LifeWorks Learning Partnership

Previous Years: 2005-2006, 2004-2005, 2003-2004, 2002-2003, 2001-2002, 2000-2001, 1999-2000, 1998-1999, 1997-1998

Dreams Into Deeds, MHC's thematic year program, is a joint project of LifeWorks and the Hester Center for Peace and Justice. Programming rotates among themes of diversity, peace, environmental protection, and economic justice.

The 2006-07 theme is Watershed Years. We are living in watershed times, in both senses of the word. In the environmental context, a watershed denotes a ridge line that divides water flowing into two river systems, and we are living in times when our watersheds are under great stress from continued development. In the historical context, watershed denotes an event marking a unique or important change of course on which important developments depend, and current world events would lead us believe we are in the midst of important changes.

For Mars Hill College, this particular year marks the watershed of our 150th anniversary as an institution of higher learning. Over the course of those 150 years, the college has witnessed several watersheds in national and world history: the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the Women’s Movement, Watergate, the computer age, and other significant moments of great change.

This year also marks a particularly significant time for Mars Hill and the surrounding community in terms of the environmental watershed of our surrounding community. The local community is in the midst of transition from a tobacco-centered agricultural economy to a tourist and information driven economy. The press for intensive development to accommodate growth is putting great stress on the watershed, and local community groups have sprung up all over the county to watch, monitor, and sometimes protest particular development plans which do not adequately account for the impact on local rivers and streams.

The college experience has always marked a watershed time for young people, a time of significant change. During this watershed year, students, faculty, and staff alike will be able to focus attention on the ways the liberal arts prepare us to protect the environment which provides us with clean water. It will also be a year to focus on ways the liberal arts prepares us for the intensive changes our country and world is experiencing in the post 9-11 age. May the year inspire us all to dream bigger dreams of how to live in this world, and may it equip us to turn those dreams into deeds.

Activities:

• August 14-16: Bonner Scholars Service-Learning Retreat
  Blue Ridge Assembly, Long Branch Environmental Education Center
• September 12 Crossroads: MaryAnn Walker Chaplain, McAfee Divinity School.
  Rev. Walker is also Adjunct Professor of Religion with the Tift College of Education, Mercer University. She is currently completing a Doctor of Theology degree from the Asia Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary. Before coming to Atlanta she was Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology and Christian Education at the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary in Baguio, Philippines. She will speak to us about her interest in pastoral theology from an environmental perspective.
• September 25: Kate Campbell Benefit Concert, 8 PM Broyhill
  Nashville recording artists Kate Campbell will be giving a free concert, with a suggested donation of $10 or more, with all proceeds going to Laurel Valley Watch.
• September 26: Crossroads: Greg Farless Yost, Director of the SOS Program at Madison Middle
  Greg Farless Yost is a member of Laurel Valley Watch and has spoken eloquently in churches and community meetings, placing the environmental issues of the proposed Laurel Valley development in a theological context.
• October 20-24: Alternative Fall Break Service-Learning Trip to Big Creek People in Action
  Big Creek People in Action is a grassroots community organization in the coal fields of West Virginia, a community that has been devastated by coal industry practices and by the destruction of three consecutive 100-year floods in recent years.
• February 9, March 2, April 13 Annual Hester Center Book Discussion
  On these Friday afternoons from 3:30-5 in the RI room of Renfro Library, faculty, staff, and students will discuss the environmental, political, and social implications of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.
• March 10-17: Alternative Spring Break Service Trip to New Orleans
  A total of 27 students, 5 staff, and 1 faculty member will spend the week in New Orleans re-building homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and will also participate in the Gulf Summit service-learning conference hosted by Tulane University.
• March 20: Crossroads, Dr. Kathy Newfont, “This I Believe”
  

Previous Years' Themes

The 2005-06 theme is For Richer, For Poorer: A Year Long-Look at Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Engagement.

. . .for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.. .
—from the traditional wedding vows

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
—Proverbs 30:8

For better or worse, we live in a world of extreme wealth and poverty. There is both promise and peril to each extreme. Wealth promises all the material comforts money can buy, but poses the danger of captivity to those comforts, of being possessed by one’s possessions, of perpetual discontent because there is never enough; one is never satisfied.

Anyone who has studied or experienced the monastic life of religious orders knows that voluntary poverty holds promise of spiritual freedom. But involuntary poverty has the danger of desperation for those who are hungry or homeless or lacking basic health care. This year’s focus will allow us to look closely at the promise and the perils of wealth and poverty, from a variety of disciplines and perspectives.

• Rev. Dr. Archie Logan (Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the General Baptist State Convention)
• Oralene Simmons (the first African-American student at Mars Hill)
• Dr. Houston Roberson (MHC class of '80, Professor of History at University of the South)
• Dr. William H. Turner (Vice-President for Special Initiatives and Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs at the University of Kentucky)
• Allan Parnell & Ann Joyner (Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities)

The 2003-04 theme, Waging Peace, calls us to dream of new ways to confront the violence and terror of the modern world and to act with great imagination in ways that will lead to peace and justice.

The words of the theme come from a poem by Walker Knight, former editor of Home Missions magazine. The line reads, “peace, like war, is waged.” Our world knows a lot about waging war. May this year’s program help us learn as much about how to wage peace.

Presenters:

• Jonathon Schell (author, essayist)
• Glen Stassen (ethicist, author)
• Tina Pippin (ethicist, author)
• Rev. Roland Kemokai (Liberian national, speaking on the civil war there)
• Sanho Tree, (expert on the War on Drugs in Colombia, Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.)
• Nancy Sehested (preacher, prison chaplain)
• Herb Walters (Director, Rural Southern Voice for Peace)
• Ken Sehested (Founding Director, Baptist Peace Fellowship)

This year our theme relates to water—to the river. The river is a central subject in fields throughout the liberal arts—the humanities, the arts, and the sciences. Commerce is tied to rivers. Around the world, wars are increasingly being fought over rivers. Communities in the U.S. are confronting the limited capacity of the rivers to provide for their growing needs.

Wallace Stegner, in a 1969 essay, encouraged us to listen to “the sound of mountain water.” Here in the mountains of western North Carolina, we will spend the year doing just that—listening to the sound of the rivers in our midst, and listening to what the scientists and the artists and the preachers all have to say about the river. In addition to the programming listed inside, our students will be involved in a wide range of service and research activities connected to regional rivers and streams, and our freshmen will be reading portions of Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad.

Presenters:

• Wendell Berry (novelist, essayist, poet)
• Wilma Dykeman (novelist, essayist)
• Linda McKinnish-Bridges (biblical scholar, WFU administrator)
• Brian Cole (environmental theologian, pastor)
• Tracy David (Director, Appalachian Bio-Diversity Project)
• Gary Gunderson (Public Health specialist with the Carter Center and Emory)
• Flood Relief with Big Creek People in Action, McDowell County, West Virginia

This year our theme centers on issues of house and home. It's a great southern expression—"Come in, make yourself at home." It brings up images of warmth and welcome, hospitality and hearth. What does it mean to feel at home, to be at home, to make a home? Home is a shelter from the storm, but it is more. In a sense, we spend our lives responding to the southern expression-we spend our lives making ourselves at home, more or less successfully. We hear about this quest over and over in songs:

Sarah Van Breathnach writes that "the House of Belonging is an ancient Celtic metaphor for the human body as the earthly home for the soul." The phrase also refers to feelings of deep peace, safety, and contentment one feels when one is truly "at home." What does it mean to be at home on a college campus, in a dorm? How well are students prepared to leave college and make themselves a home in a community? How do we respond to the "strangers who stand at our gates" -to the challenges of affordable housing and homelessness in the communities surrounding our home? Whether we are working together on a Habitat for Humanity project or participating in conversations about life in community at Mars Hill, our hope is that Dreams Into Deeds will help us all approach the experience of the poet John O'Donahue: "When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, / You come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. / You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging."

Presenters:

• Will Campbell (author, civil rights activist)
• Robert Morgan (novelist)
• Kate Cambell ( Nashville singer-songwriter)
• Darrell Adams (singer-songwriter from Louisville)
• Stan Hastey (Director, Alliance of Baptists)
• Christine Pohl (theologian, author of Making Room)
• “Trip to Bountiful” Women’s Studies Film Series

• Freeman Owl (Cherokee story-teller)

When today's Mars Hill students graduate, they are likely to find a very different world from that of earlier generations. That difference can be summed up in one word-diversity. Today's graduates are likely to work and live next to people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different belief systems. Life in the 21st century will truly consist of a global village, with daily interactions across all sorts of divides. The challenges of living in this new world are twofold-to appreciate the unique contributions of different cultures, and to celebrate what we all have in common as members of the human family. The dangers of living in this new world are also twofold-for the dominant culture to try and make everyone else in its image, ignoring differences, and for individual cultures to develop a fortress mentality, ignoring what unites us. The former leads to imperialism, the latter leads to separatism and isolation.

Our thematic year will afford us the opportunity to meet the challenges and avoid the dangers of living in the global village. Through a variety of programs, we will deepen our appreciation of the rich diversity in our world. At the same time, we will celebrate what we hold in common, as we examine the theme through a variety of perspectives: the arts, religion, business, social sciences, and others.

Presenters:

• Huston Smith (author, lecturer on world religions)
• Paddy Meskin (South African human rights activist)
• Alan Neely (author, Princeton faculty member, scholar of missionary movements)
• Lee McKenna DuCharme (World Council of Churches)
• Kairos (musical group from Cuba)
• Ballet Gran Folklorico de Mexico

The Y2K phenomenon has given added intensity to millennial speculations about the fate of the earth. People from all walks of life are combing the book of Revelation and other apocalyptic literature to find clues for what's going to come as enter the 21st century. Interestingly enough, the vision found in that mysterious book is downright earthy. Instead of pure pie in the sky by and by, the last book of scripture ends with talk about rivers and trees and earth. What if we spent our millennial energies dreaming with this ancient dreamer, envisioning a new earth, a sustainable earth, free of the destruction and pollution and devastation this past millennium brought. What if we turned those dreams into deeds?

Through support from the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, Mars Hill College is focusing Dreams Into Deeds programming on the issue of environmental awareness during the 1999-2000 school year. We are making connections between the earth and spirituality, academics, cultural life, service-learning, and leadership development. Come and help us dream. Come and participate in the events throughout the year, and we will together see a new earth unfold at Mars Hill.

Presenters:

• Stan LeQuire (environmental ethicist, author)
• Vernice Miller (ethicist, speaker on environmental racism)
• Ron Pulliam (biologist from UGa)
• Karen Armstrong-Cummings (rural economic development organizer)
• Paul Winter Consort (Grammy Award winners)
• Rob Amberg (documentary photographer, author of The Coming of the Road)

The prophets point to a time when the lion will lie down with the lamb, when there will be no more war or violence. But we are living "in the meantime." And we are living in the mean time, when children are shooting children in the schools, when churches are bombed, when many children do not feel safe in their own homes. Through support from the Bonner Foundation and the Richard L. Hoffman Fellowship, Mars Hill College focused Dreams Into Deeds programming on the issue of nonviolence, on how to respond creatively to our culture of violence. Through guest presentations and workshops, classroom connections, and service-learning experiences, we will explore hands-on ways that we can actively engage youth and children in our communities in order to stem the tide of violence.

Presenters:

• Phyllis Tribble (feminist biblical scholar, author)
• Carl Upchurch (author, criminal justice reform advocate)
• Bernard Lafayette (non-violence trainer, leader of the Selma movement)
• Charles Alphin (non-violence trainer with the MLK Center)
• Civil Rights Bus Tour (nonviolence training and tour of historic sites in Atlanta, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, Memphis, and Nashville)
• Laverna Fountain (activist with Save the Children)
• Allison Best-Teague (activist on domestic violence prevention)
• Bill Baldridge (Cherokee singer-songwriter)

"One thing we want to do is to educate ourselves and the nation about the whole problem of race and race discrimination. We must do it now—now—if we are to find a way to chart a better course. We are urging the involvement of the people at Mars Hill College, and everywhere else. I can say this to you at Mars Hill College, we're in this together, and I hope you will join me and the rest of us in trying to make this a better America." —John Hope Franklin

Through support from the Richard L. Hoffman Fellowship, Mars Hill College focused Dreams Into Deeds programming on the issue of race relations during the 1997-98 school year. We built the program around the historic visit of John Hope Franklin, who was named by President Clinton as the Chairperson for the National Initiative on Race and Reconciliation. Several other national leaders came to campus for presentations, workshops, and strategy sessions on how we can improve race relations on campus and in our community. After a year of programming with guest lectures, classroom connections, and service-learning experiences, we realize how far we have to go, but we are energized that we have made a start and are committed to continuing the work.

Presenters:

• John Hope Franklin (President Clinton’s Task Force on Race)
• Parker Palmer (author, speaker, workshop facilitator)
• Joyce Hollyday (author, lecturer, human rights activist, former editor of Sojourners magazine)
• Tyronne Pitts (President of the Progressive National Baptists)
• George Williamson (Founding President, Baptist Peace Fellowship)
• Archie Logan (Director, NC General Baptist Convention)
• Glenis Redmon (African-American poet)
• Bill Jameson (Director, Servant Leadership Institute)
• Sulak Sivaraksa (Thai Buddhist leader)
• Maura Wolfe (author, urban youth organizer)