Ashleigh Hill
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Ashleigh Hill's Blog
My Unsuccessful Life / Jul 13, 04:59 PM
“Success and failure, ultimately, have little to do with living the gospel. Jesus just stood with the outcasts until they were welcomed or until he was crucified – whichever came first … Jesus was always too busy being faithful to worry about success. I’m not opposed to success; I just think we should accept it only if it is a by-product of our fidelity. If our primary concern is results, we will choose to work only with those who give us good ones.” *
A lot of people have asked me if Mission Year has measured its success rate in the neighborhoods in which it works, or what percentage of Breakthrough’s residents have success with employment and housing. I understand the concern and am sure there are ways to measure these things. Still, what defines success in the midst of layers upon layers of emotional, addictive, familiar, and systematic injustices? That is different for every person I’ve met and neighborhood I’ve been in this year. It is different in Chicago and in Atlanta (and Philly, Houston, etc). I think what matters is that Mission Year and Breakthrough are standing where conventional wisdom says not to stand. So, how do and why should we measure our work in a conventional manner? We do not serve a conventional God.
“Teilhard de Chardin wrote that we must ‘trust in the slow work of God.’ Ours is a God who waits. Who are we not to? It takes what it takes for the great turnaround. Wait for it.” *
I’ve talked to or e-mailed a lot of you about a woman who comes to our shelter with sever chemical sensitivity and obsessive-compulsive disorder. We fight with her every. single. day. I have to force myself to say “good morning” to her. Sometimes she tells me I am trying to kill her or that the change of clothes I’m offering her are “filthy”. On Saturday we walked into a local diner to have lunch with a friend and this woman was sitting in the building. The waitress seated us at the table next to hers. I threw an internal fit and then Meredith and I went and said hello and talked for a minute. I felt horrible the whole meal: angry that she was there, mad that I was angry, prayful for her life and struggles, horrified that she might find out where we live, mad at myself again. I always think about how lonely she must be. When we were about to leave she walked over to our table and told all of us how much she appreciates Carrie, Meredith, and I and how we are her friends and how we’re hospitable and loving. I was floored. This woman that the world has literally thrown out (she’s not allowed in most area shelters), who is terrified of the outdoors in which she lives, and who is literally impossible to deal with considers us her friends. We’ve prayed non-stop that the Lord would provide for her and, in His own way, He has provided. She is absolutely both a success story and a tragedy: indefinable except as a human being Breakthrough has tried to stand by. She is surviving and not surviving at the same time. Is this a good result? It’s certainly not someone I would have chosen to stand by.
“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”
*All quotes from Tattoos on the Heart by, Gregory Boyle.
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The people. / Jul 13, 04:58 PM
Either I am nobody or I am a nation. – Derek Walcott
This morning I was sitting with some of our women eating breakfast and one of our residents walked in the room and asked, “Does anyone know where Ashleigh is?” I was sitting right in front of her and said, “I’m right here.”
She said, “I didn’t see you, you looked like the people.”
I said, “I am the people.”
She said, “You look like the people.”
I only have a few weeks left at Breakthrough and I’m trying to nail down lessons I’ve learned from working at a homeless shelter. There are so many that it’s almost impossible and I’m not really sure why I feel the need to do it. Closure maybe? Let me make a firm statement that there is no closure to this year. It will continue to occupy me for (I hope) the rest of my life.
Somewhere I read that “the people must be for the people” and that is the largest truth I have learned. I understand the value and importance in knowing that God knows us individually; I believe it is a life-altering realization. Loving yourself helps you best love God and others. Seeing Christ in others is also life altering. The importance of putting all others on the exact same level as you is just as imperative. Eugene Peterson won me over when he wrote, “I am not myself by myself.”
Sometimes, when people hear this argument, they get antsy – like an idealistic political system for forcibly sharing all our money is being promoted. No. I don’t believe in political systems or money. I believe in Jesus. I believe in making myself exactly equal to everyone. Also, I might add that doing this is nearly impossible, which is another reason I believe in Jesus.
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
Romans 12:2-5
I’ve learned that I believe in the people more than I believe in discussable ideologies (although I do love a good discussion). “[People] are the light of the world.” I want to put down my reasons for not giving someone 50 cents and I want to give them 50 cents. I want to view a friend’s abusive boyfriend as a human being and not only as an abuser (while not condoning his behavior). I want to look at someone, anyone, and see that that person is Jesus, no matter how they are treating me. I am still far from this. I want to make eye contact with everyone who speaks to me. I want to know that the God I doubt in my head is infinitely smaller than the real God.
Last week I was at Cornerstone Music Festival recruiting for Mission Year. The two tables next to ours belonged to two organizations I think have this figured out. One was Random People Who Care (http://randompeoplewhocare.com), an online organization praying for people who ask for prayer. Every morning at the festival they got together and prayed specifically for everyone who asked for prayer the day before. The other organization was ChristCycles (www.christcycles.com). They build bikes and sell them for $250 (it’s worth over $300). They then work with local churches to find people who need bikes and can’t afford them. Then they sell them the very same bike for about $40. Obviously they make no return. They fund it with their own money from day jobs. I asked the owner how long they plan on having a non-lucrative business and he said, “for the rest of my life.”
Today a woman who has had the biggest positive influence on our time at Breakthrough moved out. I couldn’t even look at her without crying because she is an encouragement to me. She thinks she doesn’t know the Lord as well as we do, which is a lie that blows my mind wide apart. She is a saint. During a Come-and-See Weekend she said she couldn’t believe we were making her a part of our lives and introducing her to our families. I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that I want to live a life that never makes anyone feel like they are not worth introductions.
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The field. / Jun 17, 04:11 PM
I can never decide if I should write what is weighing on my heart or what happens in EGP every day or, a combination of both.
Last Sunday, on our way to the grocery store, the bus stopped to pick up a passenger and two other people where huddling over the bus stop bench. I realized they were making crack lines. Then I saw them snort them. Then the bus pulled away. Sometimes, I can see these things, accept them, and move on. Sometimes I can’t. I see hurting people snort their addictions off public benches and I can’t do anything. Then, all of a sudden I’m at Aldi, where soy sauce is “seasonal,” trying to spend less than $60 on a week’s worth of dinners for 5 or more people. It’s like being in two, inflexible worlds at once.
I know there are drugs in the suburbs (this is another topic all together) but their usage is hidden. Jeff and Pedro saw some dealers down the block throw a baggie of powder down to a buyer on the street, in broad daylight. It was a whole production. Sometimes vices are quiet but nothing is hidden here. Things are a shock and not a shock at the same time.
We had our second annual benefit a few nights ago. This one was held at the Harold Washington Library and was pretty classy if I do say so myself. As I was sitting listening to a few alumni share their stories, the table next to ours distracted me. A few women sitting at it wouldn’t stop loudly whispering and visibly texting. They continued all night. I don’t mean or want to call out Mission Year donors but it hurt my feelings and my heart. It took all the energy I had left not to walk over and politely tell them that they were being disrespectful to everything I have poured my mind, soul, spirit, and energy into for the past 10 months. I absolutely judged them and I have no culminating story about how they later redeemed themselves. I am still unsettled with the whole situation. I don’t want to judge and I don’t want to observe people not paying attention. Being distracted by them made me want to cancel my cell phone, delete my Facebook and never own a TV or pay for internet service again because I am so worn-out from seeing people distracted by material things in the face of truth.
Thanks to this year, I understand Matthew 13: 44 now:
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”
A day laborer sells all he has and buys a field for one, small part of it. He sells everything to make heaven his own; he doesn’t steal the treasure and leave the field for someone else to tend. We search for the kingdom of heaven, the treasure, and buy all that is attached to it. In his book Simple Spirituality, Chris Heuertz reminds us that Christ did what the day laborer did – He gave away his life to make us His own. I’ve never thought of it that way. He did not steal us or pick around the dirty parts.
So, the field. I have been thinking about it a lot. Is it notable that the scriptures mention the field so specifically? If the man is us (or Christ) what is the field? Maybe it means nothing but it’s preoccupied me.
Maybe the field includes the people at the bus bench and at the distracting table. If “Christ is all and Christ is in all,” then, yes, Christ is in the situation that causes a man to bag up 5 ounces of cocaine and toss it out the window. God bought that circumstance. So, do I buy it and approach it because Christ does? What do I ignore which Christ has already bought? I am a missionary living in the ‘hood and the field includes splintery cocaine and shiny purses yielding warm Blackberries. I take this all with the treasure of Christ who has overcome the world. That is a big, muddy, expensive statement for a day laborer.
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Devil Town / Jun 7, 09:36 PM
This is a poem I read/sang at Mission Year’s Chicago Speak Up event.
Devil Town
With Devil Town by Daniel Johnston
I walk
The line pulled broken
Glass thin between two redemption
Songs, kicking rocks
Down tiny ravines
In the road
My tight throat
Turning toward
Big-bellied abuses and
Tiny, palmed pills
Singing:
I was living in a devil town
Didn’t know it was a devil town
Oh Lord, it really brings me down
About the devil town.
I witness the edge of the earth –
Cramming the toothy line between
Sky and solid,
Skinned city
Like a harassed heart beat and I
Sing:
All my friends were vampires
Didn’t know they were vampires
Turns out I was a vampire myself
In the devil town.
My daylight demons and I,
We think about Jesus –
His hands hauled up,
And feet packed back into
The tepid tomb
Singing:
I was living in a devil town
Didn’t know it was a devil town
Oh Lord, it really brings me down
About the devil town.
Thoughts From Two Months Out; pt. 2 / Jun 7, 09:36 PM
I’m sitting here writing and Meredith is across the table from me writing thank-you notes. We were supposed to get a new, donated fridge delivered today but it didn’t come. We’re trying to figure out how to go shopping for a picnic this weekend when we can’t really refrigerate food. But, I don’t think this is a bad problem to have. What do we do when we want to hang out with friends and feed them and our free refrigerator hasn’t arrived yet? I can think of worse things.
I am tired. My feet hurt and when I sleep too much in one day I feel hung over. The past two weeks have been stuffed more than full to overflowing. Everyone’s parents visited. A lot of our friends came over and we barbequed (this party broke our fridge) and hung out. We sat around sweating it out trying to imagine living through the Chicago summer with no air conditioner and a few worthless fans. We worked. We attended and ran Mission Year Chicago’s Speak Up event. We read poetry, served free food, sold raffle tickets, talked, prayed, and listened to Shane Claiborne talk about tearing down walls. Our friend Chris drove out of his way to pick us up and drive us home. When we got home around 11 pm, our friend Reace was waiting to deliver an air conditioner that Debbie has bought us. The men set it up while the ladies threw out all the food our dying fridge had destroyed. A lot of our week has centered on temperature. My thought is that I am seeing this new truth in Christianity where people aren’t just your friends but they’re your family and they go out of their way to be part of your life instead of doing nice things and then going home to their own lives at night. I am starting to see that if Christ died for all of us, this has to mean more than that all of us have a chance at going to heaven. It has something to do with car rides and window a.c. units. I just want to remember that Christianity has always, always been a fellowship concerned with people and the details of their polluted and lovely lives.
I am also sometimes disheartened. We were walking down our street this week and someone drove by in a car and yelled, “Go home!” and sped off. But, we are home and they didn’t stick around long enough for us to tell them that. I am sad to believe so heavily is racial reconciliation and then to be so easily dismissed because I am where the world says a white person should not be. I am a friend to our local drug dealer and he stands up for me when his sleazy friends hit on me. But, go home. I don’t want to live in a world like this but I do.
If you’re reading this and you’re going to be one of the ’10-’11 Mission Year teams I just want you to know that this is an unromantic, very mindful thing you’re doing. If you’re tired of doing nothing, you’re about to try and do everything and then realize you can’t and then keep going anyway. Every single issue you’ve ever had will come back up and you’ll have to address it with a household of weary sinners. You will have new issues. I’ve thought more about my skin color and where my life has been because of it than I ever have before. It’s kept me up at night and made me analyze people in a whole new way. I’ve battled with guilt, anger, remorse, responsibility, and awareness. All year we’ve tried to balance dying to self with self-care so that we can better die to self and it is tough. Still, I pray I don’t regress because a tough life is a true life and I am concerned with the truth, no matter how ugly it is.
I pray I don’t forget this fact: that the way we’ve been living is foolish because it is the opposite of the agenda the world has set up for us. I know that God has His own agenda and He doesn’t care about how the world says I should live my life. He doesn’t attend to how the rest of American society says I should live my 20s.
My meditation this week has been “be strong and very courageous.” It takes courage to share everything you have and live in a way that provides financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical support for people who are your family because they are people. It takes courage to fight and fight and fight against racism and poverty only to see them continue on. But you just keep on fighting and fighting and fighting for other people even if they don’t care because not only is our liberation tied up together but, the world tells us it is not. So, it must be.
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