Working together
18/11/12 05:18
South Dakota is treating us to a gorgeous autumn. We got snow a week ago and then it warmed up again, melted the snow and treated us to beautiful blue skies and shirtsleeve weather. It turned out that I spent a bit of time yesterday doing the same thing that I was doing a week ago: splitting wood. The setting was very different. Yesterday was the day of our annual “Turkey Taxi” run to the Cheyenne River Reservation. Members of our congregation donate turkeys to share with our reservation partners. If you watch the papers, there are lots of ½ price sales on frozen turkeys in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, so it is not hard to purchase one turkey for your family and one to share. The people in our church respond generously. Yesterday we had more than 60 turkeys for Rev. Norman Bluecoat to distribute to the families that he serves.
60 turkeys is a lot of weight – nearly 1,000 pounds. One of the members of our congregation provided his pickup so we loaded chainsaws, a wood splitter and all of the turkeys and there was room for five of us to ride comfortably in the cab. It takes 2 ½ hours to get to Eagle Butte, but we were there before noon and Norman was waiting for us when we arrived. Transferring the turkeys to Norman’s pickup took just a few minutes.
Last spring we hauled logs to Norman’s place for our Woodchuck project. We had an excess of wood from trees that had been killed by bark beetles and we wanted to get the beetle logs out of the church yard before it was time for the beetles to fly. We didn’t want to share the beetles with the trees in our neighborhood. There are no pine trees anywhere near Norman’s place above the Moreau River northeast of Eagle Butte. Norman worked out a plan to get a splitter from the tribe and they have been working throughout the summer and early fall splitting most of the wood that we brought, but their chainsaw isn’t always reliable, and cutting up the big logs was a challenge.
When we arrived we discovered that they had accomplished more than we expected, so the chainsaw work was completed quickly. With their splitter and the one we brought up, our crew was able to get a lot of the splitting done as well. Norman didn’t want us to do all of the splitting, so we would leave some for local people to do.
Of course, we stopped our work at noon for a lunch. It never ceases to amaze me how much food appears when we get together for a meal. I just brought a few things from home, as did others and then some of our church members sent along cookies and treats for the trip and soon a feast was spread on the tailgate of the pickup.
When we started our firewood project is was the convergence of people who had excess wood that they needed to get rid of and people who needed wood to heat their homes. By cutting and splitting together, we added in the element of working together. We envisioned the program would be a mission – an outreach of our congregation to others who had need. What we might not have seen as clearly in the beginning was how it would become a bridge of friendship. Because we rely on our partners who live on the reservations to distribute the firewood, they invest as much work as we do and delivery days become an opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with others who are investing their lives in making things better for their neighbors. The generosity and graciousness of our hosts always delights and amazes us.
We have become friends with people we might not have otherwise gotten to know so well. We find ourselves looking forward to seeing our friends once again. We watch their grandchildren grow up, hear stories about their lives and share our own stories and pictures. There is nothing like working together to serve others when it comes to forging lasting friendships.
It began as a vision of us doing something for others. It has evolved into a project of working together with others to serve still more people.
We have a wonderful program in the South Dakota Conference that took its cue from a project of our church in its national setting. Sacred Conversations provides opportunities to gather folk from across South Dakota to talk about race and racism in our state. It also provides opportunities for us to have an annual retreat with the pastors who serve our Native American congregations in the Dakota Association. I am grateful for the sacred conversations. But I am also aware that there are some very important connections that are not based in words. We have a heritage of talking and we love to get together to talk.
Sometimes, however, it takes more than talk to build relationships. For us, the hands-on work of cutting and splitting firewood to heat homes and churches builds relationships that might not have grown from more talk. I think that conversations are essential, but relationships that are only talk are insufficient to build a new future together. I am grateful for our shared mission.
We found the same thing in our partnership with our sister church in Costa Rica. Working together to serve the children of Los Guido gives us a common purpose. We come to understand each other best when we combine our efforts in the common work of serving others.
We’ve even developed a bit of lingo for our work. The little church at Green Grass has a small woodstove. The Episcopal congregation a few miles to the east on the BIA road has a stove that will take large chunks of wood. When a chunk of wood has been cut a little too long for a normal stove, we call that one an “Episcopalian” and go right ahead and split it. Still, our most important conversation doesn’t require words. It requires work.
And a few of us are just gently stiff enough as we rise this morning to remember how good God’s gift of work really is.
60 turkeys is a lot of weight – nearly 1,000 pounds. One of the members of our congregation provided his pickup so we loaded chainsaws, a wood splitter and all of the turkeys and there was room for five of us to ride comfortably in the cab. It takes 2 ½ hours to get to Eagle Butte, but we were there before noon and Norman was waiting for us when we arrived. Transferring the turkeys to Norman’s pickup took just a few minutes.
Last spring we hauled logs to Norman’s place for our Woodchuck project. We had an excess of wood from trees that had been killed by bark beetles and we wanted to get the beetle logs out of the church yard before it was time for the beetles to fly. We didn’t want to share the beetles with the trees in our neighborhood. There are no pine trees anywhere near Norman’s place above the Moreau River northeast of Eagle Butte. Norman worked out a plan to get a splitter from the tribe and they have been working throughout the summer and early fall splitting most of the wood that we brought, but their chainsaw isn’t always reliable, and cutting up the big logs was a challenge.
Of course, we stopped our work at noon for a lunch. It never ceases to amaze me how much food appears when we get together for a meal. I just brought a few things from home, as did others and then some of our church members sent along cookies and treats for the trip and soon a feast was spread on the tailgate of the pickup.
When we started our firewood project is was the convergence of people who had excess wood that they needed to get rid of and people who needed wood to heat their homes. By cutting and splitting together, we added in the element of working together. We envisioned the program would be a mission – an outreach of our congregation to others who had need. What we might not have seen as clearly in the beginning was how it would become a bridge of friendship. Because we rely on our partners who live on the reservations to distribute the firewood, they invest as much work as we do and delivery days become an opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with others who are investing their lives in making things better for their neighbors. The generosity and graciousness of our hosts always delights and amazes us.
It began as a vision of us doing something for others. It has evolved into a project of working together with others to serve still more people.
We have a wonderful program in the South Dakota Conference that took its cue from a project of our church in its national setting. Sacred Conversations provides opportunities to gather folk from across South Dakota to talk about race and racism in our state. It also provides opportunities for us to have an annual retreat with the pastors who serve our Native American congregations in the Dakota Association. I am grateful for the sacred conversations. But I am also aware that there are some very important connections that are not based in words. We have a heritage of talking and we love to get together to talk.
Sometimes, however, it takes more than talk to build relationships. For us, the hands-on work of cutting and splitting firewood to heat homes and churches builds relationships that might not have grown from more talk. I think that conversations are essential, but relationships that are only talk are insufficient to build a new future together. I am grateful for our shared mission.
We found the same thing in our partnership with our sister church in Costa Rica. Working together to serve the children of Los Guido gives us a common purpose. We come to understand each other best when we combine our efforts in the common work of serving others.
And a few of us are just gently stiff enough as we rise this morning to remember how good God’s gift of work really is.