So, during the 10:00 service at St. Stephens there is somehing we do called the prayers of the people. For those who do not regularly attend St. Stephens (which is quite a few people) and those who were not in church for the service last Sunday (which is almost everyone), this is the part of church where we pray for a variety of things, other churches in our diocese, people we know who are sick, and the world in general.

One section of this is the part where we pray for victims of violence everywhere, and the person leading the prayers says a list of places where there is violence happening. The list, as best as I can remember it, is Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Israel and Palestine and Sri Lanka. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty widely known. Most people also have heard about the genocide in Sudan. Israel and Palestine are perenially in conflict, but I have absolutely no idea what is happening in Sri Lanka.

One of the main goals of our group for this year has been to inform other people about our work in New Orleans, and to get them to care about what is being done there, for better or for worse. I think that one of the big obstacles we are going to run into is people who we can’t convince to care about New Orleans as strongly as we do.

I think that some of the places I’ve listed above, probably hold similiar feelings for many of us. We all know what is happening in Sudan, and although we consciously know that it is bad and wrong, we have not made the emotional connection, or taken any action to help the situation. Obviously, it would be impossible to do in Sudan what we do in New Orleans, but I think there are still things we could do if we wanted to, that would work towards improving the situation there.

That’s just Sudan, which everybody already knows about, but what about a place like Sri Lanka? How can we expect other people to care and act about the cause that we have decided to champion if we cannot act or even know about acts of injustice in other places. Obviously I am applying my own feelings to those of the group as a whole, but I think that what I’m saying is not too far off the mark.

I know that there are, or at least were, postcards that you could send to US elected officials, asking them to put pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the genocide in Darfur, and I will try to have more information about that this Sunday, to give to anyone who wants it, and to force on those who don’t, and I will also try to figure out something about the situation in Sri Lanka, if I’m not just imagining it, between now and then.

Also, I have an excuse why I didn’t post yesterday, but it is pretty boring, why don’t each of us just make up a better reason why I didn’t, just for fun.

-Ben

I was thinking about this today… What is HOPE? people say it a lot, but how many people just hurry through saying it…”I hope things get better.” “I hope I do well on my test.” I know I don’t. We all know that isn’t TRUE HOPE…

Today I started thinking about it because I saw this story about a young girl, who when her parents told her that her grandmother had a stroke, and there was no chance of recovery she was in a coma, her only response was, “Maybe Grandma will be ok.” And no one believed her, until about a month later, when her grandma finally woke up from the coma and started her recovery process. The doctors couldn’t explain it, nor could the family, or friends. The young girl didn’t need an explanation, she had true HOPE that her grandmother would be okay.

As I was thinking, I came upon the conclusion that we are afraid to have real hope. So my next question was…

Why are we so afraid to hope… really hope? This was my answer:

Maybe its because over however many years we’ve been alive, we’ve been disappointed when we hope. Many times this can obscure our sense of hope. I mean honestly, how many times have you heard someone say… “Hope for the best, but expect the worst.” We all know that isn’t really hope, and it defeats the purpose of hoping at all.

This is my definition of hope: Hope is being able to look at our world with all the joy and wonder of a child.

We can learn a lot from children, many of them have not yet been affected by life’s disappointments, and i think it’s important that even though we’ve been let down, and disappointed, we continue to find it in ourselves to have HOPE… real Hope during tough times.

Sorry for the lengthiness… but i thought this was worth saying

~Lori

I sit here and write this blog with an enormously large sense of defeat weighing down into the pit of my stomach. Today, we had the most glorious sunshine and New Orleans received eight inches of rain yesterday, eight inches. I just feel like no matter how many times I pray, God will not give the city of New Orleans time to heal. The people down there are continuously being bombarded by outrageous weather and overbearing law enforcement, I just feel dejected at the thought of the newly rebuilt houses being flooded once again. I feel like nothing I do will make a difference, like no matter how many times we try to help by sending money, supplies or rebuilding, they will never be able to rest peacefully. We all know that if a hurricane as large as Katrina hit somewhere like Florida, the entire country would be breaking out their checkbooks but when it happens to places such as the 7th and 9th wards of New Orleans where the majority of people are minorities, there is barely a reaction. The majority of our country watches it on the nightly news while eating their dinners, they sit there and discuss how sad it is yet when the news moves on the the next report, they do nothing. I’ve been reflecting on all of the genocides, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and wars our generation has been alive for… and how many times i have turned off the television and gone back to my everyday life. I know that there is only so much we can do, but if everyone in the world had the hope and will to make a difference that this youth group has, we could cure aids and stop the genocide in Africa, put a stop to world hunger and get the entire would prepared for catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina. I just don’t understand why people don’t want to help or feel the need to stay oblivious to whats going on in our own country. Our army is in Iraq, trying to tell another country how to set up a their government. Where do we get off telling them to fix their country when we can’t even take care of our own?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/23/national/main3396438.shtml

So yeah, Chelsea and I are making concrete job lists for people to do during this week, and we were wondering if anyone DID not sign up on sunday who wants to.  Here’s a list of who we have thus far

David C
Judy
Daniel
John P
Carolyn
Lauren
Sophie
Rachel
Blair
Brendan
David G
James

OH! and we also need more people who will be willing to help with fund raising Money from the fund raising is needed to buy groceries for the food if we can’t find someone to donate it, and also toward paying back the church for fronting us the money for the community center

If anyone else wants to help we sure would love the help We need a lot more people willing to find sponsors. If everyone found one or two sponsors, it would make this job a LOT easier Please let me know, you can call my cell phone at any time if you have questions, want to help out, ideas etc My # is 850-3354.

Thanks so much, peace and love,
Lori

When I turned on the blog today, I was stunned. I assumed there might be one or two obligatory comments on what I had written from Danny, or Michael. I was, however, faced with a deluge of messages on what I had written. I guess the best way to get people to have a conversation is to offend everybody. Because of these messages I have begun to fear for my safety and am now hiding out in the aforementioned cave. First, in the interesest of full disclosure, I am Bennett Pierson Snyder and am responsible for this post, and the one entitled “Looking Ahead”. Some of what has been said I will address generally, but certain comments have statements that I believe merit individual responses. As I have not figured out how to comment on a comment, or if that is even possible, I will provide these responses in this post.

In general, the comments that I made last night were pessimistic, as a reflection partly of my general outlook on life, but more importantly, a result of how I felt last night which, as many people can bear witness to, was not particularly pleasant. This should in no way be construed as an apology. Anything that I feel the need to apologize for I will do so in the following paragraphs, but I would never be so foolish as to apologize for the entirety of what I spent over an hour on last night.

Chelsea: I am not looking to attract a certain type of person, I was only stating my perception of the youth group. I love the fact that the youth group is open to anyone and everyone, but I do feel that some types of people slip through our fingers. Next, I have nothing but respect for what you and Lori are doing, however, and I am sorry if anything I said gave you this impression. I think it is absolutely wonderful that you have the enthusiasm and the courage to bring up such a different idea from what we as a group are used to. I am afraid we will have to agree to disagree about who our youth group attracts, although the “type” of person that I was talking about is by no means a negative, I do think we should strive not just to include, but attract all types of people. I suppose it might have been better if I had avoided specific examples, but I felt that people, rather than broad generalizations expressed what I was trying to say better. I didn’t realize that by doing so I would be offending or alienating anybody, and for that I am sorry. Please believe that I forgot to post my name along with my blog, because I would never try to hide from anything I said.

Lori: The statement “There enthusiasm is very refreshing, although I wonder if we will be able to follow through on it, or if we are doomed to disappoint.” Is an expression of my fear that your idea, which is far from what we are used to, will fail because the rest of the youth group will fail to participate. It is a reflection of great personal apperehension aout my ability to follow through on your plan. However, I have read your comments on this statement, and I think that you are right. Saying this is inapropriate because it shows a complete lack of faith. Please understand that it is my lack of faith in myself, not in you or your idea, that I am expressing.

The statement “I think that this type of group also attracts a certain type of person” is obviously referring to you and Chelsea. But what I meant was not that you and Chelsea are bad or undesirable people. I think you both have been incredibly dynamic, and that this is a wonderful thing. I was just saying that other types of people who have trouble putting themselves in new situations or committing themselves as wholeheartedly as you have, might also have something to offer to our group, but might not have as easy a time becoming part of it.

James: All I was saying was that I didn’t feel like you were looking for a huge commitment to a youth group. This was only my impression of the situation, and I would welcome any clarifications, especially because I would love to get your honest impression of our youth group. You are of course welcome on sunday evenings, or any other time we meet.

David John Chrobuck: I do not appreciate being called “sneaky” or “narrowminded”, although I do agree with you that our blog is not a place to target or insult specific people.

Tomorrow, I will do my level best to offend nobody, or at least nobody knew, and will talk about Sri Lanka.

-Ben

It’s only been three months since we finshed our last mission trip, and already we’re looking at next years’. Although we’ve always kind of seen oursleves as a youth group centered around one major activity, I’m not sure that this is a good idea. It is nice to have a centering theme that you can focus on throughout the year, I think it also creates a certain kind of dynamic. The first thing I’ve noticed, is that people feel that nothing else matters, that there participation and performance leading up to the mission trip don’t matter as much as the trip itself, or that only working hard on the mission trip discharges their obligation to our youth group, and more importantly, to god. I think that this type of group also attracts a certain type of person.

Although I pride myself on being part of an incredibly open and inclusive youth group, I wonder if sometimes this is not the case. Tonight there were 4 people at our meeting who were new in one sense or another, anyone who was there will probably recognize them by my descriptions. Two of them have only been coming regularly to our meetings for the last couple of weeks. Despite this, they have jumped headfirst into our planning for the mission trip, and have already begun planning a new fundraising event that goes well beyond anything our group has ever done. This is the type of person that our youth group does well at attracting, the kind of person of person who takes to new situations like a fish to water. There enthusiasm is very refreshing, although I wonder if we will be able to follow through on it, or if we are doomed to disappoint.

Another new person was a friend who was brought along by one of our regular members. Althought not aloof by any means, he did seem slightly detached, and i get the feeling he might be looking for a more casual commitment to a youth group, if he is looking for a commitment at all. I don’t know if we’ll see him again, and although a casual commitment may not seem as deisrable as the type demonstrated by the previous example, many of our current members started off just looking for a casual commitment.

 The fourth “new” person at our group demonstrates my point, and I am assuring myself that I have one, the best. He is not really new. His family has been going to our church for several years now, and he was actually part of our first mission trip. However, once it became clear that he would not be able to come on the second one, due to conflicting commitments, he seemed to disappear from our youth group, and indeed, I remember seeing less of his family at our church in general. He reappeared at the beginning of this scholastic year and has been going to youth group in the evenings ever since. His brother has never been able to come on a mission trip with us, and although I have seen him at school, so he cannot be dead, he remains mysteriously absent from our sunday evening meetings.

Although there is no requirement for participation in the mission trip, I think that there is an implicit understanding that this is all our group is about, and I think that this is a mistake. There is only one person in our group that I can think of who hs not been on a mission trip so far, and does not intend to go on one in the future. She was absent tonight, no doubt making mischief, but I think that her continued attendance is a testament to her commitment, despite the minimal rewards that our group offers to those who for whatever reason, do not participate for one week in july every year.