Dave, we observed an unusual comet (although I mostly appreciated being where seeing stars is a 5-10 minute walk up a hill rather than a 20-30 minute drive out of the reach of star-blocking lights).

Saturday we traveled as a team to experience Mt. Magazine for the first time. It was a trip I had been greatly anticipating since a week in Booneville rarely went by that I wasn’t asked if we had been up to the mountain yet. This question was almost always followed up by a reminder that the best time to go is shortly after the leaves start changing. So we decided Saturday would be perfect. Truth be told, it was a little on the cold side, though that became not so apparent while we were hiking to the highest point in Arkansas, and it was beautiful nonetheless. Sometimes I am taken aback by the beauty of trees with their changing leaves in autumn. I am inclined to assume people, not God, were the master inventors of colors. Looking off Mt. Magazine at the greens and the oranges and the yellows and the bright, vibrant reds reminds me that pigments and paints are just man-made attempts to emulate the beauty that God shows us through the beauty of his creation — nature.


I am also blessed with the opportunity, every Monday through Thursday, to see God’s beauty through the smiles of children at the Boys and Girls Club. I feel like I am finally becoming someone they know and look forward to seeing (as opposed to some strange new volunteer). A valuable truth I learned this week: In a gym containing somewhere around 80 children under the age of 10, piggy-back rides are kind of like a Lay’s potato chip — you can’t give just one.

And with that, having surpassed the 300-word reflection quota, I am ready for bed.

God bless and good night,

Becca

I suppose this week comes for everyone sooner or later...

This week as I sit down to write my reflection, I’m sensing a familiar feeling. It is the feeling I used to get in college when Wednesday night rolled around on a week I was supposed to write a column for the opinion page and I had no clue what to write about. I would hope that maybe someone else had felt inspired to write about something so I would be off the hook. Sometimes it would work, and other times I would sit in front of my computer staring at a blank screen until I thought of something I felt passionate about. Columns were notoriously my least favorite part of being on the editorial board of my university’s newspaper.

But alas, here it is, Sunday afternoon, and no one can write my reflection for me … so we’ll see what happens…

It’s not that there’s nothing going on worth writing about, or that God isn’t teaching me anything – because I’m sure he is … it’s just that things are starting to settle into a routine here and almost feel normal. My weeks are somewhat predictable – though not in a bad way. I finally feel confident in my ability to call most of the kids by name that come to the Boys and Girls Club on a regular basis. I can look forward to square dancing every Monday evening, having a Sabbath on Friday, and getting a ride to Mass on Sunday.

And then there are the other little treats that vary from week to week. This week those things were harvest festivals and trick-or-treaters, having a cough as the only remaining evidence of last week’s cold, getting treated to lunch by the children of a woman from my church, celebrating the 7th birthday of a neighbor, learning that the same newly 7-year-old’s little brother likes to call me “Miss Becca” (yet somehow Rachel and Katie are just that – no Miss), the Tour of Tables, petting a cow, and finally having clip art to “kick it up a notch” in the bulletin, as Father Don would say.

So, I suppose if I could pull a common thread or lesson out of my rambling attempt at a reflection, it would be that it is already November. Soon it will be December and time to spend several weeks away from this community that feels more and more like home as time goes on. In realizing that I should cherish all the recurring and surprising events of my weeks before they are all gone and another YouthWorks! summer is here again.

Until next week (when, with any luck, my writer’s block fog will have lifted),

Becca

Lessons in humility, trust, and southern hospitality

I accepted a ride from, for all intensive purposes, a complete stranger Friday morning. I didn’t have much choice. One of my teammates had dropped me off at Mass and I banked on being able to secure a ride home with someone I knew. But there was only one man in attendance. And I had never met him before. It was ride with the stranger or walk home in the newly cold weather.

I chose the former.

Prior to this week, I always thought I didn’t like asking for things (rides included) because I didn’t like to impose or put people out. I think this is true to an extent, but this week I learned a deeper reason to why I don’t ask: pride. With every question there is a possibility for rejection, a possibility that someone will say no. In sharing a van with four other people, I am learning to swallow my pride and embrace humility in the form of rides from people whose names I sometimes struggle to remember.

I also learned an entirely new aspect of humility this evening in Heavener, Oklahoma, attending Spanish Mass said by Fr. Don, the priest at my church, with one of my teammates. Perhaps for the first time in my life I felt completely lost in a Catholic Church. My 22 years of Sunday attendance had ill prepared me for this moment. I clumsily flipped through the hymnal trying to find the right page and follow along in English to no avail. After the service I was almost entirely dependent on my Spanish-speaking teammate to keep me in the loop on conversation with the parishioners.

In the same way that I find myself almost overwhelmed with opportunities to grow in my humility, I am also amazed by the amount of trust I have seen in Booneville. I am pleasantly surprised by the trust placed in us as interns, as temporary people in this community, who just over a month ago were complete strangers.

But the trust, combined with a good dose of southern hospitability, makes my newfound humility a lot easier to swallow. I rarely have to ask for a ride before one has already been offered. I would much rather accept an extended invitation (or not accept) than be turned down by someone. I have been able to experience so many great, new things thanks to the generosity of the people here in Booneville (not to mention that they have saved me a lot of long walks home from church). Earlier in the week I even got a ride offered from a random car passing by.

I did, however, turn down that one.

And oh, the places I'll go!

As I watched the small shadow of our 15-passenger van move along the bushes outside my window on our way to Mt. Eagle earlier this week, it really sunk in to me: “I live in Arkansas now.”

It is absolutely unbelievable to me when I start to think about the places God has taken me over the years. Almost a decade ago now, I convinced my parents to let me sign up for my first mission trip to Detroit, Michigan. Prior to that I hadn’t been much of anywhere outside Cincinnati or Buffalo, New York, so I wanted a new experience in a new place.

Of course after spending a week in Detroit doing service I appreciated the mission trip for more than just seeing somewhere new. And a new mission experience in a new place followed each summer after: New Orleans, Louisiana; Camden, New Jersey; Lexington, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; and Ft. Apache, Arizona.

During college I took a break from service, but resumed this summer with a place I had never expected to go in my entire life: South Dakota. I still miss the beauty of the Black Hills that I got used to seeing lots of week in and week out. Now here I am in another beautiful place appreciating the new experiences. In one week I got to see Mt. Eagle and the Heifer Ranch in Perryville (go check out www.Heifer.org).

So, in a nutshell, while part of me might desire to just be comfortable at home in Cincinnati, I am embracing and appreciating the amazing new places and people God is introducing me to throughout all of these experiences. And I am also working toward embracing those He might have for me in the future.

The follow-through

I’ve been spending some time thinking this week about the commitments I’ve made here in Booneville. We were warned in training not to over-commit, so I’ve been careful to not make too many promises or take on too much over the past several weeks we’ve been here now. What is on the forefront of my mind is the importance to agree to do realistic things and build on those as I go.

There is quite possibly nothing worse than a broken promise, and the last thing I would want to do is agree to be involved with something I can’t.

Along the same lines, we are talking about personal goals this evening as a group. One of my teammates is not a huge fan of coming up with goals and asked, “What if I don’t have as many goals as everyone else.” My response was that the number is not what is important, but that the set goal or goals are ones we truly work toward accomplishing.

And I can take my own advice and apply it to where I serve here in Booneville. It isn’t necessary to spend every waking moment busy. In fact, I would be doing myself a disservice if I took no time to rest and concentrate on my commitments.

By having a few good goals to concentrate on, I will be more able to accomplish them. If I take on just a few good tasks at a time, I can pour myself into them and make them something great (and, I hope, self-sustainable). Then I can begin new projects (or new goals, whichever the case may be).

All that said, my unspoken goal tonight will be to commit wisely and follow through with each and every commitment to the best of my ability.

God bless,

Becca

With faith like a child...

It seems like lately God has been bombarding me with the importance of the idea that we must be like children in our lives of faith. This week, especially, the concept has been everywhere I turn. On Tuesday I was reflecting on Matthew 18:1-5, which reads:

“At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, ‘Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.’”

Oddly at that same time I heard Jars of Clay’s “Like a Child” coming from my teammate’s room. Like I said, I felt like everywhere I turned the idea was waiting for me.

So the next questions in my mind – what does being child-like look like and why?

Thankfully Christ has provided me not only with the questions but the tools to find the answers – two of the main places I have been volunteering here – the Booneville Boys and Girls Club and the Booneville Human Development Center (Let’s face it: The clients at the BHDC have child-like love figured out).

What does it look like?

Why would Christ say we must be like a child to enter the kingdom? This is what I have gathered: Monday through Thursday, I spend my afternoons at the Boys and Girls Club. It is not unusual for me to get there and receive numerous hugs from some of the kids I have been helping with homework. By the end of the day I can almost guarantee to leave with at least one drawing that more than likely says, “I love you,” somewhere amongst the flowers and hearts and butterflies.

Why like a child?

Thursday was only my eighth day at the club. To these children, it doesn’t matter who I am or why I am here – really all I have done for them is help them with math or read with them and maybe played the occasional game.

And this is the same way God loves us. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we do. Shane Claiborne points this out in The Irresistible Revolution when recounting a discussion he had with a friend who said, “‘… Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didn’t see a prostitute. He just saw a child of God he was madly in love with,’” (page 266).

That right there is the secret – when we begin to see with the eyes of a child and love with the heart of a child, embracing our enemies and loving those who seem unlovable will be possible because all of our differences fade away and we can’t help but see each other as children of God.

So, there you have it. Now if only I can figure out how to become like a child… that part is still to come.

Week two from the eyes on an optimist

I like to believe I am an optimist, a glass-half-full kind of girl if you will. I say this because I was reading my fellow interns' week two blogs (or at least those ambitious enough to have theirs done by Saturday evening) and observing a common theme: frustration.

I’ve found in my past experiences that I prefer to focus on and remember joyful occurrences. That’s not to say that I don’t get frustrated and can’t get caught up in it. That’s also not to say that my fellow interns' frustrations are somehow less important than my good experiences. I am being purely selfish in my reflecting so that in a few months when I reread this blog, I will remember my second week fondly.

All that said, I realize that I have been truly blessed this week.

Having never experienced anything quite like the Boys and Girls Club, I had some nerves about how I would fare. As is becoming a recurring theme in my life, I realize I should just trust God and not worry. The club is a great place, and I can’t think of a “job” I’ve had where time passes so quickly and effortlessly. I’ve developed a joy for listening to kids learning to read. I’ve discovered that mostly they just want you to spend time with them – be it playing Candy Land, Foosball or something in between.

I also appreciate what an amazing place Booneville is. I am also realizing how amazingly small it is compared to anywhere I’ve been before. Where else besides Booneville, Arkansas, can I volunteer with a set of people in the morning and get to spend the afternoon with those same people’s children?

So if I had only one word to write in my memory for my second week as a GreaterWorks intern in the community of Booneville, it would be blessed. I am blessed for the people I’ve met; blessed for the plug-in griddle Katie found this morning so we could make pancakes (we will have a stove soon… I hope); blessed for what I will learn this year through the books I read and the teammates I am living with. I am blessed.

And with that, I think I will go get myself a glass half full of water.

Until next week,

Becca

Finding home far from it

“We’re sure you’re going to fall in love with the community in Booneville.” With those words my heart dropped just a little as I feigned my initial excitement over the phone with Dave Berg upon hearing my GreaterWorks placement.

That’s not to say that I didn’t expect it to some degree. There are a couple of things you should know to help make sense of the heart-dropping feelings and lack of surprise.

For my YouthWorks! summer I had hoped to work with high school students on a rural site. I ended up on a junior high city site. Prior to committing to GreaterWorks, I had anticipated moving back to the Cincinnati area. Somewhere in my heart of hearts I felt like my personal desires would be put on the back burner and I would end up as far away from what I called home as possible.

Shortly after arriving home from my YouthWorks! summer in Rapid City, S.D., I had MapQuest searched the distance from each GreaterWorks site (save Juarez since my Spanish skills do not exceed ‘Hola, como estas?’) to my house is Maineville, Ohio. All were under a six-hour drive but one – Booneville, Arkansas.

So I booked a flight and prepared to enter into a year of what I anticipated to be a hiatus from journalism far from home.

And after a week of training I found myself adjusting to a new home with a new kind of family – my teammates. Our community contact, Pastor Mark McDonald, and his family lovingly welcomed us into the community, and as our first week continued I began to truly believe Dave’s words. I could love a place almost thirteen hours from where I had spent most of my life.

Yet another surprise came in a meeting with the Boys and Girls Club where I will be spending a significant amount of time volunteering. Contrary to my initial thoughts, I will get to keep my journalism skills strong and in use over this time. They are hoping to put together a newsletter, and I am excited that I definitely have the skills to help them with it.

So any anxieties I might have had upon first knowing where I would be spending the better part of the next year of my life have pretty much faded away over our first week here in Booneville. If there is one thing I learned from my YouthWorks! summer it is that you can fall in love with a place you least expected to. And here I am with the opportunity to learn that lesson all over again.

There’s no telling what God will teach me over the coming months, but I am definitely looking forward to finding out.

God bless,

Becca