It was, in many unparalleled ways, a spectacular weekend. It began on an exceptionally beautiful fall day in Seattle on which I had spontaneously ditched my hiking plans and found myself instead rising at the not horribly ungodly hour of 8:30 am to hastily shower, collect an odd collection of food substances made the day before, and head across a sparkling Lake Washington to spend the day in an exciting new way.
As always, when driving to Mars Hill in Ballard, I take the longish way, driving past the UW Medical Center (my current place of employment) and along the north edge of Lake Union. I first took this route because, quite frankly, it was the only exit on the West side that I'd ever gotten off, but continued taking it because of my peculiar affinity to driving along water and the potential to see a "Ride the Duck" boat/bus crossover emerging from it's aquatic habitat to drive on terra firma in the process of showing off the wonders of the Seattle area. An additional benefit also includes driving along a portion of the Burke-Gilman trail which affords viewing of a sampling of the vast variety of people in Seattle who chose the bicycle as their mode of transportation. They come in so many different clothing options ranging from girls in mini-skirts with (thankfully) leggings underneath, to guys in running shorts that expose an alarming amount of man-leg, to your typical spandex biking outfit.
I arrived at the church, which is painted dark gray and appears rather dismal in that apparently chosen style of Mars Hill, and park by the entrance closest to the kitchen. My initial foray from my car bearing my Bible and a ziploc bag of rather crispy, over-toasted homemade granola, reveals that my chosen entrance point is locked. No worries. I can just walk around the huge warehouse that God provided as an excellent church location and try another door. I successfully find a way to get inside and try to quietly sneak into the kitchen. It occurs to me that on this particular day, sneaking anywhere will be rather difficult as I've come to serve food to 120+ guys gathered from around the world for ReTrain (a leadership training program on a Master's level that is affiliated with Mars Hill and started by Pastor Mark) and will be one of two women in a large echoing building wearing heels, modest ones,to be sure, but still sufficient to audibly mark me as decidedly female.
Within the humble precincts of the church kitchen, I meet Kendra, a veritably bubbling source of energy who apparently plays a very important if not succinctly defined role in support of ReTrain. Her duties range from providing food for the gathered men, but also apparently sorting through and processing their applications. We spend the next minutes shuttling food to the adjacent serving area, monitoring the levels of coffee and cream, and receiving various culinary creations from the thoughtful and generous women from the church. Though it was a great blessing to get to serve the guys there, the real draw for me was the promise of getting to sit in on the lectures between times of particular bustle in the kitchen. Now, to truly grasp my excitement at having the option of sitting in on a two day lecture on the subject of ecclesiology, you have to understand my delight in reading theology and philosophy, and the rate at which I devoured books of that nature from various people from John Calvin to John Piper. So between frequent checks to assure that the vital flow of available coffee was uninterrupted, Kendra and I curled up in a backish corner and listened in on a lecture series that was costing a great deal more from the guys who were actually paying to be there. It should be noted, however, that Master's level credit was not awarded to the two moochers in the back. This, however, does not diminish the personal benefit received.
Throughout the morning there is a smattering of guys visiting the kitchen for water or coffee and to grab a random bite to eat. But when on break, a flood of twenty-something guys plus a few older peers descend upon the proffered food rather like vultures on a carcass. I half interestedly note that a definite majority of them have several characteristics in common: their hair is either decidedly unstyled – suggesting, perhaps, someone not unlike myself who remains in bed until the last possible moment and then bolts upright, commencing brushing their teeth while stuffing some breakfast down their throat and hastening out the door – or is somewhat carefully gelled into a variety of variations of the lovely fohawk. There is a preponderance of plaid shirts and trendy jeans, through as someone who owns only one, decidedly non-trendy version of the latter article and never shops in designer or brand-name stores, my abilities to recognize and accurately identify jeans in such a manner are somewhat dubious. I feel much more confident of my ability to identify plaid shirts. All in all, they are a delightfully polite and grateful bunch of people and a pleasure to serve. And despite the fact that at 21 years of age, I'm almost assuredly younger than anyone present, I begin to feel a sort of motherly affection for "the boys" as Kendra and I dub the hungry crowd. I must also insert here that the expressed gratitude of periodic heads poked into the kitchen makes serving them equally a blessing for us as it is for them.
Late morning brings another vivacious character – Marie – who I immediately recognize as someone who has served communion to me before. She hauls in a large storage tub of cupcakes and immediately begins chatting in a most friendly manner. The remainder of the afternoon is split between listening to Dr. Gregg Allison's teaching and comparing family upbringing and subsequent growth experiences with Marie with our feet propped up on the Connect Desk in the foyer. Some striking similarities dually noted.
As the afternoon is nearing completion, the less amorous task of food clean-up ensues. The following is just a simple of narrative of how particularly awesome God quite frequently shows Himself to be. I was aware through the various methods of communication utilized by Mars Hill that Dr. Allison would be teaching at the U-District campus that night a lecture with the fascinating title of "The Theology of the Body." Despite the frequent reminders and the interesting subject matter, I wasn't planning to attend. God, as it turned out, planned differently. In the midst of washing platters and bagging up left-over veggies, Donald, one of the ReTrain students and someone of some sort of position of some sort of importance at the U-District campus pops into the kitchen. He wants to know if he can borrow several of the large coffee containers, fill them with coffee at Ballard and haul them over to the sadly incapacitated UD campus (it has no coffee making apparatus yet, though due to its location in a city that apparently lives on the substance, I'm sure it will not be long in such desperate straights). As Kendra and I have no particular attachment to the aforementioned coffee containers, we suppose there can't be anything too horrible in this arrangement and we begin to brew coffee to fill them. Donald, it seems, needs to get over to UD sooner rather than later, so I offer to drop off the coffee on my way home. Not much of an inconvenience since I take a route that drives me directly through UD for the above mentioned reasons. Some very nice young men help me load the coffee into my car and I carefully pull out of the parking lot. It takes only one bump on the road with a simultaneous glance in my rear-view mirror to discover that despite my struggles to close the seemingly tight latches on the lids, they do, in fact, spew coffee into my trunk when aggravated by my passage over some rut in the road. I am at first mildly perturbed about this until I realize that this is perhaps just the incentive I need to clean the interior of my car. I endure the odor of burnt beans (no I don't drink coffee) and safely reach the UD campus. There as I unload my precious cargo with Donald's assistance, I am introduced to Dr. Allison and his lovely wife Nora as they arrive. Donald and I haul the coffee inside and my ears are immediately serenaded by a favorite hymn – "In Christ Alone" – being rehearsed by the band, after which point Donald's suggestion that I stay for the evening is almost superfluous. I'm already there. Might as well go park legally and stay for a while. Nevermind that I was planning to go home and use up the rest of my pumpkin in another batch of pumpkin bars. Pumpkin bars can just as easily be made in a flurry of midnight baking.
After sitting in the foyer for a while, meditating on the book of 1st Thessalonians, I venture into the auditorium and take a seat next to a woman, who though I do not mean to suggest anything even remotely unkind or politically incorrect, appeared somewhat more mature than the rest of the college-age people filling up the chairs. It was only after saying "Hi" and sitting beside her for a few moments that my memory was suddenly jogged and I realized that she was Dr. Allison's wife! It is an undeniable fact that I am perfectly horrendous at remembering people's names, a reality that I've come to grips with. In this case, however, I thought it rather inexcusable to have forgotten so entirely someone that I had been introduced to literally minutes before, but there you have it. We spent the next twenty minutes or so discussing various topics of interest including her ministry through Sojourn church in Louisville, KY, focusing on teaching women how to deductively study the Bible for themselves. All in all, I felt very blessed to have gotten the opportunity to speak with her and thanked God for directing my absent-minded steps in her direction. Her husbands presentation was interesting, relevant and definitely worth postponing my appointment with pumpkin. I had one question for him, but as a request had been made to keep the questions relevant to the majority population of the room, if possible, and mine was purely philosophical in nature, I saved if for afterward. I got to ask him what he thought of John Robbins' idea of what it means to be made in the image of God, namely that we are rational logical creatures, and received a satisfactory answer, all of which will entirely bore any reader who may still be perusing this post.
I left afterwards blessed by the experience, and trying to pretend that the lump that had been in my throat in the morning had not gradually worsened throughout the day and was now most definitively making itself known as a sore throat. So I baked some pumpkin bars, had a shot of whiskey in desperate hopes that it would disinfect my throat – not such a crazy notion as it seems, as it HAS worked for me in the past – followed by a dry piece of toast to get the taste out of my mouth (that being another beverage that I do not prefer). I chased that all down with some Benadryl, thinking that I, as a nurse, should know better. The result should have made me wonderfully sleepy, but as the night progressed my sore throat morphed into a post-nasal drip that brought me wide awake and coughing several times throughout the night.
After briefly delivering food again the next morning and curling up with some lemon tea in the back of the room, because it's hard to miss a great discussion on Spiritual gifts and cessationism versus continuationism even when I know I should be home in bed. I then proceeded to spend the next approximately 24 hours in bed, emerging periodically to sip some warm broth or restock my tissue supply. All in all, though it was a great weekend, and though I hope that my body subdues this current microbial insurrection sooner rather than later, I, nonetheless have much to be thankful for. I might even be able to sleep now if my nose would stop needing blown.
