Some thoughts I want to share from this great speaker I heard a week ago.
"The art of disruption"
Suffering has within it all of these new possibilities. What we have planned and imagined for ourselves no longer exists.
Spectrum of Suffering:
Oppression <<------------------------->> No suffering
Severe pain <<------------------------->> No struggle
Overwhelmed <<------------------------->> Comfortably Numb
Three ways to encounter the "disruption"
* Your own disruption
* Seeking a disruption++
* Or stumbling upon someone else's disruption
++Example
A boy that lives in the suburbs drives his mother's SUV down the road. Windows rolled down and he's blasting a song that represents a life full of struggle, pain, and how someone went from the bottom to the top. It's about struggle to survive and making something out of nothing. Maybe the reason he listens, even when his parents have worked so hard to keep him out of a dangerous situation and neighborhoods like Compton, is because he is seeking someone else's disruption.
"The art of disruption has within it all sorts of seeds filled with creativity and imagination."
"Pain has a way of making us honest."
In the midst of suffering we discover this subterranean place of honesty. We say what we really want to say.++
++Example
Acquaintance: "How are you?"
You: "Crappy."
Acquaintance: "Oh, okay..."
My own aside: [They don't really want to know how you are! They just ask because it's the polite thing to do! Don't worry - I am just as guilty as the next person. BUT, suffering has a way of making you honest!]
"None get to God but through trouble."
"The art of elimination"
There is endless line, color, texture, form, etc. it is just knowing what to take away. Just like sculpture. You start with a block of stone and carve away at it to obtain the art. When you suffer, all that is trivial drifts out of focus and that which is truly important becomes clear.
"The art of solidarity"
I lovethe example used here.
Show me two mothers from two ends of town that visit their sons in jail and I will show you two women who have more in common than that which separates them.
"It all makes the difference to know there's someone else screaming alongside you."
"What every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential."
"Nothing is wasted in the divine economy."
"The God Who Wastes Nothing"
Native American rug-making is such that the stray cloth at the corner needs to remain, we in Western culture, would want to trim the stray ends off, because they believe the Spirit enters through the blemish.
"This, too, will shape me." The only question is how?
Bitter or better.
Spoken by a sculptor character, Harriet March, in novel by Susan Howatch:
“That’s creation . . . you can’t create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog. You can’t create without pain. It’s all part of the process. It’s in the nature of things . . . So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat, and tears – everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”
The speaker was Rob Bell. He is amazing.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Write, write, write...right?
Here is a sample of my writing that I submitted for a job - I got an interview & that went so well that they want me to come in and give a presentation for the directors of the organization! ::don't stop 'til you get enough!::
It's about why I moved to L.A. & why I want to work in the non-profit sector.
Would love to know what you think about it - any feedback is greatly appreciated!
______________________
Have you ever done something that made you come alive? Have you had that moment when you discover what you were made to do and doing that ‘something’ gives you rejuvenating life? I love helping what some would call “the least of these”; the broken, the lost, the less fortunate and the abandoned. I moved to L.A., the city of dreamers, to pursue a dream myself. I wanted to make a difference by changing the social and economic climate through helping homeless people, women, children and families become prosperous. I come alive when hanging out with runaway teens at Covenant House in Hollywood and feeding, talking with and doing laundry for the homeless in Skid Row. I moved here because L.A. is a city full of opportunity and need. I know that I will never be fully alive if I am not working in the non-profit sector, where people are partnering together to create real change and open doors of hope for those who have none.
In college, I studied Latin America – its language, culture and history. I fell in love with one country in particular, Colombia. For one of my classes I researched current events, political scene, education system, etc. about one Spanish-speaking country. I chose Colombia. In my search, I read about all of these cases of women being denied rights because of the drug cartels and their husbands getting tied up in them. Children could not live normal lives because they had to be under high security for risk of being kidnapped and taken for ransom. Ironically, this opened my eyes to dangers and injustices going on in my own backyard. I started to take notice of the domestic violence and crime going on in my own neighborhood. Shortly after, I started volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center just a mile away from my campus where nearly all of the clients are Spanish-speaking only. This urgency that I felt for Colombia was suddenly relevant to my own community. The Fort Worth Pregnancy Center (FWPC) helped me to practice tangible ways in which I could meet these women’s physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual needs. For me that meant spending time with certain clients outside of the center and helping them watch their children at the park, treating them like a friend and less like a patient at a clinic, shared my own experiences of love, worry and anticipation and I read the Bible with them in their own language.
Throughout college I was involved with a Christian sorority on campus called Eta Iota Sigma or HIS for short. HIS is the place that I found true friendship, the best friends I will ever have, those women that will be in my wedding, and where I saw God’s face in the most beautiful way. As a sorority, we did so much with the community of TCU, Fort Worth, churches and non-profits. For an entire calendar year I served as Growth Coordinator for over 200 women in HIS. That year was one of the most trying and rewarding times in my life. Part of my responsibility was to plan and lead the spiritual events and elements of our sorority, which included but was not limited to prayer, weekend retreats, Bible studies, discipleship and mentorship programs, church attendance and any involvement with our local churches. Being the liaison between local churches and our sisterhood of passionate women and volunteers was something I treasured and maintained. I discovered that I have a gift for coordinating people and groups to come together for a cause. My excitement and passion cultivated fuel for our women to volunteer and devote themselves to a worthy event. It was rewarding to be an example of leadership for these women and to make a significant impact on the community. I saw what it meant to the women at FWPC when my sisters came to volunteer and donate clothes or when we invited them to our retreats. Not only was there a cultural gap but an economic and social separation as well. We were not just sacrificing our time up; we were bridging the gap from a well-to-do, predominantly Caucasian university to the ghetto of south Fort Worth. It was a beautiful thing and I knew that this was something I had to continue to do in order to fulfill my purpose on this earth.
Graduation day was amazing. I turned 22 a day after and it was an entire week’s worth of celebrating my life and my accomplishment. In June after graduation I moved. L.A. was calling my name, so I left everything I knew and took a huge risk. I had no job lined up, only knew a few people (my boyfriend included), and was planning on living with a total stranger. After couple of months in and I found a job as a teacher’s assistant at a charter high school in MacArthur Park. This was no run-of-the-mill charter school; this was a girl’s academy. I did not remember full well how mean and nasty high school girls can be. Nor did I have any inkling of what it might be like to dwell amongst high school girls from downtown Los Angeles. The first month was wretched. The girls would test me, tease me, question my authority, curse and yell at me, get in fights with each other and ignore me when I asked them to do anything. I wanted to just walk away so many times, but it got better, slowly but surely. There were few redemptive moments amongst the chaos and madness. I know that you are not supposed to have favorites when working with kids, but there was a girl that I will never forget: Wendy. I was helping her to write a persuasive essay. It was an open prompt and she chose to write about how the cops should take children away from their parents if it is dangerous. She shared with me that her mother was addicted to crack-cocaine and that she had 3 younger siblings that she had to take care of as a result. Her story made me want to carry her away and take care of her myself. Trying to stay on topic, I asked her what could be her main arguments for this topic and she said, “Well, when you are an addict you don’t care about anything but getting another fix.” She said that her mother is no longer a mother because she just cares about herself; there is no food, no nothing for her kids because all of the money goes to drugs. Wendy said that it makes her angry to know that the cops know where all the crack houses are and they just keep driving by, meanwhile there are children that are victims with no way out because these cops don’t enforce the law. Then, as if that weren’t enough, she leans in and says, “Julie, there’s something that I’ve wanted to ask you for a while now…Do you see the world different ‘cause your eyes are blue?” I laughed a little and while I had to shush other girls who were teasing her for her silly question, I said, “Well, no I don’t think so…” Then, I thought about it for a second and I said, “You know what? Maybe you’re right! I don’t know really know what you see or what anyone else sees. Maybe I do see things differently. Maybe you do, too!” She just smiled and nodded her head. That sixteen year old girl had never encountered a White person before. I was the first. That sixteen year old girl has never even seen the Pacific Ocean before. There is no way that I could turn my back on young girls like her whose world is so small and they are stuck in a cycle of poverty and destruction. Working there opened my eyes to a part of L.A. some people who have lived here their whole lives never see.
Living in L.A. you cannot help but notice that there is homelessness around every corner. Mosaic, the spiritual community I belong to downtown, has a heart for the homeless in our city and I have joined them in reaching out to this demographic. I have learned one thing in particular: the homeless need to feel normal. Yes, feeding, clothing and giving money is necessary but not the end to what needs to be done. Through a project called Laundry Love, I hope to address the issues of homelessness that are sometimes ignored. My plan is to restore dignity and teach hygiene and cleanliness by providing opportunities to practice good health. I got a few friends together from Mosaic to do laundry in Skid Row as well as hand out burritos and toiletry bags of toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant. The hope is that we can develop trust and friendships by having great conversations as we do laundry. At the same time we will be preventing disease and maintaining the importance of cleanliness. If you look good, you feel good. Thus, having clean clothes and better hygiene will create more opportunities for networking with our team and increase the possibility of finding jobs, housing and healthcare. We want to continue this service at least twice a month because we know the importance of dependability and consistency with people that are used to being given food and never seeing those volunteers again.
All of these experiences have built a strong sense in me to turn my career into helping those that need it most. There are teen girls that are on the street, doing hard drugs and having children and I know that they are the most important people group that I should be investing in. I have seen first-hand that young girls that are making detrimental mistakes are the ones without mentors and people that believe and invest in their future. My experiences have shown me the prevalence and devastation of homelessness in L.A. and helping those people will strengthen and empower our city. For these reasons and more I know that the non-profit sector is where I belong.
It's about why I moved to L.A. & why I want to work in the non-profit sector.
Would love to know what you think about it - any feedback is greatly appreciated!
______________________
Have you ever done something that made you come alive? Have you had that moment when you discover what you were made to do and doing that ‘something’ gives you rejuvenating life? I love helping what some would call “the least of these”; the broken, the lost, the less fortunate and the abandoned. I moved to L.A., the city of dreamers, to pursue a dream myself. I wanted to make a difference by changing the social and economic climate through helping homeless people, women, children and families become prosperous. I come alive when hanging out with runaway teens at Covenant House in Hollywood and feeding, talking with and doing laundry for the homeless in Skid Row. I moved here because L.A. is a city full of opportunity and need. I know that I will never be fully alive if I am not working in the non-profit sector, where people are partnering together to create real change and open doors of hope for those who have none.
In college, I studied Latin America – its language, culture and history. I fell in love with one country in particular, Colombia. For one of my classes I researched current events, political scene, education system, etc. about one Spanish-speaking country. I chose Colombia. In my search, I read about all of these cases of women being denied rights because of the drug cartels and their husbands getting tied up in them. Children could not live normal lives because they had to be under high security for risk of being kidnapped and taken for ransom. Ironically, this opened my eyes to dangers and injustices going on in my own backyard. I started to take notice of the domestic violence and crime going on in my own neighborhood. Shortly after, I started volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center just a mile away from my campus where nearly all of the clients are Spanish-speaking only. This urgency that I felt for Colombia was suddenly relevant to my own community. The Fort Worth Pregnancy Center (FWPC) helped me to practice tangible ways in which I could meet these women’s physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual needs. For me that meant spending time with certain clients outside of the center and helping them watch their children at the park, treating them like a friend and less like a patient at a clinic, shared my own experiences of love, worry and anticipation and I read the Bible with them in their own language.
Throughout college I was involved with a Christian sorority on campus called Eta Iota Sigma or HIS for short. HIS is the place that I found true friendship, the best friends I will ever have, those women that will be in my wedding, and where I saw God’s face in the most beautiful way. As a sorority, we did so much with the community of TCU, Fort Worth, churches and non-profits. For an entire calendar year I served as Growth Coordinator for over 200 women in HIS. That year was one of the most trying and rewarding times in my life. Part of my responsibility was to plan and lead the spiritual events and elements of our sorority, which included but was not limited to prayer, weekend retreats, Bible studies, discipleship and mentorship programs, church attendance and any involvement with our local churches. Being the liaison between local churches and our sisterhood of passionate women and volunteers was something I treasured and maintained. I discovered that I have a gift for coordinating people and groups to come together for a cause. My excitement and passion cultivated fuel for our women to volunteer and devote themselves to a worthy event. It was rewarding to be an example of leadership for these women and to make a significant impact on the community. I saw what it meant to the women at FWPC when my sisters came to volunteer and donate clothes or when we invited them to our retreats. Not only was there a cultural gap but an economic and social separation as well. We were not just sacrificing our time up; we were bridging the gap from a well-to-do, predominantly Caucasian university to the ghetto of south Fort Worth. It was a beautiful thing and I knew that this was something I had to continue to do in order to fulfill my purpose on this earth.
Graduation day was amazing. I turned 22 a day after and it was an entire week’s worth of celebrating my life and my accomplishment. In June after graduation I moved. L.A. was calling my name, so I left everything I knew and took a huge risk. I had no job lined up, only knew a few people (my boyfriend included), and was planning on living with a total stranger. After couple of months in and I found a job as a teacher’s assistant at a charter high school in MacArthur Park. This was no run-of-the-mill charter school; this was a girl’s academy. I did not remember full well how mean and nasty high school girls can be. Nor did I have any inkling of what it might be like to dwell amongst high school girls from downtown Los Angeles. The first month was wretched. The girls would test me, tease me, question my authority, curse and yell at me, get in fights with each other and ignore me when I asked them to do anything. I wanted to just walk away so many times, but it got better, slowly but surely. There were few redemptive moments amongst the chaos and madness. I know that you are not supposed to have favorites when working with kids, but there was a girl that I will never forget: Wendy. I was helping her to write a persuasive essay. It was an open prompt and she chose to write about how the cops should take children away from their parents if it is dangerous. She shared with me that her mother was addicted to crack-cocaine and that she had 3 younger siblings that she had to take care of as a result. Her story made me want to carry her away and take care of her myself. Trying to stay on topic, I asked her what could be her main arguments for this topic and she said, “Well, when you are an addict you don’t care about anything but getting another fix.” She said that her mother is no longer a mother because she just cares about herself; there is no food, no nothing for her kids because all of the money goes to drugs. Wendy said that it makes her angry to know that the cops know where all the crack houses are and they just keep driving by, meanwhile there are children that are victims with no way out because these cops don’t enforce the law. Then, as if that weren’t enough, she leans in and says, “Julie, there’s something that I’ve wanted to ask you for a while now…Do you see the world different ‘cause your eyes are blue?” I laughed a little and while I had to shush other girls who were teasing her for her silly question, I said, “Well, no I don’t think so…” Then, I thought about it for a second and I said, “You know what? Maybe you’re right! I don’t know really know what you see or what anyone else sees. Maybe I do see things differently. Maybe you do, too!” She just smiled and nodded her head. That sixteen year old girl had never encountered a White person before. I was the first. That sixteen year old girl has never even seen the Pacific Ocean before. There is no way that I could turn my back on young girls like her whose world is so small and they are stuck in a cycle of poverty and destruction. Working there opened my eyes to a part of L.A. some people who have lived here their whole lives never see.
Living in L.A. you cannot help but notice that there is homelessness around every corner. Mosaic, the spiritual community I belong to downtown, has a heart for the homeless in our city and I have joined them in reaching out to this demographic. I have learned one thing in particular: the homeless need to feel normal. Yes, feeding, clothing and giving money is necessary but not the end to what needs to be done. Through a project called Laundry Love, I hope to address the issues of homelessness that are sometimes ignored. My plan is to restore dignity and teach hygiene and cleanliness by providing opportunities to practice good health. I got a few friends together from Mosaic to do laundry in Skid Row as well as hand out burritos and toiletry bags of toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant. The hope is that we can develop trust and friendships by having great conversations as we do laundry. At the same time we will be preventing disease and maintaining the importance of cleanliness. If you look good, you feel good. Thus, having clean clothes and better hygiene will create more opportunities for networking with our team and increase the possibility of finding jobs, housing and healthcare. We want to continue this service at least twice a month because we know the importance of dependability and consistency with people that are used to being given food and never seeing those volunteers again.
All of these experiences have built a strong sense in me to turn my career into helping those that need it most. There are teen girls that are on the street, doing hard drugs and having children and I know that they are the most important people group that I should be investing in. I have seen first-hand that young girls that are making detrimental mistakes are the ones without mentors and people that believe and invest in their future. My experiences have shown me the prevalence and devastation of homelessness in L.A. and helping those people will strengthen and empower our city. For these reasons and more I know that the non-profit sector is where I belong.
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