Stevie Neale
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…
Stevie Neale's Blog
Past Mistakes / May 21, 01:31 PM
There is a song by the Indigo Girls called “Galileo,” that has a line that has really been speaking to my heart lately. It says, “And now I’m serving time for mistakes made by another in another lifetime.” She’s actually talking about reincarnation, but I think the idea is just as significant whether you believe in that or not. We all carry the choices of those before us. Good or bad, we carry them all. It seems unfair to me sometimes. In my idea of justice, we all should carry only the weight of our own mistakes and choices. But we are all interconnected and dependent on one another; none of us carry only our own choices. My whiteness carries the guilt of the oppressor, current and past, and the slave owner and the imposer of segregation. My neighbor’s blackness carries the lingering residue of oppression, segregation, and enslavement. My privilege carries an arrogance of entitlement as my students and neighbors carry the desire just to survive and be socially accepted. I did not choose to grow up privileged or White any more than my students and neighbors chose to grow up poor or as people of color. Our privilege and poverty were chosen for us and we carry the weight of those choices “made by another in another lifetime.” That’s been a hard thing for me lately, reconciling the meaning of all of this and what my responsibility is in it. It would probably be easier just to say, “That wasn’t me. I didn’t do that so I shouldn’t have to feel guilty or pay for what was done before I was even born.” That would be the easy thing. But it wouldn’t be the right thing. And it wouldn’t be reality, merely an illusion. The fact is, I am serving time for mistakes I never made, but if I didn’t recognize that, I would be indeed making my own mistakes. I have made many already. God never intended us to live separate from each other by our differences. God loves diversity and he loves ALL people. Why we don’t seem to get that, I don’t know. Maybe we’re afraid. Afraid of the stranger, afraid of our responsibility, afraid of God and his call for all his children to reconciliation. Maybe we like our hatred, though we may not recognize it as such or refuse to name it. Maybe we like to feel powerful and in control of the lives of others because we don’t always feel in control of ours. Maybe it is easier to condemn that to accept because we would rather reject someone before they reject us. But I’m really glad God doesn’t think that way. I’m really glad that he accepts rather than condemns and that he would rather be rejected by us than reject us. That is my experience of the unconditional love and grace of God. He waits for us patiently, whispering in us, asking us to choose him, wanting us to sense his arms around us as he rocks us in our tears and laughs with us in our joys.
I strongly believe in God’s desire for reconciliation because at the very heart of us, it is our deepest desire too. I believe he wants us not only to be reconciled to him, but to one another, and to his creation that he has given us to care for and take pleasure in. Not the kind of pleasure that is abusive, but the kind that stops to smell the flowers and admire their simple beauty. We have been on the path of destruction for too long, destroying each other, ourselves, and our home. Instead of caring with grace, we have been taking advantage of people and of our planet. I’m truly repentant for the part I’ve played personally in that and for the mistakes I carry from others in another lifetime. I have seen so much injustice in the world in the last month. The oil spill in the Gulf, caused by our greed and our laziness or fear of taking a stand, is heartbreaking and infuriating. It feels like the greed in the form of crude oil, is destroying my home and my whole childhood as it moves around the coast of Florida. The injustice of Arizona’s stance on immigration that gives law enforcement permission for racial profiling and mistreatment of aliens in the name of “protecting our neighbors” is insane especially when God calls us to love the alien as one of our own. They are our neighbors. We need to seek reconciliation as God calls us to, not separation and segregation.
Back in the Abundance of Camden / Jan 14, 05:52 PM
First trimester over and the second begins. A new year filled with new lessons, resolutions, and goals. Caz has been asking us to think about what our hopes and goals are for this new trimester. For as goal oriented as I am, I realized I’m not a very good goal setter. Mostly my goals have been set for me. In high school and college it was, “This is what you have to do. Do it well and get good grades.” Write a resume, get a job, do what they tell you to do at your job. Very rarely was I asked to set my own goals for life other than what was expected of me. Even in the first trimester of Mission Year, we were told what the expectations were and how we were meant to live up to them. There was a lot of structure and I’m used to structure. I like structure. Structure helps me to know what people expect of me so that I can living into those expectations and be who they want me to be. Their goals were my goals. Being who other people want me to be is a heck of a lot easier (emotionally) than trying to figure out who I really am. Or is it? While there are still rules and expectations in place, there is a lot more freedom this trimester. Hence Caz asking us to figure out what our hopes are for our own spiritual growth and the growth of our relationships.
Last trimester, I kept waiting for all of this to feel like life. I went home for Christmas and was surprised to find that most of the time it felt like a dream. When I got back to Camden, I realized that it does feel like life here. Sometimes I feel like people see Mission Year as a transitional period of my life as if I was living before and I will be living after but right now I’m in the middle. I don’t believe that. This is my life. Life does not begin or end in events, it just is. Life is wherever we are right now. Letting go of the idea that my life is on pause while in Mission Year and will start up again after is helping me to let go of all the expectations of what my life should be. Sometimes people’s hopes for me, sometimes even my hopes for myself are not consistent with God’s. Why must I always be and do more? Why can’t I just be? Why can’t life just be what it is right now, the good and the bad? In Psalms 66 the other day, I read:
“For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.”
So often we think of abundance as only the good things of life, but this passage refers to the “fire and water” and the heavy burdens as “abundance.” In the good and in the bad, God brings us to a place of abundance. All I went through, all the lessons learned and the coming into a deeper understanding of who I am, all of the really difficult fires and crushing waters I went through, has brought me to a place of abundance and intimacy with Jesus and I see the truth of this Psalm clearly.
My hope for this trimester is that I come into a deeper peace and understanding of the abundance that comes from God in all forms. I’ve just begun to surrender the expectations and judgments held over me by myself and other people of who I am. Until I can let go of that in myself, I know I won’t be able to let go of my own expectations of how other people should be and I want to. I want to come to that place of humility and freedom so that Jesus has His unhindered way in me to love others more completely through me.
“If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturing is letting go again.”
-Marybeth Danielson
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Live your life, don't just let life happen to you. ~Caz / Nov 14, 04:04 PM
I am quite possibly the worst blogger ever. I used to be so good about this. Ironically enough, I was much better when I had far less to say, at least far less to say of anything important. The deeper things are felt, the less inclined I am to share them with everyone. A while ago in our curriculum reading we read “The Way of the Heart” by Henri Nouwen about embracing silence and solitude. In it, he talked about how wordy we are as a culture and the more we talk about things, the less we feel them. I’ve noticed the opposite, the deeper my feelings, the less I want to speak them aloud. Which I guess is ultimately the same thing.
I’ve been spending a lot of time this last week daydreaming. Dreaming about what live used to be like, the things and people that are familiar. Caz said recently that by this time, two months in, people often start feeling like, “Well, this has been a great missions trip but I’m ready to go home now.” I can relate to that. I started feeling very homesick for my friends in Pensacola especially and my little apartment with April and Sheila. I was so ready to leave Pensacola behind forever when I left in August and now there are moments I would give anything to be back there, back where things are comfortable and familiar. I was praying about this earlier today, that God would give me the strength and the faith to stay present and to trust that 10 months from now, everything is going to be okay and I am going to be where I need to be. I realized that He is answering my prayers to learn what it means to surrender and as He is teaching me to let go of the familiar and hold on only to Him, I am clinging desperately to the things He wants me to let go. I am clinging to the edge of the branch, not realizing that God is holding his arms out two feet below me ready to catch me the moment I decided to release my death grip.
I told this to Caz this morning at our team captain meeting. She commented that we are all like that; we all worry so much about what will happen and then finally when we get there, we are surprised to find that everything is still all right. Six months ago I was stressing about where I was going to go next and why I was feeling restless. And yet here I am, doing okay, living life in Camden, New Jersey. In 10 months, wherever I am, I will be doing okay and still living life. So why worry?
A lot has been happening in and around me these last two months, the retelling of which would make this blog WAY too long. But overall things have been going well. Working at the school is great and the teens I work with are a lot of fun…and sometimes a pain in my butt. :) My math skills are improving significantly. My church here is great, though really small. Bible studies have been really fulfilling and most challenging to a lot of my long-held doctrinal beliefs. I love it though; it is wonderful to be thinking of God and His word in new ways. My neighborhood is busy and my neighbors have been soaking in the last of the warm weather so we’ve been able to sit outside with them a bit more than we expected. Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching and we will hopefully get to spend some really awesome time with them. My team is doing well and have been really good for me through my inner and outer struggles. We’ve been good for each other.
Please keep me in your prayers. Specifically for my school and how my heart handles each individual student. Also pray for my team and that we grow closer together and deeper into the bonds of community. Their names are Anna, Ellen, Josh, Matt, and Megan and I’m sure it would be a comfort to them as it is to me to be prayed for by name. I could use some prayer too regarding trusting God in each situation. I often do not trust myself to handle difficult situations well and I think that comes from putting too much faith in my own abilities and not enough in God. And lastly, to stay present; that God helps me keep my mind and heart present here, where I am sure I am meant to be.
Peace and love!
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Painting Pictures of Egypt / Oct 16, 10:56 AM
There is a Sara Groves song that I adore that goes, “I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, leaving out what it lacks. The future looks so hard and I want to go back. But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned and those roads were closed off to me while my back was turned.” Those lyrics have really been resonating with me lately as I begin to realize the truth in them playing out in my own life. It speaks of when the God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and not even a week later they were complaining about being in the desert and wanting to go back to Egypt where despite of the slavery they endured they had found a way to live.
It is hard sometimes when I experience so much brokenness all around me, not to long for the comforts of my suburbian home. Sometimes I just want to walk around on the streets and not see trash and broken glass everywhere or abandoned houses on every block. But the longer I am here and the more my perspective is openned to the hurt of this world, the more I realize that “the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned” and the more I feel like I can never go back there.
A lot of people who hear about Mission Year wonder why anyone would want to take “steps backward.” Our society places most of its value on moving up in the world – get a good education so you can go to a good college so you can get a good, high paying job so you can own your own home so you can have your own family so you can give your children all the comforts you didn’t have. Whereas we have chosen to “move back” into the forgotten places, the places even the indigenous people want to escape. But that is why we are here, to love people and to remind them that we haven’t forgotten them and that we want to be with them because we value who they are. There is pain here, but there is beauty in the faces of the people I meet. People who belong to God, whom He loves and values, and whom He calls me to love and value too. Brokenness was never God’s will for humanity, but it is in our brokennes that we can see His wholeness without false pretentions and perceptions.
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