Work Party [rowing]
Apr. 3rd, 2021 05:26 pmThis morning, as I gathered up tools and supplies to head down to the boathouse and work on the club's docks, after missing yet another rowing practice due to the exhaustion of yet another long week, I was full of resentment. Why is yet another critical rowing project falling squarely on my shoulders, yet again?
One of the proximate ways to answer to the question is complicated due to interpersonal and Rowing Politics. I will largely set that one aside for now.
Another one of the proximate ways to answer the question is to point out that I'm still digging my own grave, here, with taking on so many responsibilities at once, rowing being just one of them. See also: bicycling class; research students.
But there's a third answer, as well.
One of the feelings I had when I finally left the boathouse in the early afternoon triggered some memories, most specifically memories of the Catholic parish that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
annikusrex and I grew up in. It was the memory of the feeling of satisfaction that comes from being a part of a Work Party, even though in this case it was a Work Party of just myself and one other person.
Our parents met through our church, so the church is very much a spiritual home for me, regardless of where I've wound up now. So long as a person isn't just a Sunday Catholic*, different people interact with churches in different ways, and one of the ways by which our parents have interacted with the church is through the church Facilities Committee. If anything, AKW's dad is a backbone of the Facilities Committee, because he grew up on a farm and has learned how to fix and build all kinds of things.
My dad would be the first person to declare that he wasn't handy with tools, and yet if there was work that needed to be done around the church, and a Work Party was organized, he would be there to contribute.
My mom would often contribute her gardening skills, so on days when the grounds around the church or other church buildings needed extra attention, we kids would also be dragged along to the Work Party to help out. I am sure we did our best to lodge our complaints with the management on many of those occasions, but they were also a special time at the church when not many other people would be around, where we would get to know the physical land and place the church rested on.
The main thing is, from those Work Parties, it has been ingrained in me from a very young age that if a person is a member of a community, they are expected to directly contribute back to that community by sharing their gifts and talents within the community.
Fast-forward to college, where I missed enough aspects of church to have continued participating in Catholic services on campus. Somehow, the language spoken in the Catholic church communities I encountered in Boston differed from the language spoken in the parish I grew up in, and no, it wasn't just the accent. I didn't fully understand the differences in dialect while I was in college, but after graduating I learned that a lot of the undertones I was picking up on may have had to do with the way that sex-abuse allegations were being handled in that part of the country - something that broke as a major news story in the Boston Globe in 2002. The language spoken in other Catholic communities I've encountered has also differed, for other reasons; El Salvador was the most strikingly different, and not because Spanish was spoken but because of the role of the Catholic Church and its people in the Salvadoran Civil War. That has been an important aspect of being Catholic - the global nature of the Church, something to both appreciate and chafe at.
In any case.
A boathouse is not a church. But it is still a community of people, held together by a shared love, in this case a love of the water, who come together on a regular basis to practice and strive towards something bigger than ourselves. As with my experiences with the Catholic church, rowing is really a global community, but the people in different boathouses in different places speak different and unique languages. Within that, some communities are healthy and robust. Other communities are fractured and small.
This giving of one's self, one's time and talent, is not a one-time choice, decided forever. It is an ongoing commitment. It is hard to keep going when exhausted and resentful, when there are 10 times as many things needing time and attention as there are people and hours in the days and weeks. When I look around and see other people who have retreated to the shadows instead of stepping forward to help out.
When I sit back to ask myself the question yet again, is this how I want to be as a member of this community, are my default assumptions correct about what it means to be a part of it, if I sit and listen, the answer still comes back, yes. I can only hope that if I continue to bring myself to the boathouse, who I am, where I have come from, what I can contribute, that by continuing to lead by example I can help to strengthen this community.
-
And in the afternoon, I finished editing another Physiology lab video and got it posted. Can't say I enjoy working on Saturdays or that it's a healthy or sustainable thing to be doing.
*And the fact that the label exists tells you something
One of the proximate ways to answer to the question is complicated due to interpersonal and Rowing Politics. I will largely set that one aside for now.
Another one of the proximate ways to answer the question is to point out that I'm still digging my own grave, here, with taking on so many responsibilities at once, rowing being just one of them. See also: bicycling class; research students.
But there's a third answer, as well.
One of the feelings I had when I finally left the boathouse in the early afternoon triggered some memories, most specifically memories of the Catholic parish that
annikusrex and I grew up in. It was the memory of the feeling of satisfaction that comes from being a part of a Work Party, even though in this case it was a Work Party of just myself and one other person.Our parents met through our church, so the church is very much a spiritual home for me, regardless of where I've wound up now. So long as a person isn't just a Sunday Catholic*, different people interact with churches in different ways, and one of the ways by which our parents have interacted with the church is through the church Facilities Committee. If anything, AKW's dad is a backbone of the Facilities Committee, because he grew up on a farm and has learned how to fix and build all kinds of things.
My dad would be the first person to declare that he wasn't handy with tools, and yet if there was work that needed to be done around the church, and a Work Party was organized, he would be there to contribute.
My mom would often contribute her gardening skills, so on days when the grounds around the church or other church buildings needed extra attention, we kids would also be dragged along to the Work Party to help out. I am sure we did our best to lodge our complaints with the management on many of those occasions, but they were also a special time at the church when not many other people would be around, where we would get to know the physical land and place the church rested on.
The main thing is, from those Work Parties, it has been ingrained in me from a very young age that if a person is a member of a community, they are expected to directly contribute back to that community by sharing their gifts and talents within the community.
Fast-forward to college, where I missed enough aspects of church to have continued participating in Catholic services on campus. Somehow, the language spoken in the Catholic church communities I encountered in Boston differed from the language spoken in the parish I grew up in, and no, it wasn't just the accent. I didn't fully understand the differences in dialect while I was in college, but after graduating I learned that a lot of the undertones I was picking up on may have had to do with the way that sex-abuse allegations were being handled in that part of the country - something that broke as a major news story in the Boston Globe in 2002. The language spoken in other Catholic communities I've encountered has also differed, for other reasons; El Salvador was the most strikingly different, and not because Spanish was spoken but because of the role of the Catholic Church and its people in the Salvadoran Civil War. That has been an important aspect of being Catholic - the global nature of the Church, something to both appreciate and chafe at.
In any case.
A boathouse is not a church. But it is still a community of people, held together by a shared love, in this case a love of the water, who come together on a regular basis to practice and strive towards something bigger than ourselves. As with my experiences with the Catholic church, rowing is really a global community, but the people in different boathouses in different places speak different and unique languages. Within that, some communities are healthy and robust. Other communities are fractured and small.
This giving of one's self, one's time and talent, is not a one-time choice, decided forever. It is an ongoing commitment. It is hard to keep going when exhausted and resentful, when there are 10 times as many things needing time and attention as there are people and hours in the days and weeks. When I look around and see other people who have retreated to the shadows instead of stepping forward to help out.
When I sit back to ask myself the question yet again, is this how I want to be as a member of this community, are my default assumptions correct about what it means to be a part of it, if I sit and listen, the answer still comes back, yes. I can only hope that if I continue to bring myself to the boathouse, who I am, where I have come from, what I can contribute, that by continuing to lead by example I can help to strengthen this community.
-
And in the afternoon, I finished editing another Physiology lab video and got it posted. Can't say I enjoy working on Saturdays or that it's a healthy or sustainable thing to be doing.
*And the fact that the label exists tells you something
