Reflections

So I guess after being back at Glenmary for a week or two, I'd like to reflect on some things (some are serious, others are not):


1) I felt as if while at Glenmary, I didn't quite get to see all that they did for the community... I heard about it, but really only interacted with other people under 80 from Lewis County for a siginficant period of time on one day, and don't know that I really got the full experience. I would've liked to have gone to the food and clothing pantry at least once, or delivered firewood to a family or two, or something... I don't know, I guess I just felt like what Glenmary was doing was probably really good, but by the end of the week I still wasn't entire certain what it was that they did.
2) Swing Dancing to the Thurman's music doesn't work.
3) Team Dino was a heck of a lot of fun, and I wish I had some better way of keeping in touch with them.
4) The Farm had a very hands-off method of preaching Catholicism... we never once spoke to anybody about the Catholic faith, but it seemed were more content to merely do good deeds, be there for those who needed it, and try to give people in the region a good impression of Catholics in general. On Thursday, a Glenmary brother came and spoke to us about this, and the vibe I got was that we were essentially trying to make sure that people in the region, if they needed help, knew that they could come to the Catholics for it, and that was pretty much it. This seemed like an excellent idea in my mind, but unfortunately it was a bit surprising when we went to the Catholic church for Mass (granted it was a Thursday), and we were there with around seven other people from Lewis County... There are usually more than seven people that go to a single weekday dorm mass on campus at Notre Dame. It was just a bit surprising and possibly an indication that their method, although seemingly very subtle, may not exactly be the best method of building up a Catholic parish in the region.
5) The sense of community at Glenmary was incredible... the lack of technology and lack of concern for physical appearance made all of the unnecessary things in my life drop out of focus for the week, and I was able to see people for who they really were much more so than I ever am at ND. If there were some way to harness the Glenmary experience and bring it back to the rest of the world, I'd certainly put some effort into making it work.
6) Overall, I think the experience wasn't quite as service-oriented as I might have liked, or at least, I guess that's not really the case... I spent a heck of a lot of time doing "service"-like things, but I was kind of thrown off by how much fun I had... I was expecting to have far less fun than I did have, so it felt as if perhaps the service side of things was lacking. I think really this was not the typical experience for the average Glenmary visitor, as our group of 39 people was far larger than they usually have, so if my entire spiel about not getting to interact with the community enough is making you shy away from trying this experience, don't let it! Normally they have a lot more stuff for people to do in the community itself! As a side note, if you are interested in checking out Glenmary as a possible site to go volunteer at, it comes highly recommended (although parts of my blog may not indicate this, I really did enjoy it a LOT, I swear!), please visit this website:
http://www.glenmary.org/farm/default.htm
or (if you are an ND student) sign up for the Glenmary Farm Appalachia site during the fall and/or spring break(s).
7) My favorite events, working on the construction site and participating in "The Dinner Challenge" were quite entertaining but also informative... I wish that there were some way that I could take the ideas that the farm managers used for these two events and expand upon them for use during times that I want to teach others... mixing entertainment with learning is often the best way to ensure participation in the learning.


Overall, my parting thoughts:

The experience was a lot of fun and although I didn't necessarily get as much interaction with the Lewis County community as I would've liked, I did get the sense that Glenmary is usually better about making sure that interaction with the residents of Lewis County is encouraged and induced, and I would very much be interested in going back at some point in the future. I went into this Appalachia seminar hoping to figure out how to fit service into a life-time career, and I met a couple of people who do that successfully, so I'd say I've gained confidence in my ability to accomplish that.