Moving Forward

“I’m not going back. I’m moving ahead, here to declare to you: My past is over.”

In the context of the song “Moving Forward,” that line is full of the hope of becoming a new creation in Christ.  But out of context, it could be the sad acceptance of a forced change.  “I can’t go back. I’m moving ahead now because that’s all I can do. My past is over, and I can never return.”

I’m a preacher’s kid, and I’ve had my fair share of moves. As I start my senior year in college, this will be the first time I have ever attended a school for 4 consecutive years.

I visit my grandma a lot, and one time I brought a friend. We wandered around my first church while Grandma was in choir practice.  I last attended that church at somewhere around 10 years old, so the proximity of the ceilings continually surprised me.  Classrooms were rearranged, the nurseries actually switched places, and there was an elevator that might have been there the whole time but I sure don’t remember it.  Really though, the ceilings are the craziest part because they used to seem impossibly high.

The world changes around us, and we change. There are no static characters in reality.

Voices of Youth has changed quite a bit since my first tour in 2008, and so have I. Nothing really stays the same, does it?  I remember attending a concert in 2011 and sobbing because I wasn’t up there with the choir.  This summer is the first year since then that I have not traveled with the group.  Last night, my church hosted the choir and once again I almost cried during the concert …because I could see how I and other earlier people had impacted the way Voices of Youth does things and how some of the girls I knew before Voices had changed, and I could catch a glimpse of the amazing women they will become.  People who are no longer with the group were present in the concert through gifts they had shared during their years and through siblings and others they had taken under their wings or friends they had invited to apply.  Even the founder, Jim Perry, was present through alumni who traveled with the choir during his years, alumni who were so impacted by the experience that they made sure their children and their congregation would be able to share it.

I caught a glimpse of one of the traditional activities the group does during the tour, and I know they have some more traditions to come. These moments were not part of the original choir; mostly they were added sometime during the 90s or early 2000s, and some have changed since then.  I know one that is probably the most beloved in this generation of the choir was added as recently as 2009 (or maybe it was 2010, I’m not sure.)

Things change, but they stay the same.  Two people become best friends in one day, and they’re different people every day after that, but they’re still best friends.  A ministry can adapt to different generations and personalities. It might adapt so much that it’s barely connected to the thing that started it.  But if it continues to do what God has called people to do in today’s world, then it’s doing exactly what it has always been about.

We’re not going back. We’re moving ahead. We declare to you, the past is over.  In God, all things are made new, and we are moving forward.

A voice to be heard, a part in the song (Voices of Youth!)

(That’s a line from “For Everyone Born,” an awesome hymn.)

Before Taize and Iona, there was another life-changing once-in-a-lifetime experience that gave me my voice. (Well, people kept saying it was once-in-a-lifetime and I kept thinking

because I traveled with this same group 5 times.)

Voices of Youth!  Invented on a napkin (or maybe the back of a placemat; I can’t keep the VOY story and the Society of St. Andrew story straight), this is a group of youths from the state of Virginia who travel to a place where the VA United Methodist Church sends money.  They work with a local mission there for a week, and then they go on a concert tour of Virginia and spread the word about where that mysterious apportionment money is really going.

My first year, we traveled to Brazil to work with the Shade and Fresh Water Project.  I was fourteen and shy. That trip shattered my shell and started me on the journey to becoming the woman I am now.  Before I left for the trip, my dad made me promise to “say a few words” when I got back since our church funded a significant portion of that journey.  I called him towards the end of the tour to say, “I think I want to do a whole sermon.”

What on earth could possess a timid 14-year-old bookworm who hates public speaking to ask to do a sermon?  If you live anywhere near Lynchburg or Danville, tonight is your chance to find out.  My sister is part of the group this year, and they will be sharing some beautiful music and their experience in the Bahamas.  Tonight’s concert is at 7pm at Mt. Herman UMC in Lynch Station, VA, and you are more than welcome to come. There are no tickets or anything; just show up!

I promise I’ll write some more about my own Voices experiences sometime (they really did change the course of my life, so they’re bound to come up on occasion), but today I’m a big sister excitedly waiting to see what Voices has become for my little sister this year.

If you’re near Virginia but not quite so close to Lynchburg, take a look at the rest of the tour schedule:

Wednesday July 16th (Lynchburg District) Mount Hermon UMC
7 pm 171 Mount Hermon Rd
Lynch Station, VA 24571

Thursday July 17th (Roanoke District) Raleigh Court UMC
7 pm 1706 Grandin Road
Roanoke, VA 24015

Friday July 18th (Richmond District) Mechanicsville UMC
7 pm 7356 Atlee Road
Mechanicsville, VA 23111

Saturday July 19th (Elizabeth River District) Nimmo UMC
7 pm 2200 Princess Anne Rd
Virginia Beach, VA 23456

Sunday July 20th (York River District) Chestnut Memorial UMC
11:00 AM worship 1024 Harpersville Road
Newport News, VA 23601

Sunday July 20th (James River District) Chester UMC
6:00 PM 12132 Percival St
Chester, VA 23831

“Young people” …why is it so important to label us?

I’ve heard the cry for “more young people” at just about every UMC event I’ve ever attended, and I’ve seen many blogs post many different perspectives on the relations between young people and the church, but Iona and Taize have their own unique responses to young people.

In Iona, our college group was welcomed as part of an intergenerational community. All of the friends I found there were older than me, some by a couple generations.  We built relationships across age barriers and had conversations we would never have had with each other. I learned much from my older friends and enjoyed talking, drawing, puppeteering, worshiping, walking with them through our weeklong journey there.  In Iona, young people were people just like all the others in the community.  Simple as that. No discrimination, no sense that our voices were less important or awkwardly overemphasized, just people. Praise God.

In Taize, we were one little group amongst thousands of people who were almost all in the 16-25 age range.  Most were in their early twenties, so I blended right in.  We had small groups of people within a year of our age but from many countries.  We talked through big topics with our different backgrounds offering many perspectives and found a variety of conclusions, often disagreeing, but we found common ground in the way we thought about things.

But when I wrote about Taize’s ministry yesterday, I didn’t mention the best part.  This ministry of reconciliation, this pilgrimage of trust across the earth? Most of the time, it’s not the monks spreading the word.  And it’s not senior citizens. It’s not clergy or businesspeople or anyone recognized as successful or respectable.

It’s us.

Roger’s grandmother told him about her actions during WWI and her opinions about the war not just to fill conversation, but because he was young. She knew that young people have the power to change the world.  And look at what Brother Roger did, knowing that one person believed he could do anything.

Pope John Paul II described Taize like this in a letter to young people:

One passes through Taize as one passes close to a spring of water. The traveler stops, quenches his thirst and continues on his way. The brothers of the community, you know, do not want to keep you. They want, in prayer and silence, to enable you to drink the living water promised by Christ, to know his joy, to discern his presence, to respond to his call, then to set out again to witness to his love and to serve your brothers and sisters in your parishes, your schools, your universities, and all your places of work.

We have passed through Taize, and what do you know? Suddenly I’ve found a reason to witness to God’s love in a more active way.  Taize welcomes all of us young people specifically as our own generation. The monks believe we have the power to change the world, and by sharing their community with us they have given us a reason to do it.

 

Which way is better, Iona’s welcome or Taize’s empowerment? I think putting them together creates an incredible experience.  We are people, not “young people” in our own little box on display in the corner, but people.  And we have a voice, and our voice is important, and we have something to say.

Fangirling about Taize

I’ve told you I fell in love with Taize years ago, and I fell in love all over again this past spring as I researched more about the community’s history and ministry.  Brother Roger is amazing; I’m sad that I cannot meet him or his grandmother in this life.

The story of Taize begins with Roger’s grandmother, who harbored refugees in France during World War I.  She saw the war as something the church could have prevented:

“Christians, divided amongst themselves, had been killing each other.”

She imagined a world where the church could not fathom such a thing, where people saw each other as brothers and sisters.  Her beliefs greatly influenced Roger’s adult life.  He was living in Switzerland when World War II began.  He chose to move back to France in 1940.

“The more a believer wishes to live the absolute call of God, the more essential it is to do so in the heart of human duress.” –Brother Roger

After the war, he and six others made a commitment on Easter Sunday in 1949 to “celibacy, common life and a great simplicity of lifestyle.”  The brothers in Taize earn their living by making pottery. The money pilgrims bring goes to pay for the pilgrims’ expenses and nothing more. The brothers do not even accept family inheritances, instead giving the money from those to charity.

Taize’s primary ministry is a “pilgrimage of trust across the earth,” this idea of creating a global community of people who recognize the “other” as a person, people who cannot think of a person as some obscure problem.  Brother Alois says it this way:

“All humanity forms a single family and God lives within every human being without exception.” –Letter from Kolkata

At its heart, Taize is about making Brother Roger’s grandmother’s dream come true.

“If reconciliation is at the heart of Taize’s vocation, this has never been seen as an end in itself, but so that Christians can be a leaven of reconciliation between people, of trust among nations, and of peace on earth.” –Olivier Clement

By reconciling the church, we can reconcile people and communities and nations and even the world.  This is the hope that lights every candle in Taize, and the reason the monks are so willing to receive the thousands of young people who visit them every week.