Erica Is Famous, And Other Stories

Grand Insights of the Day:

1) You would think that a campus this huge would be able to accomodate dietary restrictions that they knew about in advance. However, for the second day in a row, there was no vegetarian entree at lunch. And the servers had no idea if any of the side dishes were cooked using animal products. This made Becca very sad and hungry!

2) Rock climbing in Tennessee=Erica drenched in sweat. Erica attended a rock climbing workshop at two in the afternoon. It was very fun. It was very hot. It was indoors, but it was still very hot.

3) There is an official UCC Tribute Song that has been sung many times this weekend. In it, it mentions many famous members of the UCC by name. Among them is Charles Townes. We cheer for him when we hear the name, because FCCB members are cool.

Non-grand insights:

Erica is famous. She appears on the video screen, with the camera zoomed in on her, and none of the people around her. This has happened multiple times, which is rather strange, given that there are 2,829 people here. Also, she sang a duet tonight in the closing worship service, with a guy from Minnesota. Ok, so it was all of three lines, but it was still cool. Becca was in the back-up choir, and her entire section forgot all of the words!

Workshops - This morning, Erica went to "Forced to Flee," which was focused around immigrants and refugees around the world. They played lots of games and reflected on said topics. Erica quite enjoyed it. Becca went to "Leading the Way to Green," during which they created skits based on given "green" scenarios (Becca's was centered around a community garden, but the skit/poster could've been better with more time). In the afternoon, Erica went rock climbing, as previously stated. Becca went to a NYE Newsletter Writing Workshop, and her hastily scrawled description of Julia Butterfly Hill and John Thomas's speeches might make it onto the UCC website. If only there had been time to copy-edit it all.

Evening optional activities included DJ'd music. Becca was thrilled when she and Erica polkaed around the courtyard instead of just jumping up and down. If only more people would follow suit! We also made up a fully choreographed "Joseph"-based dance to do to a particular song in worship.

All of NYE is still praying for the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. The rock that NCNC painted made it to CNN, which is pretty awesome. In the worship service, John Thomas (General Minister and President of the UCC) talked about the situation. The House Band began to play "Amazing Grace," just as background music. The choir started to hum, and pretty soon everyone was singing quietly. It was beautiful.

This may be our last blog - unless we have the chance to write again tomorrow morning, or at the airport.

Lots of love,
Becca and Erica

The Youth Rock

While the youth attended an inspirational plenary with UCC President, Rev. John Thomas, a man walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church (less than a mile from the University of Tennessee Campus where the youth are meeting and staying) and opened fire during a children's performance in the sanctuary. Details are still being confirmed, but word spread quickly throughout Knoxville that something aweful had occurred. The youth from our conference felt called to respond and a plan was quickly hatched to put a message of support on this painted rock in the middle of the UT campus. Apparently the rock is painted over and over throughout the year by anyone with a message and a can of paint.

While painting the rock, we reflected on questions like, "Why would someone do this in a Unitarian church?" and "Can you imagine what it would be like if this happened in our home churches?" We found this incident hard to comprehend and felt a mixture of sadness and outrage at the on-going violence in our society. After painting the rock, we stood together and prayed for healing and peace in this community and dedicated the rock to be a sign of God's steafast presence here.

Peace in the Face of Violence

We just found out that there was a shooting this morning at a Unitarian Church here in West Knoxville. We do not know all the details except that a man walked into the church during morning activites and opened fire. Please check your local news for the most recent details.

We are all physically fine, but are emotionally raw and saddened by this tragedy. The leadership of this event are currently making plans for us to reach out and support this congregation as well as praying for them during our evening worship service.

Today's theme just happens to be "Living Peace." Today's tragedy reminds us that violence anywhere threatens peace everywhere. It also challenges us to end violence done in the name of religion (an assumption I am making, I admit in this case). May God give us the strength and wisdom to meet this challenge.

Adam

The Saga of Saturday

Weather report: warm rain. Confusing!

Our keynote speaker this morning was Julia Butterfly Hill. She was amazing! Good speaker, and it was interesting to hear her speak from a faith-based perspective.

We (Becca and Erica) went to the same morning workshop today - called "Old Faith, New Music." It was once again in the large arena, which means not too much discussion/interaction on the part of the audience. The workshop involved a lot of singing, which you know we absolutely hate (of course!).

Utensils - following up on the green idea I (Becca) had yesterday, our conference has been re-using their plastic utensils at every meal. However, Ohio apparently had the same idea (or stole it, because we were there first), and made an announcement to the whole group about saving utensils. Good thing it's a trend now, but we don't get the credit for the idea.

We have each managed to obtain 4 t-shirts so far at this event, only one of which we (each) had to pay for. One of the bands here is called Lost and Found, and they have some very creative t-shirts which many people have developed desires for. Lost and Found sings songs about slinkys and lions.

We decided to go get Lost and Found paraphenalia during free time, when there shouldn't have been a line at the booth. The booth was closed, and we ended up sitting on the concrete floor in the lobby of the arena, because we didn't want to walk back to our dorms. This is where we met...a guy from Washington, who strongly reminds us of Andrew McAfee (if you know who he is). He looks, talks, and acts like Andrew. We hung out with him for a while, and went to the Extravaganza.

The Extravaganza was something like a street fair, with a whole lot of booths and food and such. Erica taught the cotton candy guy how to properly make cotton candy, and he later refused to let us cut the line in trade - but did give us extra cotton candy. We both sang karaoke. "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," because we're being stereotyped as Californians.

Gwen Thomas says hi, to those of you who know her. She is working the Still Speaking booth in the exhibit hall, and was delighted to see me. She let us cheer really loudly for our home state during a later announcement in the big group!

Bad thing of the day: there was NO vegetarian main dish at lunch. I (Becca) had to eat cooked vegetables, and there was NO protein. This did not go over well with me. I like my protein.

Love, Erica and Becca

Drums are cool

Hola!
This is Erica and I wish to reflect on my workshop this afternoon entitled "Sheltered Reality." I had no recolection of signing up for this workshop, so going in I had absolutley no idea what to expect. It turned out be a group of drummers that have practice sights all over the mid-west and intend to expand nationwide. What makes Sheltered Reality special is that their main focus is not drumming, but making the world a better place by reacting out and empowering others. There are no auditions to join and most members walk into a practice session with no drum experiance. Not only that, but usually members are able to play in concerts after just a few practices. The only requirment to join is the desire to make the world a better place through music and enriching the lives of everyone around you. I am now determined to start a practice site in both norcal and socal, so I can practice when I'm at home and at school. If anyone is interested in empowering people, bringing peace to the people around you, and playing beautiful music....let me know!

~Erica

Singing and Dancing (Because that's what I would write a blog about)

Erica and I (Becca) signed up for the official NYE choir. My mother would be proud - although they had only sopranos, altos, and tenors, and went through the three parts starting with the top (this makes no sense to us Songs of the Soul people). The choir reminded me a little of the FCCB gospel choir, but it was fun. We all wore white (yay free NYE t-shirts), and got on camera quite a lot. All-group events/activities are in a giant arena, which is very cold. Because of the size of the place, they have to film everything that goes on and project it on giant screens.

Erica and I walked around singing take-offs of the choir song.... And did dance steps through the hallway, like "Joseph"-esque pony steps.

We made friends at breakfast with two girls from Rhode Island. I've also met people from Ohio, Cleveland area. And SoCal is very loud.

Food. It's pretty good, but that could be the fact that we are hungry practically all the time. The line is super-crazy-Disneyland-esque-like.

~Becca

ps...the photo of the NYE choir reveals how angelic they sang!

Bigger and better than expected

Hey Y'all (that is what they say here in Tennessee)

This is my first National UCC event...
and it is all going well. The Alamedans are having fun, making new friends, singing and dancing!

The campus is bigger than I expected...and hill-ier, too. (Feet and legs getting a work out)
The weather is better than I expected...no rain!

They told us there are 2830 people here.
Staying in the dorms brings back a lot of memories from my own college years.

Today's keynote speaker - Dr. Eboo Patel - who inspired us all to open up to the Interfaith world we live in, accept others and stand up for friends and justice.

Tomorrow we hear from Julia Butterfly Hill...and I hope she wakes everyone up about the trash we are making.

Lastly, Alexandra's space design is great also! Woo hoo!

Peace and blessings from the green hills!

Rev. Jonathan Leavy
: )