Jazz, Latin, Rhythm, and Blues: Part One

It's June 23rd. Summer has struck Northern Ireland (probably with all the force it can muster). It's a balmy 18 C (64 F), but most people here are in short sleeves and short trousers, while I'm still wearing denim and a sweater. Rob said it well - choosing to move back to hot, sticky Virginia in August is not the smartest decision we've ever made. A little humidity might do us both a bit of good, though - it'll be a constant reminder that we're home.

Speaking of home - I fly from Belfast on July 26th, arriving (via Newark) at Richmond International at 6:24pm. That puts me just two days past the 5-week mark - I'm sad, thrilled, excited, scared - the normal range of emotions that can be expected of a person about to head home after a year away - but mostly, I'm shocked that I'm already at this place in the year.

So, in celebration of the number five (no, it's nothing Sesame Street, sadly), I give you today's reading music - a 1966 performance of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five."

And now, for the good stuff - actual information about my life in Northern Ireland! Lots has happened since the last time I wrote here (obviously, it's been three months), so this is just part one of a four-part series of posts.

Part One: Jazz

Since thirteen, music has been a very important part of my life. It's pretty obvious to most who know me, particularly through college - I started a couple of bands (with fantastic names), sang in a most excellent a cappella group, and went so far as joining a musician's fraternity.

However, in what I can only assume was an effort to not be "that white college kid," I kept one important part of my musical heritage under wraps - jazz. I've never been an excellent jazz musician (I've certainly tried), but even before I understood anything about minor sixths, paradiddles, and syncopation, I knew that putting Miles Davis' version of "Embraceable You" on near-endless repeat was as close to a mantra as I could get. So bear with me for a while, even if I start to sound like a pretentious American that drinks wine and listens to Gershwin on Saturdays - this story goes further than that.

Perhaps this story goes back just a week, to the city of London, to a small enclave of like-minded people called The 606 Club. I made the (Underground-assisted) hike to Chelsea with a good friend (thanks, Kate!), poured freshly-pressed coffee, and settled down to the sounds of Charlie Wood, a Memphis singer-songwriter. Maybe it was the thrill of the first live music I'd seen since August 2009, maybe it was the excitement of spending the day with a good friend, or maybe there was something in the coffee - for two hours, I was in a different world - completely indescribable, but entirely blissful. I'll even dare to call it a spiritual experience. There is something wonderful about watching five musicians take a stage, play tunes everyone knows, and convince everyone gathered that these tunes are their own, though, this is not the entire story.

Maybe the story goes still further back - to my first experience leading a service at Dunmurry Presbyterian Church (for those of you looking for a transcript/recording of my first sermon (!), it should be around soon). As far as the church year is concerned, it was no special Sunday - the Fourth Sunday of Easter - but at this church, the last Sunday of every month is an all-age service, involving everyone from the "wee tinies" to the "distinguished" members of the congregation, and this all-age Sunday was no exception. Several members of the Kilmakee Presbyterian Drama Team (appropriately known as KeeStage) joined me in a dramatic representation of an Iona Community Easter liturgy called "Voices from the Crowd," a portion of which is reprinted below:

Simon of Cyrene:

I am Simon, I come from Cyrene
and I would not have been in Jerusalem today
if it had not been for my business.
I’m a traveller.

And perhaps I would not have been asked to carry the cross
if my colour was not so obvious.

“You..nigger..come here.” they shouted.
And what can a black man say
in a crowd of white people?

(Stepping toward the cross)

Jesus,
I don’t know what this is all about
I’ve never seen such degrading cruelty
and the reason is beyond my understanding.

What did you do
to make people hate you?
What did you do
to get strung on a cross?

You never robbed a bank
You never mugged innocent people,
swindled money,
planned an armed struggle,
or committed treason.

Most people say you were a holy man,
some say you were God’s son.

If this is the case,
why are religious people persecuting you?

From Stages on the Way by The Wild Goose Worship Group, Wild Goose Resource Group, 1998, ISBN 1876357363, page 144

This is one of six readings, each spoken eloquently by a KeeStage member seated within the congregation, one of six "artist's perspectives" of the crucifixion of Jesus, and one of six interpretations of our responsibility to building the Kingdom of God. The entire drama/meditation preceded my sermon, which, in comparison, was of very little consequence - the gravity of the liturgy and the extraordinary cooperation among the Kilmakee and Dunmurry young people were testament enough to the message of the day - "What Can I Say/Do Now?" Watching those youth work to create something of such emotional force was like listening to Charlie at The 606 - an incredible, inspirational, indescribable moment - but this is still not all of the story of the day.

Perhaps the story was best told by a man on a bus who cannot speak at all.

On the last Friday afternoon in March, after trekking in to Belfast for a haircut and a coffee with Madeline, I boarded the 9A bus toward Conway and settled in for the forty-five minute ride. I'm well used to transportation disasters this year - Doug (our site coordinator) has on several occasions told me I could fill a book with stories of bicycle, bus, train, and taxi mishaps - but I wasn't yet prepared for the fiasco to come - a three-hour trip of just six miles, during a bomb threat, with very little information filtering into our bus.

I'm very used to the crowd on the Friday late-afternoon 9A - several people just leaving work in the city, heading either home or to their local pub, several folks leaving Belfast to work a night shift in Finaghy or Dunmurry, and plenty of schoolkids seeking that sweet Friday afternoon release that only schoolkids truly enjoy. Naturally, I found myself surrounded by one person from each group - we'll call them Ben, Natalie, and Rebecca.

(I could make a great Law & Order joke here, but I won't. I'll just make you think about what it could have been.)

It happens that on this very peculiar bus ride, I was surrounded by three very peculiar people.

I'd met Ben on the Friday 9A several times before - our first meeting was the standard "Is that a free seat?" sort of meeting - no conversation, no talking at all, just awkwardly avoiding each others' eyes while trying to get as much information as possible about the other, all the while trying to pretend like you're completely immersed in whatever it was you were doing before meeting the other. That first day, we rode all the way from Belfast City Centre to the Dunmurry Halt - Ben left for the pub, I left for Tesco to pick up some groceries.

Several weeks later, I met Ben again - on exactly the opposite bus ride - a Monday morning 9A towards Belfast - we smiled, acknowledged each other, and rode on in silence.

This happened several more times until that Friday in March, when Ben finally decided to introduce himself. This process, of course, was motivated by sharing a seat yet again, and having finally come to the realisation that we would be sharing that seat for at least another hour, among frustrated commuters, shoppers laden with packages, and antsy children.

What I didn't expect was Ben's method of introducing himself - a hug, a fist-bump, and writing his name on a Starbuck's napkin.

Ben is the first Deaf person I've met in a long time - and thanks to the incompatibility of everything I know in American Sign Language with everything Ben knows in British Sign Language, our communication was reduced to crude hand gestures, writing on napkins, and pointing at things - which, naturally, attracts a lot of attention on a crowded bus.

This explains how another joined our conversation: Ben may or may not have gestured that the bus should sprout wings and fly away a bit too vigorously, in the immediate vicinity of Natalie's face.

Natalie was this new stranded-bus-passenger-community's informant: our connection to the outside world. She was receiving pretty constant news updates via text message from her boyfriend in Belfast, who had only twenty minutes joined her at the bus shelter to see her off to work. Thanks to her, we knew that we were in the middle of a bomb threat investigation, that all vehicles were being searched, and that all of our mobile phones were inferior - no one else had service for most of the ride.

She quickly forgave Ben for the incident and joined us in our very quiet abuse of the situation and the sticky heat of being surrounded by so many angry people. An excellent conversationalist, Natalie soon learned where I'd picked up the little ASL that I know (Jamaica), both of our occupations (factory worker and church worker), and, most importantly, our opinions of the strangely coloured uniforms of most of the schoolchildren on the bus (terrible and terrible).

Rebecca must have been terribly fond of the colour of her uniform, because she noticed us laughing, took off her headphones, and promptly realised that not one of us was actually speaking, just gesturing wildly and mouthing every other word or so. She recognised Natalie as a former student at her secondary school, and they were off to abuse and praise various shared teachers, leaving Ben and I to return to our not-at-all private conversation and muse about the strange ways girls talk about things.

Rebecca turned to me next, and asked where I'd learned to sign, asked what languages I knew, asked why I was dressed quite unlike other people from Belfast, asked just about every question I could think of (we had quite a bit of time). At some point, I think I was coerced into giving her a lesson in Spanish verb forms, and at another, I realised Ben and Natalie were taking their turn to laugh at the two of us. Soon, we became a strange thing among the company of angry commuters - four people, genuinely enjoying each others' company, learning from each other, getting to know each other, and making the most out of the situation we were so suddenly placed in.

A well-timed three-hour bus ride, a church service, and a dark jazz club can all do remarkable, if wildly different, things for the human spirit - at their core, the spirit of jazz, of Christianity, of community - cooperation and coexistence.

Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in Another Castle.

I've resurfaced from the depths of not-blogging.

I'll come up with a clever excuse: "I hadn't found the most appropriate title/reading music for this post."

Well, thanks to The Mountain Goats and Kaki King, I just can't not-blog anymore.

I think Rob used the right words to describe what point we've reached in our YAV year: "Half Time." I'm just over the five-and-a-half month point in Belfast, somewhere around 130 days until I fly home, with another day beyond that until I see Ginna again. Mom and two of her friends have been along to visit, and Spring is already putting up a valiant effort against the North Atlantic Winter. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed - folks here are starting to say that, too (maybe that's because I've been complaining about the struggle of making flight plans - as far as I know, the date is July 26th!).

Part of the mid-YAV-year struggle has been responding to some tough questions posed by the 'head office' in Louisville. It's a fairly standard set of evaluation questions, really: what were your goals/expectations for the YAV year, how were they met/not met, what have you found helpful, what things would you like to change, all that sort of thing. An ordinary set of questions wouldn't really do the YAV program justice, though - we are a peculiar bunch of people, doing very peculiar things.

Hard Questions

One of the items probably unique to a program like this follows: "In the area of faith development, who are the people and what are the events shaping or affirming your faith?"

As far as I know, that's not the sort of thing you'd find on an everyday job self-evaluation form. To use thoroughly underwhelming language, that's a HARD question, albeit with some very easy answers - the YAV community, the infinitely loving congregation at Kilmakee Presbyterian, my supporters and friends at home, small group Bible study, retreats with the other American volunteers, et cetera. And that's pretty much the answer I gave - the easy one - but I've been trying to reconsider that question over the past couple weeks.

I wasn't only asked what was affirming my faith. The YAVs, retreats, Bible study, all of that is doing a great job affirming, but I was also challenged to find out what is shaping my faith. Shaping - not just reinforcing the faith I possessed in September, but adding to it, building on it, and changing it. That's not to say that I'm trying to leave my roots behind - Lynnea wrote a great post about the importance of roots - but like that tree at the top of the page, and the one I found in Derry/Londonderry last month (not to mention the one on the back of last year's BCM t-shirt), I'm growing in both directions, stretching out my branches, and putting down new roots, all the time.

Haha! I've come up with YET ANOTHER reason to love pictures of trees. Go me!

The Bright Ringing Drone of Eight-Bit Choirs

Kilmakee Presbyterian Church is right in the middle of a campaign to redefine their 'mission statement.' Everyone, from the young to old, is involved - the 'Fellowship Groups' have been diving in to the topic every 2nd and 4th Sunday, and the other weeks, we've been trying to sort out the Youth Fellowship's thoughts on the matter. We've been asking each other even more hard questions: How are we involved in our community? What IS our community? What are the needs of the folks living in the estate? How will they respond to Kilmakee being a church on mission? What the heck does being a church on mission even mean?

The emergent church tackles these questions quite a bit - I won't go in to the current theological responses here, especially since they're questions that constantly require new answers. I am, though reminded of my own struggle to find purpose here in Belfast, and of poor Toad from Super Mario Bros. He's waiting, alone in a dark room that reeks of brimstone and whatever enormous spiny turtles smell like, shouting above an 8-bit fanfare: "Move along to the next castle, this one doesn't have what you seek, I'll be waiting for you there."

The next castle might be out on that rock, I think.

The church is moving along to the next castle, and I am, too. I feel like I've been jumping over gaps, collecting treasures, and just barely reaching my goal, greeted by a crescendo of some deeply spiritual chords, only to be gently escorted away from the castle into the next adventure. Faith is funny like that - and God seems to be funny like that, too - always challenging me to take one more step forward.

Sandcastles in the Sand

With all this talk of castles, I couldn't resist making a 'How I Met Your Mother' reference.

Thankfully, along with these challenging thoughts buzzing around, I've also had plenty to distract me when I need it most. I've started planning some more program nights for the Boys' Brigade at Dunmurry Presbyterian, including last week's focus on Fairtrade, chocolate, and Peru. I particularly enjoyed researching Peru (talking to Ginna), and I think the boys really enjoyed getting to try out some Fairtrade chocolate. The focus on our responsibility to small-farm operations may have been lost on them, but good craic was had by all.

The last weekend of March, I'll be away in Millisle, a seaside resort town, with the Youth Fellowship from Kilmakee Presbyterian, for the annual KYF Weekend Away. Another young adult leader in the church and I will be leading worship for the weekend (something I've been dying to do for ages - I miss you, BCM), and we'll be talking a lot about the lead-up to Holy Week, with Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, Palm Sunday, and all sorts of good Easter-y things.

There's also the Belfast Marathon to look forward to - I'm not running the full 26.2 miles anymore, but instead taking a leg as part of a relay team. My newest epic athletic adventure plan is to cycle around the North Coast of Northern Ireland, then down the border with County Donegal, and into Castlederg to take part in a 'mad' Lough Derg pilgrimage at St. Patrick's Purgatory.

There's always some challenge in the way, there's always some reward for persevering through it, and there's always an end in sight - but rather unlike Mario and Toad's 8-bit adventure, I don't get to stop with the princess at the end (as much as I would like to). My faith will keep growing, and life will keep going. For now, I'm just ready for the next ~130 days I have in Northern Ireland, and I hope to find quite a few more castles along the way.

On Travelling, Cozy Hats, and Being a Young Adult Volunteer

I've just returned from a week-long vacation with Rob to Dublin and London. It was good craic all around, and lots of good stories have come out of it. And lots of good thinking was done, as well. Here are some thoughts transcribed from my paper journal - they will also be posted, without reading music, to the PC(USA) website as my first official "Letter from a Young Adult Volunteer."

Since this is transcribed from my paper journal, you won't find the plethora of useful links you usually get through these - I hope you don't mind.

Speaking of reading music, the choice for today is John Mayer's "Something's Missing." Click play, then read on.

Depending on where you are, hostels can be a fantastic or a horrifying experience. Of course, this also depends quite a bit on your state of mind when you walk through the door. Also, like any other experience, it also depends disproportionately on your expectations.

On the subject of location, Camden Place Hostel in Dublin and Astor Museum Inn in London are tops. I won't really go into further detail here, that's something for you to find out for yourself.

Concerning state of mind, it really helps to arrive at a hostel if you've been walking for miles in the rain through crowded shopping districts, or if you've been playing human Tetris for hours on a very small, very overcrowded train through North Wales, only shortly after an equally harrowing experience with booking ferry passage across the Irish Sea.

I think that's self-explanatory, as well. If you really want to enjoy a hot shower and warm bed, take advantage of the horrible weather of the British Isles first.

(Incidentally, after living in Belfast for several months, London feels downright tropical. In my flatmate Rob’s words, London is completely south of any Scandinavian country. Belfast, on the other hand, might as well be in the Arctic Circle.)

The subject of expectations is where my story gets a little tricky. My only real experiences with hostel life consist of one night in Perú, and one night in a Hungarian villa, next to a very sketchy hostel.

Oh, and the truly terrifying movie 'Hostel.'

Naturally, I had mixed feelings about our accommodations for our holiday, but, being the socially-responsible, low-budget volunteers we are, hostel-ing seemed to be the most prudent option. So, on the morning of December 29th, we set out for Dublin, and Camden Place hostel, which definitely have us what we were looking for - a warm bed, a hot shower, friendly staff, free breakfast, free Wi-Fi, and I'll stop before I start sounding like a bad advertisement. The Astor Museum Inn also gave us what we needed - a place filled with awesome people that served as a great home base for exploring the vast expanse of London.

Now, I realize that this is NOT at all what the average hostel-vacation experience is like. I have plenty of friends who can tell horror stories about flooding toilets, kleptomaniacal roommates, and far-too-wild hostel parties. I can only imagine how bad it could be, so I know to not have such high expectations for other low-budget accommodation experiences in the future.

Something's Missing

But, if even hostels can be so awesome (sometimes), what else am I missing by continuing to live a comfy, Eastern-Virginian life? For example, at the beginning of summer 2009, I never would have expected to spend a week in the powerfully beautiful mountains of Montreat, North Carolina with a group of six truly fantastic youth from First Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Virginia. Even more surprising was driving through South Dakota's Badlands with family and friends less than a week after returning from Montreat. Less than a day after that, I was in a small town in North Dakota, a short drive away from the world's largest fake buffalo.

Buffalo: check.

The wonder of the World Wide Web gave birth to a ridiculous number of 'best-of' lists at the end of 2009, which, being the sentimental technophile I am, I read voraciously. Lists of the top twenty-nine movies, the top fifteen albums, the ten best gadget ideas of the decade, the five funniest twitter users to follow, the best of everything - whatever I could think of, I found a list for it. Remarkably, though, in 2005, I never thought that half of these things would exist, much less that I'd appreciate them as much as I do. Twitter? The Netbook? Peruvian hats with ear flaps?

Peculiar hat: check.

I also never pictured that I'd choose to very abruptly pack a few bags and relocate to Belfast for a year. To be honest, at that time, I was completely certain that I'd be in Africa by this time. Or Japan. Or maybe South America. Instead, here I am, writing from a flat in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, decidedly not on a medical-school track, working in several churches and organizations where it seems that my biggest contributions to date have been vegetable soup, giant chewy sugar cookies, and donning a lab coat and fairy wings while miming deep conversation with Joseph the carpenter from Nazareth.

You read that right.

Fairy wings: check.

A Year of Service, A Lifetime of Change

My favorite household chores have always been the sort where I can see the progress I've made - mowing the lawn is a great example. I know when I'm done, I can see what I've changed, and while it might take some extra pushing to get me started, it's a generally pleasant experience.

Not so with the task of 'mission in partnership.' It is not the glamorous work that gets presented by national news outlets (well, not often, sometimes, they catch wind of what we're doing and decide to share it). It is not a sexy, Nobel-laureate sort of field. It is not the saving-the-world stuff that makes people in coffee shops and bars flock to hear stories. In fact, it's very hard to explain, and probably even harder to understand. I recall a funny story about that from a night in Dublin - ask me about it sometime.

What's this "year of service, lifetime of change" business about, then? It is the YAV t-shirt slogan, after all. An obvious "lifetime of change" would be the immense experiential value of the year to us volunteers. We practice socially-and-environmentally-responsible living. We live in intentional community with the churches we work with, as well as the other other YAVs. We have great cross-cultural experiences. We participate in worshipping communities. This list could go on and on. I certainly don't want to diminish the value of any of these things - I find all of these things and more in the work I've been doing, but I think there's something much, much deeper there.

The YAV home office likes to use an incredibly simple, very weighty phrase to describe what being a volunteer really means: "Being, not Doing." I remember hearing this a lot working in university Residence Life, as well. The job was really all about being available for those around you, co-existing with them, and trying to encourage them to do the same. The real impact didn't come from fancy bulletin boards, awesome hall meetings, or (thankfully) how many times I strapped on a pair of wings and pretended to be the angel Gabriel. It's not about how much I gets out of it, or even how much anyone else gets out of my work, but about meeting someone's needs, whatever they are, in whatever way I can provide.

Not about meeting their expectations - if I tried to live up to everyone's expectations of me, I'd be a very exhausted volunteer with no time for myself, not to mention being very disappointed with my lack of success.

Not about meeting my own expectations, either - if I tried to that, I would never have seen the Badlands, I'd never have started wearing my peculiar (and very warm) Peruvian hat, and I'd probably be frighteningly unfulfilled in medical school.

One Small Child That Saved The World

(And Ten Million More That Probably Could)

The intellectual-progressive-hipster Presbyterian in me shudders to say this aloud, much less share it with the world through the Internet, but the only thing I can do in a situation like this is rely on God. Thankfully, God has a very fortunate pattern of helping out, and, well, being God.

I realize this is a vague statement. It's meant to be, simply because this Parent-Son-Spirit God is wonderfully artistic and expressive, and downright mysterious. It's terribly hard to find God sometimes, and I'm not always the best at that sort of spiritual searching. It's especially difficult when most days of the week feature things like being tackled by nine-year-olds or serving sixty-four children cocktail sausages.

A lifetime of change? It's hard to imagine that those sausages will cause too much serious change other than potentially increasing someone's blood pressure someday, and that the kids using me as a jungle gym has definitely made me a bit stronger physically. However I may feel about the work at the time, though, God's not missing from the equation, she’s just sitting quietly in the corner of the church hall, waiting very patiently to be talked to.

Lifetime of change: check.