Some experiences are far greater than the sum of all its parts. And so it was for the eleven of us who travelled to Bethlehem Farm for "Alternative Spring Break 2010". We arrived Bethlehem Farm late Monday evening after an eleven-and-a-half hour ride in two mini-vans, and were greeted with hugs and exclamations of "Welcome Home!" from the young people who live in the intentional community that is Bethlehem Farm. We stowed our luggage on the bunks in our dormitory rooms, met the group of faculty and staff from St. Martin de Porres High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and sat in the large common room on the couches and chairs of the prayer circle, trying to discern by our glances around the great room (which served as kitchen, dining hall, living room and prayer circle) and at each other what kind of week lay ahead.
The members of the community explained that Bethlehem Farm was based on four 'pillars': prayer, community, simplicity and service. They explained that they had committed themselves to living by these pillars as a response to the love God had shown them, and to more fully live out God's call to love. 'Simplicity' was to be lived out by being conscious of our consumption of water (limiting ourselves to two showers that week, one of which was to be the famous 'bucket shower') and other resources (lots of recycling!), and taking a break from the electronic devices that tend to take up so much of our time. Prayer would be conducted in a variety of ways, and would be planned by the community members as well as by the small groups into which we were divided. Community would be experienced by shared work, completion of chores together (including baking bread, working in the garden, cleaning, and cooking), and being present to each other during community time. Service would be given not only to the people who would visit the farm in the future (we helped plant the potatoes and onions that would feed the 400+ volunteers who would visit throughout the year), but also to the people of Summers County (the Farm community had lined up a few work projects for people who lived nearby).
The 'wake up' music started each morning at 6:00 a.m., and we groggily gathered for prayer. We began each day with a chore before breakfast, and followed breakfast with going out with our work crew to build a ramp for Ed, who was having serious issues with an infection contracted after a hernia operation, or to put up siding at Deborah's, or to help clean the Hospitality House (a bed-and-breakfast established to offer housing for people coming to the town of Alverson to visit their loved ones incarcerated at the Federal Women's Prison), or to help out at the Loaves and Fishes thrift store 'in town' (Hinton, West Virginia), or to stay at the Farm as the 'home crew', cleaning, baking bread, and preparing the next meal for the whole group. Our evenings were spent hanging out and playing games, singing along with Mark (a teacher from St. Martin who was an accomplished guitarist), attending a local church service and playing a rousing game of kickball afterwards, meeting the many, many friends and neighbors who gathered for the 'Community Night' pot luck dinner, or snacking on s'mores by a fire underneath a canopy of deep darkness punctuated by the piercing light of thousands of stars.
But these mundane and not-so-attractive activities (I mean, who wants to get up early and do all this work over Spring Break??) were just the shell around something that was truly miraculous. The group did come together as a community. And a profound sense of the God who is Love began to permeate the experience. Perhaps it was the lack of distractions; perhaps it was the example of the community who made us feel so welcome; perhaps it was the stunning beauty of this remote place surrounded by the wooded mountains of Appalachia; it certainly was God's grace working through all of these things, and our hearts were being transformed. People felt peace. People joked and laughed. Old ways of looking at things fell away, as we began to see each other, and the people we had come to serve, as precious children of God. "The Kingdom of God is like a kickball game, where everybody gets one last kick and nobody is keeping score…" was the way one of the community members began a prayer session. And there was much truth in what he said. The community's sensitivity to the earth, each community member's commitment to justice, their compassion for all of God's children, especially the poor and dispossessed, their passion for working for the common good, were all woven through each of the 'ordinary' tasks of each day, so that the most mundane tasks seemed to be sacraments of God's love.
