Hello to PresbyLand! My name is Maisha, and I’m a member of NNPCW CoCo. Since the wonderful women of CoCo have gathered here in Louisville for the Spring CoCo meeting, Kelsey asked me to be the guest blogger for the day. I’m so excited about this. I love doing these things. I regularly update my livejournal, which only my friends read, but I like to go on rants and pretend that the whole world is reading. And now that I have the opportunity to have all of PresbyLand reading my thoughts (okay, so maybe not everyone in PresbyLand will read them), I can’t decide what to write about.

I love when Kelsey writes about what’s going on in the world, but some of my favorite blogs of hers are when she’s doing self-reflection. One of my favorite things about blogs is the chance to invite the world to be a part of your learning about yourself. So self-reflection is what I’m going to do. I invite you into my brain (be careful, it can be a scary place).

One of the major things on my mind right now is considering seminary. This is on my mind at the moment especially because this morning Carrie S. and I led worship here at the Presbyterian Center. I was pretty nervous about it (especially as it came down to some of the preparation at the last minute – ah, procrastination), but at the same time it was exhilarating. I couldn’t help but use the experience to dream about a day when I could be leading worship services every Sunday.

This is a fairly new idea for me, or at least serious consideration of it is. I’ll admit that I actually began thinking about it the moment that I walked into my church in Los Angeles for the first time. Honestly, at first I didn’t even expect to have much of a religious life in college. I thought that I’d address my own spiritual needs on a personal level, and perhaps attend church once a month to keep my parents happy, but besides that I’d avoid religion – from which I’d learned that faith and feminism were opposing values, among other things. As soon as I read the Back Page, a summary of what my church stands for, and met Susan Craig, the fantastic woman who was the pastor at the time, I pictured myself as the leader of such a church. Before then, I never even knew that churches that stood for such values as peace, justice, and feminism existed.

In November, CoCo sent me to the REWYT retreat, where two women, Theresa and Heather, spoke to young women of color about the need for more representation in positions of leadership in the PC (USA). Somehow I felt like they were speaking to me. Immediately after the retreat, I set about planning my life, because I tend to do such things. Changes in my plans included changing schools, so I’m currently taking a semester off from the University of Southern California and I hope to transfer to the University of San Francisco in the fall. I’m also reconsidering my plans for life after undergrad, which previously included getting a Masters in Creative Writing, but now may involve putting that off until later and going to seminary instead.
This is only my second CoCo meeting, but I’ve already been influenced by the leadership development aspect of NNPCW. I think that spending time with the intelligent, ambitious women of NNPCW, and knowing that the PC(USA) has such an organization, and therefore has faith in the abilities of college women, gives me the confidence to pursue things that I may not have seriously considered before. Coretta Scott King passed away recently, and while saddened by that I was reminded that women like Mrs. King aren’t just working as individuals, but also hoping to inspire others to follow in their example. Just because she is no longer with us doesn’t mean that her work shouldn’t continue, and I feel being a part of NNPCW is my opportunity to learn about leadership and prepare to take on a leadership role in standing up for what I believe.

Okay, so this has definitely confirmed my belief that blogs help self-discovery, because just since I began writing this blog my desire to go to seminary and eventually get ordained has increased. But I still have a while to decide for sure, so we’ll see. For now, I thank you for reading and taking part in my reflection, and thank Kelsey for having me as guest blogger. Have a wonderful day.

Peace,
Maisha