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| Posted on Monday, July 20 @ 00:01:10 PDT |
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Real-World Hope, in Real Time
My life’s work is university chaplaincy. And university chaplaincy is - certainly by practice, but probably by necessity—amorphous, nebulous, and ever-changing. Days are filled with grief care, individual connection, event planning, multi-faith collaborations, ceremonial prayers, and elbows-deep-in-the-weeds endeavors. (Ever tried to plan a winter clothing drive during move-out season? I have stories.) No two semesters (let alone days) are ever the same.
Part of what makes this project so meaningful for me is that it started from failure.
This makes “success” in chaplaincy notoriously hard to measure and narrate. But it usually comes down to how we understand community. Which, too, is nearly impossible to describe. As we’ve all learned in these post-pandemic, polarizing days, it is both essential and fleeting.
Fleeting but Essential
One of my passions is gospel music. I’ve always imagined gospel music and university church enmeshed in a beautiful tapestry of university worship. I remember a particular Sunday in February 2020. We were hosting our second-ever Gospel Music residency at Bucknell University, and I thought to myself, “This is it.
This is the Beloved Community.” A larger, broader, more excited community had perhaps never met in Rooke Chapel.
A week later we were on spring break. And by Thursday, we were sent home—for Covid lockdown. The next Sunday was my first-ever Zoom worship service. Community: fleeting and essential. And we haven’t (yet) returned to that pre-pandemic level of “success.”
Exhausted and Exhilarated
But another kind of community has emerged, and another kind of success, and I’ll try to tell its story: What it looks like is 11 Bucknell students (and me, and my Jewish-Life colleague) shoulder-to-shoulder on couches and stools in our eight-day apartment in Reservoir Hill Baltimore, exhausted from a day of meetings and exhilarated by a week of partnership and reflection on our theme of Food, Faith, and Justice.
What it smells like is the black-bean enchiladas (and also Zimbabwean beef stew and Puerto Rican-inspired peas and rice) we’re about to eat for dinner, all lovingly (and very seriously) prepared by one of our three student prep teams.
And it sounds like a cacophony of complaints about the long hours, excitement about the next after-dinner student-led reflection, and lament that our memorable week is nearly over.
For 20 years I’ve been involved in annual justice-theme excursions with multi-faith student groups (first at Dartmouth College, then Colby College, now Bucknell). Memories flood in: the Jollof rice that nearly set the house on fire; the games of spicy Uno; laughs, tears, and anger at the state of the world; the manifold small conversations amidst our manifold new experiences on the ground. All unique and yet somehow all about the same question: how do we live justly, make a living, and exist in community in a world where neighbors are struggling and forgotten?
Three (and a Half) Questions
For the last 11 years, our destination has been Baltimore, where our focus has been specifically on a “Food, Faith, Justice” collaboration with local partners to combat food insecurity. Students read and reflect on the city, its history, and its geography. They serve meals and dig garden beds, visit churches, mosques, and synagogues. They talk with city officials, and spend a day on Capitol Hill lobbying for just public policy through Bread for the World. They recognize that racist geographies, access, and health outcomes are constructed realities rooted in deep history. They recognize that racist geographies, access, and health outcomes are constructed realities rooted in deep history.
It’s my longstanding critique of higher education, though, that we stop there: “Yes, you’ve been lied to. The world is unjust. Good luck!”
That’s where we want to start. We ponder ethical, short-term, community initiatives. All while focused on three (and a half) questions: Why are people food insecure in a place like Baltimore in 2026? (Spoiler: it’s not because there’s not enough food.) How are neighborhoods and politicians responding? How might we fit in (in careers, community life, faith practices, advocacy, and organizing)? The half question (because I’m never sure it’s the right word): what does “hope” mean in such a matrix? After a dozen years of partnership, conversation, and—yes—community. I believe Food, Faith, Justice has been an unequivocal success.
Baltimore Dispatch
Through these years, in embattled post-pandemic conditions, I’ve seen how the definition of community is changing, yet how it unfolds and grows nevertheless. Our first Bucknell cohort in Baltimore was sent home for Covid time. When we left by train for the Capitol on a Wednesday morning, US Senate offices were open. When we arrived that afternoon, they were remote-only. We returned to campus to a world changed.
In 2022 we came back to Baltimore with a notably shaken group of students who were (are?) trying to figure out how to do community, but also how to imagine it. After our return to campus I received an unsolicited text from one in our cohort informing me that her average daily screentime had been reduced by seven hours (seven!) during our Food, Faith, Justice week together.
Every year I’m privileged to travel with incredible students from across the country and world, from all manner of religious traditions (or none). It’s the thing (other than my children and my marriage) I’m most proud of. And—if I’m honest—it’s an anchor point for my faith (hope?) that we can build hope-filled communities in real time, in the real world.
“Optimism is Resistance”
As one of our particularly wonderful students wrote in her public-facing reflection post: “I can’t change who is in office, but I can build protective communities, advocate for and create change at the local level, and after our DC day, maybe even feel confident enough to call my own elected officials about protections I feel passionate about. Optimism is resistance, and after this week, it is the path forward that I hope I can continue to channel.
That is because of our amazing, example-setting community partners and all of the inspirational people I get to call classmates and friends as a result of this experience.”
Part of what makes this project so meaningful for me is that it started from failure. Years ago on a different campus, I was bequeathed an annual student experience that was heavily into the “Alternative Spring Break” model, still rebuilding in Biloxi, Miss., two years after Hurricane Katrina. The students were unprepared, the community partner didn’t have meaningful short-term work to do, and I was sleeping in a tent. We returned wet, tired, and frustrated.
Finding Our Way
I said aloud, “Either we’re going to figure out how to do this week, or we’re not going to do it.” And so we sat down and asked interested students, “What issues do you care about? What do you want to learn more about? What landscapes interest you?”
The answer—then—was homelessness and housing. We landed in San Francisco for the next two spring-break experiences, and then Washington, DC, (where I met our first Baltimore contacts). We learned that working with a wide array of partners helped our students make sense of community response.
We learned that policy professionals were really eager to speak to passionate students. And we learned—bit-by-bit—what sort of productive learning experiences were possible.
A few years later, at Colby College in the frigid landscape of Maine following a mediocre experience in rural Appalachian learning, we sat down and asked the same question: What do you care about? What do you want to learn about? Where do you want to go?
The answers: hunger and food insecurity, and “as far south as we can drive in a day.” We chose Baltimore. They had interesting urban farms and willing community partners, and we could visit DC and talk with Bread for the World, and wade into policy.
A year later, we met the Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III, who launched the Black Church Food Security Network. “Critique what is, create what should be,” he said as he sat with our students and shared the story of a Baltimore-based organization not hoping to feed needy people, but to help people advocate to feed themselves. You can find that phrase across 10 years of student reflection papers.
That’s when I realized what we’d been trying to do all these years and where we needed to go—to build a learning community, focused on food insecurity, imagining a world that is different than the one we’ve been given, alongside local partners of all stripes: direct service providers, grassroot organizers, public policy wonks, and elected officials.
Why does it work? Luck. The Holy Spirit. Perseverance. Trial and error and failure and trial again. But mostly, it’s community. The sort forged in those dinners and reflections. The sort forged in learning and questioning. And the sort forged over 10 years of collaboration and partnership.
The Rev. Kurt Nelson ’07 M.Div., formerly the Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Bucknell University, will become Executive Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Johns Hopkins University in June. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, he is a graduate of St. Olaf College. He is a member of the YDS Alumni Board.
The Rev. Kurt Nelson ’07 M.Div., Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Bucknell University, will become Executive Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Johns Hopkins University in June. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, he is a graduate of St. Olaf College. He is a member of the YDS Alumni Board.
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