Orin at YNIA in DC - Update #2

Monday at Young Neighbors in Action was pretty busy for Orin. During each week of YNIA, Monday is typically the day when the parish groups make their way to their work sites for the first time. Usually the three staff members, the Site Coordinator, the Program Director, and The Prayer and Music Coordinator, drive around to the various work sites to learn about the service being done and offer support for the parish groups. Here are some highlights from Monday:

This picture was taken at St. Anthony's, the host site for their Young Neighbors week. Orin's note to me was that this was 'indeed a long fence'. Good thing they labeled it:

This is artwork being done at United Communities Against Poverty, Inc. or UCAP, one of the work sites for the week:

This is the Orin we know:

A pledge posted at UCAP:

The next two pictures are of work being done at one of the service locations that supports poor immigrant families:




The Community for Creative Non-Violence, another work site:


This is something called the "Peace Machine" being done at something called 'Peace Camp' (stop me if you're tired of all the detail.):



Since there are no shower facilities at St. Anthony's, the whole group has to travel to St. Anselm High School each day for a shower. This is an interesting corpus Orin found one one of the walls there:

Each night of Young Neighbors, the participants learn various aspects of their faith and Church teaching where it pertains to justice and service. On Monday night, they learned the different principles of Catholic Social Teaching. Here are some of the posters created during that process:

Orin at YNIA in DC - Update #1

Hey Everyone! Orin arrived safely in Washington DC on Saturday to begin a week as the Prayer and Music Coordinator for Young Neighbors in Action (YNIA). As he mentioned in a previous post, all the parish groups and staff are staying at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.

This church has a great location as it it just two blocks from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception:

Young Neighbors draws high school students from all over the United States. The teens travel in and stay with their parish groups all week long. This pictures was taken as the teens were arriving and getting settled on Sunday afternoon:

In Orin's role as the Prayer and Music Coordinator, he'll be responsible for directing the prayer, involving the teens in prayer, and setting the prayer environment. The picture below shows the prayer table being prepared for the the theme of the week, "Salt and Light":

Please keep Orin, as well as all the teens and staff, in your prayers as they spend the week serving God's people and growing in faith.

Orin, YNIA DC

Hi all,

This is Orin, writing from Washington DC on my phone... Young Neighbors in Action (youngneighbors.org) is about to begin later today, and I'll again be the prayer and music person.

I won't be able to post as many pictures as last year - I didn't bring my laptop, and there's no wi-fi near here anway. We're at St. Anthony's, very near the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I'll try maybe to email some pics to Shannon along the way.

Please keep us all in prayer this week!

This here is funny

Joe Cocker at Woodstock (1969), closed-captioned...

Thanks to Orin's wife and our friend Corinne for the lead...

Ask, and ye shall receive

Since Shannon asked...

Anyone else care to try?

A few more YSP prayer pics

Hi all, Orin here. I survived! Whee. It was a great week all around. Here are a few more pics of prayer, swiped from participant Jarrod's facebook profile.  I know they may not mean so much out of context, but trust me, all these moments were prayerful and pretty darn cool.

The cross, toward the end of Taize Monday night prayer, Kings House Chapel.

What had been a series of dots/stepping stones transformed Saturday morning into a music staff and the melody to "The Servant Song" (Kings House again)

The large mobius strip awaiting signing (Shrine, Christ the King Chapel)

The mobius strip, mostly signed

Go Cards!

For those of you who care about baseball, you might have noticed that the St. Louis Cardinals, the bestest team in the whole wide world, is currently locked in a tight pennant race with the Chicago Cubs.  I realize it's still early in the season, but there really isn't a bad time to rally support for the hometown boys.

If the Cubs fail to win the World Series this fall, it will officially be 100 years since the last time they won.  That's pretty amazing.  I wonder if Edna Parker remembers that?

To help the cause, please enjoy a re-presentation of The Cubs Song (with non-related Old Irish Blessing):

Bravo!

This past Saturday, seventy (or so) high school students took the stage at the Shrine Ampitheatre for the Youth Sing Praise performance of Lost and Found. They did not disappoint. It was evident that the long week of auditions, rehearsals, and prayer paid off. Congratulations to all involved. Here are a few pictures from the performance (thanks to Marianne Cline for the first three. Thanks to snowsyouthministry.org for the rest):

As we've mentioned before, Orin and Erin were also part of the week. Orin served as the Prayer Coordinator. Here are a couple of pictures highlighting some of the prayer and environment:

Erin's role for YSP was to direct the Helper's Team. Since there is a lot the Helper's Team does and there weren't really any good pictures that could illustrate her work, I chose this one:

Congratulations, again, to all those who worked to make Youth Sing Praise 2008 a tremendous success!

Paul Melley On The News!

Oddwalk friend, and fellow GIA composer Paul Melley, was recently featured in a news story on New England Cable News (NECN). The story highlights Paul's ministry, specifically the opportunity he has to share his music at the International World Youth Day event in Sydney, Australia next month. Here's the report:

Paul is a tremendously talented musician who plays several instruments, including piano, guitar, and saxophone. His debut CD with GIA entitled, Humbled (pictured below), was released last summer.

Orin and I have had the opportunity to hear and play much of Paul's music and have witnessed, first-hand, his ability to touch people's hearts. When he's not jet-setting around the world, Paul serves as the Director of Liturgical Music and is the Assistant Chaplain at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

If you're interested in checking out some of his music, click here.

YSP in the BND

The Belleville News-Democrat had a great article and video posted on it's website today about this year's production of Lost and Found at Youth Sing Praise. The video gives a glimpse into the rehearsals for the show and the great work being done by Theatrical Director, John Vallo. It's worth a look. Here's the link:

http://www.bnd.com/living/story/380361.html

'08 YSP Update...sort of

Here are a few pictures taken from the first couple of days at Youth Sing Praise. Since I (Shannon) am not actually at YSP this year, I have no frame of reference for these pictures, so I'll just take a guess as to what's happening in them:

This one's pretty obvious, although it wouldn't be hard (with Photoshop) to erase what's actually on the card and write something else. We could change it to read "Oddwalk is awesome!" or "I love my husband, even when he rips his pants wide open on stage in front of several hundred middle school students".

Here, Orin tries to convince a fellow YSP staffer that his degree in Folklore and Mythology has truly been the secret ingredient for his rise to rock stardom.

After careful review of the manual, Brad and Melissa are horrified to discover that YSP actually stands for "Youth Shaving Platypi". So that's why they're always trying to sneak off. Who knew?

"Daddy...Will You Be At My Wedding?"

This past Saturday, the Cerneka family attended the wedding of friends, Kim Gross and Josh Pierce. Since Erin and Shannon were singing, they were invited to the rehearsal on Friday night.

At some point in the rehearsal, the bride-to-be was nice enough to give the increasingly-restless Madeleine a small veil and bouquet of flowers to play with. Upon receiving these gifts, Madeleine quickly took Noah by the hand and started dragging him around the church, marching him down the aisle several times. Below are a few of pictures from the "ceremony". The woman in the picture is our good friend, Kay:

Lost and Found

Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately. A combination of a lull in the Oddwalk schedule, and usual summer craziness for each of us individually, has contributed to the slowdown.

This week, Orin (and wife, Erin) will be helping with another Youth Sing Praise music camp at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, IL. In case you don't know, Youth Sing Praise (or YSP) is a week long Christian theater experience drawing together 70-80 high school students from around the country. In a week, these talented performers will audition for roles in a full-length musical, be worked through grueling rehearsals, participate in a retreat like experience, and finally perform that musical for around 3,000 people at the Shrine Ampitheatre. Oddwalk has posted about past YSP experiences which you can find here, here, here, here, and here!

This year, YSP is performing Lost and Found, written by Rory Cooney, a well-known writer of Catholic liturgical music. If you plan to be in the St. Louis-area next weekend, we recommend that you stop in and see the show. The performance is scheduled for Saturday, June 28th beginning at 7pm. While there is no admission, there will be an opportunity to give a free-will offering. Hope to see you there!

Orin's "Christ Reigns" - Score Available

Here's a pdf of the lead-sheet score to Orin's "Christ Reigns" submission to the NCYC 2009 Theme Song Contest.  That's all, please carry on.

The "Orin Johnson Maneuver"?

Doing a little ego surfing over lunch, I (Orin) was a bit surprised that google turned up something called the "Orin Johnson Maneuver" in its list of hits.

So, I call on our readers, before visiting the particular page, to take some guesses as to what the "Orin Johnson Maneuver" is exactly.  Here are your only hints: the references are found in a book.  Here are a couple critical passages from the pertinent section:

Happy guessing (leave your answers in the comments)!  And once you have, find the true solution right over here.

Bris Milah!

Yesterday, Orin had the honor of attending his first bris!  Well, it wasn't mine (thankfully), just that it was the first on I'd ever been to.  The Cantor at the Temple where I accompany services on many Friday nights and Saturday mornings, Seth Warner and his wife Shayna had a baby boy, Isaac Asher, last Monday.  And, just like it had been done unto Jesus (see Luke 2:21), they brought him to the Temple.

I thought I would be there merely as an observer, but shortly before the service began, the Mohel (the Rabbi who performs the ceremony) asked if I would take some pictures and handed me a camera.  So I did.  Here are a few of them, there are more here.  None are too graphic, if you get my drift.

Congratulations Warner family!