by Rose Ashley (she/her), Alumni Engagement Manager, Aloha, OR ’19-20
I vividly remember the moment where I knew that I needed to do a year of service. I was 21, sitting in a theology class at my now alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. It was the fall semester, and my life was busy: I was deep into writing my senior thesis, had just finished taking the GRE, was researching graduate schools to apply to, all while trying to check off items on my senior year bucket list. I was holding all of these things (and more) in my head as my theology professor began our one-minute ritual of silence. She began every class like this so that we could center ourselves and be more present to each other. In the midst of that, it came to me. A voice spoke in my head and said, “you don’t want to go to grad school. You are way too tired for that. Do a year of service instead.” In that moment, it became crystal clear to me that I needed to extend this moment of silence and quiet the noise in my life. In fact, that’s the phrase that I repeated over and over again to people asking me about what I was doing post-grad. I said, “There’s a lot of noise in my life right now, and I just want to quiet it a bit.” In the moment, I was tired from school and just wanted some peace and quiet, something serene. To me, JVC Northwest felt like it could do that.
It’s funny looking back on that now because I would describe my year as anything but serene. There were of course the more light-hearted moments of chaos that any JV experiences: two ant infestations in the pantry, a sprawling blackberry bush that threatened to take over the yard, spiders the size of my hand, and a garage filled with decades worth of artifacts from past houses.
There were also, though, deeply challenging moments that plagued much of my year, the most notable one being the Covid-19 pandemic. My community-mates and I were on the cusp of surviving the damp Portland winter, looking forward to all the travel and sunshine we were about to experience, when Covid hit us like a tidal wave.
Things changed drastically at record speed: we stopped going to our service sites, quarantined together in our house, and eventually returned to our family homes. We left behind most of our belongings, including my car, in Oregon and spent two and a half months apart. By the time we returned, only six weeks of our service year remained, two of which were spent in quarantine. I said goodbye to my service site over Zoom and offered socially distanced farewells to fellow JVs in scattered parks and backyards across Portland. Definitely not serene.
When it was finally time to leave, and I pulled out of the Aloha driveway for the last time, I felt two distinct emotions. The first was surprisingly a sense of satisfaction; despite the chaos, I had accomplished what I wanted to do with the circumstances I had been given. The second one was harder to name. The best I could do was recognize that I felt strange. It was a weird way to leave. I had spent half of that year intentionally connecting with people at my service site and within JVC Northwest. When everything went virtual, even with all of the creative work that was being done behind the scenes to connect people, I felt disconnected leaving.
What did stay connected, though, was our community. Meaghan, Morgan, and I had taken a humorous approach to the year, centering joy and laughter as we waded our way through the chaos. We had fun, alongside the bad. In the six years since we said goodbye to the Aloha house, we kept this philosophy as we’ve gone through different stages of life: grad school, cross-country moves, annual trips to Michigan, late-night Bananagrams games (a beloved pastime from our service year), and even a wedding! Life moved on after our service year, as it does, and we moved with it.
And so, as life continued to unfold, this past summer ushered in another significant season for me: a period of personal discernment about what was next. There were a lot of different things coinciding at the same time in my life that showed me that I had to evaluate what I needed out of this moment. My life was very full, in some incredibly beautiful ways, but also in some chaotic ways. I once again found myself needing to quiet the noise.
To do this, I decided to hit the pause button and begin a period of radical rest for myself. I moved out of the Midwest to Denver where some of my family is located. I spent time going on walks, creating latte recipes, reading, and learning to slow down. It was in that space that I saw a job opening for an Alumni Engagement Manager position at JVC Northwest. The job excited me for many different reasons, so I applied, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous. I had entered this season of rest, and I was worried that a new job would disrupt that. What if things got noisy again?
It was then that I started to really reflect on what “quieting the noise” actually meant to me. My mind first went back to the end of my JV year, to the moment I pulled away from that house for the last time. I knew that I felt satisfied with my year, grounded even amidst a pandemic.
How was that possible?
Sitting with that question, I began to understand something more clearly. When I looked back on my JV year, I saw that quieting the noise was never about eliminating busyness or avoiding hardship. Those are inevitable parts of life. Instead, it was about learning how to live within the chaos without being consumed by it.
During my year with JVC Northwest, I was formed by a culture that constantly invited me to refocus on what truly mattered and to simplify the variables; I was surrounded by people who saw me and honored me for the many parts of who I am; and I learned, again and again, to choose joy and laughter even when circumstances were far from ideal. That is how I was able to feel grounded in a year that held so much uncertainty. That is what quieting the noise looks like.
Once that realization settled in, I knew I wanted to re-enter a culture that had once taught me how to live that way. I wanted to return to a community that knows how to quiet the noise: not by escaping the world, but by helping one another live faithfully within it.
For all of us, in this moment, life can feel very noisy. It feels hard and, at times, overwhelming. If you are an FJV or a member of our broader community who feels like the world has gotten too loud and you’re not sure where to turn, know that we are here with open arms. And as the new Alumni Engagement Manager, I’m here, personally, to welcome you back.
Want to connect with Rose? Email her! She can’t wait to meet, in person and virtually, as many FJVs as she can.
