From the last few days when I've been slacking on writing here... I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to just talk with one of my supervisors, the coordinator of the TORCH program at Northfield High School. We had organized a two-hour window to be available on Thursday night for any parents to come ask us anything they wanted to know about credits, college access, and paying for their child's education, but most of the time we did not have parents and just hung out. I am learning so much from her, and that night even further highlighted this incredible opportunity to work with the TORCH program that is truly an anomaly in Minnesota. My home state now has the highest achievement gap between overall and minority graduation rates in the entire country, but the TORCH program has raised the Latino (largest minority group in Northfield by far) from 60 percent to 96 percent in the last six years due to some ingenuity and drive to constantly be thinking of new ways to serve the low-income and minority students of Northfield. Now high schools around the state, including my alma mater, Hopkins, are looking to hopefully not replicate but model programs after TORCH to better serve their own populations and affirm the potential of all students, especially those who may face greater challenges to their education such as home life and other outside factors. I'm so blessed to serve here and learn so much from this program, from these kids, and from those who are dedicated to walking with them!
I'm also thankful for whomever invented direct deposit so I get the pleasant surprises of some hard work translating into the ability to sustain myself.
I'm thankful for all the ways my friends and family made my birthday special and took the time to show me their love. Even if it meant too much birthday cake in too little time - thank goodness for a silly dance party djed by one of my talented friends to take care of some of that sugar!
I'm thankful for falling asleep to rain on Saturday night. And I'm thankful temperatures did not dip low enough to freeze that rain and make driving or walking dangerous. I look forward to the spring thaw so I can start biking around Northfield!
I'm thankful for how many St. Lukers turned out for my adult education hour presentation about my Cuba delegation experience, especially with Daylight Savings Time! Usually "spring ahead" will trip a good number of people up so that they arrive fifteen minutes early for the 10:30 service when they were intending to make it for the 9:15 education hour, but it was amazing to have a packed room to listen to my stories, see pictures from my trip, (hopefully) appreciate my nerdiness about Cuba and sustainable development, and to work in solidarity for the US-Cuba relationship. I'm so grateful for further invitations to share about my Cuba experience to a small group through the church as well as possibly at other congregations around the Cities to continue raising awareness about what we as concerned U.S. citizens can do to help normalize relations between Cuba and the U.S. (Please consider taking 20 seconds to sign this petition: http://signon.org/sign/cuba-is-not-a-sponsor-of-terrorism - thank you!).
And I'm thankful for our interim youth pastor's sermon with a new take on the story of the prodigal son. Did you know that "prodigal" means extravagant, wasteful, excessive, etc.? While more typical and still-powerful sermons focus on the wastefulness of the son who denied his father and took his inheritance only to squander it, or even the extravagance lavished in celebration of his return, our pastor today highlighted the "prodigalness" of God. That God's strength and love are so extravagant and excessive that they are beyond comprehension. When it might be human nature to cut your losses with the one lost sheep out of 100, God never gives up searching and is overjoyed when that last sheep makes it home. That love reaches out to us, excessive beyond comprehension, "recklessly extravagant" as Dictionary.com would have it. An extravagance of love, and the riches of that love and the fulness of the Spirit are all there for those who love God! You do not need to have everything figured out, you just have to try to follow the shepherd and live in love.
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