Today is my third day at RNS, and I have gotten the opportunity to write several more articles. Yesterday I wrote a brief on the fire yesterday morning at the Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. It took two-and-a-half hours for firefighters to contain it, and although the roof had extensive fire damage and will need to rebuilt, the sanctuary was spared from the flames, although it sounds like there was pretty severe water damage. What a sad occurance for the 134-year-old historical cathedral.
Today I wrote a brief about a settlement between the Washington Metro and the U.S. Department of Justice involving religious discrimination. A woman of apostalic pentecostal faith was applying for the position of bus operator, and she requested the ability to wear a skirt instead of the slacks that are a part of the uniform, so as to stay in accordance with her religious practices. The application process was terminated at this point, and she made a complaint. The Metro decided to settle instead of taking it to court, and provided the woman with monetary compensation and is also required to form new policies to better accomodate employees' religious practices. I got to talk with members of two different groups that push for religious freedom in the workplace (one was Orthodox Jewish and the other was Baptist) about their take on this settlement, which was quite interesting.
Oh, and last night one of Chris' clips ended up on a little Web site for a little news organization called U.S.A. Today ... how cool is that?? My article on the post office is going out to subscribers later today, and I'm hoping I can at least get one full-length clip out of it. We shall see ...
Last night my floor had our first weekly progressive dinner, which was really fun! There are three apartments on my floor (two of girls, one of guys), and the girls in the apartment next to ours came up with the idea. Each apartment is assigned either the appetizer, the main course or the dessert, and then we travel from apartment to apartment over the course of the meal. First we had pizza bites in our apartment (We kind of forgot about it until last minute, haha ...), then we had amazingly delicious tortilla soup at the girls' apartment, and finally we had ice cream at the guys' apartment.
We all stayed over there for an additional hour because two of the guys decided to bust out their guitars (and one harmonica), and we had a group sing-a-long. "All Star," "Kiss Me," "Hallelujah" and "I'll Be" were the night's biggest hits. It was seriously so much fun! Honestly, I'm pretty sure that my favorite music in the world is just an acoustic guitar with singing ... the singing doesn't even have to be great, I just love hearing real voices to a real guitar. It was a really fun night, and I'm glad we're making it a tradition.
This is random, but I've realized how much I love to sing and how I'm not embarrassed anymore about how I sound. I would much rather just have fun than care about what I sound like :) I think a lot of that came from really getting into worship and watching those around me do the same. I think it's absolutely beautiful when someone who doesn't have a good voice pours themself into worship because you know they aren't doing it for show. It just seems so demonstrative of a heart full of love for Christ.
WJC and ASP had an optional worship night on Monday that was led by a girl on piano and a girl on guitar. About 20 to 25 of us met in the parlor and spent an hour singing and praying, and it was such a wonderful experience. It's amazing to me how strong of ties have already been developed between all of us, simply because we share the same faith and the same commitment to and love for Christ. We might not know a lot about each other's lives, pasts or personality quirks yet, but most of us can bond over a shared devotion and give each other support in that. It's funny how I've only realized in the last couple of years how absolutely imperative fellowship is. It's what we were created for.
Speaking of support and prayer, if anyone happens to think of it, I could definitely use some. I have two five-page papers due tomorrow, and I haven't started either yet. I know it's probably not a surprise to most of you, haha. I will get them done, and I will do a good job because I always do, but I'm just not looking forward to the long night ahead ...
On the plus side, the little cafe next to the RNS office called "Jolt 'N Bolt" probably has the best chai lattes ever :)
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