Jackie Posek, Director of Campus Ministry

What do we mean when we use the term “alternative” to describe a spring break? An alternative from what? It’s a valid question, one that many students ask me when I get up in December and January to encourage them to apply for the Newman Alternative Spring Break to Kentucky through the Christian Appalachian Project, or CAP. What is this alternative that we are offering?

The simplest answer is, of course, that we are offering the alternate opportunity to perform some kind of service to a needy community. This kind of trip stands in direct and glaring contrast to the typical, MTV-style spring break experience of  beaches, booze, and bikinis in various semi-tropical locales. As I read the various applications I received for this year’s spring break trip, I came across some common themes: “I’d rather do something substantial with my spring break.” “I’d like to help others, rather than just focus on myself.” “I’ve never done anything like this before.” These students were volunteering to spend their spring break in the back hills of Kentucky, repairing homes for the poor in one of the most impoverished regions of our country.

Yet I think everyone who participated in this year’s Newman Alternative Spring Break would agree that the alternative which such a break provides goes much deeper than comparisons to Daytona Beach or South Padre Island. This alternative refers to an entirely different way of life which the folks of Appalachia live, and which we were blessed enough to immerse ourselves in for a week. It is an alternative to the crazed pace of city living and the flat Illinois horizon, offering instead a more relaxed and friendlier community amid the green and rolling mountains. It is a week away from school and dorms and parties; at CAP, your days are spent instead working on siding and roofing and insulation in homes that would not likely survive another rough Kentucky winter without repair. It is time away from familiar faces of family and friends, spent in the company of other college students from across the country, as well as the local families whom we served.

But perhaps the greatest alternative offered to the participants of the Newman Alternative Spring Break is the alternate view of service itself. People perform acts of service for all kinds of reasons: to fulfill a quota of service hours, to feel that they’re doing something constructive with their time, to “give a little back” of all that they’ve been given. But a week with the Christian Appalachian Project can make you see service differently, in light of our faith. Rather than being people who make the choice to serve when it is convenient, we can be Christian servants first and foremost in our lives, in all that we do, because we are called to do so. Jesus was the ultimate servant, laying down his very life for the people he so loved. When we become servants, we become who we are meant to be as true disciples of Christ: people of love and faith, who express that love and faith for the human community through our very physical actions, not just our words.

As a community project, this year’s group of Alternative Spring Break participants kept a collective journal of their reflections and experiences throughout the week. We here at Newman would like to share those reflections with you, and have chosen to include them in this month’s edition of Spiritus. I could go on forever about our incredible experience, but the students express it better than I ever could. Peace, Jackie Posek, Director of Campus Ministry, The John Paul II Newman Center