Engaged Life

Let’s Move! is a comprehensive initiative, launched by First Lady Michelle Obama, dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation.  This laser focused goal was created so that children born today will will grow up healthier and able to pursue their dreams. Since March is National Nutrition Month, featuring Let’s Move! seemed like a no brainier.

Supporting communities

This campaign focuses on education for all ages and integrates current health campaigns into their messages to reinforce healthy living. For instance, when the USDA unveiled the new ‘My Plate’ food icon - taking over the food pyramid  - Let’s Move! promoted this change.

Let’s Move! will give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.

[Video about 'food deserts' from the White House]

By providing community, support, education, with a splash of fun, this campiagn has been implemented in schools and homes around the nation. In fact, leadership of Let’s Move! have been known to break out into something called ‘The Platypus Walk’.

How are you setting a healthy example for those around you?

Please visit LetsMove.gov or below for more information:

Emma (12) and Claire (10) host a bracelet making party to raise money to dig a well in Africa

When you first talk to 7^th grader Emma (12) and 5^th grader Claire (10) you realize that they are wise beyond their years. For these sisters, they have set their sights on the bigger picture by making it their mission to raise $10,000 to dig a deep well for a village in Malawi. This well will provide clean drinking water for an entire community.

Sound like a lofty goal? Well, they’re approximately half way to their goal already and don’t show any signs of slowing down.

Through multi-family garage sales and bracelet making parties, they are diligently working to bring clean water to a small village in a country an ocean away by 2013. They plan to visit the village that will be breaking ground for the well and are excited to hear about where the well will be located.

“The well is going to be right by a school and it’s amazing to hear how it’s going to help the community” said Emma cheerfully. “I can’t wait to see the smiles on the children’s faces,” Claire says.

Claire and Emma first heard about the project from their grandfather’s role with the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin.
This isn’t the first time this family has raised money to help their fellow man in Africa. When they were younger, the sisters would take their piggy banks at their grandparent’s house and donate the funds to buy mosquito nets to help prevent Malaria.

Sample bracelets Emma and Claire have made to raise money for Mission Malawi

Where did they get the idea to make bracelets? While Emma was out shopping, she saw some bracelets at Kohl’s and said ‘We can make this.’ The rest, as they say, is history.

From Minnesota Viking and Green Bay Packer themed sets to plans on expanding their philanthropic empire to make bracelets for younger kids, these young women are learning how to serve others while keeping up with a demand.

This duo isn’t just about bracelet making. They also love horses and sports. Between homework, riding, volleyball, and church, this family stays busy.

These budding philanthropists have been able to sell the bracelets through church and family. With the prices of the bracelets ranging from $3-$5, these affordable pieces have been making great presents. The proof: their production couldn’t keep up with demand, and as a result, they have been asking for help from their friends and family to keep up the momentum.

Malawi

Recently, when they spoke in church about Mission Malawi, a visitor came up to them after hearing why they are spending so much time raising money for others. The visitor said that she attends another church but doesn’t see why her community couldn’t do something similar.

These girls are setting a community on fire.

Not only are they selling the bracelets, they are developing an awareness to their community about the need for clean water in Africa. They are teachers, creators, and now marketers. From passing out business cards, their blog, and word of mouth, they have already learned life lessons on how to reach and build relationships with people in order to make a difference in the world. Emma and Claire know they can’t do it alone, so they have reached out for help and the community has graciously responded.

If you’re interested in learning more about Mission Malawi, please visit their blog to learn more. Oh, and if you’re wanting to order the bracelets and you’re not in Wisconsin, they’ll ship to you.

November is National Novel Writing Month. While I may not be a novelist, I can’t ignore the community that pops up surrounding story. No matter who you are stories are what bind us together and help us get through tough times.

Originally stories were passed down in an oral tradition. Now pass we pass on tales through writing, art, pictures, movies, quilts, books, and several different methods to tell and display a story.

Each method of story telling sheds light on an aspect that could have been overlooked in previously.

The wonderful thing about the world we live in today is that we are able to have an international community through online forums, community boards, and live chats. And National Novel Writing Month is no exception. Through their site, they have created a community within communities, giving writers the option to join a region where they live. From there they can encourage (aka ‘pep talks’), swap story ideas, check on name connotation and much more. This gives the story tellers a place to hone in on the craft of storytelling.

Let’s face it, the art of telling a story is an important one. Today, in a social society, everyone has a story to tell, draw, animate, video tape, publish, write, sing, etc. But there is one thing that separates the story tellers from the screamers, is the understanding of audience and delivery.

Real story tellers know it’s not really about them. It’s about the audience, and from there, it’s how you tell your tale.

A social world has leveled the playing field, but it’s also drowned the system. Anything can be made public, for better or for worse. The important thing to remember is that it’s not for us to judge what’s the best and worst out there, because there might be a person somewhere, that finds a piece speaks to them. A story that’s not heard in one room, will be echoed and repeated in another.

Either way, all stories need to be told.

Guest Post by Sister Dale Jarvis, RSM

I have been a Sister of Mercy for 45 years. When I first joined the Sisters of Mercy, I moved from Miami to Maine.  It would be an understatement to say that this was a big change for me; not only did I enter a new way of life by joining a religious community, I moved from one culture to another.

I was 14 years old when I knew I wanted to be a Religious Sister but it was not until I was 19 and met the Sisters of Mercy, women of service and women of compassion, did I feel I found the right community. Following your heart when it is moved by others to follow God is so important. The Charism of the Sisters of Mercy, the gift given to us by our foundress Catherine McAuley, is one of service and responding to the needs of God’s people, where ever that is. For the first 22 years of my life as a Sister of Mercy, I was a teacher. In 1991, I decided to change my ministry and to work full time in the area of Social Justice, which has always been and continues to be a passion in my life.

Just two weeks ago I returned from a trip to Haiti. I was there as a member of the Board of Trustees of Outreach to Haiti, a sponsored ministry of the Diocese of Norwich, CT. As a member of the board, I wanted to become more informed of their many ministries in Haiti. This was my second trip, but my first since the earthquake in 2010. I will be returning again next year, not to keep informing myself of the situation there, but because there are times in our lives when God beckons us back to be where the poorest and most vulnerable are. When our hearts are so moved by the plight of the poor, and we know we have the means to make a change in their lives, no matter how small, we cannot say no.

It has only been since I returned from Haiti that I have had time to process this trip. There is so much overwhelming poverty there that it dominates and it is almost impossible to process. Since I have returned, I have been so impressed by the ordinariness of their lives, knowing that each night they returned to poverty, rubble and many times violence. Over 800,000 people still live in the tent cities, 15 months after the quake. I met children coming from school to be at Hospice St. Joseph, one of the ministries in Outreach to Haiti, to have their only meal of the day.  I met mothers who held their babies with tender love and care, knowing the children would be spending the night in rat infested tents. I was overwhelmed with tears at Paula’s orphanage, not because of the pain and poverty, but because of the joy and life in the children. It was at this orphanage that I first heard the sounds of children playing and heard them sing. What mixed emotions I experienced, to know those who have no parents could find joy and life in an orphanage.

For the past five years, I’ve worked as a Vocation Minister and this involves working with women who are considering becoming a Sister of Mercy. I call my time with them “The Emmaus Walk”. I walk with them as their “hearts are burning” in this journey towards the sacred, towards God’s call to Religious Life.

My Ministry involves many opportunities to spend time with young women, often when they are engaged in service projects and learning how integral this is to living a fully spiritual life.  In fact, as I am writing this, I am in a small town in Mississippi called Mound Bayou where 32 high school seniors from St. Dominic’s Academy in Auburn, Maine are doing a week of service. The Sisters of Mercy, who have been here in Mound Bayou for years, run St. Gabriel Mercy Center, and offer many opportunities for young people from around the country to serve the people of the area. We give them the chance to become more aware of the spirit of Mercy and the gift of service to God’s people here in the South.

I believe this ministry of service will open up the hearts of many of these young people and move them to follow Jesus in a religious community. If a young woman today were to ask me my advice about being a Sister, I would ask her, “Have any of my words stirred something in you? Do you feel a pull at your heart to love and serve God and God’s people? Do you want to be part of something bigger than yourself, and give more than you ever thought you could?”  If  she answers yes, I would repeat the words of Jesus when he said to his disciples “Follow me.” I have followed for 45 years, and I have never looked back. In the words of Frances Warde, one of the first Sisters of Mercy, I can say “It is a glorious thing to be a Sister of Mercy.”

[My name is Sister Dale Jarvis, and I am a Sister of Mercy. I was born in Providence, RI, but grew up on Miami, FL. I have a twin sister who still lives in Florida.  I have lived in Maine for the past 45 years, except for the four years I lived in New York City. I went to High School in Miami Florida at the Assumption Academy, a boarding school for girls.  I went to college at St. Joseph’s College in Maine and got my graduate degree from the University of Maine.]

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lloydcrew/

A Year of Food Life

When I accepted a role with Engaged Life, I went searching for books, articles, people, and organizations that represented living a life of engagement. What I found was an overwhelming plethora of content. So, I did what anyone would do, instead of trying to figure it out for myself, I crowd-sourced.

I asked Twitter, Facebook friends, and other various networks. It wasn’t until I began getting engaged in spring life (my new love is planning my garden), that my husband recommend that I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

This book (written by a talented author) is a great example of living a life of engagement.

In the book, Barbara, her husband, and their two girls pack up their home in Tuscon, AZ and trek across America to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.

Here’s why:

“This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

As I read the book, I realized that the family was giving up lots ‘luxuries’ that we all take for granted, or we sometimes label as ’staples’. You know that bananas really don’t grow in Minnesota in January right?

They passed on pop tarts, cereal, cheap milk, dried fruit, and all the artificially sweetened wrapped candy bars that we all know and love (Snickers anyone?). The family of four went all out- with small exceptions like spices and coffee- to replace the life of convenience for a sustainable one. They shopped at local farmers markets, traded with neighbors, had their own garden, and what they couldn’t get locally, they went without or went the fair trade route. They replaced the drive-thru with dirt and a garden, and processed sugars for strawberries and rhubarb. They were engaged with the earth, with what the world could provide them in their surroundings.

Reading all this I couldn’t help but to think about my great-grandmother Ma. You know the one. She ‘didn’t have a pot or a window to throw it out of’ when she was ‘my age’.

When Ma heard about these ‘hippies’ ‘going local’ a number of years back, I could hear her say ‘Why do it yourself when you can get it all at Wal-Mart?’ This coming from the woman that made her own soap and didn’t shop for groceries at the store because she always went to the farmers nearby  for local produce. Why? Not because it was cheaper, but Ma wanted to support the people around her. She grew up in a community that valued and understood that it’s hard work to grow food. And hard work needs support, locally. She first taught me what it was like to lead a life of engagement in your community and this book reminded me of her wisdom. Thanks Ma.

Back to Barbara.

Her family didn’t live a life of convenience, they were searching for more. They were living. Digging into the earth. They got engaged with the earth and community around them.

How are you getting engaged with food and local farmers? Are there organizations and groups in your area that support local farming?

To learn more about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle watch this video:

Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College is one of 12 in the nation. Here, students take excess food from Augsburg Dining Services and create meals to send to local community agencies in the Cedar-Riverside and Phillips neighborhoods of Minneapolis, MN.

The students not only create, package and deliver the meals, they also spend time off campus getting to know the community around them.

Campus Kitchen is also planning on creating a community garden on campus where they’ll have access to fresh vegetables for the meals and offer classes.

How are you becoming engaged in your community?