Keep My Eyes to Serve

Written by Christine Convery on the Second Sunday of Lent

Two years ago, on my senior alternative spring break trip to Wheeling, WV, my group spent a day walking part of the Warrior Trail in Green County, PA.  As we painted yellow circles to mark the 5,000 year old trail first cut by Native Americans, we got to see up close the mountain resources that have resulted in economic boom and bust for this region of the country. Old coal plants, slurry pools, and fracking sites interrupted the otherwise pristine natural setting, along with a few isolated homes and farms. On this Appalachian trail, I had a mountain-top experience: an encounter with a God of the rural poor proclaiming “These are my beloved people. Listen to them.”

The trip down from the mountain becomes the hard part. Like Peter in the story of the transfiguration, I often have a short-lived and misdirected enthusiasm after such experiences and I want to stay on the mountain top forever. But coming home, from service or retreat or an enlightening encounter, is when I get to answer God’s call. How can I sustain an active and joyful spiritual life? How do I serve God and others in the mundane tasks of graduate school? Where do I see the face of God revealed to me on the streets of Ann Arbor? What does it mean to be transfigured? To be resurrected from the dead?

In my life today, I am faced with decisions and uncertainty about career paths and relationships and life plans. I am finished with ASB trips; instead I have the chance to serve in my own neighborhood and my own community. I don’t have an Appalachian vista inspiring me to open up to God’s call, but I do have the transformative presence of Christ in the Eucharist and in my neighbors. There is no audible voice of God, but today I hear Christ’s message and my prayer in the words of Mumford & Sons: “Keep the earth below my feet…Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEJ-v3n0qkw]

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Christine Convery
Christine is a master’s student in the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.  She served as the undergraduate intern for retreats at St. Mary Student Parish for the 2012-13 academic year and graduated from U of M in 2013.
Email: converyc@umich.edu