Julia Whitaker
Why Mission Year?
I’m Julia Whitaker; you can call me Lulu though. I will be participating with Mission Year as part of the 2009-10 team!
I recently graduated with a degree in studio fine arts. I have been asking myself ‘what does it look like to follow God, now?’ I want to be intentional about my choices in building a lifestyle during these formative years. I want to really seek after God, instead of trying to fit God into my convenience.
The parable of the rich young ruler is found in Matthew 19:16-30, Mark10:17-30 and, Luke 18:18-30
In this story a young ruler asks Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life, beyond following the law that he has always known. When Jesus tells him to drop everything and follow him, the young man goes away sad.
With our hindsight, it seems that the obvious choice would have been to drop everything to spend life with the divine; but I too, have at points chosen the practical and the safe, over wisdom. I strive to choose a life pattern that is not safe, but one that is true.
“It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. …Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships.” -(S. Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution).
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…
Julia Whitaker's Blog
jan newsletter (baby it's cold outside!) / Jan 14, 05:51 PM
Dear Friends,
I hope that the holidays treated you all well and that you are all off to a great start this New Year. While Christmas vacation was a great blessing to me, it’s is really great to be back in Atlanta. The morning that I left Chicago it was -6 degrees, so stepping of the plane in Atlanta into 34 degree weather seemed pleasantly tropical.
However, 34 degrees is still horrible, even deadly, for many friends with no heat and no housing. To be honest, this obvious reality has become poignant only now that I have spent significant time amongst the homeless and in under resourced buildings. I have always been “thankful” for furnaces in wintertime, but I have spent many winters too self-absorbed to help others without it. So where do we go from here? What if we don’t know anyone living these realities? Here, I have been discovering the hard answers that I have always known. Isaiah 58:6-7 speaks of the Lord’s desire for our fasting.
Isaiah 58:6-7 (NIV)
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
This is a call to fasting. This is a way to choose a full life through inconvenience to self. If we choose to fast we must go out of our usual paths. We must seek out the under resourced, not expect them to come to us asking for help in a world separate from theirs.
This is our reality: “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” -George Burns
Thanks you all so much for your support and prayers that enable and challenge me to learn these lessons.
Love, Lulu (with Amanda, Curtis, Nadine, Josh and Kate)
November / Nov 14, 04:04 PM
November 2009 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
This month, like all the ones before it, has been a busy one. Since settling in, I have been volunteering consistently with several organizations in Atlanta. I realize that I haven’t yet written to “y’all” about what a “normal” day looks like for me here, so here is an overview of daily life.
To begin, every morning my team meets together for devotions and prayer for the day before we depart for our various service sites.
On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons and evenings my team volunteers at an afterschool program, ‘S.A.Y. yes!’ (Save America’s Youth), through our church. The program provides a positive environment for our kids to do homework, eat, learn from the Bible, and play. We also do homework, eat, learn from the Bible, and play. In addition to these things, we provide crowd control, challenges and encouragement to our young neighbors and future leaders.
On Monday and Tuesday mornings I volunteer at New Horizons Senior center. Here I often do paper work, help with meal charts, walk with seniors, call bingo numbers and enjoy listening to the seniors belt out old African American spirituals together.
On Wednesday and Thursday mornings I am grateful to work with a community called “The Open Door Community”. (I encourage you to check out their site at www.theopendoorcommunity.org). This group of people, coming from a Catholic Worker’s Union tradition, strives together in advocacy, justice and life. On Wednesdays I usually help to serve a brunch of hot grits, turkey sausage, sliced oranges, coffee and boiled eggs to our homeless friends. On Thursdays I’ve done laundry, paper work, typed sermons and other odd tasks around the house.
There are days of sadness. On the evening of October 21, I attended a candlelight vigil on the steps of the capital building. Mark McClain, a close friend of The Open Door, was killed by lethal injection by the state of Georgia that night. This was very painful for the community.
Others days are ones of joy. Everywhere that I work people greet me with hugs; Little runny-nosed-friends who call me, “Miss Lulu”, old ladies who call me, “Baby” and those who call me, “Friend” provide me with affection and encouragement. (I have also gained the nickname as team “mom”). Along with the hugs, I am also fed food at my sites. I am blessed by the gifts of sandwiches, grits, apples, and some home cooked food (chicken, mashed potatoes, corn-casserole, lasagna) brought to our after school program by a sponsoring church.
One of my teammates, Curtis, described our life together well when he said, “Our weeks are short and our days are long.” Every week when Friday, (our Sabbath), rolls around we are surprised and relieved for a break.
Thank you all for your support, interest and prayers while my team, our neighbors and I learn and love together.
Love,
Lulu, (with Kate, Amanda, Nadine, Josh and Curtis)
october / Nov 14, 04:04 PM
Dear Friends,
I hope that all is well with you. I am loving Atlanta and all of the people I am meeting. This month I thought I would share one of my experiences with you through a story: A half-buried sweater. A human tooth. Fast food Bags. Used Prophylactics. Needles.
It was time to take out the trash. Or rather, it was time to begin picking up a minimal portion of the refuse that lines our sidewalks and fills our abandoned lots. We left our apartment armed with a backpack, plastic bags and makeshift gloves. We made our way towards piles of rain-wet clothes, shattered bottles, electronic parts, and un-namable disintegrates.
During our purge and scavenge one of the neighborhood kids came up to us and told us not to waste our time. The trash would be back again tomorrow.
I asked him, “Do you shower?”Dezmond replied, “Yeah.”
“You always have to do that again. Should you stop doing that?”
“Hey, that’s different!”
“How is that different?”
I later thought to myself that we, as humans, inhabit our bodies. We take care of them when we have the resources, knowledge, and self-respect to do so.
While one only occupies their own body, our neighborhood is a place that we occupy together. Our collective respect, resources and effort are required to maintain it.
An outside effort to clean up our streets may be a good thing, but it is not sustainable. A day at the salon will clean someone up, but it will not change a person’s ability, will, or daily lifestyle for the long run.
And there is hope blooming here. There are people who care. There are children learning. There is a garden producing. And an etched sidewalk tells us that, “GOD IS HERE.”
Love,
Lulu,(Nadine,Josh,Kate,Amanda,Curtis)
Comment [1]
even the vile / Aug 21, 10:07 AM
The love I desire often seems unfulfilled by God’s promises. Is it that I somehow feel that the God of my theology is obligated to love me? This being, (that I think I know), loves even the vile.
I want a being that is capable of selfishness, capable of unjust judgment, and capable of fatigue, to accept me during my fits of anxiety and fall. I want a being without an unchangeable precondition. I want someone to be with me when I wake up, because they chose to stay.
All this talk of selflessness is to improve myself(8.14.09) / Aug 14, 11:05 PM
Among many, there is a theme in my life that I am revisiting (again): Starting over.
About this, I have questions:
After we are finished with a place, with a task, with a life phase, (with a degree my dear friends!) what do we turn to next?
Why and how do we choose our rebirths?
How does one be intentional about (re?)location choice?
What is a wise environment in which to find blank slates and good teachers?
What do I want to learn?
What is the way to make a better new me?
But above all of this importance I ask, “How am I contributing?”
I will depart for Atlanta in less than two weeks. I am so excited, so honored, that I might be able to help and serve others. Honestly, I am relived that I can serve. I am selfish, and pleased to know that if I am serving in any minute way. is to whisper an answer at my mammoth.
/All this talk of selflessness is to improve myself/
How sweet the sound
Of my own voice,
To be crashed under the waves.
(And I’m trying for never again)
I will not sustain myself.
I choose to yet praise You.
As a member of the body, in this old song,
Wine washes through the veins of this old pain.
Wine washes through the vines of this new joy.
And washed clean I still remember my stains.
Honor and power and glory to You.
Your promise of peace doesn’t seem enough,
For right here, right now.
I will praise you yet.
Now It’s right.
Now we are set right.
- 1
