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Last night Chi Alpha hosted its first Thanksgiving Renaissance. Franklin United Church donated yummy desserts, drinks, Vermont pickles, and a salad for the occasion. Church of the Rock let us borrow their food warmers to keep everything hot. It was quite the process for Joe and I to bring everything to campus in our small Scion, but we were able to pull it off within two trips. Our guest speaker for the night was Jean Luc Dushime, who currently attends Champlain College in Burlington. We met Jean Luc about a year and a half ago when we first moved to Burlington. He is originally from Rwanda and experienced the genocide of 1994. During that time, his dad was murdered, leaving his mother, brother, and baby brother to make the long journey out of Rwanda, across the Congo, ultimately leaving Africa and moving to Burlington, VT.
Students were enthralled as Jean Luc shared his experiences of God’s sustaining grace and salvation in the midst of tremendous hardship. He was able to move to Burlington with his family as a part of the Vermont Resettlement Program, began studying English, and is currently studying towards a second degree. We closed the night by talking about Jean Luc’s experiences of exclusion and embrace as a newcomer to the US, and how Chi Alpha is meant to be a community that is always willing to embrace one more.
Thanks so much to everyone who helped to make this event possible! Joe and I both believe that Chi Alpha is ending its first semester at UVM on a very good note.
On Nov. 4, once the election results were in, about a thousand UVM students spontaneously rallied together and marched downtown to Church Street and back to the Davis student center, cheering and chanting in celebration over Barack Obama’s win. Once back in their residence halls, students continued the festivities, hitting pots and pans and running around naked. Many students described the mood as “Pure Joy.” Personally speaking, I’ve not seen that many college students spontaneously rally together in “Pure Joy” since my alma mater UL Lafayette’s football victory over Texas A&M in the late 90’s, when hyped up ULL students spontaneously flooded the Ragin Cajun field and pulled one of the field goals down, throwing it over the stadium boundary. What else would you expect from college football fans in the South?
But I consider this most recent outburst of celebration by UVM college students over President Elect Obama’s win to be a bit different from your typical collegiate rally of sports pride. Compared to most Division 1 campuses, collegiate sports at UVM doesn’t create a campus wide sense of pride. While many students at Division 1 institutions like University of Florida choose their University based school colors and mascot, UVM students rarely cite collegiate sports loyalty as their primary motivation for becoming Catamounts. Some might say that because of this, there’s no campus-wide cause that brings students together on a routine basis. So students are left with a campus culture that is primarily tribal, with no real overall sense of unity. Joe and I have often wondered what would indeed cause these students to unite in “Pure Joy?” And on the night of Nov. 4th, we obviously got our answer.
Whatever your political leanings have been during this past election season, we all must agree that with the election of Barack Obama, restorative justice has occurred. Especially for us as believers, we must acknowledge that a kind of national restitution has taken place. A nation which once thrived on the back of slavery, notions of “separate but equal,” and white bigotry has paid restitution in the election of the highly capable Barack Obama. This is a cause for “Pure Joy.” It is not a time for sadness and despair. God works through history in mysterious ways. As we long for that time when God’s restorative justice and peace will completely fill the earth, we must celebrate the glimmers of that future reality in the present. It would be a tragedy not to.
