Our Formation House friends and us were featured in recent article about christian communities. I am excited to share it with everyone. The title of the article is "Presbyterian Monastics." It was featured in Presbyterian Today and I encourage you to read it with an open heart regarding the way God moves in and among his people (even if you are not a Presbyterian!).
All that said, the article provides some good information on the discussions that are going on about how Christians are seeking closer relationships to their neighbors and to God. And it shows pictures of Dave, Karen, Jay, Amber, and Jenn and I. There is a great picture of Jenn! Enjoy!
JF11_presbyMonastics-1.pdf
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
AOTY Coup D'état
I know everyone is probably wondering how we are doing in Pittsburgh, and it would be beneficial to our friends elsewhere to write about the amazing Formation House community and our adventures in the snow, but!....
It is December and I have been listening to music all year long to formulate an Albums of The Year (AOTY) 2010 list. Just as this list has taken over my mind the past several weeks, I now take over our blog so I can share it with YOU! It's just that exciting. If you or someone you know is looking for new music, I recommend all of these. To keep things sort of brief, I only wrote a few words about each album, but if you want to know more let me know. SO! Without further ado, I give you
I'm not going to do that....
(if you would like more of an update, check out Jay and Amber's blog-Adventures in Togetherness)
It is December and I have been listening to music all year long to formulate an Albums of The Year (AOTY) 2010 list. Just as this list has taken over my mind the past several weeks, I now take over our blog so I can share it with YOU! It's just that exciting. If you or someone you know is looking for new music, I recommend all of these. To keep things sort of brief, I only wrote a few words about each album, but if you want to know more let me know. SO! Without further ado, I give you
Ryan's Best Albums of 2010.
(also known as: The Best Albums of 2010 Period.)
10. Broken Bells- The High Road
Fun album. These guys are funky. Honestly haven't listened to the lyrics, distracted by the beats.
9. Josh Ritter- So Runs The World Away
Very low key. Excellent song writing and story telling. I think Mr. Ritter is a genious.
8. The National- High Violet
Love their rhythm and orchestration on this album. Took me a while to like their style. Had "Bloodbuzz Ohio" in my head for weeks.
7. Arcade Fire- The Suburbs
Upon second listen, completely fell for this album. Heavy subjects and not as epic as past albums, but very catchy. Every song is a win.
6. The Crazy Heart Soundtrack
Watch the movie. Great songwriting with a Country-Western flair. Some of my favorite songs of the year.
5. Sufjan Stevens- The Age of Adz
Good ol' Sufjan folk disguised in a mask of synthy-techno mess. Excellent.
4. Mumford and Sons- Sigh No More
Very positive message, great lyrics. Upbeat banjo folky-folk.
3. The Tallest Man on Earth- The Wild Hunt
If you don't like his voice, keep listening. Great solo acoustic stuff, great lyrics. Confessional and inspiring.
2. The New Pornographers- Together
Completely overlooked excellence. Have heard no buzz about this album. I loved it on the first listen. Very catchy.
1. Dr. Dog- Shame, Shame
I hate to use the word "accessible," but if you are not into "weird" stuff, you might like these guys. This album is a lot of fun! Great music, great lyrics, a little bit of everything. Now one of my favorite bands.
Any feedback?
After writing this, I realized we have not updated everyone in a while. That needs to happen. More to come.
-Ryan
Friday, November 26, 2010
Song of the South
Moving to a different part of the country, Jenn and I have been thinking a lot about the differences in where we are from and where we are now. I think we have whittled down our answers to several things that we like about living "in the North." Pittsburghers would probably label themselves as some kind of "halfsie", not Northern or Southern but somewhere in the middle. (Yes that was an Office reference..) However, we will use the Mason-Dixon line as our guide and for the sake of this post, Pittsburgh is in the North.
Back to the point. We are really living in a different part of the country. We like Pittsburgh because it is local. You do not find a big box store on every corner. You can find many restaurants that use local, organic food and are completely locally owned. Pittsburgh has a neighborhood feel. We love the community of folks we have fallen into. We cannot be more happy or thankful for the Formation House "Pilot" group.
While it has been refreshing to live in a different environment, coming home to Georgia for Thanksgiving has been great. Getting used to living in Pittsburgh has been one huge swirl of activity and adapting to our new home. It has been gratifying, and I would not change a thing. But it is also true, that as your life moves and changes, you must remember where you are from. Seeing Jenn's family yesterday (which, by the way, had %100 family attendance!) for Thanksgiving reminded me of the support and love they have given us in our journey. We are at home here, and we know we are always welcome. We talked with my family on the phone for a while and I also thought about how they have, in their own way, been there for us and supported us. We know that we always have a place in Dallas or in Georgia for support and love. I cannot put into words how THANKFUL I am to have two wonderful families. God has blessed us immensely!
This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for where I am from and the family that I have.
"All the sweetest winds, they blow across the South."
To finish, some pictures of family.
Back to the point. We are really living in a different part of the country. We like Pittsburgh because it is local. You do not find a big box store on every corner. You can find many restaurants that use local, organic food and are completely locally owned. Pittsburgh has a neighborhood feel. We love the community of folks we have fallen into. We cannot be more happy or thankful for the Formation House "Pilot" group.
While it has been refreshing to live in a different environment, coming home to Georgia for Thanksgiving has been great. Getting used to living in Pittsburgh has been one huge swirl of activity and adapting to our new home. It has been gratifying, and I would not change a thing. But it is also true, that as your life moves and changes, you must remember where you are from. Seeing Jenn's family yesterday (which, by the way, had %100 family attendance!) for Thanksgiving reminded me of the support and love they have given us in our journey. We are at home here, and we know we are always welcome. We talked with my family on the phone for a while and I also thought about how they have, in their own way, been there for us and supported us. We know that we always have a place in Dallas or in Georgia for support and love. I cannot put into words how THANKFUL I am to have two wonderful families. God has blessed us immensely!
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| The Merrill and Locke Families, Thanksgiving 2010 |
This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for where I am from and the family that I have.
"All the sweetest winds, they blow across the South."
To finish, some pictures of family.
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| Drewby |
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| Locke family at our Wedding |
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| Eric and Alyson- soon to be Newlyweds! |
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| Papaw |
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| Nanny and Brousin Danny |
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| Jessica and Paul |
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| Cousin Rachel |
Sunday, November 7, 2010
I Want to Ride My Bicycle
Don't I look great on my. . . .
NEW BIKE?!?!?
Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce Bikey Blue, the newest member to our family. It only took me four hours of classes, 13 hours of volunteering, and ten hours of fixing up (roughly) to earn her, but now she is all MINE. My own. My . . . . . precious.Do I look a little excited? If you see me and Bikey riding around the city, don't be surprised if I have a big, goofy grin on my face. And you might hear the faint traces of a song. . . .
"IIIIIIIII don't wanna work, I just wanna riiide on my bike all day!"
What can I say? Bikey Blue just makes me want to sing. And tell lame jokes: Q: What did the bicycle call it's dad?? A: POP-cycle! Q: Did you hear about the vampire bicycle that went around biting people's arms off? A: It was a vicious cycle.
(All right, I'm done).
Wishing you all the most fabulous of weeks!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
A Day In the Life
Hello, friends. Jenn here. Ryan and I have been talking about a good place to go with this blog. There is a LOT we could talk about. . . . which we haven't been the most faithful about putting on here. You see, we have the best intentions about not being slackers on this blog, as we know you people out there check it daily and sigh resignedly when we've yet again *not* posted something by the time you go to bed each night. We are flattered, and regret to cause you such disappointment. But sigh no more! We are coming out of slackerdom to describe a day in the life of our community.
This is edge-of-your-seat thrill stuff people, so get ready. Brace yourselves; here's the run-down. Ryan and I wake up and go to work ridiculously early (Ryan especially). Ryan gets home in the early afternoon, me around 4:00--4:30; everyone else is usually home a little later as they get to work later. Each week, our community plans five meals that we will eat together. Each meal has two people on cooking, two on dish cleaning (Pittsburgh houses that were made a really long time ago have no fancy schmancy-ness such as dishwashers). That's ten opportunities a week to be involved with a meal, either cooking or cleaning; each person usually has a role in two or three. Which means. . . two times a week, at least, we eat delicious meals we have absolutely no responsibility for! Pretty wonderful, eh?
So. We get home. If one of us is cooking, we usually start around 5:30 or so. (To see our fabulous meal board created by the talented Amber Howard, head on over here to check it out! *Friends' blog plug*). Somewhere in the window between 6:00 and 8:00, we eat. The exceptions to this rule are Tuesday and Friday; Tuesday a friend of our community hosts a huge dinner for various people in our network of friends. This and/or leftovers from Sun. and Mon. provides our Tues. night meal. Friday is date night.
At 9:00 every night (or mostly every night, except for Fridays), we gather for prayer. I could write a whole different post about this. Karen (of Karen and Dave) has a special love for exploring different prayer practices and encountering God through different traditions. Ergo, we change up our prayer style just about every week. Lectio Divina, Taize prayer, intercessory prayer, imaginative prayer. . . . all these words would have been meaningless to me two months ago, but they are regular practices now. Quite the education! And it's only just begun.
Around 9:15--20, we pack our lunches for the next day. Then, guess what we do?? You won't believe this. We go to bed. Usually pretty early (especially Ryan and I), as our schedules permit no sleep-in time. Then we wake up and do it all again.
WHEW!! Seriously, not the most thrilling stuff to talk about, but if anybody out there is wondering what it is like to be in an intentional community, there you have it. (Another Howard blog plug: head here for pictures of our common living spaces. Those Howards are way more on top of this blog thing than we are). What I'm leaving out, of course, is a description of how rich we are finding this style of life to be. We don't intend to always share apartments with other people. What we have now is not a long-term arrangement--all of us understood that going in. But what we would like to work toward is integrating this style of life into a more sustainable situation. It is wonderful to be around two other strong marriages and to learn from them daily. It is wonderful to have people to share chores with. The knowledge that there are people nearby with whom we can share our days and our lives on a regular basis is encouraging, and we are blessed beyond belief that they are such generous, loving people. The days are short; they fill up quickly and seem to rush by. Ryan and I are in disbelief that we've already been here for over two months! Our lives here, though definitely not perfect, are very full. There is a quiet joy we are finding by living near and sharing our lives with good people who want for their lives some of the things we want for ours. Oh; and you've just GOT to see this place in the fall. Pittsburgh does fall better than any place I've ever seen. I'm just a little bit (or a lot) in love with this place right now, and daily feel so thankful to be here. (We'll see how I feel in February when I'm buried under two feet of snow).
Here's a few parting shots: a few weekends ago, Ryan and I went kayaking in downtown. . . for FREE! This past Friday, we went to the top of Mt. Washington, which overlooks the city. You can ride an incline up to the top, but we were cheapies and drove it instead. Here's what we saw; enjoy!
This is edge-of-your-seat thrill stuff people, so get ready. Brace yourselves; here's the run-down. Ryan and I wake up and go to work ridiculously early (Ryan especially). Ryan gets home in the early afternoon, me around 4:00--4:30; everyone else is usually home a little later as they get to work later. Each week, our community plans five meals that we will eat together. Each meal has two people on cooking, two on dish cleaning (Pittsburgh houses that were made a really long time ago have no fancy schmancy-ness such as dishwashers). That's ten opportunities a week to be involved with a meal, either cooking or cleaning; each person usually has a role in two or three. Which means. . . two times a week, at least, we eat delicious meals we have absolutely no responsibility for! Pretty wonderful, eh?
So. We get home. If one of us is cooking, we usually start around 5:30 or so. (To see our fabulous meal board created by the talented Amber Howard, head on over here to check it out! *Friends' blog plug*). Somewhere in the window between 6:00 and 8:00, we eat. The exceptions to this rule are Tuesday and Friday; Tuesday a friend of our community hosts a huge dinner for various people in our network of friends. This and/or leftovers from Sun. and Mon. provides our Tues. night meal. Friday is date night.
At 9:00 every night (or mostly every night, except for Fridays), we gather for prayer. I could write a whole different post about this. Karen (of Karen and Dave) has a special love for exploring different prayer practices and encountering God through different traditions. Ergo, we change up our prayer style just about every week. Lectio Divina, Taize prayer, intercessory prayer, imaginative prayer. . . . all these words would have been meaningless to me two months ago, but they are regular practices now. Quite the education! And it's only just begun.
Around 9:15--20, we pack our lunches for the next day. Then, guess what we do?? You won't believe this. We go to bed. Usually pretty early (especially Ryan and I), as our schedules permit no sleep-in time. Then we wake up and do it all again.
WHEW!! Seriously, not the most thrilling stuff to talk about, but if anybody out there is wondering what it is like to be in an intentional community, there you have it. (Another Howard blog plug: head here for pictures of our common living spaces. Those Howards are way more on top of this blog thing than we are). What I'm leaving out, of course, is a description of how rich we are finding this style of life to be. We don't intend to always share apartments with other people. What we have now is not a long-term arrangement--all of us understood that going in. But what we would like to work toward is integrating this style of life into a more sustainable situation. It is wonderful to be around two other strong marriages and to learn from them daily. It is wonderful to have people to share chores with. The knowledge that there are people nearby with whom we can share our days and our lives on a regular basis is encouraging, and we are blessed beyond belief that they are such generous, loving people. The days are short; they fill up quickly and seem to rush by. Ryan and I are in disbelief that we've already been here for over two months! Our lives here, though definitely not perfect, are very full. There is a quiet joy we are finding by living near and sharing our lives with good people who want for their lives some of the things we want for ours. Oh; and you've just GOT to see this place in the fall. Pittsburgh does fall better than any place I've ever seen. I'm just a little bit (or a lot) in love with this place right now, and daily feel so thankful to be here. (We'll see how I feel in February when I'm buried under two feet of snow).
Here's a few parting shots: a few weekends ago, Ryan and I went kayaking in downtown. . . for FREE! This past Friday, we went to the top of Mt. Washington, which overlooks the city. You can ride an incline up to the top, but we were cheapies and drove it instead. Here's what we saw; enjoy!
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| Everybody loves a free kayak ride! |
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| Heinz Field, where those dang "Stillers" play. |
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| Behind me is the incline, which takes you up the mountain to give you a view of the city. |
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| Beautiful night, beautiful view, beautiful city. Wish I had a better camera to do it justice. |
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Jay and Amber!
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| (hope you guys don't mind, I stole your picture off of Facebook) |
They are very disciplined about blogging, much more than us. (we are working on it) They have been writing on different Formation House happenings and have lots of great pictures. Check it out!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Free Ride!
Ryan here. We have been in Pittsburgh for 1 month and 5 days! Let me start with some updates. Probably the biggest is that Jenn has started her placement at Propel Homestead as an assistant Teacher for 7th and 8th grades. She will hopefully be able to write about the experience in more detail, but it has been a little different for her. One of the main reasons for this is simply because she was a full time teacher last year but now, inherent in her job title, is taking more of a backseat role in the classroom. However, she will be the first to tell you how happy she is to have NO papers or homework to grade and NO lessons to plan. Gotta give a shout out to teachers, it is much more than a full time job! Anyways, making that shift from teacher to assistant seems to be kind of an awkward one no matter how well you do it.
In other news, Jenn and I started volunteering for a Co-op in the area called Free Ride! I have to be honest, though, this is not self-less volunteering. We are in it for FREE BIKES! This bike repair shop operates on the "Repair someone's bike and they will have a fixed bike for a day.....Teach a person to do bike repair and they will have a repaired bike for a lifetime" -policy. They teach people to be their own bike mechanics and use damaged and discarded bikes from around Pittsburgh to refurbish, sell, and teach about bikes.
The concept is this: You come and volunteer for two hours and you can go to one class on bike repair for free (during volunteering we helped sort out old wheels and tires). There are six classes that I know of that focus on separate parts of the bike. When you have gone to at least two classes, you can pick out an unclaimed bike of your choice from the shop to repair. The bike is then appraised ($20-150) and you can earn the bike by volunteering for the Co-op at $8/hour. Once you have volunteered your hours, you get your bike and hopefully have the skills needed to repair your bike!
We took a class on Hubs and Bearings last Sunday, and are looking to volunteer and take another class soon. Here is what the shop looks like:
In other news, Jenn and I started volunteering for a Co-op in the area called Free Ride! I have to be honest, though, this is not self-less volunteering. We are in it for FREE BIKES! This bike repair shop operates on the "Repair someone's bike and they will have a fixed bike for a day.....Teach a person to do bike repair and they will have a repaired bike for a lifetime" -policy. They teach people to be their own bike mechanics and use damaged and discarded bikes from around Pittsburgh to refurbish, sell, and teach about bikes. The concept is this: You come and volunteer for two hours and you can go to one class on bike repair for free (during volunteering we helped sort out old wheels and tires). There are six classes that I know of that focus on separate parts of the bike. When you have gone to at least two classes, you can pick out an unclaimed bike of your choice from the shop to repair. The bike is then appraised ($20-150) and you can earn the bike by volunteering for the Co-op at $8/hour. Once you have volunteered your hours, you get your bike and hopefully have the skills needed to repair your bike!
We took a class on Hubs and Bearings last Sunday, and are looking to volunteer and take another class soon. Here is what the shop looks like:
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| Bikes everywhere..... |
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| One hot bike mechanic learning to clean the wheel hub. (I love this pic!) |
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