Ashleigh Hill
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Ashleigh Hill's Blog
Things I Used to Understand Part 3: People Who Practice Yoga / Feb 3, 06:15 PM
On Saturday we helped out at Breakthrough’s Fresh Market – our version of a food pantry. It’s kind-of set up like a grocery store and people are able to walk around and pick what they want, in an encouraging environment, instead of waiting in line outside for a box of random donations. It’s dignifying. One of the volunteers is a man named James to whom Pedro introduced me. We started talking about yoga because he practices it and so do I. Also, he’s a strict vegetarian and I would like to be someday. So, this 61-year-old African American man, who sells pillows and hats on the street for a living, told me all about his love of Egyptian yoga (and I joined in about my love of Ashtanga). It’s funny – standing in a homeless shelter having a conversation about variations on Warrior Pose. He talked about vegetable juices and I talked about mangos. The rest of the day he walked around the market talking to other people and saying, “you know, that young lady and I have a lot in common.” And I guess we do.
I am a bow on your hands, Lord.
Draw me, lest I rot.
Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break.
Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break?
- Nikos Kazantzakis
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one and one / Jan 28, 06:54 PM
One frustrating fact:
We found a sushi place that sells half-price sushi on Mondays. But, they don’t deliver west of Western Ave. Basically, where they hood starts, they stop. This isn’t turning out to be such an uncommon thing.
One non-frustrating fact:
The Joshua Center got a full order of brand new, industrial strength toilets for almost every bathroom. We’ve been trying to get new ones for a very long time. Somehow, our saint-like maintenance man pulled it off. This is a massive blessing that sent one of our afternoon staff running and screaming down the hallway. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be rid of clogged, overflowing, busted, leaky, tank-top-missing toilets. I cannot even tell you. God is good.
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Stand up, be quiet, be one, be several. / Jan 8, 10:22 AM
I am a detail-oriented person. Usually, I get the big picture but I don’t really stop to care about it. I care about everything that makes it up. For example, I don’t see our kitchen –I see our pantry, our sink, our dishtowels, our snacks, our coffee, whether or not the floor is clean, if the tea is organized, etc. Mission Year is sometimes overwhelming because it puts the big picture right in my face. I can’t wrap my mind around it because there are also so many details right in front of me. I can see the kitchen and every individual part of it at the same time – it’s sensory overload. I want to squeeze by for the coffee creamer but that means I have to pick up the sink and the broom and strap a chair on my back on the way. I know, that’s absurd but that’s the best way to explain how I feel. I’m working on it. Stepping outside of the city, for our holiday break, into the rest of the life I know was in some ways, like trying to swallow a beach ball. If I were, say, a rabbit.
Here is a little of what I’ve been working out in my head.
The Bible calls us to live a quiet life (1 Thes. 4:11) and do what is right in the eyes of everyone (Rom. 12:17) and also to stand up against injustice (Is. 58:6-11) and carry nothing on our journey (Matt 10:9-10). That is a very large beach ball. How does one stand up and be quiet?
The body of Christ is big and distinctive and so, so connected. Recently I read an article suggesting that despite our focus on such a personal relationship with Christ, we seem to forget that most of the Bible is letters to groups of people. True. So, the Body is an individual and a group. We move as one and as several. This has to mean something. Stand up, be quiet, be one, be several.
Because of this I know that we must not all live in the exact same terms and locations. What I am certain of is this: I think we all are called to make grand, sweeping lifestyle gestures (I have been thinking about this a lot, Megan :)) but in different ways. We, of course, do not all have to move into the inner city and be a good neighbor to lonely people. Lonely people are everywhere. Still, we cannot use this as an excuse for not heavily considering our locale.
I think we are called to love and give in grand, hard ways, whatever those ways are for us as determined by God. God speaks pretty strongly in Chicago, and I still ignore Him. He says to go talk to someone and I keep my headphones on and my hands in my pockets and walk. I think, “this is my day off and I am an introvert and I need silence today.” I am learning to hear God but not quite to listen to Him all the time. For all the praise we’ve gotten for taking on this project – maybe it doesn’t matter that I’m in Chicago if I am sometimes ignoring it.
Still, there is grace covering all of this. I can keep walking and that is ok and not ok (a lot more on grace later). Stand up, be quiet, be one, be several, stop walking, keep walking.
I am worried that we don’t prayerfully consider what the grand, hard ways are for us. Do we live our lives and assume that what we’re doing is what the Lord is asking of us? Do we really, really listen or do we continue on and find a few good things and call them blessings and through that assume we are following the Lord? I am certain that we must take things seriously. I know that, right now, Chicago, with Mission Year, is where God wants me but after this, I don’t know. When He speaks, I hope I hear and listen. Does God really want you were you are or do you want you where you are? Are you comfortable, and therefore considering it a blessing? Sometimes, I am almost frantic over this.
I’ve been harping over my last blog. I do not mean to say that having and wanting stuff and money is our biggest problem. I mean to say that the sense of entitlement is our biggest problem. We work, we earn, we keep and give – but we decide what we give and we decide where we stop because it is our hard-earned money and, after all, we worked for it. Can we really switch so quickly between believing God gave us something and claiming what we’ve earned ourselves? Is what is mine God’s, until someone else who maybe doesn’t deserve it, needs it and then it is mine?
I come up with excuses. A man downtown is clearly high and asking me for change. I ask him his name and if he’s eaten that day and eventually move on without giving him money, even though he asked me for it. I think he will buy drugs with it. But I realized that I willingly give up a lot of money every year to musicians, artists, and authors who will use a lot more of my money for drugs and I still give it up. I see them in concert, wasted, and I keep buying. I see them on the street wasted and I keep walking. How is the man on the street different? He has no credible record contract? I don’t think his poetry is extraordinary or his bass-playing phenomenal? This argument has proven null. I am digging for another one.
I continue to believe that we should seek people outside of our immediate, comfortable circle to help. Still, that circle is so important. If you are the person in need of help, you must turn back on your Body and ask for it. It’s true that we cannot care for others if we cannot care for ourselves. If you cannot pay your cell phone bill, another part of your community can and should. If you think you have no part to ask, e-mail our house (ashleighfhill@gmail.com) and we’ll help you figure it out.
Thanks for keeping up with this blog, discussing, and supporting us over the past four months. I look forward to the next seven. A lot.
Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom.
Though it cost all you have, get understanding.
Proverbs 4:7
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One sentence on how I spend my time. / Jan 5, 10:43 PM
Recently, I realized that I can probably name as many Chicago shelters and public aid programs as I can D.C. concert venues and bands, which I guess says something about the past several years of my life.
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What I Have Gotten Myself Into pt.1 / Dec 18, 09:37 PM
We’re all about to take a break for a few weeks and travel home for Christmas to see our families and sleep a lot. I have a lot to say about the past (almost) 4 months because a lot has happened. Things have been disappointing, frightening, awkward, understandable and not, difficult, heart wrenching, joyful, and extraordinary. I have come home crying uncontrollably and I have walked in the door praising God. I’ve had powdered milk for breakfast and had a homeless women offer to buy me a mango. At Breakthrough I’ve heard success stories and just as many relapse stories. I’ve heard people talk about how God is good in ways I’ve never considered. We’ve had a small taste of what it’s like to be a minority, which is weird because I can go two L stops and disappear again.
What I really want to do is write a long blog about materialism and Christmas and Jesus and the poor and money, just because it’s right in my face. I want to write about Deuteronomy 15:4, which says there should be no poor among us for the Lord has given us enough for everyone. But, deep down I know everyone reading this probably knows about all those things and I might be screaming into the wind (screaming into the wind is not an altogether bad thing, still, I will in this case resist).
We spend too much money on stuff. We save too much money for our own futures when Matthew 6 tells us to not worry about anything and 10:9 tells us to journey without any belongings. There are others in immediate need and God asks us specifically to take care of them. We either ignore this or are blind to it because of where we’ve situated ourselves. By large, the church has failed and we have a lot of money and big buildings to prove it– old news. True news, but old news. I’ve spent months watching my new friends be afterthoughts of a society and a Christianity that claims they work for them. I’ve thought a lot about how they’re grouped into a “them”. I wish I could show everyone what this looks like – it’s a mind trip when it’s right in front of your face. I don’t think dumping on culture and Christians is heroic or even necessary but still, I can’t justify a lot of the things I’ve seen done in the name of religion or fairness.
Sometimes I see the poor working together without our help and it humiliates me (I use the word “our” for lack of a better word). One morning this week I walked into work and read our staff log, detailing what had happened that weekend. One guest of ours who works her hands to the bone hand making bags had almost $200 stolen from her the night before. She was going to pay her phone bill and buy a bus card so she could get around to sell some more of her merchandise. She’s honest, hardworking, never complains, and just downright loves everybody. And all her money was gone. I wish I could better explain, or even understand how it must feel to have only $200 and then have $200 stolen from you. Understandably, there was hyperventilating involved.
The women at the Joshua Center passed a hat for her and they gathered enough money (in addition to a few more sales that night) to get her back to where she was. Don’t scan over this. A roomful of homeless women financially helped another homeless women out without even hesitating. That’s not a nice Reader’s Digest story about good people. It’s phenomenal. I’m so tired of nice stories about good people that coax us back into not taking poverty seriously.
I am starting to believe that giving out of our poverty is the only kind of generosity that is really noteworthy. But poverty is not just a financial issue. We are poor in how we treat people who are different from us or who we disagree with. The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and we don’t really even talk to our immediate ones, especially if they’re a little different than us. I have learned more in four months than I thought I would in twelve but thus far; the overwhelming truth is that we have a lot to learn about generosity. A lot. Francis Chan, a minister we’ve been listening to as a household, decided that in order to love his neighbor as himself he must use half his income to support himself and his family and half of it to support others. And it’s working. My idealistic side wants to jump up and down and say, “What if we all did that? What would it be like? If we started with our finances, our physical involvement would surely follow, and vice versa. How many people could we help? How much like Christ would be become?” The catch is that my realistic side is asking the same types of questions.
So, loosely, my requisite Christmas message is this –if you don’t know someone who needs your help paying the phone bill, think about how you can find one. If you have never had your immediate neighbors over for dinner, you need to invite them. Even if they don’t speak English very well and even if they voted for another political party – we MUST get to know people we don’t think we have anything in common with. Think of ways to be generous that you’ve never tried before. Do something scary that people will talk about. Don’t just give your leftovers. Stop walking by someone asking for change and buy them a cup of coffee. Ask them their name and give them yours. Stop telling yourself why you can’t do something for someone and stick your neck out for someone. Treat people like the rest of the world tells you not to treat them – just like Jesus did.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Romans 12:10
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