Katie’s Reflection
One of my favorite aspects of working for Asheville Youth Mission has been the variety of work that we do. It’s not uncommon to begin the day working at a day shelter, having lunch at a nature center, and then shoveling mulch in the afternoon, all before doing reflections at a church at night. I think for the youth that we work with it’s a powerful testimony that service can be done anywhere, and by anyone. During orientation when we are introducing the different sites we remind the youth that it isn’t our job to bring God to these different work sites, because God is already there in the people that we will meet and the service that we will do.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book An Altar in the World examines the practice of finding altars to worship God in our daily lives, being intentional about finding God in our surroundings instead of limiting ourselves to believe that worship can only happen within four walls. This is exactly what AYM has done for each of the youth that comes through our doors. It’s a new and exciting premise for many of the youth that worship doesn’t have to look like what they are familiar with.
For AYM, worship can take place on a trash walk around a day shelter in the morning, or under a pavilion at the nature center during lunch, or in the serene quiet found on the VRQ prayer knoll after a hard afternoon of shoveling and pushing wheelbarrows of mulch. And while we still join together in a church at night, or worship with Haywood congregation in the Methodist church, the youth walk away having a better understanding that it’s not the four walls of a church that make it a place of worship, but the people inside. The next time that these youth do service they might take a second glance at a grassy knoll, a hidden creek, or a pile of freshly gathered trash not just as a part of the landscape, but as a space and tool to worship God.
