Last Updated February 25, 2013Staff Blogs

A Year of Eating Locally: Part 1 of 12

At the end of December, Liz and I (Ben) made a commitment to spend at least 50% of our grocery money at vendors in our immediate neighborhood.

Immediate Disclaimer: For us, buying a certain percentage of our food from local farms is a challenge. We also find that it would take us all over the state, for hours a week, and out of our local community. So for us, the adventure of "eating locally", is more connected to the whole health (shalom) of our Codman Square neighborhood than the locally grown movement which we find equally valuable and inspiring while challenging to enter into on a regular basis.

For the rest of 2013, I intend to publish one entry a month detailing our adventure in trying to eat both more healthfully (is that a word?) and locally. We have intentionally chosen to make food-buying and food-consuming more complicated than it usually is, but we feel that these complications are good and healthy (no pun intended) because they help us think more critically and make more informed decisions about how we care for ourselves, neighbors, and the planet we inhabit together. Every month I will identify a challenge we had, a success story, a compromise we made (!), or perhaps an ideological element of why we are doing this. If you care to join us on the journey... read on.

I need to start at the beginning: Why are we doing this? Why not just go buy what looks good at Stop & Shop like "everyone else" does? Or why not buy everything from Massachusetts Farms and/or families?

We are committed followers of Jesus. Our commitment to local and healthy eating means nothing outside of that commitment. I find grounds of motivation in the book of Jeremiah: In chapter 29, the prophet Jeremiah tells the people, on God's behalf "Seek the peace of the city" where they have been exiled to. Liz and I weren't exactly exiled to this community; if we were alive during Jeremiah's time, we might be like a Babylonian couple deciding to go live with the Jewish exiles. The parallel is tricky and nuanced, I know, but it's a roughly accurate way to describe us. One way to sustain our local community is to come alongside those who are already making a positive difference for the sake of the existing population.

I moved to this neighborhood in early 2011 - almost exactly two years ago. In my former neighborhood, I was fortunate to have a medium-size grocer at the end of my street. Nothing super fancy, but a vendor committed to selling a variety of fresh produce at affordable prices. They also had some environmentally engineered household goods (100% recycled paper goods, for example). I was saddened when I moved and found out that there was nothing comparable within walking distance. In fact, everyone even warned me: Don't go into People's Tropical Food Supermarket. There are rats. The meat is bad. They jacked up the price on bottled water during a water emergency. They do not care about the community.

I woke up on my first day in the neighborhood to find that I had no orange juice in the house. I had all of my ingredients to make smoothies, but no juice. I took up a deep breath and walked up to People's, expecting the worst. Lo and behold, it had just been bought out by a new owner, the America's Food Basket chain of Brooklyn, NY.

Over the next year, I watched AFB remodel the interior of the entire store. They now stock an incredible variety of conventional and organic produce options, while maintaining an inventory base specifically marketed to the population of the neighborhood. They sell more recycled household products than the dominant larger supermarkets. They hired about twenty new staff members. They work with the local health center to teach patients about nutritious eating options. This business is seeking the peace of the city where it's located. It is a bright, shining light gleaming in the darkness that often characterizes the Washington Street business district.

We have spent 54% of our grocery money, so far, at America's Food Basket.

In 2009, Silverbrook Farm responded to a request by local teens: start a farmer's market in Codman Square. Nobody else was taking the risk. After all, this is the 'hood, it's unsafe, the people don't want fresh vegetables, it will cost too much, etc. Silverbrook denied conventional (worldly?) wisdom and came anyway. Now, to quote something I found online, "The BOLD Teens (local youth interns) now staff the market, helping coordinate CSA pickup. In addition to accepting SNAP/EBT and WIC coupons, the market collaborates with Wholesome Wave and the Codman Square Health Center on a Fruit and Veggie Prescription program (FVRx), through which obese children and their families can shop at the market using their prescriptions."

Silverbrook Farm also grows their food "with Sustainable Techniques which means [they] do not use herbicides, harmful pesticides on our crops. [They] follow this more labor intensive approach because we believed it is the right thing to do - for our employees, the land and our customers." Not only that, but out of season, they cold store their food using solar power instead of fossil fuel energy. Finally, they are located less than 60 miles from our neighborhood. The cost to transport the food is significantly less than shipping from California or Florida to Massachusetts.

We have spent 20% of our grocery money at Silverbrook Farm.

There are plenty of other reasons to buy from vendors in our immediate neighborhood. For one thing, it's much easier to build a healthy relationship with a small, neighborhood-sized business than it is with a colossal chain store. Because the catchment area is generally super-localized, it doesn't take long to become a familiar face to any one staff member. I make it a point to talk with the America's Food Basket manager, Gonzalo, every time I go in the store. It makes the shopping experience so much richer knowing that is personally invested in the health of the community.

Smaller farms or grocers are better able to understand their market, because they simply have less people to keep track of. They can buy and sell more products that are more relevant, and reduce waste in the process. Grocery giants like Stop and Shop expect to throw a lot away because they're operating on a huge scale - while it might enable them to keep their prices a little bit lower, a lot also gets thrown away.

Neighborhood-focused grocers also tend to be much more conservative in their energy use. One Stop and Shop store near me stays open 24 hours a day, except for Sundays, when they close at 11 PM. Shorter operating hours mean less electricity, oil and gas used for heating and lighting. They also demand that people do their shopping in a tighter window of time - perhaps passively forcing them to go home and stay in with their friends and family, or go to sleep, at a decent hour.

I recognize that many people work unique work hours, and the convenience of a 24-hour grocery store is necessary for some. But that model caters to a worldview that is incredibly individual-focused. We wouldn't need 24-hour grocers if our friend who would shop at 4 AM knew someone they could call and say "Hey, can you pick me up this and that when you get to America's Food Basket this morning?" I cannot tell you how much more I enjoy the simple act of buying food at AFB or Silverbrook Farm's stand - I usually walk there, see a few neighbors (a girl from my church even works at the local AFB, how's that for fellowship?), and am in a much better mood than I ever was driving to Stop and Shop at 3 AM, by myself, and walking around a desolate and dreary store with a few other equally desolate and dreary shoppers.

So that's why we spent 75% of our grocery money in Codman Square so far this year.

We value local jobs.
We value energy conservation.
We value having locally grown and/or organic produce in our neighborhood.
We value relationships with the people who work and live in our neighborhood.
We value being able to walk to our grocery store, and seeing neighbors when we do.

So, seek the peace of the City in which you find yourself. One way to do this actively is look around and find out who is already doing it, and make an intentional decision to support and strengthen their work. They won't turn you down!

The Church: We are The New Creation

This blog post is long overdue.

It's long overdue because our last "real" blog entry was over a year ago. (February 2012 and December 2011 blogs were postings of newsletters). It's long overdue because I (Ben) have never contributed anything to our blog, unless you count the newsletters we've posted as opposed to unique content. It's long overdue because the topic at hand is one that has been on my mind and out of my lips since early 2009, but has never been recorded on paper (or in Cyberspace).

Since many of the folks following this blog are, I assume, friends with my wife Liz, let me take a moment to explain how I came into the picture. Don't worry, this storytelling will provide a framework for the content to follow shortly.

In 2009, I moved to Dorchester, MA, following a distinct call on my life from the Lord to ministry in one of New England's most under-served communities. I had spent a substantial amount of my time as a college student in Philadelphia with the homeless community, where I learned to love and serve in ways that I had not yet opened my heart to. It was out of these experiences that God began to call me back to New England. I grew up only 50 miles from Boston, but the racial, cultural and economic differences between my hometown and the community in which I now live and work might as well separate the two places the way California and Russia are divided by the Pacific Ocean.

This reality is not debatable. Anyone who comes to visit, whatever their religious, social or political opinions and preferences may be, will concur that this place is distinguishably different than Exeter, Dover or Hampton Falls, NH; or the Main Line, Philadelphia.

It's in this new context that I find the words of Paul, writing to the Corinthians, come alive:

From now on... we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation.

I initially was exposed to this passage in an individual context. Jesus came to reconcile individual people to God; part of our responsibility was to submit our fleshly (Earthly, sinful, un-Godly, selfish, etc) desires or wishes to that of God or Jesus' teaching. The fact that much of the history of God's people has been wrought with the fact that people define themselves according to their flesh (physical attributes) was not a reality I wrestled with until much later - that is to say that I have come to believe the text deals not solely with an individual's relationship to God through Jesus, but that entire cultural and societal relationships between people, each other and God are turned upside down here.

See, in those days, if you were part of God's people, you were circumcised - wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Surgery completed. if anyone really wanted to know if you were one of "those" people or not, all they had to do was look at one crucial part of your body, and it was obvious whose side you were on. Spiritual identity was wrapped up in physical appearance.

Not much has changed since Christ's coming over 2,000 years ago. While Christ certainly was a man in the flesh - a Jewish man, born to Jewish parents, with skin color, hair type and circumcision to prove it - He came teaching us that these external indicators are not what dictate who is "in" and who is "out". Just look at where His disciples came from (zealots, fishermen, tax collectors; all Jewish, but certainly disassociated from each other. A good parallel today might be to ask "How many people from the majority-white suburbs have tons of friends from the equally-majority-white trailer park down the road?") Think about the things that we think and say about people who share our racial identity but not our social identity.

So you can imagine that when Paul tells the Church at Galatia that there is "no Jew or Greek; no slave or free; no man or woman, for you are all one in Jesus Christ", the people go forth and... struggle with the implications. This is much bigger than rich Jew to poor Jew relations; even non-circumcised people are said to be of equal importance in the new community Jesus initiates.

The social and racial hierarchies that determine both who has the power (and who doesn't) and who is allowed to be in God's community (and who isn't) are completely obliterated by Jesus' resurrection - but it's not like we can just change centuries of cultural molding with the snap of our fingers.

It's like Paul could have said this. "Hey, Joe. You can't go on living in your safe, concealed and cozy white neighborhood and be okay that five minutes is a dangerous, polluted black neighborhood. I have shown up powerfully in the lives of those people, too, and if you can't go over there and talk with them about it and learn from each other, then Jesus might as well still be in the tomb."

In late 2008, I made a decision to move to this neighborhood. When someone close to me found out where I was moving, they weren't sure how to take it. They knew enough about the neighborhood to know that there was a "good side" and a "bad side". For work trips, they had even gotten off the highway at the exact same exit I needed to take to move into my street - but had only gone one direction, left, to the "good side". They didn't know much about what happened when you went the other direction, but had some ideas: "Ben," he said, "I have gotten off there so many times, but don't take a right. I don't know what happens over that way, but that's where I hear people get killed."

I can imagine 2,000 years ago:

"Jesus," Peter said, "Don't talk to the prostitute. They'll stone you to death"

"Don't touch the leper! He is unclean!"

"You're going to heal the centurion's daughter? He's one of the Roman oppressors!"

"What are you doing associating with that Samaritan Womanat the well? Are you crazy?""

And, eventually, He did get killed. Part of His message is that our racial and economic identities - especially when they contribute to how we decide who is "in" and who is "out" - do not define if we are in the Kingdom of Heaven or not. This claim threatens generations of developed power dynamics. His life and death, taken as part of a whole narrative, prove that when men and women question this dynamic - especially with God's authority - they will have to make sacrifices because society does not accept the truth they come to preach, prophesy and live out.

So here I am. The context I live in work in surprises me daily, even after 3 and a half years here. I grew up in an almost all-white, almost exclusively middle class community. Now, I work with two white guys, four white young women (one of whom I am happily married to), a Liberian guy, a second-generation Jamaican guy, an Asian West Coaster, and a young woman from Guyana. We have neighbors from places like Dominica, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Some moved to Boston years ago from Alabama and Georgia. Each bring their own language and culture to our 13-street neighborhood.

It is not always an easy experience - we have to forgive each other often for the ways our stereotypes or pre-determined judgements might inform how we view each other. We have to be very aware of our words. We have to reflect on our body language.

But living and working in the Kingdom of God is one of the most life-giving experiences I have had. We have so much to teach each other about God and the dynamics of the world we live in. We eat good food together and we learn to laugh in new ways. And we learn just how similar - maybe even alike - we are in some core ways.

And daily we hold close to this reality, remembering that we preach a Jesus who lived, died and was risen for all. There is no Jew or Greek; no slave or free; no man or woman, for [we] are all one in Jesus Christ.

Dear friends and family,

We want to start the new year with a special announcement: over the next 3-5 months, we (Liz and Ben) will both begin serving full-time with The Boston Project Ministries, and will dedicate more of our time to sharing Christ's love through caring for God's creation and nutritional health.

A few months ago we confided with you that we were embarking on 40 days of intentional prayer to seek God's guidance for our future. We knew something wasn't quite right. Our desire to fully invest ourselves in the ministry of The Boston Project, in neighbors and in our new marriage was falling short. After a lot of prayer and conversation, it became more evident that our dissatisfaction was rooted in us not pursuing our clear purpose; that we are to be in ministry together, not apart. We understand that some couples work and may even be in ministry separate from one another, but we have become convinced that this is not God's design for us.

Throughout our relationship, one of the things that has most excited, energized and refreshed us is the opportunity to engage with God's amazing creation. From hiking in the mountains to learning where our food comes from to actually growing vegetables ourselves, we love it all! It has been very challenging to interpret what this passion and sense of calling looks like in our urban context. We even wondered if we needed to move to the country; but God consistently brought us back to His deep love for this community in Dorchester. At the end of the day, we want to live out our convictions and share our love for God and His creation with our neighbors by building relationships (and gardens!) with them.

So what's different? We are excited to pursue employment together at The Boston Project. Our goal is to fundraise enough for Ben to step into his new responsibilities as the Greenspace Organizer-Educator before the summer (for Ben, this would be his first full-time ministry job since he moved to Boston in 2009). In this new role, Ben would focus his work on projects such as:
• Neighborhood garden initiatives (working with neighbors to design, build and maintain community gardens)
• Develop garden space to provide more healthy and local food for The Boston Project's summer staff and neighbors
• Work to promote energy-efficiency in neighbor's homes
• Work alongside other community members to advocate for new food and garden cooperatives in Dorchester
• Build relationships with neighbors and address other environmental and transportation justice issues that are raised

Liz will remain as the Executive Assistant, but will hand off some responsibilities so she has additional time to work alongside Ben and pursue her growing passion around nutritional education. It's her hope to be able to learn more (maybe school again?), and empower neighbors to make healthier food and lifestyle choices. One project we may work on together this first summer is planting and tending a large garden that could feed our seasonal staff.

We are now convinced that God has created us to care for our neighbors and creation together in Dorchester. This new work meets several strategic goals of The Boston Project and also fits well with our style of sharing the Good News with others. Here are ways you can join us:

1) Pray. This is a huge step in faith (the biggest ever for both of us!). We know that leaving a stable job with good benefits (ie. Ten Thousand Villages) may seem crazy in this economy. However, we believe we are walking into what God wants for us.

2) Give. For Ben to be here full-time, we need to raise additional financial support (a 60% increase from last year). We think this will take 15+ new individual or church partners joining with us early in 2012. We discuss our financial needs and opportunities below.

3) Share. Can you share with your friends and church family about our new mission work in Boston? Maybe you have a friend who can't get enough of urban gardening? Or your sister in-law loves urban missions? We would be delighted to share the vision of what God is doing here in our city, and could really use your help in connecting with others.

If you would like to have us visit with you, your church, a missions committee, or small group, please e-mail ben@tbpm.org to let us know. We are so thankful to have you as part of our team, and trust you are encouraged by the many ways God is at work.

Our Financial Need: Seeding the Transition

In order for both of us to be on staff full-time by June, we need to raise $25,000 annually (in 2011, we received gifts totalling $15,495). One challenge is that we need to raise a significant portion of that total (about $15,000) by mid-year to 'seed' Ben's new position.

$5,000 Matching Gift. A church partner has given us a $1-for- $1 matching gift for all new regular donors and special gifts in 2012.

Pledge to give Regular Donations. People who give monthly or quarterly are the foundation of our support-raising. These gifts provide stability and consistency for our salary. You can even set up automatic monthly donations from your account on our website.

Give a Special Gift. We greatly appreciate special gifts (as you are able) towards our annual support-raising goal; especially as we raise "seeding" money for our transition. Every bit helps!

If you would like to give, please go to www.tbpm.org/giving and select "Ben & Liz Cressy."

Thank you!

December 2011 Update

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." - Jeremiah 29:13

Tis the Season
This time of the year is a favorite in the Cressy household. From Christmas decorations, smells and foods, to more importantly, taking time to reflect on the birth of Christ - we love it all. We have already gone to New Hampshire to chop down our tree (a first for Liz!) and taken the time to decorate it (with fairly traded Ten Thousand Villages ornaments, of course). Since it's our first Christmas as a married couple, we've wanted to establish new traditions that reflect the things we are about and focus on what the season is truly about. Ben has committed to reading the birth of Christ story every day until Christmas. We are choosing to give simple gifts to each other to allow for a more creative expression of our love. We are hoping to not get caught up in the materialism of the season and take time to focus on the greatest gift we have been given.

40 Days of Prayer
As we've shared previously, this summer Ben was offered a full time job with Ten Thousand Villages as the Assistant Manager and he accepted. However, we've come to realize that even though there are a lot of wonderful things about this job and the organization, it hasn't been the greatest fit for our family. We often have an hours mismatch (Ben getting home very late, often having to work full weekends, including Sunday) and with Liz continuing in full time ministry with its own demands, we sometimes will go multiple weeks without a day off together. Additionally, we haven't been able to spend time loving our neighbors or pursuing other passions together, something we feel strongly about. This reality is often overwhelming, and in light of this, we were recently nudged to spend 40 days in intentional prayer. We are seeking God on our future and are trying to determine what questions we need to be asking as we think about changes in our life routines. We have taken a lot of time to think about who we are, the things we are passionate about, and the various giftings we have. Please join us in praying as we try to make some decisions that will ideally lead to a healthier rhythm of life where we can pursue our passions together. As we seek the God who has all wisdom, we trust that we will find the answers we are looking for.

He is Faithful
Not all is bad! We serve a God who is faithful beyond comprehension. We have been blessed by words of encouragement from God's word, as well as from his people. We are so thankful for our community, here in Dorchester, and also far away, that supports us in so many different ways. There are moments where we are just so awestruck that God should show His faithfulness through our humble community of friends and family. Thank you! As we end this year, we are still short on our fundraising. Please prayerfully consider being a part of God's work through us in Dorchester. We couldn't do it without you!

Prayer Requests:
1) Pray for us as we make decisions about our future. Also pray for Ben's schedule and that his manager will consistently give him Sunday's off so we can worship together.
2) Pray for the start of Real Life, our teen bible study, in January. Liz will be helping lead.

Our constant prayer

"may you be blessed with discomfort with
easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships
so that you will live deep in your heart.

and may you be blessed with foolishness
to think you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do the things which others say
cannot be done."

-- the sending forth (anonymous)

Amen and amen.

Summer Update

Wow... it's been a long time since this blog has been updated. This summer was a busy one, but a great one.

As we approached the conclusion of our first married summer in ministry, there was so much on our hearts to share with you. Often, it's easy to find the thoughts and words of what to write about. This time, there is so much to share about our lives, and we only get to touch upon a bit of what God is doing.

Our summer started with some literal and metaphorical bangs. In a very literal sense, guns banged near our street all summer long - and continue to. Gang tensions near our direct neighborhood have flared, and several young men have been killed or injured. As we heard about these instances - one of which involved the near-death of a four-year-old boy - we began to question our residence in this neighborhood - particularly as we began to think about what it might mean to raise children in a neighborhood plagued with violence and other kinds of trauma. We sought wise counsel from older mentors who have lived in Boston for years, and were reminded of both the bigger picture of God's redemptive work in our City, but also of His promises to protect His children from harm. We feel more committed to living here than we ever have before.

We struggled with another tension as well. Ben expected to oversee our Green Space programs and help build our new community garden, but due to an unforeseeable staff departure at Ten Thousand Villages, he was called upon to work nearly full-time for the entire summer. Although this presented a significant challenge, God revealed to Ben gifts and talents that he didn't even know he had. In late July, he was offered a full-time, management-level job and, after much prayer and discernment, accepted! For now, Ben will be serving The Boston Project as a neighbor and volunteer, and not as a paid employee.

Liz's role serving with the Boston Project and as a neighbor continues to be dynamic and fruitful. She continues to serve as the Executive Assistant, and did much of the behind-the-scenes work to empower our street-level ministries to thrive this summer. She also continues to spend time building relationships with neighbors in the community and serving as a representative at neighborhood meetings pertinent to the safety, economic and environmental health of our neighborhood.

Despite some of the changes in Ben's work schedule, we feel more committed than ever to our community - both the people and the places that make up our neighborhood. Thank you for your ongoing prayers and financial support. With Liz continuing full-time work at The Boston Project, your gifts enable us to put down roots here and consider major decisions about the feasibility of raising a family and tackling other obstacles to the long-term viability of our residence here. If you are already a regular supporter, we thank you! If you have not joined our support team, would you consider becoming a monthly or quarterly donor? Please join with us as we seek to follow God's lead to this community.

Prayer Requests
• Pray for us as we are looking to put down roots in a church community. We both were involved in different church communities before we got married, and are looking to find a place where we both feel at home as a couple.
• Pray for our house to be one of hospitality. We have valued having others over and making it a safe and welcoming place to be.
• Pray for safety in our neighborhood. Pray that the Gospel of peace would be transforming the lives of our young people, particularly the teenage boys we work with.

I'm Getting MARRIED!

So.... in the hustle and bustle of life, I realized I haven't done a very good job of letting the world know that I'M GETTING MARRIED! On December 19, 2010, Ben Cressy asked me if I would be his wife. Of course, I said yes :) He will be joining the ministry as our part-time Greenspace Coordinator, which will be a great match with his passions and giftings.

More to come, but I'm excited for April 9th ;)

Overflowing in Thanks

"You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God." ~ 2 Corinthians 9:11-12

Overflowing in Thanks to God
This fall, we have been sharing the above passage with volunteer groups, and I have been struck by just how relevant these verses are to my day-to-day life. The months of October and November tend to be dominated by one thing for me: Thanksgiving Baskets! This year, we provided over 80 baskets to families and seniors in our neighborhood, and I spend weeks in preparation for this event. I speak with families, shop (and shop and shop some more!), fundraise, coordinate volunteers, schedule deliveries, and try to keep a bit of my sanity.

Despite the hectic feel, it's always been one of my favorite days of the year. It's one of those blatantly clear moments where my gifts and talents collide with supplying the needs of the Lord's people. The result? I can't help but to be overwhelmed with thanksgiving to God. Even though on the surface providing food baskets may look like a "me helping you" type of event, I have been blessed in return year after year. This year, as I delivered the last basket of the day to a neighborhood friend, I was blessed with a full Dominican dinner. Thanks be to God!

There are so many things to be thankful for in my ministry. I've come to appreciate the roles and opportunities God has put before me more and more - from my administrative duties which frees others up to do what they are gifted at, to being an advocate for community change by working with resident leaders and elected officials, to just hanging out (or having dance parties!) with youth on our front porch. My life is overflowing with joy and thanksgiving that comes from a life of service. Thank you for helping make this ministry possible.

Remember Our Past, Rejoin in the Present, Re-Imagine the Future

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
~ 1 John 3:16-18

Remember Our Past, Rejoin in the Present, Re-Imagine the Future
I recently had the privilege of attending a week long national Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) conference in Chicago. It was a week of rest, reflection and catching up with old friends. It was such a blessing to spend a week with my brother and former Boston Project staffers Emily and Melissa.

This year's conference theme was "Remember the past, Rejoice in the present, Re-Imagine the future," and multiple times I was struck by the need to know and reflect upon our own past, but also the importance of knowing our collective past as believers. John Perkins, who founded CCDA, shared story after story of his past as a civil rights activist, being beaten and put in jail for the sole reason of his race, the deaths of friends and family for standing up for civil rights, and the ways God showed up through it all.

It's difficult to not feel inspired after hearing heart-wrenching stories followed by words of wisdom of "but LOVE conquers all", and seeing the redemption and reconciliation that can happen when there is a true commitment to living out the words of Christ. Morning bible study with the 80 year old Perkins was inspirational to love as Christ loves - literally loving our neighbors with all we have.Our collective past as believers shows that when we take the words of Christ literally, radical things can happen. John Perkins' story and commitment to reconciliation of people with God and people to people, when he has ever reason to be jaded and full of anger, is a reminder of that. Let us love with actions and in truth, and see what happens. I have no doubt that God will show up.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
We're always keeping things interesting around here, and things never remain stagnant. I've moved to a local church's parsonage house and am living with some wonderful coworkers at Boston Project in an effort to save money. A dear friend has moved back to Nashville, TN, but I am excited with the arrival of another dear friend, Dana, who will be serving with us for a year through Americorps. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I'm considered "old" in Boston Project world, having been here for three years, but I praise God for the role I can play in helping some of our new staffers adjust to life here in the city. I'm learning more and more to go with the flow with change and love the season I'm in, regardless of what may come.

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