that time I painted a bedroom... or three

I spent today in Coatesville, PA. If you know anything about the area, you'll know that it was - about a decade ago - home to one of the largest sites for drug dealing on the East coast. No one went up the hill to the projects; not even the mail man. That infamous hill in Coatesville is where I worked all day - not with drug dealers, mind you, but with Habitat for Humanity. About ten years ago the government tore down the projects and, long story short, Habitat was given a substantial number of housing lots by a developer. The site director told us that there are some home owners in the new Habitat houses who grew up on that hill and are amazed by the changes. Newness and life abound; there's hope in that community. To me it was a perfect illustration of how nothing is ever too far gone that it can't be made beautiful.

And it was a wonderful thing to be part of the work Habitat's doing in Coatesville. To hear the stories of what it had been was one thing; but to work alongside and hear the stories of one of the women who's a future home owner - knowing that it's people like her that we were blessing by our labor - was even better. Even though it was simple, today was a day I won't soon forget. I even took home a souvenir as a reminder: a whole slew of white paint stains on my clothes (but at least I'm a pretty confident room painter now).

There was even something - can I say - sacred about today. Seeing. Hearing. Doing. Experiencing. Creating. All these are things that resonate with us as embodied beings, that bring meaning into life. It's possible to have your eyes opened to new ideas in the classroom, but those ideas really take root when you get outside of intellectual speculation and start making concrete application.

Let me make a distinction, though. I used to be under the impression that either you "went and did" or you "sat and thought," as if they were mutually exclusive and you had to pick which you thought was best - or as if one was merely a step up the ladder, a means to achieve the higher good of the other. But I've become convinced that it's not a black and white issue and that life doesn't fit into neat little packages that can be stacked on top of one another, making it very easy to prioritize the ones you want and ignore the rest. I'm convinced that we're both reasoning and creative beings and that both contemplation and action are vitally important. What's more, they work hand in hand, each making the other better. Hearing and discussing new perspectives can certainly lead to more informed action (and vice versa).

And there you have it. In the words of the woman I mentioned earlier: Good things really can come out of Coatesville.