I think that whenever you experience something outside of your routine it changes you. If that something is profound it changes you even more. It’s not about changing the things that are fundamentally you (though even this is possible), it is about the sometimes subtle changes in your heart and mind. I don’t think you can realize until after you have returned to the routine how you have been effected and affected by the other. I am home now from five weeks of extraordinary experience and I am excited to see for myself how I have been changed. I left with an open mind and I return with perhaps an even more open one (though not in the way I might have expected). Perhaps my greatest learning was to be able to listen to the closed minded and to feel their struggle. It is important to be with people you don’t agree with and to be open to how their experience might change you.

You learn a lot about yourself when you spend a month with people who don’t know anything about you. Everyone might come with preconceived notions about the others. Certainly my external persona is that of a White Mainline Protestant Male Pastor and assumptions are always going to be made because those are indeed a part of who I am. I cannot nor do I want to hide these things, but the questions is, “will I let these things be all that I am?” How much of myself am I willing to show beyond the surface? The other question is, “can I be myself or should I put on some kind of mask so that I will be more acceptable?” Most of us wear those masks even more often than we think. We don’t trust in the reactions of others so we tell them what they want to hear or only as much as we think they can handle. The second questions has never been a problem for me as I tend to be more honest than I should at times, trusting in the reaction of others even when perhaps it has gotten me into trouble or hurt someone else’s feelings in an unintentional way. I try very hard to be authentic because that is what I expect of others. I don’t like superficial questions with superficial answers and I struggle to find much appreciation for disingenuinous people. The first question is crucial for me not because I don’t want to be known as more than a surface level persona, but because a part of who I am is very reserved emotionally. I rarely show emotions and yet I consider myself emotional. That means that being me is being reserved in that way, but how do you get that across. After a month I feel known at least by the people who wanted to know me and I feel like in some ways I shared more of myself in those four weeks than I have had the chance to share in years with a church. It was a freeing experience even for one who tries to be open and honest in all things.

I am inspired by the relationships that I formed and I am changed I believe for the better because of those relationships and this experience.