Light Night

I thought I should update you all on some of my activities here in Liverpool. Last Friday I helped the cathedral celebrate LightNight which is a one-night free arts and culture celebration across the city. Venues take advantage of the long days, the sun now sets between 9:30-10 as opposed to 4-4:30 in winter, to celebrate..well...light. The main space of the cathedral featured performances of many choirs to start off the night before a DJ and light show start and went till late in the night.

The Lady Chapel featured an icon of Christ surrounded by loads of candles, incense, which the cathedral does not typically use in services, this cool soundtrack, and places for people to light their own candles. There was also sung compline every hour which people could participate in if they wanted but mainly space became a sort of respite from the loud music of the main space. Many were drawn into the beautiful way the icon was presented on simmering blue and orange cloth in the haze of incense, below the beautiful blue stained glass windows of the Lady Chapel. Many took pictures of the altar and spent a long time just looking at it.

The use of the space could have offended either the religious, as the high altar of the cathedral did become a sort of backdrop for a dance party, and I did at one point have to protect the Paschal candle from the overflow of dancers but the more secular audience could also have been offended as compline was never announced it sort of just happened and one could have felt slightly trapped in a religious service by social convention. Yet, the magic of the night was that things just flowed into one another. Space was made for a convergence of religion and secular. The cathedral showed it's commitment to being a space for all people. A people's cathedral, not something above the city but connected to it. I don't know that I can come close to conveying how important I think that is here and in other places but I hope it continues.  

If you would like to see some of my videos of LightNight you check them out on my Instagram here.

Data

I have spent a good chunk of my time here entering data. Now you might think that sounds boring and I'll admit it's not the first thing a long to do at work but it has to be done. I enter in data about the guests who come to the food bank. Name, address, DOB, country of origin, number and age of children, asylum or refugee status, etc.

I see them when I work at the food bank too. I usually greet them and then check their names in our system to see if they've been before. We muddle through the questions needed for my database even though I only speak English fluently and perhaps they only speak Arabic, or Farsi, or French, or Lingala, or Swahili, or Pashto, or Dari, or Kurdish, oh but not the Kurdish that our volunteer speaks another type of Kurdish. I could learn 15 different languages and I would still have problems communicating with some. 

I try to show something to a guest in her language, she mutters to Akbar. "No good." says, Akbar. "Why?" I ask. "She from the country area, ya know? She never learned to read." 

You might think the face to face interactions like that would be the hardest but they're not. There is a person in front of you, they do not have time for you to become emotionally overwhelmed by their position in life. They need you to get on with it. It's inputting data that I feel the weight of them. Perhaps because I can consider them more in that space. 

The woman from earlier: 28, 1 adult 3 children under 10, Afghanistan.

When I enter in people with my birth year I think about them the most. I volunteered to leave my homeland, family, and friends to come here. Someday I will get to go home. She must have been driven out. Why else would you leave with 3 children under 10 and travel over 8,000 km? Partly on foot but maybe they were smuggled at certain points. She will probably never be able to go back.

 I think a lot about how different our lives are and I wonder if I would be able to live her life.

On Hospitality

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it." Hebrews 13:2

It has been almost four weeks since I got to England and settled into the Tsedaqah House, a three story victorian style, next to the Liverpool Cathedral. The views are immense. Out my front door I can see the great cathedral building that I feel in awe of every day and to the back, I can see down to Albert Dock and the Mersey River.  The house itself is very cozy and Emily Bethany (a Canadian housemate) and I have done well to make it feel more like home.

You may have been caught off guard by that funny name for my house, Tsedaqah. A more common transliteration is "Tzedakah" (ze-DAH-ka) but nevertheless, its literal translation is "to do justice" but is more commonly associated with the Jewish concept of charity. Since I am neither a Jew or a scholar of the Jewish faith I don't think I can accurately explain what this concept means in Jewish faith but if you are interested I think this might be a safe place to start.But back to the story of my house, the house has four bedrooms and one room that is very small and more like an office? or maybe just a really large closet that will soon have a twin (or single as they say here) bed in it. Emily and I both sleep on the second floor with fairly large sized rooms. Bethany is on the third in a smaller room but it has an epic view of the docks and most importantly there is a large bedroom with an ensuite bathroom which serves as a guest room for various guests of the Liverpool Cathedral or Liverpool Diocese. (The small office/closet room will be available as well but so that if we have friends visit there is a room for them.

Being an innkeeper extraordinaire has been a cool experience so far. I have learned new skills like towel origami. I have so far mastered dogs and swans as pictured below:

But aside from my goofy and cheesy towel art, I have been considering what being hospitable means and how to engage in hospitality with those I do not know. How often have I invited someone to stay with me or eat with me who I did not know much about? These are scary things and in part, they are scary because as a society we are continually reminded of people who wish to do others harm in every true murder show (Dateline, First 48, Investigation Discovery) and local news report. While surely there are people like that in the world today, there were also people like that in the days of Jesus. I mean the Good Samaritan story is pretty graphic and yet the call is not to be hospitable to those you know. No, it's "do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers" or Romans 12:13 "Contribute to the needs of the Saints, extend hospitality to strangers." There are others but these are my favorite because they seem the most direct. 

If we, as Christians, hold to the idea that living our faith is what we are called to do, then we must also acknowledge that sometimes it will have to be a vulnerable and courageous thing to do. It will have to involve some personal risk, discomfort, and perhaps even rejection. I wish to see in myself and also in others more last minute invites to dinner, regardless of the "state of one's home." More "crappy dinner parties" but with a mix of those strong hold friends and those people, you wouldn't normally invite. Or maybe you just put out an invite on social media that you'll be having dinner and if people are interested in coming they should feel free. (There is a man studying to be a priest here who does this every week, oh and he has a family of 3 children. They fed 28 people last Monday) Find some goal of hospitality that works for you but work towards being more hospitable because there is so much joy in that.

I have not mastered the art of hospitality, I often think I have just begun even understand what it is but what a joy to learn something new. What a joy to experience all sorts of people God has sent and what a joy to be someone invited to the table.

A Welcome

Welcome to the first of what I hope to be many entries about my life as a missionary in the Episcopal Church as part of the Young Adult Service Corps (YASC). The program is available to church members ages 21-30 and is a year-long commitment to serve in another country through partnerships with the Anglican Communion. YASC members live in a variety of situations from monasteries, family stays, to apartments. Likewise, members do a variety of work from teaching, farming, and NGO work serving the poor, migrants, seafarers and many others. It gives the church an opportunity to strengthen ties across the communion to reach mutual goals of healing a broken world.

I have thought about joining YASC since I was about 21 but when I graduated college I took an opportunity to attend graduate school first. That venture ended in 2014 rather suddenly with the understanding that I was not going to be a college professor after all. That winter I was left with a part-time minimum wage job with distribution factory in Denton, Texas and no idea what to do next. I had no "real" job experience, I mean not even an internship. I had just been in school since I was in kindergarten.

Pretty much my whole life till age 26

But I was also left with a strange amount of peace and knowledge that now we could finally get to what I should be doing. I kept circling back to the other two options I had considered before graduate school the Americorps VISTA program and YASC. Finally, one day I just committed to applying for the VISTA program for 2015 and to YASC for 2016-2017. With a lot of sass and sarcasm I said, "Fine, Here I am Lord!."

Here I am

It has been the most rewarding year of my life and I have been truly blessed to have been partnered with Refugee Services of Texas for my VISTA year. I have talked with the YASC mission personnel and it is my hope that I can continue my work with refugees in the next year but I know no matter who I am serving I will be blessed to share life with them far more than I can even imagine.

Now if you're still with me, here is the part about how you can help me in my journey. We are all called to heal the world and some of us, like me, can give up everything and take off for a year to do it. Others cannot, whether that's for health, financial, or simply because that is not how you are called to serve. But that doesn't mean you can't be a part of this work. It cost a lot of money to send a missionary to another country for a year. YASC estimates the cost is $25,000 for one missionary and the national church generously covers $15,000 of that, leaving YASC members to raise $10,000 before we leave. I need your help in order to go a serve those who need it the most.

$10,000 dollars seems like a lot but if you divide it up by a year that's only $27 a day. So please take an opportunity to partake in the work God has given us all to do. You can find my Go Fund Me page on the side-bar of my blog or here

I hope to write soon with an update about my placement.

Blessings,

Kate