Hills, and life, roll on

There’s no telling where we sometimes find ourselves.

Some time ago, a Marianist education in Baltimore brought me to the University of Dayton, where I became involved with its Appalachian Program and through which I spent two summers of service in Magoffin County in Eastern Kentucky. A half-century later, after continuing education with the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Baltimore, I find myself back in Eastern Kentucky, in service with those in need amid hills, highwaters and hollers.

I have long been of the belief that good-hearted souls turn to service later in life when they are financially secure and can afford to put something back into the community. For me, it happened a bit differently.

By God’s grace, I was exposed to service in high school, and it profoundly and irrevocably changed my life. From that moment on, service was always part of my routine, no matter what I did professionally or where I lived, and this I safely can say: I always received far more from the tiny blessings of service than I gave.

I certainly was repaid in kind when I heard our young students from Institute of Notre Dame and SSND sister schools say the same on our service trips.

I’ve been contemplating the blessings of “passing it on” as I toil with the Christian Appalachian Project restoring homes. When I decided to transition from a decade of teaching to a year of service, I wanted to find an organization that welcomed people of all ages, even an old man like me. In CAP – which was founded by a Catholic priest but welcomes volunteers of all faiths – I found the right match.

I live in community with a 19-year-old young man who never had been away from home, a woman in her early 20s, another young woman who has made service the centerpiece of her life the last 10 years, a woman considering a mid-life career move to teaching, and a house “Mom” who keeps it all together. Tiny blessings among a diverse community. Lord knows the world could benefit from more of that right about now.

Several members of our community work in housing, where we strive amid a pandemic to restore hope to those who might have given up a long time ago – a woman living without heat in a battered trailer who has the resilience of 10 men, a 65-year-old man battling cancer who recently lost his wife and never had an indoor bathroom. Such conditions resemble those in parts of Garrett, Allegany and Washington counties in Maryland, one of 13 states that comprise Appalachia – so easy to locate, so hard to define. Appalachians are the salt of the earth, and I am truly blessed to work for them.

I also find myself in the land of two of my spiritual mentors, Thomas Merton and Wendell Berry. Merton’s spiritual autobiography “The Seven Storey Mountain” rings true with not only religious aspirants but many lost souls as well. Believe me, I know. When I say that I “found” myself in Appalachia, I mean that metaphorically as well as literally. Merton, who died in 1968 after spending part of his life as a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, taught us that a contemplative life is just as formative as an intentional one. He called the non-

violent civil rights movement “certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States.” That is as true today as when he said it.

As for Berry, his poems, particularly his “Sabbath” ones, also continue to ring true.

“To be
on horseback with him and free,
lost in time, found in place, early
Sunday morning, was plain delight.”

Another tiny blessing among these rolling hills.

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