How Are We of Service?
Summer Solstice 2023: How Are We of Service?
To be of lasting value, to anyone, service must transcend mere metrics… and even mere “service.” In its best form, a quality service experience is a creative form of pilgrimage— transformative for all involved.
With summer and the formal declaration of the pandemic’s end, comes a time of great excitement for our mission. EAB can once again offer our unique and life-changing service programs to U.S. schools and parishes, and celebrate the building of homes, relationships across borders, solidarity, and hope that grow forth from them.
Each year, almost without fail, as I present the program to potential students, parents, teachers, and ministers, I’ll be asked, “So, what percentage of this program is service?” This often comes from well-meaning adults or students hoping for reassurance that, along with the time spent studying Dominican history and culture, and living with a rural Dominican family, the participants will do something, be productive, make an “impact.”
When I’m feeling a bit mischievous, I’ll pause, and answer with three little stories: of Francisco’s tears, an unfriendly friend, and the secret nickname of EAB.
* * *
Once upon a time, Francisco and Clarita lived in the small coffee-growing community of Franco Bidó. (I’m using pseudonyms in this story.) And from the very first year— all the way back to 1999, and even 1997 if I count the time apprenticed to my mentor, Pablo Burson, as part of our work with a U.S. Jesuit university— their family hosted students and teachers in our service-immersion program.
Francisco and Clarita lived a hard life, by any measure. Coffee farmers who scraped whatever living they could out of the red-clay soil, raising many children together with little formal education but deep faith, grateful for the small-sweet blessings of rain and sun, family and community, and grace itself, that helped them get through each day, sometimes each hour. Not rich, as many folks in their community say, in the things of this world, but rich in what matters to God.
Francisco wore a mustache, fairly thick, and his method of talking suggested a cleft palate, mild enough to speak well, but noticeable just the same. I couldn’t be certain, and I never asked (he has now departed us, God rest his soul). His adult daughter has lived with a more obvious cleft, however, and unlike Francisco, was unable to articulate words intelligible to the average listener.
He was not the most gregarious of types, but he could get talking, and over the years, as I learned more and more of his story, my admiration grew. He’d come to this community, where his wife hailed from, with little beyond his boots, and managed to scrape out a living farming coffee, raising pigs, and planting whatever root vegetables the red-clay soil could support, on whatever scrap of it he could find work on, or eventually, acquire.
Like many Dominicans I know, Francisco loved to be hospitable, and to compartir— literally, to share, but often in the sense of being relational, companionable, “hanging out,” as contemporary English-speakers might say. Clarita also loved welcoming guests, but she was more reserved, and their daughter, who lived with them, was painfully shy. In various indirect ways over time, Francisco intimated that, in a culture that values conversation so highly, his daughter’s plight caused her tremendous pain; he and Clarita did not feel ashamed of her, but she certainly did. Shame has lacerated the Dominican people widely and deeply, especially the poorest, thanks in no small part to centuries of old-school, colonial-grade Catholicism, and Francisco’s daughter, as a poor campesina with no marriage prospects, was an open wound.
In our service program, students stay with a family like Francisco’s, less to “do service” in the traditional, transactional sense of giving something to someone in need, but to practice solidarity— to share life, as authentically as they can. They also get hands-on involved with something concrete, often a home or latrine construction, to meet the basic need of families in the community. (To be fair, I consider this balance essential, part of the justification for the group’s presence and the time community members devote to them.) As I’ve written before, this works best when we set aside a charity-based notion of service, defined solely by quantifiable measures—what is given to or done for the unempowered by the empowered— and embrace a holistic concept of service that dares to consider both parties involved as vulnerable, as needing to receive generosity… and offer it too.
The results of this kind of service are hard to quantify, but easy to spot; hard to explain, but easy to feel, for all involved.
At the end of each home stay experience I’m privy to a tender, soulful moment that genuinely moves me, no matter how often I witness it. Just past dawn on the day of departure I make the rounds in the big flatbed truck, stopping at each home along the one winding dirt road that stretches the length of the community, and load up the students. Like life itself in the community, it goes slowly; it invites you to pay close attention, and takes time to do it well. Tears are flowing, after all— and from almost no one more so than Francisco.
I’d been told that Francisco cried easily. And I admired that, believing tears are a gift of the Spirit, and knowing it takes courage for a man to weep publicly, especially in a culture so tightly clutched by machismo.
But I thought that in time, after receiving a few groups each year for more than a decade before he died, his tears would fade. I thought that some students would not touch his heart, not because of any malice, but because of habituation. I thought that at some point he’d follow through on what he always said to me in these moments, his hand to his heart— “it’s too much for me, Juan, we can’t take in anyone else” and decline serving as a host family the next time a volunteer group came around.
But time after time, year after year, when I’d confer with community leader Felicia at the start of a home stay, she’d say, Francisco y Clarita quieren gente, they want people, despite the pain. They want the company, they want the love.
Ten years into our work in this community, after the building of almost ten complete homes, and dozens of major home repairs as well as new latrine constructions, Francisco and Clarita finally got their turn, and were beneficiaries of a new home project. They stayed patient in their waiting, and stayed loyal in their commitment to host, within this new house once it was complete. Why?
Francisco’s tears failed to surprise me after the first few occasions. Especially since by and large the students who stayed with his family were exceptional, and engaged well, even if they spoke limited Spanish. But I remember one time he did surprise me, and taught me a lesson.
The student on that occasion was, let’s just say, not the best suited for this experience. His application looked good on paper, and he held his own in our interview process, but once in-country he surprised us leaders with insensitive comments or self-centered actions that in this situation stood out, even if they might not in ordinary teenage life. Most of this behavior occurred in our group dynamic, times set apart from the community itself. I assumed that the home stay had at least gone decently well, since I heard no complaints from him nor Francisco and Clarita.
But I didn’t expect the tears. From Francisco, and most shockingly, from the student. Something mystical had clearly happened— the Spirit had clearly moved— and I felt humbled, as well as grateful.
Helplessly curious, I asked Francisco why he was crying, since I frankly thought the student might have been difficult to host.
Nos tratan como gente, he said, y eso nos ayuda mucho. You treat us like humans. And that helps us so much. It’s worth a lot, even more than a house.
So how much of this experience is service? One hundred percent.
* * *
Once upon a time, a U.S. college professor had a terrific idea: he would build a multi-use facility to help a historically oppressed community in the Dominican Republic. It would have a first-aid clinic, a place to store medicines, and an examination room for a visiting doctor or nurse to see residents who could not afford to go anywhere else; it would have a library, a reading room, and a computer lab so residents of all ages could learn to read, improve their school work, and become technologically fluent; and it would be a meeting place, a safe space, a place to hold workshops on human rights, preventive health, political organizing, and empower the community members— almost all of them Haitian immigrants, or descendents of immigrants and thus subject to the same systemic discrimination— to break the cycle of poverty and dependence to which Dominican society had seemingly condemned them.
An exciting idea, a shining vision. Everyone in the community got excited.
The trouble was, the professor, for all his intelligence and scholarship, hadn’t understood whom the project was really for, whose it actually was, or should be. He hadn’t learned how to treat these marginalized peoples as real human beings, rather than means to the fulfillment of his personal and professional goals. And so everyone paid the price.
The planning went forward, but not collaboratively; community leaders kept politely insisting they needed to be more involved, but were increasingly shut out. The professor wrote beautiful grant proposals to foundations, which in turn promised large sums of money. He sent eager graduate students to the community to conduct research, for their dissertations, his on-going scholarship, and the bolstering of this vision. And his demands for time— to help with errands, menial labor, and interview after census after survey— from these already overburdened residents were justified by, and leveraged with, the promise of this vision coming to fruition. We can make this happen, was the promise again and again.
But that “we” did not include them, the residents learned. Engineers were brought in, then builders, all from outside the community, even though community members had the know-how and experience to construct a building of this sort. The residents were expected to hold back until given direction, which usually meant doing the grunt work, unpaid, to save costs, even though the builders and engineers were paid. The professor asked people to trust him. After all, he said, “I’m the one who knows.”
He did indeed know a lot, but not in this situation, unfortunately, and rather than copping to that, he held the reigns even more tightly.
Construction finally started. The foundation was dug and poured. The walls started to go up one line of cinder-block bricks at a time, and rebar could be seen sprouting from them to the eventual height of the roof. Despite their misgivings, it was hard for residents not to feel excited. This was a project beyond any attempted in their community before, one that could have profound immediate and long-term benefits, and thus was worth granting some benefit of the doubt, even a lot.
Then, the pause. Construction is by nature sporadic, often going in spurts, or inchworm style, depending on the level of human and material muscle available. A few feet above ground level, the walls stopped, and everyone waited. The next round of funding is on the way, the professor promised. Be patient, we’ll continue.
It took a while, several months or more, but his word was good. The walls climbed upward some more, steadily if slowly, until the next pause.
Eventually, after almost two years, the walls were ready for the concrete tie beam. Be patient, we’ll continue, the professor promised.
Residents were anxious: the building needed to be roofed and then the floor poured before too long, or the earth inside the walls would potentially settle in strange ways, subject to direct tropical rain from above, and affect the building’s eventual integrity. Not an irresolvable problem, but still a problem they wanted to avoid, because it would delay the project’s completion, and the residents’ benefit from it, even longer.
Sure, you might say, like the professor did, that if you’ve lived your whole life deprived, a little longer to wait for some help won’t kill you. But actually, it might, depending on what you’re suffering with, frankly, and at some point, when you start to see hope rising up before you in very concrete form, you don’t want to wait one second more to grab it, because you’re hungry, damn it, and you’re just human, after all.
The questions swirled through the community, practically stirring up dust in the dirt lanes between homes: When would the work start again? What was the delay about this time— money? Or did the bricklayers quit, because they don’t want to be associated with Haitians? Or did the government shut it down, since this project might make it look bad?
Round and round suspicions swirled as the waiting endured, with no word from the professor, despite call after call to reach him. And like the lanes’ dust they seeped through the walls of the tin and wood dwellings, into the very bodies of residents, becoming rumors, then stories, driving wedges between neighbors. So-and-so knows what’s going on, he just won’t tell us. No, so-and-so took the money from the professor and kept it for himself. No, I heard that…
Eventually, a community leader’s phone rang.
The professor was unsure exactly when they would move forward, only that they would. Just be patient, we’ll continue.
More waiting, without any word. Call after call from community members went unreturned, again. Weeds sprung up inside the project’s walls; goats and dogs wandered in through the empty door frames and left droppings behind; migrants squatted there for days or even weeks at a time.
Finally, the professor presented himself, in person. He sat in the home of a community leader and explained what was coming next, and even very soon: the next round of funding that would jump-start the project and see it through to completion. But it could not be until his next break from teaching, at the earliest, because he himself needed to be there to supervise.
The community leader suggested that, with his decades of experience organizing and managing projects, he could very ably assist in leading this endeavor. After all, he lived there, he knew every person in the community and spoke both Spanish and Kreyol natively, and he knew how to get things done in the face of formidable odds.
No, that would not be possible, the professor said.
They talked back and forth, the community leader trying to convince the professor that careful records would be kept, that the project would keep moving forward steadily, and that frankly, residents needed the help from a project like this now— they did not want to wait.
Finally, the professor lost his cool, threw down the gauntlet. “No! I am the one who knows!”
The building sat. The goats and dogs wandered in and out, and the weeds grew, until the building eventually resembled the autocrat’s mansion in García Márquez’s novel The Autumn of the Patriarch: abandoned, ghost-filled, moss-spackled, draped in shadows and heavy blankets of tropical vines. And still it sits.
And the professor— he also ghosted, as my son and his friends would say. No response, no word at all, since that time, despite phone calls, letters, emails requesting he release the project, or at least, have a conversation.
And in some ways, he might not be faulted. This is the well-worn path of the top-down development model, in which you appear to be of service, to anyone looking from afar or without an eye to see otherwise. You appear to be working for peace and justice, really “doing service,” but actually you are very carefully, assiduously, ferociously preserving the status quo, even making it far worse. If you haven’t build relationships, don’t try to build a house, or anything else. It will fall down before long, if it even gets done at all.
So, what percentage of this “community service” endeavor was service? Zero.
* * *
Once upon a time, a group of college student volunteers visited a humble Dominican coffee-growing community during the month of May. The rains, which had already been going steady in those mountains since the fall, came down and down, turning dirt to mud, and mud to sludge, triggering a few minor landslides, and making the drive— or more realistically, the walk— just about anywhere in that unpaved terrain pure treachery, or pure adventure… depending on your perspective.
We spent a week in that community, and by the third day every single piece of clothing I had was either soaked-through or trying (but failing) to dry out. Not surprisingly, we did no construction work that week, but we hadn’t planned on it anyway, given the circumstances. But more surprising, at least to these students, was our inability to bathe (for the students, the water was too cold, but to the families it was too expensive to heat up the on their small propane gas stoves), and just how much work it took to get clean water to drink. In both cases, the only water you could start with was what fell straight from the sky onto families’ roofs. The local aqueduct (a very generous term, considering that it’s nothing more than a series of PVC tubes snaking through the community, held together with ingenuity, a helluva lot of twine cord, and prayers) sprang leaks or flat-out busted over and over again, delivering either muddy water or no water at all.
The students were humbled. This was not the bucolic, “back to the simple life” experience many of them had imagined; this was an intimate encounter with the ugly face of poverty: children of God who are literally filthy, hungry, and thirsty for months on end, due to individual poverty, yes, but even more so due to systemic injustices that keep their roads unpaved, their aqueduct leaky, their homes un-electrified, and their coffee from fetching a fair price, which if it did, might help them resolve at least some of their other problems, with their own resources.
But the students, who by and large had come to this experience for the right reasons, were undeterred. When we walked to a family’s home or coffee field, and our sneakers or boots would get caked inches thick with the red-clay mud, they’d laugh at each other and themselves slipping or even falling splat on the ground. When we arrived at a home, we’d all pry our feet out of those mud-bricks, and if the family had a hose or a bucket of rainwater, we’d take turns washing each others’ shoes, and even feet. “Hey, it’s like the Last Supper,” one student said. “The washing of the feet!”
Nothing seemed to go according to plan that week. We were there to accompany the community during los Patronales, a traditional nine-day celebration of the feast day of the patron saint of the local church or chapel. I’ve always found it a beautiful tradition in the D.R., a way for faith communities to create sacred space that is truly their own, independent of the major holidays and Catholic feast days celebrated nationwide or even globally. The very fact that it extends over nine days reveals both its importance, and the intentionality which the faithful lend to it; you really can’t miss it, the way you might a “one and done” version of a feast day, unless you try. Granted, in some communities, the patronales have become commercialized affairs, like Christmas, during which the country’s major alcohol vendors fall over themselves to sponsor big fiestas with live music, enormous speakers, and even larger banners encouraging folks to imbibe their rum, whisky, or beer, supposedly as a way to honor their saint. But for a community as small, poor, and remote as the one we found ourselves in, that was never part of the plan; instead, a Celebration of the Word would be held daily, with Marian devotions optional, and a Mass— yes, with an actual priest coming up from the city— offered on the ninth day. That was the plan, at least. Sadly, the priest chickened out, too afraid to drive his truck in the mud, and too appalled at the thought of walking several kilometers from where the paved road ended in the nearest pueblo, just to offer Mass in this tiny chapel which couldn’t fill his collection plate in return. And the Celebrations of the Word were sparsely attended because of the weather: many elderly were afraid to suffer a bad fall living so far from adequate healthcare, some children were still trying to shake off the cold or flu that seemed to keep on making the rounds, and more than a few adults were either too worried to leave these same grandparents or kids at home, or too frantically working their coffee harvest to make the time.
And so, de facto, our group’s meals became the celebrations.
A little context: each service group works within a budget, which includes an allowance for food during the home stay. It won’t buy you steak and shrimp, but it will feed that student and their host family comfortably for those few days, and will include some meat (which for Dominicans in this situation is a rare luxury), in addition to rice, beans, vegetables, and some other staples. With the thrift and ingenuity that are essential to surviving life in these mountains, families can turn these staples into veritable feasts, loaves-and-fishes-style, and create opportunities for celebration which nourish body and soul.
The budget is calculated months ahead of time, before we finalize the itinerary or have some idea about the weather. And it’s assumed that, whatever happens, students will be hungry, since whether through construction or walking the mountains, they’ll be getting spent.
Well again, things didn’t exactly happen according to plan. We did walk a lot, but not as much as usual. So, from the very first mid-day meal (the main meal in the D.R., rather than supper) the food on hand was far more than students needed. The women who volunteer to cook for the group are always invited to partake as well, and to take home leftovers. But even then, there was food left over, and with no electricity in the community, there was no way to keep it fresh very long. So some children were invited. These kids loved the food, and the chance to hang out with US college students, so they then invited their friends, who then invited siblings, parents, uncles… you get the picture.
The more people came, the longer the meals would extend. Frankly, we weren’t in any rush, in part because of the rain, in part because the meals were fun. Kids and students would improvise games with jacks, cards, bottle caps, songs— whatever was on hand and whatever they could think of. Adults rarely joined in, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t enjoy the heck out of watching it all happen. Smiles were everywhere, despite the rains’ persistence.
Finally, one student, laughing, pointed out the obvious. “It’s like, all we do on this program is eat!”
And another: “If they’d told us this at school, a hundred people would’ve signed up!”
And yet another. “Oh, I get it! EAB doesn’t really stand for ‘Education Across Borders.’ It’s ‘Eating Across Borders!’”
A joke, of course, but I’m proud of it nevertheless. Because it means that, through all those activities that didn’t feel like activities— walking the roads and fields, accepting the hospitality of a cafecito in almost every home, praying with families caught in excruciating dilemmas, participating in the church celebrations, playing made-up games with children, and always always trying to listen with the ears of the heart as folks told their stories— through it all, bodies were being engaged, minds were being opened, hearts were being touched. Life was being shared, authentically.
Which means: service was being offered, and received, mutually. One hundred percent.
* * *
How we define “service” tells us what value it can have. In purely quantifiable, metrical terms, its benefits will be tangible, but risk being narrow and short-lived, confined most often to the receiver, and to the present or a short-term future. In purely esoteric, metaphysical terms, its benefits will seem broader and longer lasting, but risk vaporizing like wispy clouds on a warming afternoon, leaving us with nothing. When we define it holistically— to involve body, mind, and spirit; present, past, and future; ourselves, our Neighbors, and the Holy Mystery— the effects can be mutually and generationally transformative.
To do that, you’ve got to embrace paradox. You’ve got to consider service expansively, generously, while at the same time requiring it to meet you at the table. It’s got to meet some real need, defined by those who live the problem, and involve your physical body; it can’t be “make-work” fluff, a series of clicks, or something wholly concocted in a climate-controlled board room. It’s got to demand some study, analysis, and reflection on the roots of the problem, as well as its broader implications, especially in historical and cultural context; you can’t pretend that any of us live in a vacuum. And it’s got to invite you into some experience of mystery, elements you can’t control, whether you understand that as spirituality, prayer, or simply the mystery of working collaboratively with other human beings.
It’s got to involve all of these. Take any dimension away, and service starts getting thin, and ultimately will collapse into self-congratulatory achievement, self-indulgent click-advocacy, or sanctimonious and self-protecting “thoughts and prayers” support. But holding them all together, engaging and serving body, mind, and spirit, you can change the world.
I say this because this is what I see Jesus doing in the Gospels. This is the way we’re asked to follow.
He often starts with the body, knowing that our narrow minds are predisposed to prejudice, and our wounded hearts clutched in fear. His healing miracles are dramatic, waking us up, cutting through all dogma and explanation, making it undeniably real.
Confronted with this dramatic new reality, we’re less likely to ignore, diminish, or deny the teachings, which are deceptively simple but often demand our full effort, and our surrender, and often involve failing and trying again.
Because of that challenge, we’re keenly aware that we need help, and more than that, we need community, in some form— accompaniment, both mystical and tangible, that helps us carry the Cross. We see Jesus model this when he goes off alone to pray, to beseech and listen to the Spirit by himself. And we see this when he lives in community with the disciples, which of course includes sharing many meals.
In its best form, a quality service experience is transformative, for all involved, and thus a creative form of pilgrimage. Even if it’s not a traditional walking journey, from sacred point A to sacred point B; even if it includes elements (like construction) that don’t feel quite so ‘devotional’; it is still an inner journey, and everything within it, every step along the way, can be a form of prayer, if practiced with intention, or at least the desire for that intention.
A good pilgrimage requires good preparation, since it will involve sacrifice, even some suffering, beyond the comfort zone of daily life. It will shake us up, break up the hardened soil of our minds and/or hearts to plant seeds of transformation. We may even experience some or much of that transformation right then and there, while some will come later. And it will bestow some boon, some good gift or gifts, real treasure for the longer journey of life itself beyond this pilgrimage time.
There must be a gift, some gold that truly nourishes you, that you can also share with others. If not, you’ve not engaged in that true, deep service that lasts and transforms. If you’ve only been on a “trip” that you can now brag about on social media or your resume, if you’ve only engaged part of your whole self, if you don’t emerge with some sacred wounds— like deeper humility and compassion— then that “service” is only something that will, before too long, wither and die.
That’s why the brilliant professor was never “doing service” with his impressive project.
That’s why that group of mud-soaked, over-eating students was engaged in full service.
That’s why Francisco, Clarita, and their adult daughter were moved to tears, time after time, even by the visits of students who could barely cobble a sentence together. I don’t dare to say I know precisely what happened for them on a soul level, I only know what I saw, with my own eyes: genuine healing, more subtle than a dramatic healing from Jesus, but real nevertheless. Genuine embrace, of and by folks who’d been on the short end of the stick, and lived steeped in the shame of that, their whole lives. Genuine accompaniment, and a genuine desire for more, because of the sacred gifts given and received.
This is how we are of service, how we walk the way together.