Rev. Ashley Goff, Director

Ashley has been at Church of the Pilgrims sinceJanuary 1999 and serves as one of the pastors at Church of the Pilgrims.

In 1995, Ashley completed a year of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) in Atlanta, Georgia, where she became involved in justice ministries with the poor and incarcerated. During the JVC, Ashley lived in community with six others to practice and live out the JVC values of simple lifestyle, justice, spirituality, and community. She worked in Atlanta with poor and homeless people living in emergency shelters.

After JVC, Ashley went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City where she graduated in 1998. While in NYC, she worked at Broadway United Church of Christ doing visitation to women at Riker's Island and Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. In her last year at Union, Ashley co-facilitated an economic cooperative group for mothers living on public assistance.

Working with The Pilgrimage continues Ashley's commitment to transformative education through reflection and action. Ashley enjoys Pilgrimage groups who are willing to move out of their comfort zone with relationships and allow their lives to become disrupted by the Gospel.

Ashley is ordained in the United Church of Christ and lives in Arlington, VA with her husband, Bob Glennon, a social worker who works in the behavioral health clinic at SOME, and their three children, Sam, Maddie and Ryan.

Matt Boote, Program Manager

Matt is a 2007 graduate of Hope College, having received a degree in International Studies, Religion and Philosophy.

Matt was raised in Deerfield, Illinois where he was heavily exposed to volunteering and service-based learning by an extremely supportive family and church. These experiences instilled a sense of social responsibility that Matt didn’t begin to understand until college. Contact with new religious ideas and theologies in the classroom crystallized years of service providing him with a better framework for understanding the inequalities he faced while serving.

Matt discovered his personal connection between service-based learning and the positive impact these incidents had on daunting problems such as poverty or interreligious hostility. He understands the importance of the experiences that influenced his life and realized he wants to help create opportunities for others. Matt is excited to work with Pilgrimage groups as they tackle difficult issues, challenge themselves and others, and engage in new experiences.

Matt can be reached at pilgrimage.manager@verizon.net or at 202-387-6615.

David Harris, Poet-in-Residence

David is a forty-year-old native of Washington who grew up in suburban Maryland. A few years ago David became homeless due to untreated health problems. David describes this as the darkest experience of his life, but it led to many positive experiences: David was soon recruited for the Speakers' Bureau of the National Coalition for the Homeless; the Speakers' Bureau educates the public about homelessness by telling personal stories. This is what led David to become involved with the Pilgrimage.

Another positive result of homelessness was David discovering Miriam's Kitchen, a soup kitchen in downtown Washington . Miriam's provides programs fostering art and creative writing among homeless people. David had been a poet while growing up, and Miriam's helped him rediscover poetry. In the fall of 2002, the staff at The Pilgrimage suggested that David use his gift for writing to help Pilgrimage volunteers reflect on their service. David has been doing writing workshops at the Pilgrimage ever since; David describes his Pilgrimage experiences as a source of learning and great joy for many volunteers and himself.

David's homelessness ended on October 6th, 2004. He has a nice apartment, conveniently within walking distance of The Pilgrimage, and continues to be active in working with the National Coalition and doing workshops for The Pilgrimage.

David can be reached at backwaterhope@yahoo.com.