THE MEANING OF OYAN

So I kinda got tired after facing about twenty or more people today who came up to me and asked, "WHAT WAS IT LIKE??"
They expect me to rant about the temperature, or swimming, or sunbathing, or something-weird-cause-that's-what-Sian-does. I got my camera out to show five pics to someone and they wandered off in the middle of it.

That's when you kinda realise people are happy for you because it's new and different, not because they're actually interested.

But some people are.

Some people want to know what it's like.

But I don't know who you are, so it's easier to shove a blog at you and ask you to read it, if you care. If you really truly care about the passion stirring in the hearts of 1,000 young men and women around the world.

OYAN. One Year Adventure Novel.

It's made up of fans, groupies, ultra-conservative Christians, legalists (I was one!), liberal Christians...waaaay liberal. (I love you guys! ;))

Some people found home. Life. Love. Acceptance. Trust.
Some people built walls and hit the wrong people when trying to take them down.

I found my best friends through OYAN. I met best friends who betrayed me and who I betrayed in OYAN.
I met the guy I fell in love with through OYAN. I met three of the five guys who I fell with and who fell with me, through OYAN.

OYAN is a combination of good and bad. It is not perfect. Because we are not.
Neither is OYAN exclusive. We make it so. God's love is unconditional. So should we be. And I know we find it hard.

But we understand each other and we bond more than most. Because we have a common cause - a common interest. We write. And we fangirl/fanboy out together. And WE HAVE A CHANCE - more of a chance than ANY OTHER CHURCH OUT THERE - because we're a bunch of crazy kids GOD has brought together, and we KNOW WHAT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE IS.

Because we've seen it. And it's been lived to us. And it lives in us.

He lives in us.

So I'm tired of trying to explain this. And it's so much easier just to shove a link at someone. How do you explain what 500+ kids full of writerliness, craziness and God's love are like to a world that hears only, "Writing conference"?
It's anything but. Their reaction is a polite smile and an "oh-you're-just-obsessed-with-American-stuff" look.

Here, in the words of Julia Duke, is that explained - the way that is to us:

"That moment when you're chatting with someone who you just don't know how to express alllllllll your feels to. All of them. And meanwhile you're going absolutely nuts inside and trying to hold it all in. And you just want to be all like "ASFLKJWOIDLKJFLKJSLKJDLJKLKJF I HAD THE BEST DAY AND THE BEST NIGHT EVER" but you can't. Because they won't get you. They won't understand, they'll just be like, "That'sniceIdon'treallycare."

Please tell me I'm not the only one. =_="

No, Julia, you aren't. :)

So guys. If you REALLY want to know what OYAN is like. Read this blog.

It's made of twenty-eight posts from OYAN attendees and non-attendees to this year's Summer Workshop.

This is what OYAN means to these people, guys.
This is Home.


~Sian Garner-Jones/Queen Jane by God's Grace