General Assembly

Last week, I was present at the 221^st General Assembly in Detroit as one of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s interns, and I was exhausted.

I received an incredible education from countless organizations, commissioners, advisory delegates and observers in topics concerning environmental justice, peace in Israel/Palestine, and marriage equality issues, among many, many other topics. I learned about church polity, about exceedingly specific grammar, and about how every vote counts.

I felt the heavy sadness of the commissioners rejecting things I poured my energy and heart into, and the intense joy as other acts of just peace and equality were passed.

Of course, there were also the long waking hours and short nights of sleep on the floor of a nearby church, the rushing from plenary to strategy session to commission meeting to briefing dinner and back again, and the endless organization of emails, twitter feeds, mass texts, testimonies, and reflections.

I was exhausted physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but it might be the most beautiful kind of exhausted I’ve ever been. My cup is running over and spilling everywhere. 

I applied for the internship because I wanted to go to General Assembly to see the bigger picture of the church I grew up in, and am serving this year as a Young Adult Volunteer. It has been a great opportunity not just to see that bigger picture, but also to connect with it, and it has left me full of hope. I am part of a church that is happening. This week has been full of discussion and discernment as well as opportunities to learn and to love. As a church, we have taken risks to include others and encourage peace, not because they were the easy answers, but because according to Holy Spirit, they were right answers. The exhaustion will pass, but I believe this church will continue on. And here I am, part of that picture!

how far I've come

Greetings from the whirlwind we call General Assembly! I'd hoped to update more during the week, but I have kept incredibly busy as a Presbyterian Peace Fellowship intern. Also I fell ill with a viral throat infection, so the vast majority of my free time is spent unconscious, drinking tea, or... no. I haven't had free time yet. But I have been loving this (minus the abscesses on my throat).

First, let me say, I adore PPF and feel so honored and excited to be one of their interns. This is a group of wonderful people who are open minded and ready to be challenged, responding with grace (no seriously, read that link, that letter and the press conference we put together in under 3 hours to support it were really amazing). An organization started to support conscientious objectors in WWII, PPF is celebrating 70 years of peacemaking through justice of all kinds-- social, food, environmental... we have talked about drones, about BDS (boycotting, divestment and sanctions), about gender and marriage equality, about fossil fuels...

I am loving this.

I have probably a hundred thousand million billion more things to say, but I wanted to talk about two horrible ironies in my life this week: the oil slick experience I had a few weeks ago, and the laptop on which I am writing this.

I testified before Committee 15 regarding fossil fuel divestment, in partnership with PPF as well as Fossil Free PC(USA), Presbyterians for Earth Care, the Covenant Network, and other great people and groups. We heard many, many testimonies in favor of divestment, mostly focused on climate change. I talked about the irony of swimming through oil while planting bullrushes to restore the banks of a river badly eroded by the oil industry. Investing in fossil fuels undermines this work I've been doing, that the church has told me is important. Supporting environmental damages is inconsistent with preaching that the earth is precious and worth caring for.
 
Another big topic PPF is focusing on this General Assembly, is that of divesting from three companies that have supported Israeli occupation of Palestinian places, bulldozing homes and trees. Those companies are Caterpiller, Motorola, and... HP. Hewlitt Packard.

I am writing this from an HP laptop.

I bought it six years ago when I started teaching at Rutgers, because moving a desktop around might have become a bit tedious. It was a good price, had a reputation for being a good machine, and plus I really liked the commercials that were on at the time:



I am learning a great deal about Middle East issues this week, not just through the eyes of the Peace Fellowship, but many other organizations and individuals weighing in.We're mostly discussing Israel/Palestine, an issue that the great Desmond Tutu has spoken about. Wearing a PPF shirt and carrying an HP computer felt a little ironic and inconsistent.

I'm human. I'm not perfect, even at the stuff I believe in. I am passionate about conservation, but I still drive a car all over the place. I lose my patience and speak violently even though I believe in peace. I'm not perfect, because I'm human, but I'm trying. I'm learning. I'm doing my best to share what I learn in productive, peaceful ways.

So, is it a little strange to serve PPF and use an HP? Yes. But I can't know everything. So maybe the HP isn't so awful, but is a sign of how far I've come. When I do learn things, I will do my best to live it out-- I'm learning a lot this year about voting with my dollars (and/or future computer choices). In the meantime, the environmentalist in me will use this laptop until it is dead, and as an associate of the Peace Fellowship I will keep my mind and heart open. I think that's ok.

Eco-Stewards Gainesville

I apologize that this has taken a few weeks to post. Immediately following my incredible trip to Gainesville with the Eco-Stewards, I hosted my childhood bff in New Orleans, along with a visit from my partner and one of his friends, and then I had surgery to remove a stubborn wisdom tooth from my sinus and jaw (I'm not sure how it could be in both places at once, but it sure made a mess; also its neighbor was removed from the other side of my jaw, good times in my face). So now that I've slept off the anesthesia and my brain is not totally being hijacked by pain medicine, I wanted to tell you about the beautiful things I saw in Gainesville as part of this year's Eco-Stewards program:



Just kidding. I don't know where to begin.

We toured a beautiful organic farm, an incubator kitchen, talked with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers about fair labor conditions for farm workers, went to some really great coffee shops, and visited a ton of incredible places: Payne's Prairie, a community garden where you pick and you pay what you can, a farm to school program, a farmers market, the Gainesville Catholic Worker, a microfarm, and a church yard community garden, biked 20 miles to the Alachua Conservation Trust to tour Forage Farm and talk about water issues with the Florida Springs Institute. We ate amazing local foods, and learned about the connections between all of these places. There is some beautiful work going on in Gainesville, feeding the hungry and loving the earth. To top it all off, we hiked the Devil's Millhopper and tubed the Ichetucknee. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few stops but it was a week of constantly amazing things.

And, of course, I would be remiss not to mention that tubing the Ichetucknee lead to swimming alongside manatees as they moved up the beautifully clear spring-fed river. Yep, I just dove in and swam beside these two incredibly beautiful creatures.





Keeping up with them is a lot harder than I would have guessed. They're so big and slow and graceful, but also very strong. We floated so slowly down the river that I was surprised how hard it was to swim upstream. I was also just a little bit excited, so holding my breath long enough to be underwater, take pictures, and kick frantically without scaring the manatees was a challenge.

It was a really amazing week to come together with other people interested in the relationship between faith and environmental work. As we all reflected on how awesome the Eco-Stewards program was, and how good it was to connect with this sort of buildingless church that the program has created, it came up that these kinds of great experiences kind of carry us for a while. A week like this is fleeting, but so deeply moving. And in the face the church being a complicated place for many young adults, it's kind of important to find these beautiful things to sustain us while we sort out the tough stuff and figure it out for ourselves.

While deep in the throes of that conversation, Rev. Rob Mark, one of the trip leaders, piped in, "...like the manatees..." Yes, exactly like the manatees. So incredibly beautiful, and only with us for a very short time, but I think about it every day. Not just manatees. The whole week of connecting with the great things going on in Gainesville and the church.

Will that excitement wear off? Perhaps, just like the manatees kept swimming up that clear, cool spring. But it leaves me with a sense of hope in what I am doing, and encourages me to keep seeking out the church in the world like this.