Joplin

Let me tell you a little bit about Joplin.

Joplin, Missouri is located just shy of 300 miles southwest of St. Louis. Down in the lower left corner of the state by Kansas and Oklahoma. Population roughly 50,000. And on May 22, it was the location of what can be considered the worst tornado since we started keeping records about that kind of stuff. Touching down over a stretch of land a mile wide and seven miles long, the tornado demolished 9,000 homes and claimed 159 lives.

When I visited the town seven weeks after the disaster, I expected to see pretty much what I saw. Total devastation. Spaces that used to be homes but instead were wooden shreds. I didn't quite expect the trees, the haunting trees that were still standing but almost all of their leaves and branches were ripped off, leaving them bare and out of place in the full summer foliage. The feeling I got from the wreckage reminded me of Port-au-Prince six months after the quake or even the deathly stillness of the 9th Ward in New Orleans three years after Katrina. A terrible, terrible thing had happened and people simply needed a moment or two to collect themselves.

There were some incredible stories of heroes - some supernatural, some not. In the local Pizza Hut, everyone had been trying to cram in the walk-in freezer as the sirens were going off and there was enough room for all but one person. A brave man stepped out from behind the door and held the latch shut, keeping the others safe inside. He was the only casualty from that restaurant. In a house not far from there, a father threw himself on top of his two little daughters as the tornado passed by. After they all made it through the storm, the two girls said, "Daddy, Daddy, did you see the big butterfly that was holding us down during the tornado?"

Even in the midst of all the darkness and pain, there were angels. There was hope. There was a sense of acceptance and solidarity that can only come from such a shared experience.

My trip to Joplin, as heartbreaking and emotional as it was, will - I believe - be a pivotal moment in my story. It was there that I found freedom. Freedom from things that have stuck with me and drug me down over a period of years, freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from a past I could not shake.

Do you know how good freedom feels?

In my quest to figure out why I moved to St. Louis, I can say with confidence that Joplin, Missouri is pretty darn near the top of my list.

eastward wind

After reading several recently-acclaimed books in the past few months (you know, books an English major is supposed to read to, like, broaden her mind more), I found myself staring at my bookshelf. Now, my bookshelf at my parent's house - where most of my things still live - is super full of all kinds of good stuff to read. I only brought a smattering of my collection with me and it's interesting to muse over my choices four months after packing them up to bring all the way out here.

The Great Gatsby
Snow Falling on Cedars
several installments of both the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket series
my favorite Donald Miller books
Gone with the Wind (natch)
(French Rosetta Stone CDS - technically not books but sitting on that shelf nonetheless)

Add to them my recent finds from a local book fair:

Under the Tuscan Sun
The Joy Luck Club
Memoirs of a Geisha
an introductory French textbook

You know, stuff I'm supposed to read.

I don't know if it was the warm weather that got into me or my ever-present desire to escape, but I picked up Bergdorf Blondes, a bood about Park Avenue princesses. And I don't even want to admit how many Sex and the City reruns I've been watching.

Today I got called a "white girl from the northeast." As a rule, I am against labels and putting people - including myself - in boxes. But that is one box I will always fit. As people start to ask me what I'm going to do next year, I don't know what to tell them. I like it here. I never know what I want to do next in terms of jobs, but I like it here and I just got here, so I plan to stay for at least a little bit.

But I'm a white girl from the northeast, and it's hard to make real, satisfactory substitutions for everything the northeast offers. So will I stay here in the end or migrate back east? Or end up somewhere completely different for a little while, and then move on from there too? We shall see. The grand adventure of my life is not so far along - let's find what's in store.

One Year Ago

May 23, 2010 was a pretty big day in The Life of Amy Joy. I had spent the previous year completing all requirements for my Master’s degree, and on May 23 I got to walk across the stage in John Paul Jones Arena and take my diploma (largest diplomas in the Commonwealth of Virginia, what?). I said see-you-later to a lot of wonderful people I had gotten to know during my Charlottesville stint. I was getting ready to head to Haiti the next week, a trip I knew would change me but I did not know how much.

But let’s be honest. Something way more important than these things happened on May 23, 2010.

It was the series finale of LOST.

Yes, I am one of “those” people. Yes, I am writing about LOST a year later. Accept it and move on! I know that some people were not too happy with the show’s ending. Upon my first viewing, I too was in shock. At 11:30pm that night, the TV screen turned to white and there was no more Jack, Kate, Sawyer, or anyone else, and I thought, “What the h*** just happened?” I didn’t hate it or love it at first. The jury was very much still out because I didn’t know what to think.

Then I ruminated. I read some online commentaries. And I watched it again.

And I loved it.

The moral of the LOST story? That it’s not about what you do in your life that makes it so important. Sure, the setting is this magical, moving island and there are all these mysterious people trying to save the world by protecting whatever that light thing was in the center of the island. In my interpretation of the ending, the setting was simply a mechanism. The setting could have been anywhere and anything because it doesn’t matter what you do in life. What matters is the people with whom you spend your time. It’s the relationships that make a life mean something.

I could not agree more.

After leaving grad school and spending the month of June 2010 in a third world country, I had had it with the rat race. I cannot express the amount of relief I felt that I didn’t have a job to get to once returning from the Caribbean. That I had the option to take an “unreal” (as opposed to "real") job in a coffee shop and be able to spend the fall with my sister and new brother-in-law helping to plan their wedding was huge. That I could move to Missouri on blind faith and know that everything would be fine because I knew that the community here would be incredible is nothing short of the best thing ever.

It’s not about what I’m doing in life, it’s about the people I’m living life with.

If you’re reading this, that means you’re one of my people. Thank you for being so incredible and for being a blessing in my life. I appreciate it more than you will ever know. So when the world goes white just like the end of LOST, please know that whatever God wanted me to see or know about this life, He showed me through you.

I am thankful for...

- Carondelet park and it's trail, and how they are only a few blocks from my house
- elderly couples I pass while walking who say "Afternoon" to me - in those moments it feels like Jesus is giving me an afternoon greeting
- food stamps
- Reese's peanut butter eggs
- how food stamps will buy me Reese's peanut butter eggs
- dogs, specifically Effy and Cooper and Bruno
- jean jackets and sweaters and weather that accompanies those items of clothing
- Skype
- extreme weather (like hurricanes or tornadoes or wind storms. especially wind storms)
- my literacy
- how roughly 1980 years ago, Jesus died on the cross for you and me and was dead for three days and then ROSE AGAIN and that one act was more than enough to cover the sin for everyone who ever lived ever

Happy Birthday, Jeremy!

To the right is a recent photo of my brother, Jeremy Allen Bulgrien. He is currently finishing up his Master's Degree in Foreign Policy, isn't that cool?! Ok, so his birthday was a week and a half ago and I meant to make this video a week and a half ago but I kept forgetting. :( However, I figure people like to get presents anytime, even if they are a week and a half late. So here is a video of me giving the top ten reasons I'm glad Jeremy's my brother (and you should be jealous because he's a really great brother).

as fast as I can

I live with two other girls. One of them got engaged this past February 4th. The other one got engaged this past March 6th. After No. 2 came home with a ring, I made the joke that - in order to keep the pattern going - I would have to get engaged on April 8.

This was an unlikely task. I don't have a long-term boyfriend nor am I dating anyone. To start a relationship and get engaged within six weeks is possible, sure, but improbable. Well, ladies and gentlemen, April 8th was this past Friday and I am still ringless.

At my church, Pastor Noah talks  a lot about people getting married. Like, just about every Sunday. He talks about all the married people in the church and how they should love each other well and go make lots of babies. Then he talks about the single people and how they should get married so they can love each other well and make lots of babies. And I agree with him that it is God's plan for many of us single folk to get married and love each other well (and have lots of babies). Tonight when he talked about men loving their wives enough to buy them back massages, I thought "heck yeah! I want to be married so my husband can buy be a back massage!"

But that's just it, isn't it? There are some days that I am lonely and miss having a boyfriend and want to be dating someone attractive and smart and funny and nice (not too nice yet not a liar) but there are many more days that I think of marriage in terms of the financial benefits that would be open to me if I had a husband with a "real job." In those moments of indulgence, I know that I should want to be married to share my life with someone, not because I could travel on his dime. In those moments, I am thankful that I'm not married. If I were married right now, I wouldn't necessarily be able to do half the stuff I do. I wouldn't necessarily be able to jet off to Haiti for a month to live in and serve an orphanage. I wouldn't necessarily be able to think about getting a second Master's or even a PhD because, well, why not? I might be able to drop my entire life in Virginia and move to Missouri but I definitely wouldn't be able to spend the entire month of July and half of August lounging by the pool of my brother's apartment complex, recuperating from grad school and the stuff life threw at me.

As my friend Emily once said, it's a different type of adventure. Some people choose to stay put and get married. Some people move to Scotland and trek around Europe making the rest of us get crazy wanderlust. It's just a different type of adventure. So right now I am having this St. Louis adventure, and I think probably I'll get married sometime in the future, and that will be a different kind of adventure. If it happens that I start dating someone tomorrow and get married in a year, hey, that's cool, I'll just start that new adventure pretty soon.

 

On the days I am super frustrated about not being married now, I often think of a specific episode of How I Met Your Mother. I thought of it in church tonight and when I got home, it just happened to be on TV. It's that one in which Tony breaks up with Stella and she appeals to Ted to talk Tony back into marrying her (he was the one who talked Tony out of it, after all). Stella and Ted are sitting in the car after getting Barney out of jail and Ted, in a moment of vulnerability, spills to Stella that he wants what she and Tony (and Marshall and Lily) have. And Stella tells Ted that somewhere out there is a girl who will be that person for him, who will give Ted what Stella and Tony have. Stella reassures Ted that that girl is getting there as fast as she can.

I'm getting there as fast as I can.

an anecdote of my house being burglarized

Last night I came home from work to find some of our front windows smashed in.

It's a very surreal experience, having your own house broken into.

They hardly took anything. In fact, the only thing we have identified as missing is my monogrammed jewelry box that my mom gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Let me tell you, those robbers were not smart enough to realize that any girl with a plastic dresser does NOT have expensive jewelry.

The cop who was dispatched to respond to my phone call walked around the house for a while until the crime unit came (in the form of a stocky man named Harry who mumbled things that sounded hilarious) and dusted for finger prints. It was all very uneventful. Roomie/landlord was pretty pissed and had to get wood from Lowe's to cover the smashed stained glass windows. We all had plans to be productive that night and instead were relegated to waiting around for the police to finish and then eating everything in sight since it was 8:30pm and, seeing as how we hadn't eaten dinner, we were quite hungry.

Thankfully, those crazy robbers didn't take the TV or any computers or anything expensive like that. My guess is they got spooked when the alarm went nutso after the 30 second grace period and, as they fled the scene, the top of my jewelry box flew open to spill contents all over the front lawn (it took me a while to collect my things. Earring studs hide well in grass and dirt). Thankfully, my grandma's pair of glass mosaic earrings were one of the first I found in the grass. My fleur-de-lis earrings were neary (this is actually the second pair of fleur-de-lis earrings I have from New Orleans, the first pair having mysteriously disappeared in my parents' house).

Things that unfortunately went missing: assorted necklaces and earrings people have given to me after traveling to far-off places. My hieroglyph name cartouche from Egypt. The pearl necklace and earrings from my mother as well as the matching bracelet I wore to my sister's wedding. My Randolph-Macon class ring.

We have concluded that it was someone inexperienced, probably a couple of kids. This makes me really sad. And mad. It breaks my heart that we still live in a society where it is acceptable to teach children the art of breaking and entering so that they can steal people's memories.

Me and my roommates, we got lucky. We didn't lose much materialistically, and what we did lose is easily replaceable. But I think we all also lost our sense of safety. And that might take a while to get back.

everybody dies but not everybody lives

On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I volunteer at a local elementary school's morning reading program. Normally the drive is as you would expect: 7:15am, sort of light out, some traffic on the road, to-go coffee in the cupholder to aid in the process of fully waking up.

Last Wednesday was different.

There was still traffic on the road, still coffee for me to drink, still 7:15am, but there was a stillness. I remember it being warm enough outside that my car window was cracked to feel the morning air. I was driving northeast on Gravois when Nicki Minaj's "Moment 4 Life" came on the radio. I love Nicki Minaj. I love this song. And it was just then that I got to my favorite part of Gravois - when the arch emerges from behind that incredible church on the corner of Lynch. The whole downtown skyline in front of me was shrouded in fog. It was so thick I couldn't see the top of the arch.

"I wish that I could have this moment for life, for life, for life. 'Cause in this moment I just feel so alive, alive, alive."

It was a perfect moment, captured in my mind forever.

In that moment I thanked God for bringing me here because I love St. Louis.

Japan: In Memoriam

This is a photo of Taylor Anderson. She was found almost a week ago, one of the first United States citizens to be identified as a victim of the disaster in Japan.

I knew Taylor. Not well, but I knew her. We went to college together. She graduated the same year as me. I could have picked her out of a crowd and said, "Yeah, that's Taylor Anderson."

From the few conversations I had with her, she seemed like a real sweet girl.

As much as I cannot say that Taylor and I were close, I can say that some of the girls I am close with were close with her. Taylor was in the same sorority as many of my college friends, including my dear friend Virginia.

She shared cherished memories with the same people I share cherished memories.

She was a loved one of my loved ones.

CNN interviewed Virginia and some of my other friends about Taylor. Here is the article. The accompanying video is embedded below.



Here is an article from Randolph-Macon, the college Taylor and I went to.

I urge you to pray for her family during this difficult time. If you're not the praying kind, send your most loving thoughts out into the universe - God will hear those prayers, too.

Chicken Massacre

One of the awesome blessings with my current job is that on many Fridays, I get to work from home. I still typically get up around the same time as I do other weekday mornings but instead of getting dressed and leaving at 8:15, I simply lounge in my pjs and watch The Today Show for a little bit, then get down to work whilst sitting on my couch (still in my pjs, natch).

Today began the same as any other work-from-home Friday. Since it was nice out, I left the back door open so the dogs could go in and out of the house as they wished (for a little bit of a reference point, my roommate has two 90-pound dogs. They often can't make up their minds about whether they want to be indoors or out, so leaving the door open and giving them the option is the optimal way to handle their needs). It was a peaceful morning. I worked on a blog for the Mission: St. Louis website and drank coffee. I could hear the traffic go by on Grand, the faint train whistle, and the subtle squawk of the chickens next door.

Yes, the chickens next door.

Bruno

As I sat there quietly typing away, I came to the realization that over a period of several minutes, the normal chicken noises had changed into not-normal chicken noises. Now I know that Bruno, our big black dog, has a history of killing livestock. I rushed to the open back door and saw that, sure enough, Bruno was in the middle of the backyard with his face shoved into a mass of chicken carcass, feathers going everywhere. I made a loud exclamation of "OH MY GOSH" or "EWW GROSS" or "AUGHGHGH" or something like that and slammed the door shut so that no dog could drag any chicken bits into the house.

Cooper

A short while later I was upstairs when through the window I saw another chicken hanging out in our yard. There is a four-foot fence between our yard and the neighbor's, so I am not sure how these chickens got over the fence. This is the first time while I've been living here that Bruno has killed chickens, so while I'm sure that the chickens can fly over the fence if they want to, they don't often do that. I wonder what got into them today that they wanted to go traveling. So I saw this chicken and I thought, "Dude, chicken, you're gonna die." I didn't see the little guy get killed, but I am certain that Bruno took him out.

A few hours went by. I got around to taking a shower and finally felt like I could stomach some lunch (seeing chickens being killed doesn't really arouse my appetite). At about 2pm, I saw ANOTHER chicken that had gotten into our yard. Bruno was already in sight, stalking the crap outta that chicken. But this time I couldn't look away. I just couldn't. I had to watch as Bruno chomped down on the chicken. I could not stop watching as he casually pushed the chicken's body down with a large paw and broke the chicken's neck with his massive jaws. I managed to wrench my eyes away only when I saw the flesh start tearing.

*shudder* UGH. I am traumatized. I do not live on a farm. I live in a city. Unless I am going on a field trip to a farm or am watching Animal Planet, I am never mentally prepared to experience animals eating other animals, especially dogs that I live with eating live chickens! BLECH!

However, I will say that dogs do a good job of cleaning up after they eat. All that is left are three piles of feathers. No blood, no bones, just feathers. And two very full dogs.

This is the amount of feathers that come from one chicken.

My next blog: I'm contemplating going vegetarian again.

Fat Tuesday and the 40 Days After

ATTN: I have tremendous appreciation for Catholic traditions but I am not myself a Catholic. My Fat Tuesday/Lent observations follow no strict doctrine/rules/laws but since I have seen these specific ideas manifest as beneficial in my life, I usually choose to observe.

St. Louis has the second-largest Mardi Gras celebration in the United States, beaten only by New Orleans. In STL, this past Saturday was Mardi Gras Day. The neighborhood of Soulard was overtaken by all kinds of hullabaloo, none of which I experienced firsthand since I was hiding in my house in South City, away from the crowds of revelers.

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday (and the traditional Mardi Gras day), which I did choose to celebrate with some of the other STL VISTAS. I love to bake although my experience is limited - this was my first foray into using yeast/making dough. I decided to make the King Cake for the party. It took me about five hours on Monday night to complete the monster of a pastry, but in the end it was totally worth it.

Deliciousness ensued.

In my life, Fat Tuesday represents a day of indulgence before lent begins. It also represents a time period of making the decision to do something about things that I know get in the way of my relationship with God.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about "not wanting to miss it." Well, I have not turned off the TV. I know I need to because it's getting in the way of so many other, more important things. So for Lent 2011, I have given up TV reruns. Brand new episodes are still okay (so the Thursday night lineup is protected). Believe me - new episodes take up very little of my average TV watching for one week). I typically watch two hours of Bones a day. That lasts from 6-8pm. And then, since I'm already watching TV, I just sit around and watch whatever jenk is on from 8-9. Then I usually go to bed.

My whole evening? Wasted.

My relationship with God? On the back burner.

I came to St. Louis to give it all to God. I need to start acting more like it and doing more about it. Filling my evenings with so much mindlessness (esp TV shows that cause me to dream about murder) is doing nothing for my spiritual life except making it stagnate like standing water. So bye bye, Booth and Brennan. This is me moving forward towards my goal.

"real job"

It's my second week at my first-ever "real job" (although it's not technically a job - I am, in fact, a full-time volunteer). It's my first time working "real job" hours, anyway. The Monday-Friday, 8:30-4:30 grind. I realize I haven't had these hours very long and it might be a little early to say whether I love or hate my schedule, but as someone coming from school/restaurants, I'm not sure I can get down with it. I have no problem working 40 hours a week (if you know me personally, then you are most likely aware that I tend to over-commit myself on a regular basis). It's the transition to a repetitive, conformist schedule that is taking some getting used to.

This past Saturday, I took one heck of a Sabbath.

Sleeping until almost 11am, lounging in my pjs for several hours after that, I entertained the dogs and did almost nothing. I made some cookies, washed my sheets, and played catch-up with my read-the-Bible-in-a-year assignments - that was about it. I don't know what I even bothered changing clothes; I was only up for ~12 hours.

Sunday was better. I read a bunch of Eat, Pray, Love and then had an excellent Skype conversation with Friend Katie. I attended a training so I can start volunteering at one of the local elementary schools and help teach kids how to read. Church was good, as per usual. Thought-provoking. Sort of depressing (still in Ecclesiastes) but gave me a lot to think about.

So now I'm back at work. Day 12 of 365. Sitting in my chilly office. Staring at my to-do list. Listening to the Pandora chill/downtempo station through my headphones. Attempting to get myself acclimated to sitting down eight hours a day, five days a week. Wrapping my head around doing this for at least 51 more weeks. Trying to focus on the tasks as hand but instead pondering what the heck to do about next year.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.

my sentiments exactly

Shared from Dani's awesome photo blog. She shared it from someone too.

what if it all means something

This past week I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico for AmeriCorps VISTA training. For those of you unfamiliar with the AmeriCorps VISTA program, it's basically a domestic Peace Corps designed to fight poverty. VISTA training is meant to provide a context for the program and to motivate people before they go to their service location - all I can say is that it had the opposite effect on me. I left de-motivated, wondering what was the point of it all, and deeply missing Haiti.

I'm not trying to cheapen anyone else's experience of training. I am glad that there is such a program and hope that Congress votes to keep AmeriCorps as a line item in the budget. I'm just saying that when I heard one girl say that she was sad to leave because of the bonding experience she'd had with some people, I was confused. It had only been four days. Most people - including the girl speaking - had spent the three evenings out drinking. I didn't understand how this set of circumstances could add up to anything except an eagerness to go home. Please don't take this as a judgment. I'm certainly not against drinking or the community one could potentially build in four days. I simply had not had the same feeling of connection in New Mexico. When this girl talked about how she was a little sad, I immediately flashed back to June 31, 2010, when my Haiti team was huddled in the airport crying, praying for each other, and how I had actually refused to go home that night. I flashed back to switching my flight to the next day and going to the Atlanta Braves game, sleeping at a friend of a friend's house, and trying to cling to any time I had left with my team before we went our separate ways.

Albuquerque left me with a growing list of questions, questions I may have had before but now seem to be haunting me. How does my year of VISTA service fit with the type of community I had in Haiti? How does my new life in St. Louis connect with everything that came before? How do I balance wanting to stay here and move forward with how much I miss everyone back east? Even more so than that, how do I balance appreciating the here-and-now when I have always been a planner, trying to figure out what the heck comes next? What do I do when I read Katie's blog and think "Good grief, I miss the crap out of her. And Spain. And Italy. And traveling?" Is St. Louis a stepping stone or will I be here a while? Indeed, what is the point of it all? All for the glory of God, for sure, but enjoyment too. (And now that I'm sitting here, I'm realizing that my church's current sermon series on Ecclesiastes is bleeding all over this blog entry.) Am I enjoying myself as much as I could be? I was made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Am I enjoying God?

Are you?

Because if not, you and I should go think long and hard about what we would rather be doing.

About the Perpetual Struggle in Letting Go of Expectations

I did what I said I would - I moved to St. Louis. I moved to St. Louis because this is where I know God wants me to be and I want to follow Him no matter what. So about a month ago I packed up my car and left the east coast. Besides the unfortunate car transmission incident on the way through Ohio, my time here has been quite enjoyable. I have a nice house to live in, a comfortable bed to sleep in, space for all my stuff (which I am still increasingly feeling like is too much stuff). I've met great people. In Virginia - and I'm speaking generally here so if you're a Virginian, don't be offended - people are supposed to be southernly hospitable and nice but it often comes off as fake. People here are genuinely nice and not in-your-face about it, which I appreciate so so much. I've pretty much already found a church I'd like to invest in, at least a church that has welcomed me with open arms. It's been wonderful, just as I knew it would because whatever God has in mind for me will always be wonderful.

But I sort of feel like I'm missing it.

I think I'm feeling it more today because it's snowing (AGAIN) and so I am once again cooped up in the house all by myself, just like I have been since last Friday. Roommate #1 is in Europe. Roommate #2 is in Illinois. It's just me and the dogs. And I know I should be digging into the Word and praying and reading some Jesus lit, and I WANT to, but instead I find myself perpetually lying on the couch watching endless hours of "How I Met Your Mother" and "Bones" reruns. Even on days I do a lot of work, run errands, and do my daily Radical tasks, I get to 11pm and feel like I completely missed it. How am I helping others? I go to work and go straight home after because I only have enough money to do the absolute bare essentials right now (and I'm not complaining - just stating a fact. I chose this situation and am happy with my decision.) (Although now I feel convicted because even with my meager stipend, I still make more money than 80% of the world, which is OUTRAGEOUS and makes me really mad and sad.)

I think maybe I just answered my own bad feelings. I asked "how am I helping others?" and while I value helping other people more highly than just about everything else in life, that's not actually what my focus should be. I should be asking "how am I glorifying God and working to grow His Kingdom?"

The thought has been growing in my mind that the next 13 months especially (until the end of my VISTA service year in late February 2010) are working to prepare me for what is coming ahead. Being the planner that I am, I've started making plans concerning my VISTA situation. Most of these deal with finances and learning more about the nonprofit realm. That being said, God's plan for my next 13 months might be totally different than what I have planned. I don't want to take over God's plan and make it my plan, turning something holy and good into something sinful and self-worshiping (I've done this before - hello student affairs plans - and it clearly did not turn out well). I want to keep God's plan as God's plan. If He has other ideas for my life, then He has other ideas and they are always going to be WAAAAAY better than my ideas. He knows how I can glorify Him best in my poverty and baseness. And so I am again trying to let go of my expectations. I am again trying to be ready and open for all He has planned. I guess I should turn off the TV because

I don't want to miss this.

Be a Good Neighbor

By now, your New Year's resolution might be wearing off. In an attempt to give you a little more motivation and a resolution revision, here is a list of 50 ways to be a good neighbor. (This is also preempted by my review of David Platt's Radical. Go read it. Internalize it. Let it challenge and change your way of life.)


1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church's sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor's grass (or shovel their snow).
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid's family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes - and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor's too (they'll let you...really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who's cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grown your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say "I'm sorry" to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation - care by going fuel free for a week - ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don't get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and buy mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don't have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God's Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help you church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember than Jesus said he would meet you there (Matthew 25).

List shared from http://www.craiggross.com/post/171657321/goodneighbor.

An Anecdote about Getting to Missouri

Three days after returning from my most recent trip to Haiti (which was INCREDIBLE, more on that in later blog posts), I loaded up my car with my junk (once again) and drove drove drove across I-76 and I-70 to Missouri. It's about a 14 hour drive.

Hour six (roughly 2pm): central Ohio. My mom and I are cruising down the road, listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on audio book (I think we were at the part where Harry, Hermione, and Ron almost get caught by the Deatheaters when they apparate into Hogsmeade -  a pretty intense part! Although most of the book is pretty intense...). All of a sudden it feels like my car pops out of gear and revs real loud. Mind you, we're going 70mp and while there's not a lot of traffic, there are some other cars around. I try to get my little Hyundai back into 5th but it is just. not. working. I pull off to the side of the road and call AAA. I'm sort of freaking out at this point because I have no idea what's wrong with my car and there are trucks rushing by on the highway and the falling snow slowly, slowly covers my car so that I can't see anything.

Fast forward to my car being towed 40 miles to the nearest place that is open on a Saturday afternoon (apparently all of Ohio shuts down every weekend). My transmission is busted. No autoparts stores will be open until Monday, and then it will be several days after that before my car is ready to go. All my jenk is in my car - what do we do? Tell the auto shop to leave my car outside when they lock up for the day because we'll be back to empty out the car.

Since it's the weekend in Ohio, no rental car places are open except at airports, so my mom and I take an hour long taxi ride to the Columbus airport, get a rental car, and drive back to Zanesville. Pulling up to the now-closed auto shop, it appears they have locked my car in the garage. If you know me at all, this next part will come as no surprise. I start banging on the garage door really, really loud. Then I start banging on the shop door. If anyone is still there, they are sure as heck going to let us in.

It turns out someone was there. Hooray! We load up the rental car and I end up taking every single little thing out of my car just in case we don't go back for it. Mom and I are pretty tired at this point (it's about 10pm and we left at 7am), so we drive a little farther and then get a hotel, driving the rest of the way to St. Louis in the morning. My mom's plane from STL back to Philly was Monday afternoon, so we had to get her to Missouri by then.

So my car was stuck in central Ohio. Eight hours from St. Louis. Six hours from my parent's house. Not near anything with which I am familiar. But fixing a transmission is cheaper than getting a new car, so we get it fixed and all the while are brainstorming ways to get my Hyundai from Zanesville to St. Louis.

In the end, I took an overnight greyhound bus. In Europe, doing things like this is exotic and romantic. When I took the midnight train from Madrid to Paris, it was exciting because I was going from Madrid to Paris. Oooooo. This was decidedly not romantic. Or exotic. At all. However, this trip did provide me with excellent people-watching opportunities as well as a chance to practice my ability to sleep on a bus while sharing a pair of seats with a stranger.

After 10 hours on the greyhound, I got to Zanesville, retrieved my car (which I endearingly call Little Red Riding Hood), and drove back to St. Louis (all the while praying that LRRH will last me at least three more years, please God!). It was all very adventuresome and not anything I want to repeat. Ever.

So, yeah. I'm now a brand-new St. Louisan!

Happy New Year!

If I'm coming in a little late on all the New Years well-wishing, it's because I was in Haiti for the past week and the internet at RENMEN Foundation (www.renmenhaiti.org or check out the Facebook page) was spotty to the point that I didn't even try to do anything web-related except send a message my friend Tiffany who left for the World Race on Tuesday (http://tiffanyhandley.theworldrace.org/).

New Years: a time for reflection and resolve to do things differently in the New Year. I've never been big on New Year's resolutions myself although I admire people who make them. I am someone who likes to have a good time on New Year's Eve. During most of my post-high school life, my New Year's Eves have been spent in Norfolk with my sister and/or brother. House parties at Graydon, leaving just before midnight to go see my boyfriend-of-the-time to give him a kiss when the ball drops, great dinners out with friends. New Year's Eve 2009 was fun. We were at the club dancing it out but we all missed the countdown because the TV connection went out. The staff got it to work and we all got champagne and counted down and then confetti got everywhere, even in our glasses so we couldn't toast with our bubbly. Good times, good times.

This New Year's Eve, NYE 2010, was different and somewhat unexpected. Half of Team Uncaged ended up returning to RENMEN for the holidays. As there had been a huge, all-night party on the 30th, the 31st was pretty quiet. We, however, were of course going to stay up until midnight. We grabbed some snacks, an iPod & speakers, and headed to the roof where we had slept in June. We stood there in the dark and counted down, quietly saying "Happy New Year!" since there were sleeping children right on the other side of the wall. I turned on "Auld Lang Syne" and we each ate a peanut M&M and toasted with our long Nibs ( a gift from Canada via Melly). It seemed that none of our Haiti brothers and sisters were up to celebrate but then at 1am, they all gathered in the courtyard to do prayers. It's been chilly at night so they were all wrapped up in sheets for warmth, giving their gathering an ethereal feel. The kids' beautiful voices rose into the night, welcoming the New Year by praising God. Many kisses and wishes of "bon annee" followed prayer when we all headed for bed.

I think it was the best New Year's Eve I have ever had.

PS: In all of June and this trip, the only time I have ever gotten up early enough to take part in morning prayers was on January 4, my birthday. After prayers were over, my Haiti family sang me "Happy Birthday." Could there be a better start to your 25th year than 50 orphans singing to you? I submit that there cannot. It was so incredible, I cried.