WIND AND FIRE

As of this Thursday, there are but two months to go in this eleven-month journey of the Nashville Epiphany Project. Come September 1, there will be some new Young Adult Volunteers moving into the Toolshed and the four of us will be moving on. An important part of this year’s experience we have participated in a program of vocational discernment, which is a program of exploring what God is calling us to do in our lives. A simple explanation might be the question “what am I going to do when I grow up?” A truthful answer to that question based on the principles we have used this year is “lots of things, probably.”

The four of us in NEP have used this year to learn more about the concept of vocation and to put these ideas to work in our own lives as we have tried to discern where we are called to be over the long term, and the short term. We have learned that most often, an accurate vision of the long term is not realistic, and making decisions based on what we feel called to in the moment is often the best strategy. So, that is what we have done in planning our lives as they will look come August 1 after this year of service is over.

Patrick and Chasie are still trying to discern what they will be doing. Patrick will be returning to Texas where his girlfriend Sarah is, and he is looking for an engineering job in Austin. Chasie and Tara will be staying here in Nashville. Chasie is looking for a job somewhere, while Tara has accepted a position at Conexión Americas, where she was working this year. She has spent the last several weeks weighing her options and now plans to defer her admission to Vanderbilt Divinity School until the fall of 2008. Chasie and Tara are looking for an apartment together.

And now: the news you’ve all been waiting for.

(drum roll…)

As for me, as has been typical for me, I am not following the well scripted plans that I had made for myself. I am doing something that I had never even thought of as a possibility a year ago. I will be staying here in Nashville and will continue my work at the Campus for Human Development. I initially asked about the possibility of staying in April. I got an immediate yes, which I was happy about, and I was given the opportunity to think about what role I’d like to take and create my own job description.

I will primarily be continuing the work I have been doing this year as a member of the education team. Those activities—staffing the support desk, running the education center, and offering basic hospitality—will take the majority of my time.

The other part of my job will be a new position for the Campus: for Spirituality Programming. In the job description I wrote, I included the following paragraph that described why I wanted to add this to what the Campus offers.

“The type of spirituality that seems to be most often presented to the homeless is a narrower version of religion than the one that underlies our core values: spirituality, love, hospitality, respect, hope, community and non-violence. Religion is often used as a way to earn help, and as a basis for feelings of moral superiority, dividing people into groups rather than uniting them into one body of people made in the image of the divine. The spirituality we express is born out of a belief common to many faiths that God is love. The expressions of our spirituality, though necessarily religious in nature, should always seek to include rather than exclude and offer unconditional love rather than narrow dogma.”

I will be starting a weekly (or possibly more frequent) “chapel” service. I might come up with a more creative name later. These brief services will give people a chance for people to reconnect spiritually. I want to use art, music, readings, prayer and silence to allow our homeless participants to express themselves spiritually. I plan to recruit other staff members and outside guests to lead these services whenever possible.

I’ll also be organizing a program for our interns, so they might have a chance to reflect more deeply on the work we do and the experiences we share. This was actually prompted by Jana, who was an intern along with me at the Campus this year, when she said that she wished we would have had more of an opportunity to explore the bigger issues, like “should I give a homeless person on the street money if they ask?” [Funny story—at this point in writing this entry, the four of us just went to eat at Chili’s on West End. As we were walking out, a presumably homeless guy asked the girls how much he could pay them for the boxes of carry out they were carrying. His strategy was excellent, since they both, as most somewhat nice people would do, just said “oh, you can just have them!” And then the guy asked me for a dollar or two so he could go in and buy a drink. I said “no, I don’t think so,” because I have answered the above question about whether or not to give people money on the streets for myself. Plus, if he was going to buy the food from the girls originally, why did he need money for a drink? Okay, back to the blog entry…]

Other plans I have for our spirituality programming include giving our participants an opportunity to serve other people. As an example of a way this has already been done, after Hurricane Katrina, our participants were able to use the points they accumulated from attending classes, which they would normally use in our store to buy something for themselves, to buy bottled water to be sent to the Gulf Coast. This would give people a sense of purpose and help break the cycle of using religion as a means to getting help (you have to go to services to spend the night at the Mission) or as a strategy to solve all of their problems (i.e. “if I become a Christian, then all my problems will be gone and I’ll quit drinking). Also, I am going to try and facilitate ways for participants to express their own senses of spirituality through art, music, and creativity. Giving them a voice to communicate with the outside world is also a goal, which might include something like a Campus blog or enhancing participation in the newsletter that we put out.

So, you might ask, have I given up on seminary? No. I am still on the “ordination track,” and I have my annual consultation with my presbytery’s Committee on Preparation for Ministry this coming weekend in Louisville. One thing I have learned through vocational discernment this year is to not try and look too far down the road. I still see theological education in my future. I don’t know whether that will be a year from now or 30 years from now. In the meantime, I will be discerning the next step on the journey. And for now, that next step is alongside the homeless in Nashville, Tennessee.

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At the end of this morning’s Pentecost worship service, Jim took a vial of oil that he had used during his sermon and offered people the chance to come forward and be anointed. Presbyterians don’t typically do much anointing, but we did a little this morning. As he marked the sign of the cross on our foreheads, he said “receive the Holy Spirit.” He also personalized each person’s anointing. To me, he said something like “May the Spirit of God be with you in your work at the Campus and through you may God touch those with whom you work.” May it be so.

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We remember that your church
was born in wind and fire,
not to sweep us heavenward
like a presumptuous tower,
but to guide us down
the dusty roads of this world
so that we may lift up the downcast,
heal the broken,
reconcile what is lost,
and bring peace amidst unrest.

-Garth House, Litanies for all Occasions