Listening for the Spirit at Work
Matt Boote
Pilgrimage Manger Matt Boote reflects on his recent "Urban Plunge" experience with the National Coalition for the Homeless, in which he spent 48 hours living on the streets:
I was tired and lonely. I was frustrated and extremely defensive. My own smell was starting to make me feel a little queasy as I sat in the hellishly hot heat sweating under three layers of clothes. I felt useless and extremely humbled. To other people I was either completely invisible or so visible that they made a concerted effort to avoid me. Experiencing this vulnerability and exposure was downright exhausting. I was homeless. And it had only been twenty-eight hours.
I was so alone that I was forced to come face to face with my rawest and most visceral emotions and reactions. Completely stripped of all familiarity, I felt like I was treading water, accomplishing nothing. But the funny thing about the Spirit at work, for me at least, is that when it does its greatest work in or through me, I never know it until much later. The frustrating thing is that without fail this work ends us muddying the picture for me, leaving me more confused and lost than when I started. Ultimately, this is what I find so beautiful about the Spirit at work; it forces me to integrate new ideas, people, problems or insights into my life even when I don’t understand them.
Since my brief experience on the streets of D.C., I have been drawn to this passage from The Bhagavad Gita: “To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruit; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.” I come from a world where the achieved outcome of an event or effort is sacred. The Spirit reminds me to get down and dirty just for the sake of it, to take joy in the process and embrace the risk associated with trying new things. Ironically, it is at times like this, like my May 30th – June 1st, that I find the outcome most impactful (even if I still can’t make any sense of it). And I know that the Spirit
