Bless Us With Discomfort

"I'll see you tomorrow then!" My darling friend shouted as I pulled out of her driveway last Tuesday evening. Only, we knew this would not be so; I was packed and on my way to orientation the following morning.

It's true, saying 'goodbye' is the hardest part of any new adventure. Especially when I have been given such amazing friends who went out of their way to make me feel loved during my final days in Virginia. I was blessed by round-the-clock lovin' from my friends in the form of potlucks, care packages, carnival rides, and enormous laughter that turned into bittersweet tears. How sweet it is to be loved by them all. How bitter it is to leave such comforts.

Friends who know me at all know that I am a chronic procrastinator. I do nothing in a timely manner, but rather, take pride in my ability (and preference) to work under pressure! With that said, I am living proof that God works in all circumstances. When I applied for this SALT position, I turned in my application on the day it was due. That same week I was asked to interview, and the following week I was given the position. I still find great peace in knowing that 1. God knows my flaws, inside and out 2. God is working through me, not despite of, but because of my flaws. An imperfect person reflecting God's perfect love. This is not the first time I've been put under pressure while working for God (my favorite examples are of my summer camp experiences) and it certainly won't be my last!

Tomorrow, the 80+ young people I've questioned with, prayed with, and shared life with here at MCC will be sent out across the globe. Three of us SALTers (see Allison and Dominik under "Other SALT Bloggers") will fly to Durban, South Africa, for the beginning of our great adventures. The days and hours leading up to this moment have been nothing short of amazing, God-filled, inspiring, and absolutely draining. Though I have only known these 80+ peers for a week, I will treasure them in this next stretch of the journey.

With each of our adventures come great responsibility. As the Franciscan blessing states below, we are charged to be uncomfortable, to be angry, to shed tears, and to feel foolish. Leaving our comfort zones, we will experience every one of these, and I pray that we will count it all as blessing. Amen.

P.S. Two 'self-care' goals I'm proposing for myself is 1. to write shorter blog posts (a win-win for all) and 2. to write more frequently. At this point, writing once a week is a pretty lofty goal for myself, but if you would like to hear more of me, please Subscribe under My Profile (you will receive email updates for each new post).

This Is Not A Mission Trip: Part 2

An article I pose in contrast to the "voluntourism" style of missions is titled Staying for Tea: Five Principles for the Community Service Volunteer. Our MCC SALT coordinator shared this with all upcoming SALT and IVEP peers in our joint Facebook group. He introduced it as an article that "highlights the importance of building relationships on assignment and to ensure that we are empowering others, rather than forcing our own views and values onto others. It captures well the way MCC hopes all our workers will interact with those we serve alongside." With that preface, I take to heart the advice of this experienced MCC writer. Some highlights:

1. Stay for Tea: Mv title and position were being eroded; I was becoming real to them. At the same time, my simplistic stereotypes of them were melting away; they were becoming real to me... Staying for tea helped us to become mutually indebted. I call this operating at eye-level with the community, and this made all the difference in the quality and impact of our time together... It is not healthy or productive to allow yourself to be falsely perceived as a hero, or to perceive yourself as such.

2. Process Matters: When logic models forget to examine the behavioral .issumptions in the links between intervention and outcome, it amounts to forgretting that people are at the center of the development process. An outsider can totally miss the fact that the community has a unique set of cultural lenses, economic incentives, and social structures that may run orthogonal to one’s neat logic model.

3. Focus on Values: ...there may be a drawback to defining the situation in terms of needs, because it automatically frames the whole development issue in terms of the community having something wrong with it that needs fixing... Instead of mapping problems through needs to external solutions, you help the community identify its values and then map these through local resources to develop a vision and action plan.

4. Check Your Filter: If we fear that nothing will get done or improve without us, if we are the motor of initiative, if we are stressed-out that we might fail in out efforts, if we have trouble recognizing the names and faces and stories of those whom we serve, then it's likely our filter needs replacing. 'People as Function' how shockingly inhuman people can treat you when they filter out your humanity and see you as nothing more than a malfunction in their transaction rather than as a person with history, sensibilities, soul, and a piece of the Creator within. 'People as Backdrop' it's easier to set our mind's eye on wide angle at 10,000 feet and just take it all in from a safe distance, treating people as the background scenery to our life... this filter blurs individual people...it dehumanizes, stripping from view the essential elements of individuality and personal consciousness. 'Polarizing Lens' As a rule we should seek clarity to see people for who they are: unique expressions of God's creative proficiency, fellow human beings with a full range of emotive faculties and wholly enabled desires to belong, to have enough, to overcome, to create, to give, to enjoy life, to survive, and most of all, to have meaning.

5. Cultivate A Servant's Heart: First, since you don't have the power to steer a community, don't pretend you're at the helm (it doesn't depend on you). Second, since people with self-respect resist arrogant generosity, make sure to operate at eye-level. Third, since unlike us, God does have the power to transform a community, we should be interceding passionately on its behalf.

As history shows us, I am humbly reminded that good intentions do not always mean good outcomes, thinking especially of missions that have been done in the name of God (see Part 1 of this blog post). This article is not written to scare me away from the next chapter of my life, but rather, to remind myself (and those who ask 'why not someone else') to think critically about how I serve others. Remaining doubts, fears, worries aside, I want to pause this topic with two quotes...

The best journeys answer questions that, in the beginning, you didn't even think to ask.

Don't shine so that others can see you; Shine so that, through you, others can see Him. - C.S. Lewis