Tasting the table, getting old, and dancing in the rain

Hello Loyal Followers,
   My journey through the world of non-profits and spiritually intentional community continues. I am spending my work days coordinating academic work for students who have been suspended from school, playing basketball and building relationships with them, and promoting and doing marketing work for the YMCA's Darkness to Light child sexual abuse prevention initiative (check out my revamping of the website). Currently, our Fridays are spent in servant leadership class, which I have found to be a great form of personal exploration and dissection of what it means to be a leader who is also a servant (in the mold of a fella you may know as Jesus- foot washing still to come). While I am still somewhat working to find my work niche, I am definitely enjoying the work, and accomplishing my goal of learning more about the inner workings of a non-profit organization. It is also interesting to, in addition to the 2 specific Y programs I am working for, be a part of the larger YMCA. Y's have a lot to offer to the community, something I didn't see or realize in the Swim and Gym Y that we are members of in Birmingham.
    My second goal during my time here (for those not paying attention, the first was learning about non-profit management) is to do some spiritual expansion, exploring new spiritual practices and attempting to learn more about other faith traditions and congregations. I was reading Eboo Patel's (founder of the Interfaith Youth Corps) book recently and a quote seemed to define my searching. "The tradition you are born into is a home. Open the doors and let the winds of other traditions blow through and bring their unique oxygen." So far, this is going splendidly. Thus far, I have attended worship services that were Presbyterian, Church of the Brethren, American Baptist, Unitarian Universalist, United Church of Christ, Quaker, Episcopal (traditional and bluegrass mass), non-denominational, and interfaith (International Day of Prayer for Peace). I am gaining a great respect for the traditions and practices that each congregation holds dear, and the spiritual practices that can be gained and learned from in each. This past Sunday was World Communion Sunday, and I heard one of my favorite sermons ever at Binkley Baptist Church. The preacher spoke of an experience with a Catholic-priest friend, who not only invited him to participate in the Eucharist with him, but encouraged him to kiss the table before hand. As he discussed the true Communion and community of believers that World Communion Sunday reminds us of, we were encouraged to think back on all the different communities of believers with whom we had worshiped over the years. While many were likely thinking of congregations and groups abroad, my experiences were all in the United States, but wow were they diverse. I thought back on a church in an old bowling alley, an outdoor worship service at the 4-H center, the traditional worship of my upbringing, the Quaker worship of silence, a Miami that, had our group of college mission trippers not showed up, would have consisted only of those leading the service, the F219 service and participants that grew so close to my heart over my time in Birmingham, and the many church congregations I have seen in my travels over the last 2 years. I also thought back on worship services where I hadn't been comfortable; congregations or worship styles where I didn't fit in, didn't enjoy it, or disagreed theologically. But as the Words of Institution were given and we were encouraged to kiss and taste the table of these congregations all around the world, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the unity and Communion that we were a part of. A communion of believers, of churches, of spiritual communities, of searchers and of servants, so different in so many ways, but all coming together on that day to celebrate our commonalities and to cherish the value of each and every time that two or three are gathered around the table of Christ, humbled to be broken and then fed and re-energized for the journey.

Bullet time!

• As I sat in the office of a colleague today going over a marketing scheme, I realized that I am becoming one of those people who will grow old and get left behind by the ever-changing technology. That's a harsh reality at 23. As I sat listening to a hipster woman and a trending Asian fellow on a video blog discuss the release of the new Iphone as Tim Cook and company were revealing it, I  realized that I had little to no idea what any of the features they were discussing entailed. And honestly, I didn't care. Some day, technology leaves each of us behind and we grumble about the newfangled doodads and thingamajigs. Today is my day. Touch screens, 3D movies, 4S, tracking devices. Grumble, grumble, grumble.
• My new favorite quote, "It's not about how you weather the storms, its about how you dance in the rain."
• Food is a difficult thing to agree on amongst 8 people.
• Check out Mipsomusic.com, home of the Mipso Trio. Chapel Hill band I have seen a couple times in the last couple of weeks. Good stuff if you are into the folky Avett Bros/Civil Wars kind of stuff, with a bit more of a bluegrassy twang.
• "Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to hope." - Paul Hawken
• A quote from our Boomerang promotional material that is intriguing for the situation that our kids are in, but also appropriate for those in pretty much any stage in their lives. "A bend in the road isn't the end of the road, unless you don't make the turn."
• If you want to know more, ask in the comments.

Knowledge dropped.

Where I'm From

A couple weeks ago, we did a workshop on creative writing. One of the prompts for the exercise came from a poem by George Lyon entitled "Where I'm From," and we were charged to write our own version. Here is where I'm from:

I'm from "I reckon" and "over yonder"
I'm from Nana tea and Garga's cottage
I'm from water skiing and swimmin' in the crick
I'm from World War 2, Chemical Leamon, and Singer sewing machines; teachers, party stores, farmers, physical therapy, GUP, and landscaping
I'm from the maize and blue Michigan Wolverines, tomahawk choppin' Atlanta Braves, the country roads of Tennessee, dippin' snuff and singin in the church choir.
I come from softball and cub scouts, conversion vans and a Geo Prism
Raised on a Nana special and Sun Drop, an RC Cola and a moon pie, ice cream from the General Store.
I'm from low water bridges, family reunions, and a coon skin hat; bare feet and capture the flag; graham crackers and apple juice; horse drawn buggies and Dutch Wonderland.
I'm from the marching band and the bluegrass band, tree houses, fishing, baseball cards, and red dirt on everything I own.
I'm from trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. From "Be prepared" to "Do a good turn daily."
I'm from rocking on a porch swing, feeding the birds, and playing cards until the sounds of croaking frogs and crashing waves lull the darkness into sleep.

Drewbie does the Johnson Intern Program

The blog is back by popular demand for another year of my life. This year, in addition to my personal bloggings, I am taking the suggestion of my buddy AuburnTyler and adding a football blog to my repertoire to keep up my college football musings. Check that out at drewbiesnacksfootball.blogspot.com. A week 1 review will be posted by Monday each week.

This year, I am participating in the Johnson Intern Program. I am living in a spiritually intentional community with 7 other 22-25 year old college grads from around the country. Each of us works Monday through Thursday with a non-profit organization in the Chapel Hill/Durham/Carrboro, North Carolina area and brings our experiences back to the community. On Fridays this fall, we are participating in a servant leadership class. During the spring, we will be using our experiences and observations to create, plan, and carry out a community project for which we will write a grant and do all the leg work. Here are the roomies! We will seek to follow the five values of communion, co-creation, compassion, collaboration, and character in their purest and simplest forms.

My job placement is with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA's Boomerang and Darkness to Light programs. Boomerang is a community based alternative to suspension program for middle and high school students in Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools. Boomerang provides a supportive environment for students who are short term suspended, advocates for youth in the community, and provides resiliency based training to the community. Students participating in Boomerang complete a substance abuse assessment tool, take part in a strengths assessment process, have the opportunity to stay on pace with their school work, engage in skill building and information group sessions, and are provided the space to voice their goals to staff, parents/guardians and school representatives. At Boomerang, I will serving as an assistant to the academic director, communicating with teachers and schools and helping the students to progress academically while they are not at school.

The YMCA's Darkness to Light initiative is a part of a larger movement that seeks to provide education about the prevention of child sexual abuse. The goal for the program is to have 7,300 members of our community trained in the Stewards of Children Program in the next five years. The idea is that information is spread exponentially, and that each person who is trained will affect those around them, and thus help to extend safety all throughout the community. I will be trained next week in Stewards of Children and then be trained as a facilitator to be able to train others. Additionally I will be working to create awareness for the program and to recruit and support community partners in expanding the program and training members.

Sorry there isn't much wit in this post. Like Joe Friday, just the facts here. Post your questions in the comments and follow drewbiesnacksfootball.blogspot.com if Bobby Boucher's mother's version of the devil is appealing to you.

Americorps Wrap-Up (4 months later)

Soooo, kind of fell off on the blogging for the end of my Americorps term, but here is a quick wrap up (bullet format since you probably don't care this far after the fact):

• The team spent 10 long, exhausting, and frequently cold weeks in Memphis working on the Arkwings property and cutting privet (an invasive species-think kudzu) off an isthmus into an oxbow lake that would be used as a natural area with picnic tables and such. This was a long and arduous task that took a chunk out of team moral. While in Memphis however, we were able to see lots of cool sites including Graceland, the Rock and Soul Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum, the Peabody Hotel, and the Memphis zoo.
• After 10ish days of transition, River 5 headed to Greensboro, North Carolina to work with Habitat for Humanity. We were to spend the last 6 weeks of our time doing rehabilitation on homes that Habitat had bought to fix up or old Habitat homes that needed weatherization upgrades to help the families decrease utility bills. HFH Greensboro was an awesome organization with awesome people who treated us great. Unfortunately, Mother Nature did not allow us to fulfill our full 6 weeks.
• When a huge tornado went through rural Bertie County, North Carolina on April 17th, our team was called to action. We packed up our belongings and headed to the small towns of Windsor, Askewville, and Colerain to provide relief. We spent most of our time simply helping people sort through the rubble and destruction to find the few belongings that could be salvaged and then move all of the rest to the road so that they could start over. These were long days (12 hours generally), but very rewarding. It was amazing to be able to help people in such an immediate time of need and for them to invite us into their lives at such a tough time. The attitudes were equally incredible, with gratitude and a renewed sense of purpose and enthusiasm for life the most common. We spent Easter Sunday with the Red Cross, going door to door making sure that everyone's needs had been met. A quite interesting way to spend Easter (a sermon is already written from this experience that will be preached on an Easter Sunday sometime in the future). We finished our time in Bertie County by working to overhaul the organization in a large donation warehouse so that things could be sent out to survivors in an orderly manner and so that everyone could get what they needed. After 11 days, we headed back to Greensboro to return to Habitat...
• But not for long. After 2 days back on the job, we were called to Tuscaloosa, AL to aid with the recovery process there. This was very important to me because this tornado had hit so close to home. I was glad to be able to go to T-town to help. We spent almost our entire time in Tuscaloosa working with the Holt Relief Center, a makeshift center set up in the devastated Holt Community. A family had the center up shortly after the tornado in half of an auto body shop and the center expanded from there. While we were there, the center expanded to include a circus sized tent for clothing, a Salvation Army food truck, and an extension to the roof to allow for more room. Our center became a center of activity and a key resource for all of Tuscaloosa as the recovery process continued and other, short-term distribution centers closed up. We spent about two weeks in Tuscaloosa before heading back to Vicksburg for the end of our year and graduation.
• On May 26, 2011, Americorps Class XVII of the Southern Region graduated. Each corps member had completed 1700 hours of service and 80 independent hours. Many received President's Volunteer Service Awards and Congressional Awards.
• Looking back, I am able to appreciate this experience so much more than I did as it was going on. Never again will I get the chance to be around 140 people giving a year of their life to serve communities so wholeheartedly. It was an incredible opportunity and I met so many incredible people, both within the corps and within the communities we served.
• An update that is actually time relevant is forthcoming. Stay tuned.

Clever title about Memphis

We start Round Three eight members strong. Joe and Dianca are no longer with us. We miss them a ton, but we are pressing on and ready to do great things for the city of Memphis. Memphis is one of the Americorps NCCC target cities for the Southern Region. It is a city with a deep history, great culture, and great music, but also a lot of problems. Racial tensions during and after the Civil Rights Movement and a de-facto segregation of city and suburbs have left the city with a depleted downtown area, no city center, a deep housing crisis (preceding the national crisis), and a shoddy education system. And we are charged with fixing these problems, or at least planning some seeds. This round, we will be working with two organizations. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we will be working with the Wolf River Conservancy, an organization seeking to preserve the Wolf River Corridor which runs from the Mississippi River, through downtown Memphis, and into the suburbs to the east. The urban portion of the river was channelized years ago and the river is struggling to recover. One awesome project that the Conservancy and other organizations have been working on for several years and will continue to work on is what is known as a greenway. This is a hiking/walking/running/biking area along the side of the river that is protected and provides not only great scenery for the city, but a viable exercise area for a city plagued by the effects of poor eating habits and lack of exercise. I look forward to doing some erosion prevention, river cleanup, and trail work with Wolf River, along with hopefully being able to spend some time on the river. After looking at some of the things that the Conservancy is doing and seeing tons of the pictures of the river, I am inspired to get back to spending more time in the woods, which I didn’t do as much as I would have liked to during my college years, after spending almost one weekend a month camping during my scouting days.

Our Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays will be spent working with the Arkwings organization on whose property we will also be living. Arkwings is a retreat property and an organization that focuses on the betterment of the mind, body, and spirit. I have yet to get a firm grasp on exactly what Arkwings main mission is- in fact they seem to have their hands in all kinds of work. What I do know is that we will be working for the betterment of the community of Frayser, a suburb north of Memphis. We will be working to prepare the property for future NCCC teams (this is Arkwings’s first time as a project sponsor), doing a reading program for 4^th and 5^th graders on Saturday mornings, working with the Arkwings youth program for underprivileged students, and working on a barn where the organization is hoping to host an offshoot of the Harlem Dance School. I look forward to working with Arkwings and seeing what we can do to get things moving in a positive direction is Frayser.

We won’t have internet for a while, so I am writing my blogs and then posting them when we get access. Thus the sudden explosion of blogage. Enjoy.

National Champions!!!

I began my Americorps term attempting to maintain not only my personal blog, but also a blog on Auburn football which I had begun last year for a friend’s website. As my personal blog dwindled, so also did my Cover2Sports blog. So, now you get to read my football recap in Drewbiesnacks form. What a year I chose to leave Auburn University! I was lucky enough to make it to one game this season- the greatest Iron Bowl ever. But wow, did I miss the greatest season of football I can imagine by one year. Many saw big things from this Auburn team before the season started, but few imagined this amazing a season. Six months ago, we had no idea how amazing Cameron Newton would be and how big an influence his presence would have on this team. Yes, there were lots of distractions, but for a guy my age, he did a phenomenal job of keeping poise, focus, and humility amidst a barrage of pointed and vicious media attention. But this season wasn’t all about Cameron Newton or Nick Fairley. Yes, they were incredible talents, leaders, and emotional forces, but this was about a senior class that had been through a gauntlet of ups, downs, coaching changes, and learning curves, and emerged as an outstanding group of leaders poised to take on challenges, face big deficits without losing faith, and persevere even when trailing seven times in the second half to emerge undefeated national champions. Many of these guys will be forgotten by a history that will remember Newton, Fairley, Wes Byrum’s kick, and Michael Dyer’s Oregon Duck chair. Much of the credit for this team’s success, however, must go to guys like Ziemba, Pugh, Berry, and Isom- an offensive line that put in more than its share of snaps and deserves way more credit than it will ever get. How about Zach Clayton, Zac Etheridge, and Aairon Savage? Three guys who missed significant time to injury during their Auburn careers but put in key time mentoring young players and helping Auburn develop the depth that it had missed so much in recent years. And don’t forget Clayton’s presence on the field. Fairley got a lot of credit, but Clayton was a dominant force at times. And what can be said about Kodi Burns? The former quarterback who moved to wide receiver and made himself into one of the best blocking wideouts in the country as well as a threat to catch the ball in key situations. It is the dedication and sacrifice of guys like Burns that take a team from good to great- the desire to do what it takes to make the team better while forgoing selfish desires. Credit the Auburn coaches for this type of development, not only in Burns, but in many members of the team. The “Auburn Family” line is not just lip service, as it may have been under previous regimes. These coaches have taken a personal investment in the lives of their players, dedicated themselves to Auburn (as evidenced by Gus Malzahn and Jeff Grimes turning down more money in other places to stay and get things done at Auburn), and made a huge impact on the field as well as off. I would have counted myself among the skeptical when Gene Chizik was given the job more than two years ago, but also encouraged people to wait and see who he surrounded himself with. Once he hired a staff that included some of the most highly respected men in the business, I knew that special things were in store. I guess I am a genius. War Damn Eagle!

Guess whose back? Back again. Drewbie’s back. Tell a friend.

It’s been far too long. In fact, a whole round has passed since the last blog. Sorry, life gets in the way. I was told recently that the readers just want the info, they don’t care about the presentation and how much thought I put into the wittiness and presentation of it all. Well, that’s not how I roll, so you will just have to be patient with the updates. This post will be a recap and will be followed shortly by an outlaying of the current proceedings. The team spent the half of October, all of November, and a large portion of December along the Mississippi Gulf Coast working with Habitat for Humanity. We worked in the cities of Ocean Springs (where we lived), Pascagoula, Pass Christian, Gulfport, and Biloxi. The beginning of our time was painful boring if we are being completely honest. We spent a lot of time doing what is known as punch list work. This type of work includes caulking, touch up paint, cleaning, and fixing minor problems. In short, it is all the things that you probably would not notice upon initially walking into a house to purchase it, but might annoy you upon further inspection. Our team became experts at taking a house that was completed but lacking in a few areas and turning it into a home ready to be showcased for a homeowner. While the transformations could be quite impressive, the satisfaction was not near as strong as we had seen at SBP for one simple reason: no one was moving into these houses. This fact gave the greatest contribution to the frustrations of the team during the first portion of the round. Habitat for Humanity homeowners must 1) have a job, 2) make under a certain amount of money, and 3) put in a large number of volunteer hours with Habitat. The current state of the Mississippi Coast, which has rebounded much quicker than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, is such that very few families qualify for both of the first two categories. The families who are in need of homes rarely have the necessary steady source of income required to get a home. As a result, many of the homes that are being completed have no owners to move into them. The result is a lack of new builds and lots of homes sitting empty for longer than expected. HFHMGC is working to remedy this by raising the maximum amount that people can make, but until the job market picks back up, it will make for an interesting situation for the organization and those for whom the need for housing is greatest.

Our work began to pick up during the second half of the round, as we began to work on a huge deck which connected 17 MEMA cottages. This was a project that really intrigued me because of what it meant for the community. Most importantly, it meant community. The goal for the project was to bring artists and artisans together in an artists’ village to begin to bring culture back to the city of Pascagoula. The idea of these people living together and sharing their skills, talents, and lives with one another and with the community was and continues to be very intriguing to me. Our work with this project was largely in putting the different railing systems up around the deck. We learned how to build wooden hand rails, run pipe and wire rails, and meet the building codes associated with each. In addition, we stained the deck and did some cleanup and landscaping around the exterior. This project was a great way to learn while on the job, thanks in large part to our supervisor Mark, who made sure that we not only learned how to do the things we were doing, but why we were doing them.

Finally, during the last week of our time on the coast, we got to do work on a new build, putting up the framing for a house, which is considerably more difficult on the coast, where all the new homes are built on stilts. It was cool to be able to see the detail that went into making sure everything was properly aligned at these beginning stages and to have the process of creating a home come full circle. Our time on the coast concluded on December 15^th with a bowling party with the whole Habitat staff, before we headed back to campus for a week and then home for winter break.