When the helpers are in need of help

Do you think – do you suppose it's possible – that we might have become a little full of our selves? It's an interesting expression, one I would say (having been reading a lot of Lemony Snicket with my son lately) that here means being so wrapped up in our own world view and circumstance that there is little or no room for anything else.

Do you think –might it be possible –that we could benefit from the insights and observations of people who are not so consumed by our view of the world as we are?

In church we have a story (thousands of them actually) about a congregation that worked and lived and breathed their mission life. Fund raised, bake saled, collected, compiled, sewed and shipped all manner of goods and services to a grateful sister church in another part of the world. Then one day they invited some of the recipients to come tell them what else they were in need of. They came and all went well: the pot luck dinners; Sunday Services; slide shows; and presentations of trade goods produced by weavers, carvers and other artisans; the fair trade coffee and chocolate sale tables. The event was judged a success all round.

That is, until one of the hosts got carried away and asked, during the final presentation, at the end of the slide show and gratitude sharing, what the recipients thought of the community and the congregation.

The responses were a bit, well, difficult.

The recipients were truly pleased to be in relationship with other people who cared enough to want to help fill their gaps and lacks. They were happy to be given the opportunity to partner on various projects, to build together, to export products and to receive fair value for them. But they could not understand how their hosting community could be so giving, so sharing, so caring, and yet so bereft of a way of life they took for granted back in their home community.

In the hosting community they saw disconnections between neighbours, a lack of knowledge about the lives and circumstances of fellow community members, a seemingly uncaring attitude displayed in the contacts between people living in the same town, the same neighbourhood, on the same street, attending the same church, with children in the same schools, shopping in the same stores, attending the same community events.

It mystified them. How could a people who cared so much about their plight, who knew so much about trade imbalances, the International Monetary Fund, the impact of plastics on the environment, the use and value of community schools, and so on, hold themselves back from true involvement in their own community? How could they travel to Hawaii for a well deserved vacation when the community elders living next door struggled to survive on an inadequate pension? How could that be?

Do you suppose it's possible that we've become a little, well, full of ourselves?

Keith Simmonds is a diaconal minister in the Communities in Faith Pastoral Charge serving Beaver Valley, Rossland, Salmo and Trail.