i love our ReadRetreatServe experience. once a semester we do a mash up of the typical campus ministry retreat/service project in a way that is disruptive, refreshing, and challenging. i've written about our fall/Halloween/salem experience here and here, so i won't go in to the logistics of what we do. what i will say is this: one, it's fun to see how this experience has grown over the past three years. more importantly, we have an AWESOME group of students this year. i am continually amazed at their depth of insight, their level of maturity, and, this weekend especially, their courage, their servant posture, and their flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances (and weather). i am so proud of them and honored to work alongside them on campuses and in neighborhoods around our city.
stuff_that_happened_this_weekend we held our fourth ReadRetreatServe event with sojourn on saturday. 25 students, staff, and volunteers joined together for an immersion experience with one of our neighborhood initiative partnerships. i am particularly excited about some of the conversations coming out of the weekend as there is a new wave of students involved with sojourn who, before yesterday, weren't familiar at all with this aspect of who we are and what we do. we spent the morning reading and talking about God's justice and his heart for the oppressed at St. Mary's (where our UMASS students tutor high school kids). we heard some stories of folks who have intentionally moved to the upham's corner/quincy street/dudley street sub-neighborhood of dorchester to live this out. we ended the day with an interactive tour of the neighborhood and some practical next steps for students to take. i thought the day turned out great and each element brought a particular aspect of the conversation to life for our students. i am stoked to see what happens next! check out the slide show:
oh, and then today amy and i participated in foxborough's old fashioned ten miler (amy as an employee of marathon physical therapy and me as a runner). if you've been following me for a while you will remember that i ran in a trail race circuit in durango. a couple of thoughts...one, those were trail races and at high elevation so i actually thought they were all harder than this run even though it was a couple miles longer than i've ever run before...two, there were a LOT more people in this race than any i ran in CO...three, i actually surprised myself considering my running has been very spotty in january and february with the snow (i was hoping for a 10 minute mile pace and i actually beat 9!). ps. if you check out the results you will notice that the winner was from dorchester!
we had a pretty poor turnout today, probably due to the miserable, cold weather, but i still loved every thing about Read.Retreat.Serve. in particular, our partnership with St. Mary's is something to be really excited about, and it is ALWAYS good to break the routine and be quiet for awhile.
