Kelsey Davis '09

Director, Blue Ridge Service Corps & Campus Missioner, WCU/UNCA

This year has emboldened the truth that the dance between caring for self and others in an art. There is not a perfect formula, check list, or smartwatch that holds the percentages to where we turn our attention and how we share our love.

The dance requires listening deeply to our lives and the lives of others. And it requires us to resist a dichotomous understanding of care, as if caring for self and community are mutually exclusive actions.

Instead, the spiritual life invites us to integration. The spiritual life loves the both/and, so the action of caring becomes steeped in mutuality and interdependence. As we care for ourselves, we care for each other. And as we care for each other, we care for ourselves. This is what it means to be in community.

Tending to each other in community is one of the most radical, counter cultural, and sacred actions in our society.

And, community is an invitation. An invitation bolstered by this year as we continue to find our way through injustices, suffering, and this pandemic. Choosing community opens us to accompaniment. And loving accompaniment has the potential to soothe our sufferings, and offer a healing balm to our tired hearts, as we prop each other up along the way. 

Tending to each other in community ignites ancient mysteries of the spiritual life. What happens between receiving and giving, being cared for and caring for, is a Grace that is only known by experience. When we receive, our hearts grow in hospitality, love, and generosity. Yet, in cyclical rhythm, the mark of having truly received a gift is made manifest in how we share it.

This cyclical rhythm is the rhythm of divine love.

It is the rhythm that heals us, and heals the world.