Lessons Learned and Relearned

Michael Beard is the author this week. Michael works as the Campus Minister at Mount Mercy University.

I’ll get a bit personal this week. This Tuesday marks 10 years since I arrived back in the United States after 18 months of volunteering in Lima, Peru. Every year around this time I reflect on the craziness of time passing, but when it hit me that a decade has passed since this critical time of my life, it hit me in the gut.

Since I got back to the States, people have asked, “How was Peru?” A perfectly legitimate question. I’ve struggled to find responses that are concise and sincere; too often I struggled to find ways to summarize the experience in its totality. Often I simply responded, “Amazing,” “Really great,” etc. I never quite figured it out.

Don’t worry: I’m not going to use this entry to try and find the right way to answer.

I signed on to be a volunteer with Capuchin Franciscan friars after graduating from college not knowing what I hoped to get out of it, what I’d be able to do with it, or even what I was going to be doing. I arrived in Lima with 2 other volunteers from the States to work at Ciudad de los Niños de la Inmaculada, a residence for boys aged 3-18 whose families were in dire economic straits. Ciudad offered education and formation in addition to shelter, a fairly healthy community, and good nutrition, while also making sure parents didn’t jump ship. I got assigned to work with the 13-15 year-old boys.

Come by my office sometime; I have many stories to share with you from the absurd to the somber, profound to inane. I will wax with (maybe) eloquence about the diverse and amazing cuisine, the raw aching beauty of the geography, the complexity of marveling at colonial architecture and influence. I can tell you the misadventures of being far taller than standard Peruvian size (I hit my head a lot), of being a suburbs/city boy who’d never killed livestock in his life having to kill chickens and manage a henhouse, of playing, “Let’s eat something outside of our comfort zone” and getting a big mouthful of what’s colloquially known as the “vomit fruit”. It was only 18 months, but what a vivid and full 18 months it was.

For the purpose of this blog, I’ll forego those and dive into a different story. Before going to Peru, I usually knew what to say, having a firm grasp of language and a variety of words to get the exact shade of meaning I wanted. I was a very good student. Suddenly I was thrust into an environment wherein I had rudimentary language skills, and my wanting the exact right word suddenly became an impediment to communication: imagine talking to somebody self-correcting every other word. I felt like an idiot. The kids would good-naturedly laugh at some of my fumblings, which made me all the more frustrated. I felt unable to be heard. And, as an added blow to the arrogance of my ego, I felt unable to be recognized as intelligent.

The lessons learned from this experience came both internally and externally. Externally, I encountered great love from a community of people who didn’t know much about me. They didn’t know about my life as a student, or any wit, and they certainly didn’t know about my linguistic skills. They knew I was there. They knew I was trying. Both because of that and because of just how magnanimous they all are, I was welcomed and loved. Without having “earned” it, I received love. It was a true moment of encountering God’s love through others’. So externally, I learned firsthand that God’s love is gratuitous, and that is how I’m called to love.

I had to learn it in my heart, too. I had unwittingly placed conditions on my worth: my goodness is connected to intelligence or to measurable success. The blows to my ego made me re-examine that. The love others showed me at a vulnerable and exposed time made me realize I derived my self-worth (and probably others’, too) from the wrong places. For the Christian, DesCartes’ famous “Cogito ergo sum” is more, “God loves me, therefore I am.” My dignity and everyone else’s is not something we can dismiss on the merit of wealth, race, sex, mental or physical wellness, attractiveness, political position, nationality etc.

I have to brush up on these lessons every now and again. How do you evaluate your self-worth or the worth of others? Is it on merit? Intellect? Opinions? Grades? Attractiveness or weight? They may not be the sole metrics, but are they part of the calculation? Be loving to yourself and to others; strive to set these aside. Let God’s love meet you where you are, and rest assured it will not leave you there.