Having Fun Along the Way

In between curriculum, our online class, serving our neighbors and participating in our volunteer sites.... we like to enjoy each other in laughter and we also take time to enjoy the things we like. A lot of times, I forget about some of the things I like from back home, like my hobbies or what I like to listen to. 

Micheal, one of my housemates, and I are photo geeks, and for his birthday, he got some photo gear. So, we decided to play with his diffuser umbrella some! Here's our little experimentation with his umbrella and some general goofing off.

Ashley Gibbs being a cutie... courtesy of Micheal Mann. Isn't she adorable guys?

Micheal has a tendency to just keep firing away..... Me holding the flash umbrella.

I tried to make Schuyler my subject....

"WHAT'LL HAPPEN IF WE PUT IT UNDER HIS FACE?"

Meaningwhile... Ashliegh Bynum was making our dinner, minding her own business. Everyone cooks at our house. That was her dinner night.

This is kind of magical. Taking a picture of Micheal while he's holding the flash diffuser.

And of course, I like to explore the places I'm in.

The last few pictures are those that I took outside from our backyard just for funsies. I miss my camera a ridiculous amount, and so, it's nice and refreshing to be able to borrow one from my housemates every once in a while. I'm so excited in just being able to capture some images that'll soon become memories. In our hobbies and in our free time we can remember our uniqueness and some of the gifts we can offer to each others as individuals.

I hope that this finds you well.

From Philly,

~Rachel Virginia.

The Gift of Fellowship

          I think personally, I can forget that fellowship, whether it be in community or in friendships (or marriage, for you married folks), can be a great big gift from G-d. I think that remembering this is important to me, because it allows me to remember my G-d, from whom which all good gifts come from. When I forget that true friends and community are a result of G-d’s love alive in the world, I can often find myself functioning in these environments with thanklessness, without care, with a stony heart.

This year, I found myself in community with others, something that I had longed for for quite sometime. Here at The Treehouse (just kidding!*), my roommates and I are experiencing fellowship among each other. I’m learning that fellowship is a wonderful opportunity to learn about ourselves, what are gifts and weaknesses are, as well as it is a opportunity for us to be purified by the fire that is G-d’s love. Being in community with others is also an excellent and wonderful opportunity for us to learn what it means for us, as individuals to love other individuals, and to realize what type of functions we might serve in the body of Christ.

So on that note, I want to share about last night. Last night, we met at my city director’s (Nate) church, La Iglesia del Barrio, in order to share a covenant that all three teams located here in Philadelphia were encouraged to create with our respective teams. This covenant was designed to be a commitment that we’ve made to each other and to express what it would mean for us to carry this commitment together within our daily lives. This commitment that we’ve made to each other is about loving each other, and choosing to stay in on each other, even when times get tough and even when it seems hard to love and forgive. So as we all gathered together that night in the dimly lit sanctuary, my team shared our covenant with the other teams and the Mission Year alum who have come to visit us. My team leader, Ashliegh,  washed the hands of my housemates and myself in a bowl as a symbol of our commitment to serve one another. I found it to be a wonderful moment, reflective of how Christ put us before himself, with the joy and hope of it restoring relationship with us. Likewise, we want to love each other, even when it is hard, so we can continue on living reconciled to each other. These are some of wonders of being in commitment to those you share the gift of fellowship with.

Before we got our hands washed though, each of us in the sanctuary lit a candle and put it in a bowl of water so it could float among the other illuminated candles. Like illuminated candles, when placed into the water, we cause a ripple that affects everyone else; our lives are interconnected, even if we think they are not. And when the candles move closer to each other, the light that we carry each as individuals become greater -- by ourselves, we carry the Light of G-d, but when we are together, and the closer we become to one another, the brighter that Light shines. I really adored the symbolism of those candles.

I’m not sure what will come about with our time here. All I know is that I really like being with the people that the Lord has put me with, and I know that I don’t want to take advantage of and forget how precious this gift is. These people and the commitment that we’ve made to each other has been put into my life because He loves me. And so, I want to encourage others to look around them and see where beautiful committed relationships can be formed and sustained, whether it be marriage or friendship or family… for being purified in this way, by seeking reconciliation with those around us is the means in which we can become more loving and more holy. Let it be so.

courtesy of my roommate, Ashliegh Bynum

*P.S. Just kidding! Our house isn’t called the Tree House at all! Well... it hasn’t been approved by all my roommates anyway. We have the only two trees on our block. I just really want to call it the Tree House. So, technically… it’s pending. I just love when houses have names, especially sense we all have different last names here in our Southwest Philly home.

Give Me Dreams-- A Path to Keep Following

          A song usually has the tendency to bring me back to the time when I first heard it or to return to a stage when it was at the height of its rotation in my life. Every once in a while, I’ll look at my iTunes library or my iTunes, wanting to listen, knowing that somewhere deep inside, I miss the sounds and the lyrics that motivated me and drove me and became the theme songs of the seasons that I lived and now have  been left behind.

          Today I finally got myself to bring up my music library, and I found myself willing to be surprised, (otherwise, I’d probably be stuck on David Wimbush and the Collection, a band which has been on high rotation ever sense I saw them play at the Wild Goose festival a few months back in the summer. Such a joyful noise!) so I selected the rotation icon on the bottom of the screen and pressed play.  The first song to play brought back upon me a flood of memories, bringing me back to a season where I found myself pondering over the possible adventures in store for me. The song was “Please Don’t Go” by Barcelona, one that I would find myself sticking on repeat and would leave me lying on floors or sitting in the shadows of a barely lit room, wondering what was to become of my life, reflecting on all of the people I’ve never met that I found myself excited to meet, the places that I would journey to and the landscapes I would etch into my memory, also entertaining the possibility of being mutually in love; the first time I believed that I began to purposely, not hopelessly, dream.

by Rachel Virginia (c) 2010

          And so here I am with Mission Year, on my day of rest, wondering what to write about for a blog post. I could write along the lines of the extensive list of topics and issues of which a lot of us here have been discussing and having conversations over. I could begin by describing some of my encounters. However, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. It still feels somewhat early in my journey. I‘ve yet to know what to make of all that I‘ve been learning. And I’m not sure if I know what yet to make of the new relationships that have fallen into my life.

           I’m not even sure what to make of the discoveries I’ve been making about myself.  But I think, if anything, I wanted to start by announcing that I’m here.
Somehow, with all the dreaming and wonder and hoping and turn of events which I could have never imagined happening over the past one or two years… I’m here.

          I realized that I’m here, and I don’t know exactly where “here” is. But, I think “here” is  this. Here is now. Here is me being in Philly, with Mission Year, with the people around me with all that’s going on within me. And I do find myself reflecting upon place quite a lot. I’ve been thinking about how I find myself thinking of the day I‘m in, and all the business going on around me. And yet, now that I’m “here”, I wonder, what is my dream, the vision for my life, here in this place?  I’d like to think of myself  as present, but, sometimes, when I look back, I wonder if a lot of the times I’m finding myself distracted, too. Distracted with all that I must do and get done, and maybe all of the distractions have become obstacles that have resulted in being a little blurred in terms of direction.

I am here, but what is my vision for here? 

I want to live in the present, but what is my dream now that I find myself in this time, in this place, with the people around me and with all that’s welling up within me? 

I find myself longing for the music again, theme songs for this season, songs for the “here” I find myself wanting cadences and swells that  understand the cry of my heart, and songs that know the adventure of living. When I was younger, in my room, listening to the songs that encouraged my imagination to dance, I had visions. And although I didn't know exactly where I was going, I knew that what was welling up in my heart, the hopes and dreams, that they were from my Father in Heaven, because I believe that G-d has us yearn for more, to desire greater things in our hearts-- if our hearts truly are wellsprings of life, if they truly are compasses that lead us home-- because He cares for us. Those visions give me the strength to bring myself  “here“..

And so, on this Sabbath, I am deciding that it is important to rest, to do what rejuvenates you, to find what makes you come alive again. For me, it’s the songs, the colors, the visions that create something in me that encourages me to propel forward and to believe in a better life and a better world. I want to make time for that. I want to make time to uncloud and learn about the unique vision placed within me for this time of my life, to have a path to run down further.