Groups

A discarded article I wrote up for a CAP publication. It was a little too negative towards the group people for 'em. I thought I'd share it here.


I had a lot of expectations coming to the Christian Appalachian Project. They were all good, hopeful expectations that propelled me with lots of joy and excitement down to Kentucky. I expected that I would learn how to do useful things like install windows; I expected that I would learn how to interact gracefully and lovingly with a houseful of diverse people; and I expected that I would have meaningful relationships with the people that I’d serve in Kentucky.

The problem with expectations is that it’s hard to gracefully accept it when they aren’t fulfilled. I assumed that most of my time in Housing would be helping and loving the participants that CAP serves. I assumed that when Jesus said to “love my neighbor,” that my neighbors would be the rural residents of Appalachia. My expectations about who God was calling me to love were so clear that they might as well have been in Technicolor.

Most of all, I assumed that I knew the answer to the question “who is your neighbor?” I was wrong

I landed in Kentucky and in the CAP Housing program just about bounding out of my skin with excitement. I wanted to learn how to build things, and here I was, in Kentucky, 2,000 miles from my home state of NH, building things! Every day was (and still is) a small adventure. I love learning how to use caulk, power saws, and crowbars, and I love stepping back at the end of the day and seeing that I made something. Going home exhausted, sweaty, dirty, and sometimes bloody, brings with it the peace and satisfaction of a good days work. There have definitely been bad days. But even when I’m frustrated and confused and tired and it’s 113 degrees, I’ve still put up siding for a family that just had a burn out, or built a wheelchair ramp for a chair bound man with cancer. What I’m doing matters, in a physical way, to the people that I serve. If my Housing experience was limited to this kind of day, then there would be only beautiful days.

But having meaningful, sweaty experiences isn’t the only thing that happens on the Housing crew. Approximately every other week, five to fifteen well intentioned, pleasant high schoolers, parents, pastors, and teachers flood the jobsites. They are armed with cameras and brand new shiny tool belts. For one week, the Christian Appalachian project is the home of their church, youth group, or college mission trip. Like all people on missions trips, they are eager to help, eager to learn, and eager to make new friends. It is an awful lot of eagerness to encounter at 7:30am.

Helping to lead groups was unexpected, and quite frankly, at first completely unwelcome. I’m not much of a teacher, and it’s even harder when I don’t feel like I have a strong grasp of the material. Instead of spending my time on roofs, cutting timber, and caulking windows, I spend most days helping pleasant Sunday School teachers hold a drill, or teaching a 15 year old how to cut siding… all while praying fervently that I’m doing it right in the first place. Worse than groups without experience are groups with experience – and I get to feel all my insecurities and pride and fear well up as the kindly, slightly bossy Southern carpenter corrects my grip on a drill or tells me off for cutting porch railings “the wrong way.”

I retreated into a hole of judgment and complaining, overwhelmed by a lack of knowledge (when teaching) and a lack of humility (when being taught). I was frustrated that I wasn’t spending more time connecting with the participants, and frustrated that my emotional energy was going towards church groups instead of towards people who “really needed it.” I was particularly frustrated that my work in Housing wasn’t living up to my expectations. I came to Kentucky to love people, I told God in a wave of self-pity, not to herd wealthy high schoolers around on their first Mission Trip. Why am I here at all, God? And God said,

“To love your neighbor as yourself.”

And I said, “But who is my neighbor?”

The command and the question always seem to go together, even right at the original parable. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, and we fling back in his face “who is my neighbor, anyway? Who exactly am I supposed to love? That condescending friend of my parents who questions my career choices? My micromanaging boss? The girl who undercut my relationship with my best friend? Are those my neighbors?” And Jesus’ answer is always – your neighbor is the person you least expect. Your neighbor is the one who confounds expectations.

My expectations coming into CAP lead me to try and contain my love, to ration it out to people who needed it, and to only use it when necessary. Love that is contained, though, just isn’t love. You don’t run out of love. The more you give, the more you have. Loving is a capacity, not a possession. When I love the people that comes in these groups, I expand my capacity for love, and when I refuse to act in love towards them, it becomes harder and harder for me to love anyone. But when I start to open up to the people that come down to spend their summer vacation or work holiday building homes in rural Kentucky, I start to see something that I didn’t before. They didn’t have to give this week to service, but they did. They come with joyful hearts and just as many expectations as I did, and what they learn in Jackson County for the four days they spend here may go with them for the rest of their lives. Because of my work with these groups, they will have an experience of Christ through the participants and my fellow volunteers. Not only can I help them experience Appalachia and CAP, but they begin to teach me about grace as I learn from faith background different from my own, and humility as I learn how to graciously accept opinions from a passé of experienced carpenters.

Who is my neighbor? It turns out that my neighbor is right next to me, trying to dig a 23 inch post hole with a pickaxe. It turns out my neighbor is behind me, telling me that I’m using the level incorrectly. It turns out that my neighbors are the lades who sits in the shade with their cameras all day and the fourteen year olds who compete for distance in hammer throwing competitions.

My neighbors are all around me. By the grace of God, this year at CAP my soul will be expanded and I will grow in humility, patience, and compassion as I continue to discover, against all expectations, who my neighbor is, and to discover how God is calling me to love them.