Oh dear, is it really time for this?

It's annoying to say, but time really is flying by. April is practically over, and that means we have only about 2 months left in our VSC year! Volunteers for next year are already lining up. We current volunteers are realizing that we will soon, even though the weather is growing more beautiful and being outdoors in St. Louis is becoming more fun everyday.

Since the calendar is rapidly swallowing my free weekends, I need to make a list of "must do"St. Louis things before I leave. So far I have already seen/done

• The Arch
• Anheuser Busch Factory Tour
• Missouri History Museum
• St. Louis Art Museum
• City Museum
• Old St. Louis Cathedral
  
• Ted Drewes' frozen custard
• Italian food at Ragazzi's on The Hill
• cheap happy hour food in the Central West End
• many, many meals in The Loop (Fitz's, Blueberry Hill, etc. etc.)
  
• Cardinals game in Busch Stadium
• Blues game in the Scottrade Center
  
• Walking through Forest Park
• Kickball League in Tower Grove Park

But I still should get to:

• Botanical Gardens
• Forest Park Zoo
• Science Center
• paddle boats in Forest Park
• outdoor theater at the Muny
• movies at the Moolah, Tivoli
  
• Soulard Farmers Market
  
• Bellefontaine Cemetery
  
• "The Rock" Church/ 2 hour Gospel music Mass
• St. Francis Xavier/SLU College Church
• that log cabin church in Cahokia Texas Volunteer wants to visit
• actually doing good photo shoots of the Cathedral and local parishes now that I have my tripod in town

Not. Enough. Time. To be. A good. St. Louisan.
(Although really, the only way to become a true St. Louisan is to grow up in your grandparents' house here and then attend a notable high school.)

This is what non-profit management looks like

This was our office kitchen at lunchtime on Friday. See what a ridiculous amount of free food is always lying around? We have Easter candy co-workers wanted to unload, leftovers from the early morning Board of Directors meeting, a volunteer's leftover birthday cake, and the bread from someone's lunch sandwiches.

It's a good thing for me most of it is gluten. (Although GF Nurse did bring me a fudge cupcake!)



I'd like say I stuck to the fruit bowl, but those mini Cadbury eggs were calling me.

"Give me your arms for the brokenhearted"-Brandon Heath

In the VSC house we have dinner and prayer as a group 3 times a week. Tonight New York Volunteer was in charge of prayer, and did a great job as always. You can always tell her teaching background by the handouts and visual aids she prepares. She started with this song by Brandon Heath, which gets stuck in your head and urges you to share God's compassion.

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see.

I once wished I had's God's ability to constantly be present with and know the heart of every person. I'd be so good at staying in touch with all my friends then! Really, this isn't practical for us mere humans. We can't internalize everyone's life story or we'd explode. The trick is to recognize God in the people we meet, if only for the second that they cross our paths.

This idea happens everyday at my job. Maybe it's becuase the Nicest Boss in the World is constantly affirming other people, and it's rubbing off on me. Maybe it's because we try to thank visitors like every donation is the best one ever. Whatever the reason, I love learning the stories of the people who stop by NFNF.

This morning Nicest Boss in the World and I helped two elderly women unload bags of baby clothes from their van. We offered a tour, and one woman asked if her service dog could come. Of course he could! So we welcomed a furry visitor wearing a "Don't Pet Me - I'm Working" vest. He had been abandoned, but some kind soul trained him to offer balance and protection to his fragile new owner.

Later in the day our Development Director walked up cradling a napping baby girl. This precious infant had come with her foster mom, who raises the girl's 7 year old brother and her own 6 year old son besides. I can't imagine taking in additional children only to let them go in a few months, but it's such an important job. The foster mom is white and the baby is African-American, but that's not really important. What is special is that the foster mom's son is learning to welcome and care for vulnerable people, if only for a brief moment.

St. John's Retreat Center in Plymouth, MI

Ok, we really didn't hang out in the swanky hotel lobby during the Vincentian Family Gathering, but I did get to spend some time with interesting church architecture.

According to a brochure at the front desk, the main chapel is done in an "almost-Medieval" adaptation of the Umbrian Style. Dedicated in 1955, it served as the chapel for St. John's Seminary until the school closed in 1988. (And was converted into a retreat center/popular wedding location, I assume.)



I liked that the Woman clothed with the Sun is depicted on the left- hand part of the mosaic.

Pews were in a choir arrangement. Note the marble inlaid floors. The walls are rough-textured Mankato stone and the pews are oak. (Hopefully after grad school I can throw around terms like that more easily.)



The Holy Family Chapel for daily Mass is definitely more modern. The room is a rectangle, but seating is in the round.




The tile circle patterns echo the patio tiles of the Mary garden outside. Overall the effect of the basement setting is coziness, not claustrophobia.


The tabernacle chapel? nook? was full of lovely sunlight and featured icons of Mary and Joseph. All the artwork in the chapel was printed on lucite and lit from behind.

This is a nice surprise

The VSC secretary just informed me that yesterday's post on the Vincentian Family Gathering has been quoted on FamVin, the international Vincentian family website. Wow! Frankly, I'm flattered that Fr. John and his team found me and thought I was worth mentioning.

If you are visiting from there, welcome! This started out as a private blog of sorts, but now I write for a more general audience. I always like to see more visitors to my little corner of the Catholic blogosphere :D Please feel free to leave comments and/or visit me again!

Finally, a new Archbishop!

Exciting news this morning:

Pope Benedict XVI announced the appointment of The Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson as Archbishop of St. Louis. Bishop Carlson is currently Bishop of the Diocese of Saginaw Michigan.

Huzzah!!! By all accounts I have seen, Bishop Carlson is a dedicated pastor who did great work encouraging priestly vocations and Catholic schools in Saginaw.

This excellent article gives many clues about Carlson's pastoral approach:

Carlson is said to be distressed when he meets Catholics who have worked to advance their knowledge of professional skills and a wide range of topics from politics, hobbies, cooking to sports but have made no effort as an adult to learn about their faith. Those letter writers showed “clear examples of the erosion in Catholic formation for the last two generations,”

Those words speak to what I have observed in the Church during my few months here. St. Louis is a very Catholic town in terms of lovely buildings, tall steeples, and prestigious private high schools, but many STL natives make their faith only a nominal affair. Their Catholic education ended when nuns stopped grading their tests.
I am unable to form much of a personal opinion about Archbishop Burke, but I do know that he was a very authoritative, at times polarizing, figure. There are some people here who adored him, but there are also many who still love to hate him. It sounds like Bishop Carlson knows what is needed to bring about much needed healing.

“Kindness, courtesy, meekness, gentleness, humility, patience, prudence and eager concern are the virtues which must describe the pastoral ministry of the bishop."

Welcome to St. Louis, Archbishop Carlson!

One Big Moter City Family

This weekend the VSC girls made our long-awaited road trip to the Vincentian Family Gathering conference in Detroit. It was a busy and enlightening weekend. We sat through 3.5 days of talks and met Daughters of Charity, Congregation of the Mission priests, and Society of St. Vincent De Paul (SVDP) volunteers from all over the country. Our West Coast VSC counterparts were also there.
Hearing about the work other people do is always a great shot in the arm. Here's a sample:

• The Hispanic parish in Charlotte, NC that offers a monthly free medical clinic
• Sr. Elizabeth, who shares her sweet smile with incarcerated teens on an Arizona Reservation. She visits them, encourages them to hang onto Native traditions, and fights for the detention centers to offer more job training and rehabilitation
• The Samaritan Center, a former Detroit hospital that is now a collaborative social service center. The huge facility houses an urgent care center, job search facility, assisted living home, dialysis center, small businesses, and a future mental health facility. Keeping the place clean and bright is a central component of respect for their clients. The staff is also great - we met a nurse decked out in gold jewelry who is possibly the most loving dialysis nurse on the planet. She cheerily greeted every elderly patient like they were her relatives.
  
• On the Rise Bakery, a joint effort of Capuchin monks and the released prisoners and recovering addicts they mentor. Fr. Ray nearly broke down and wept as he told us about the men who started the business and their determination to build better lives for themselves.

I used to think the abundance of non-profits was a depressing sign of the state of the world. I could never donate to every single one, and they clearly hadn't succeeded in completely changing the world. Now I see the hope and encouragement in so many efforts to reverse poverty. A dozen impassioned, closely-knit local groups can be more specialized and effective than one government agency wrapped in red tape.

Meeting other non-profits is also good for getting ideas and forming potential partnerships. We did a lot of VSC publicity this weekend, since our program is pretty obscure even in the Vincentian world. (If the Jesuit Volunteer Corps is Diet Coke, VSC is RC Cola.) Once we had explained the year-long service in community concept, people loved it. They all seemed to be thinking "Where I can get one of these?" Could there be a VSC-Detroit one day?

The whole VFG gave me a lot to consider, not just about social justice but also the future of the Church and my own calling. This is probably going to be a multi-poster - tune in tomorrow!