It would be easy for us to simply fill up a summer with meaningless activity, but I believe that the summers are meant for healing, growing, and preparing for what is ahead. May the Spirit be in all that we do.
This how my friend Chloe, who works for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, closed a recent e-mail message. It made me think about my own perceptions of summer, especially recently, as heat and humidity levels have been almost beyond bearable. A friend recently confided, "I feel guilty for wanting summer to be over already. We're not even halfway through July, but this weather is getting on my nerves!"
Heat, humidity, air conditioning and global warming aside, I can relate to this sentiment. Summer is not my favorite season, but as with all seasons, it has its place. There is a more relaxed feel, which I like. Even though I am no longer intrinsically tied to an academic calendar, this can still be felt in other areas.
TV schedules: reruns.
Vacation schedules: it's not likely that the office will be at full capacity again until after Labor Day.
Work schedules: not so much. In some ways, I feel like my workload becomes a little heavier over the summer, as we in CCO headquarters work to gather and update information, reflecting which staff have departed, which staff are coming on board, whose job titles have changed, and so on. Lots of transition. My world is all about Web updates this month.
I am looking forward to my own vacation getaways, coming up soon. This weekend, it's a long-awaited family reunion, for which I only have to travel 40 miles or so. Over the next several weeks, I'll be driving to eastern Pennsylvania, western Virginia (not to be confused with West Virginia), and western New York to spend time with different groups of friends. As relaxing and enjoyable as those times will be, they will undoubtedly be tiring as well. All that driving!
I believe that the summers are meant for healing, growing, and preparing for what is ahead.
It seems to me that it takes a bit of intentionality for the healing, growing and preparing to take place. I find myself longing for sweater weather, if not for shorter days. Maybe it's because I was born in September that I love that month so much, with its paradoxical mixture of new beginnings and returns to comforting routine.
Perhaps I should resist living for the future long enough to allow space to heal, grow and prepare.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
A Green Party at the White House
My life changed when I attended a green party at the white house. Anyway, it started to change.
It was September 1984, the end of the first week of my freshman year at Allegheny College. Karen, a senior and my SOA (that is, Student Orientation Advisor), asked me if I wanted to go with her to "a green party at the white house." It went without saying that the "white house" to which she referred was not the White House, Meadville, Pennsylvania being a good distance from Washington DC.
It had already been a week of new experiences. First there was the matriculation ceremony and residence hall bonding of my first day of college — and the tearful farewell to my parents. (I was okay until I had to hug my mother goodbye.) Then there were meetings with my new faculty advisor and the chaos of registering for my first term of classes. There were mixers between the freshman women of third-floor Walker Annex and the freshman guys of first-floor Edwards, complete with flashbacks to youth group ice-breakers. We actually lined up, boy-girl-boy-girl, and passed an orange from one end of the line to the other, tucking it between our chins and our necks — no hands allowed. And who can forget the Video Dance where I won a Madonna LP (yep — this was the pre-compact disc era), featuring favorites like "Holiday" and "Lucky Star" and "Borderline"? (I gave that record away within the week. It skipped.)
It's possible that the "Freshman Teas" happened that week as well. That's when all of the first-year women were escorted in groups, by residence hall floor, from one fraternity house to the next. We were all dressed up, and the brothers from one of the fraternities even presented each of us with a single red rose. Some of us were naïve enough to believe that this was the kind of chivalry we could expect all the time. Most of us had been clued in by upperclasswomen as to what was really going on. The "meat market" had begun.
Anyway, when Karen issued her invitation, I was in my first-week-of-freshman-year adventuresome mode. I had no idea who lived at "the white house" and hadn't a clue as to what a "green party" might be. (In 1984, Ralph Nader's political aspirations were unknown — at least, to me.) But I rounded up a few friends from my dorm and off we went.
It turned out that a few guys that Karen knew lived in the white house, a college-owned building which was white (go figure) and which was used as residence hall overflow. These guys — Kevin and Carl and Tim — happened to be student leaders of something called "ACO." ACO was a student organization which met every Friday evening, and Karen proudly told me that she had never missed a meeting. I eventually discovered that ACO stood for Allegheny Christian Outreach.
The living room of the white house was crowded with students, most of whom I had not yet met and all of whom were very friendly. Many of them were dressed in varying shades of green, and objects were strategically placed around the room — on the coffee table, the mantel, the floor — which were also green. A bottle of Scope® mouthwash, a comb, a bowl of M&Ms®. Eventually, between the so-what's-your-name, where-are-you-from, have-you-picked-a-major-yet threads that we freshmen were getting a little weary of, someone swooped in with Styrofoam bowls and gallons of (green) mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Then the door flew open and a man wearing bright plaid golf pants and a grass-green blazer appeared in the archway. He was older than the rest of us, and he was very colorful — both figuratively and literally. "Rock and roll!" was a refrain that punctuated most of his conversations, that night and throughout the year. He worked the room like a politician, making a comedic welcoming speech and shaking hands with all of us — those he knew and those he didn't. His name, I learned later, was Arlan Koppendrayer, and he was a campus minister; worked for some organization called the Coalition for Christian Outreach. But I didn't put that together until much later. For weeks, my friends and I simply referred to him as "the rock and roll guy."
That's pretty much all I remember about the green party at the white house. And to be honest, that event in and of itself was not particularly life-changing. In fact, I'm not sure it even made it into my journal at the time.
I remember it now because it's September. The back-to-school buzz is contagious, even when I'm not going back to school. I drove through Pitt's campus last week and saw the boxes and old furniture stacked up on the curbs. It's hard not to reminisce about what it was like to be a college student — half a lifetime ago!
And it's hard not to be grateful to the senior who took me under her wing and invited me to an event that I'd never have sought out on my own. That weird little party provided me with an entrée into a fellowship of people who ended up having a profound effect on my life — and many of them remain an important part of my life today. Those students encouraged me to grow deeper into a faith that I barely knew I had. They nurtured leadership abilities in me that were as yet untapped. They allowed themselves to be used by God, and God eventually called me into a field of work that I didn't know was an option when I first set foot on Allegheny's campus.
Thanks, Karen!
This article was originally published in September 2002. Copyright Coalition for Christian Outreach, 2002.
It was September 1984, the end of the first week of my freshman year at Allegheny College. Karen, a senior and my SOA (that is, Student Orientation Advisor), asked me if I wanted to go with her to "a green party at the white house." It went without saying that the "white house" to which she referred was not the White House, Meadville, Pennsylvania being a good distance from Washington DC.
It had already been a week of new experiences. First there was the matriculation ceremony and residence hall bonding of my first day of college — and the tearful farewell to my parents. (I was okay until I had to hug my mother goodbye.) Then there were meetings with my new faculty advisor and the chaos of registering for my first term of classes. There were mixers between the freshman women of third-floor Walker Annex and the freshman guys of first-floor Edwards, complete with flashbacks to youth group ice-breakers. We actually lined up, boy-girl-boy-girl, and passed an orange from one end of the line to the other, tucking it between our chins and our necks — no hands allowed. And who can forget the Video Dance where I won a Madonna LP (yep — this was the pre-compact disc era), featuring favorites like "Holiday" and "Lucky Star" and "Borderline"? (I gave that record away within the week. It skipped.)
It's possible that the "Freshman Teas" happened that week as well. That's when all of the first-year women were escorted in groups, by residence hall floor, from one fraternity house to the next. We were all dressed up, and the brothers from one of the fraternities even presented each of us with a single red rose. Some of us were naïve enough to believe that this was the kind of chivalry we could expect all the time. Most of us had been clued in by upperclasswomen as to what was really going on. The "meat market" had begun.
Anyway, when Karen issued her invitation, I was in my first-week-of-freshman-year adventuresome mode. I had no idea who lived at "the white house" and hadn't a clue as to what a "green party" might be. (In 1984, Ralph Nader's political aspirations were unknown — at least, to me.) But I rounded up a few friends from my dorm and off we went.
It turned out that a few guys that Karen knew lived in the white house, a college-owned building which was white (go figure) and which was used as residence hall overflow. These guys — Kevin and Carl and Tim — happened to be student leaders of something called "ACO." ACO was a student organization which met every Friday evening, and Karen proudly told me that she had never missed a meeting. I eventually discovered that ACO stood for Allegheny Christian Outreach.
The living room of the white house was crowded with students, most of whom I had not yet met and all of whom were very friendly. Many of them were dressed in varying shades of green, and objects were strategically placed around the room — on the coffee table, the mantel, the floor — which were also green. A bottle of Scope® mouthwash, a comb, a bowl of M&Ms®. Eventually, between the so-what's-your-name, where-are-you-from, have-you-picked-a-major-yet threads that we freshmen were getting a little weary of, someone swooped in with Styrofoam bowls and gallons of (green) mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Then the door flew open and a man wearing bright plaid golf pants and a grass-green blazer appeared in the archway. He was older than the rest of us, and he was very colorful — both figuratively and literally. "Rock and roll!" was a refrain that punctuated most of his conversations, that night and throughout the year. He worked the room like a politician, making a comedic welcoming speech and shaking hands with all of us — those he knew and those he didn't. His name, I learned later, was Arlan Koppendrayer, and he was a campus minister; worked for some organization called the Coalition for Christian Outreach. But I didn't put that together until much later. For weeks, my friends and I simply referred to him as "the rock and roll guy."
That's pretty much all I remember about the green party at the white house. And to be honest, that event in and of itself was not particularly life-changing. In fact, I'm not sure it even made it into my journal at the time.
I remember it now because it's September. The back-to-school buzz is contagious, even when I'm not going back to school. I drove through Pitt's campus last week and saw the boxes and old furniture stacked up on the curbs. It's hard not to reminisce about what it was like to be a college student — half a lifetime ago!
And it's hard not to be grateful to the senior who took me under her wing and invited me to an event that I'd never have sought out on my own. That weird little party provided me with an entrée into a fellowship of people who ended up having a profound effect on my life — and many of them remain an important part of my life today. Those students encouraged me to grow deeper into a faith that I barely knew I had. They nurtured leadership abilities in me that were as yet untapped. They allowed themselves to be used by God, and God eventually called me into a field of work that I didn't know was an option when I first set foot on Allegheny's campus.
Thanks, Karen!
This article was originally published in September 2002. Copyright Coalition for Christian Outreach, 2002.
Everything old is new again
In the spirit of process vs. product, I thought I'd take a suggestion from Denise and repost previously written articles here. One at a time, as the Spirit moves. And not necessarily in the order in which they were written.
Most were originally published at the CCO site, when I edited the monthly Ministry Exchange online newsletter, which ceased publication in December 2004.
Stay tuned!
Most were originally published at the CCO site, when I edited the monthly Ministry Exchange online newsletter, which ceased publication in December 2004.
Stay tuned!
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Hit Me Baby One More Time
I was having coffee with an old high school friend last week, when it hit me. Again.
I am getting older. And everything old is new again.
J. and I reconnected last year, shortly before our 20th high school reunion. Until that weekend, it had been probably 18 years since we last saw or heard from one another. We spent a surreal and fun day together back in October, leading up to the reunion that evening, then we saw each other again over Thanksgiving weekend, when I was able to meet her husband.
Fast forward to summertime, and J. and her husband were in town again, visiting their families for the week, and we managed to carve out a few hours to spend catching up. Having just consumed way too much food at a suburban Italian chain restaurant, we were enjoying dessert at a nearby Starbucks.
As we sat at the little cafe table outside the coffeeshop, sipping our drinks, we started talking about one of this summer's reality/nostalgia TV shows, Hit Me Baby One More Time, in which musical acts from the 1980s reunite to perform one of their hit songs. (In some cases, their only hit song.) From the single episode I watched (J. had not seen it at all), during the second half of the show, the singer/group appears again, singing a cover of a current pop song.
The night I watched, I saw a middle-aged Greg Kihn perform "The Break-Up Song," Billy Vera dusted off his hit, "At This Moment," which was made famous on the TV sitcom "Family Ties," and Club Nouveau sang their late '80s cover of "Lean on Me," which was an anthem of sorts for me and my senior-year college roommates.
I have concluded that the studio versions of these songs, recorded two decades or more ago, are both more polished and appealing. And there was something just, well...disturbing about seeing these once-young-and-hip musical acts back on stage with their receding hairlines and middle-aged spreads. I guess for those who have managed to more or less stay in the spotlight throughout the years, like the Rolling Stones or Billy Joel, these physical effects of the aging process aren't so startling. But as I watched Greg Kihn sing, I had the same sensation I had at my high school reunion last fall. "That's so-and-so? He looks like a middle-aged man!"
Oh yeah. He is one. And I'm a middle-aged woman.
Anyway, as I was telling J. about this show, we started reminiscing about the days when MTV really was about showing music videos 24/7, when VCRs were the size of microwave ovens, and about which songs conjure high school memories for us. "Total Eclipse of the Heart." "When Doves Cry." "Oh Sherry." And we talked about the Live 8 concert, which had just occurred a few days ago, and how we remember watching the Live Aid concert back in 1985, the summer after our freshman year of college. We tried to list which artists performed at both concerts. Paul McCartney. Madonna. U2?
At the table next to ours, four high school girls, dressed in halter tops and low-rise jeans, were talking about boys as they sipped their lattes and mochas, beverages I had never heard of, let alone tried, when I was their age.
Suddenly, one of their cell phones started ringing. Well, not ringing exactly. Singing, sort of. The tune?
"Girls Just Want to Have Fun."
No kidding.
I am getting older. And everything old is new again.
J. and I reconnected last year, shortly before our 20th high school reunion. Until that weekend, it had been probably 18 years since we last saw or heard from one another. We spent a surreal and fun day together back in October, leading up to the reunion that evening, then we saw each other again over Thanksgiving weekend, when I was able to meet her husband.
Fast forward to summertime, and J. and her husband were in town again, visiting their families for the week, and we managed to carve out a few hours to spend catching up. Having just consumed way too much food at a suburban Italian chain restaurant, we were enjoying dessert at a nearby Starbucks.
As we sat at the little cafe table outside the coffeeshop, sipping our drinks, we started talking about one of this summer's reality/nostalgia TV shows, Hit Me Baby One More Time, in which musical acts from the 1980s reunite to perform one of their hit songs. (In some cases, their only hit song.) From the single episode I watched (J. had not seen it at all), during the second half of the show, the singer/group appears again, singing a cover of a current pop song.
The night I watched, I saw a middle-aged Greg Kihn perform "The Break-Up Song," Billy Vera dusted off his hit, "At This Moment," which was made famous on the TV sitcom "Family Ties," and Club Nouveau sang their late '80s cover of "Lean on Me," which was an anthem of sorts for me and my senior-year college roommates.
I have concluded that the studio versions of these songs, recorded two decades or more ago, are both more polished and appealing. And there was something just, well...disturbing about seeing these once-young-and-hip musical acts back on stage with their receding hairlines and middle-aged spreads. I guess for those who have managed to more or less stay in the spotlight throughout the years, like the Rolling Stones or Billy Joel, these physical effects of the aging process aren't so startling. But as I watched Greg Kihn sing, I had the same sensation I had at my high school reunion last fall. "That's so-and-so? He looks like a middle-aged man!"
Oh yeah. He is one. And I'm a middle-aged woman.
Anyway, as I was telling J. about this show, we started reminiscing about the days when MTV really was about showing music videos 24/7, when VCRs were the size of microwave ovens, and about which songs conjure high school memories for us. "Total Eclipse of the Heart." "When Doves Cry." "Oh Sherry." And we talked about the Live 8 concert, which had just occurred a few days ago, and how we remember watching the Live Aid concert back in 1985, the summer after our freshman year of college. We tried to list which artists performed at both concerts. Paul McCartney. Madonna. U2?
At the table next to ours, four high school girls, dressed in halter tops and low-rise jeans, were talking about boys as they sipped their lattes and mochas, beverages I had never heard of, let alone tried, when I was their age.
Suddenly, one of their cell phones started ringing. Well, not ringing exactly. Singing, sort of. The tune?
"Girls Just Want to Have Fun."
No kidding.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Process vs. product
In the spring of my junior year of college, I took a fiction-writing class. This was possibly one of the most exhilarating and terrifying experiences of my undergraduate career.
There were probably about 20 of us in this class--it was a very in-demand course which, each term that it was offered, filled to capacity very quickly. We met two or three times a week, and we'd sit in a circle, reading drafts of each other's stories, offering praise and criticism. Probably more criticism than praise, but we were often reminded to offer a positive before enumerating the negative--or the "could-be-improved."
I've never been one for sharing my deepest secrets to large groups of strangers, and that's pretty much what this felt like. Writing is such a personal, self-revealing endeavor--fiction or not--and I felt so vulnerable offering up my writing efforts to this group of my peers. It may have been different had I actually known and trusted them all as individuals. Or not.
My preference through the years has always been to write and publish, without the median experience of critique. Even as an editor of others' work, I'm more apt to proofread and reword sentences, making the prose technically more readable. I'm much less likely to offer suggestions on content and direction. I've never thought much about why this is, but I suspect it has something to do with the whole "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" mentality. I don't want to be told by someone else what it is I'm trying to say. And I don't want to tell others what they're trying to say either.
I know that there's a fine line here. Critique is and should be a good thing. Iron sharpening iron. Two heads are better than one, and all that. And there are different kinds of writing, which is something I deal with daily--the writing I do for myself vs. the writing I do for my job, which is supposed to fit a certain formula to meet the needs of the organization and to communicate the mission. Even then, I am prideful enough to resist editorial advice, no matter how gently it's given. But I ultimately concede that it's necessary, and usually on target.
Back to the fiction-writing class. I remember one day, the professor asked us which we preferred--to write or to have written? There was a split decision there, but the consensus was the latter. Our professor confessed that she found the act of writing "torturous," but that it was a complusion that she could not escape. I'm not sure I completely related to that, then or now.
It's never been particularly cut and dried for me. When I'm "in the zone," there's nothing so exhilarating as the process of writing. But there's something particulary wonderful--a sense of relief, even--to have completed a project: an essay, an article, a newsletter.
So, how about you? To write or to have written? Process or product? Or both?
There were probably about 20 of us in this class--it was a very in-demand course which, each term that it was offered, filled to capacity very quickly. We met two or three times a week, and we'd sit in a circle, reading drafts of each other's stories, offering praise and criticism. Probably more criticism than praise, but we were often reminded to offer a positive before enumerating the negative--or the "could-be-improved."
I've never been one for sharing my deepest secrets to large groups of strangers, and that's pretty much what this felt like. Writing is such a personal, self-revealing endeavor--fiction or not--and I felt so vulnerable offering up my writing efforts to this group of my peers. It may have been different had I actually known and trusted them all as individuals. Or not.
My preference through the years has always been to write and publish, without the median experience of critique. Even as an editor of others' work, I'm more apt to proofread and reword sentences, making the prose technically more readable. I'm much less likely to offer suggestions on content and direction. I've never thought much about why this is, but I suspect it has something to do with the whole "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" mentality. I don't want to be told by someone else what it is I'm trying to say. And I don't want to tell others what they're trying to say either.
I know that there's a fine line here. Critique is and should be a good thing. Iron sharpening iron. Two heads are better than one, and all that. And there are different kinds of writing, which is something I deal with daily--the writing I do for myself vs. the writing I do for my job, which is supposed to fit a certain formula to meet the needs of the organization and to communicate the mission. Even then, I am prideful enough to resist editorial advice, no matter how gently it's given. But I ultimately concede that it's necessary, and usually on target.
Back to the fiction-writing class. I remember one day, the professor asked us which we preferred--to write or to have written? There was a split decision there, but the consensus was the latter. Our professor confessed that she found the act of writing "torturous," but that it was a complusion that she could not escape. I'm not sure I completely related to that, then or now.
It's never been particularly cut and dried for me. When I'm "in the zone," there's nothing so exhilarating as the process of writing. But there's something particulary wonderful--a sense of relief, even--to have completed a project: an essay, an article, a newsletter.
So, how about you? To write or to have written? Process or product? Or both?
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