The Rev. Thad Holcombe, campus pastor, Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave.:

Alternative Breaks are often opportunities for university students, and others, to understand themselves, society and their interdependence with the earth, in new ways. The alternative breaks sponsored by Ecumenical Christian Ministries (ECM) at Kansas University, are open to persons of all faith traditions and those who have none. They are influenced by the “critical pedagogy” of Paulo Freire, an important educator of the 20th century who was an education adviser to the World Council of Churches.

“Praxis” is therefore encouraged. It is a process of reflecting on the experience of the alternative break. This is done recognizing that the participant needs to be open to rethinking his/her own way of life as another culture or context than the one in which they had been raised is experienced.

Alternative breaks can be for the individual, very affirming. A participant can learn that they are not an “empty vessel” to be filled by the expertise of an authority figure in a classroom. Freire challenges such “banking education” where students answer questions that have no relevance to their own experience. Fortunately, at KU, not all classrooms are like this, and where, in contrast, questions raised from alternative breaks are welcomed. Both student and professor are recognized as having expertise.

As I read or listen to evaluations of alternative break participants, I am often struck by how the learning experienced becomes connected to the possibility that they can effect change in society. A new or deeper understanding of their life story gives impetus to this possibility. The past becomes connected to the present in a way that a new narrative empowers them to explore their life as one where “their great joys (gifts) can meet the world’s deep hurts” (A paraphrase of Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation).

The tenants of faith that are reinforced are numerous. In addition to possibly discerning their “call” or vocation in life, justice is understood as systemic in contrast to charity, thus love becomes a way to publicly affirm social change with compassion — an ability to “suffer with others.” Faith becomes a verb that describes how one makes sense of life. It changes as one understands one’s life as a gift and with a sense of “grace” can accept the past as a way to learn and not be thwarted by mishaps that have occurred along the way. Often, a sense of gratitude is evoked as the ability to be in solidarity with others who are different is experienced and the hospitality extended by the “stranger” is celebrated.

“Journey” as a metaphor may be discovered as they have a change in perspective on social and political issues or a new appreciation of living interdependent with the earth is acknowledged. Journey as liberation, i.e. Exodus, gains new relevance. One can be “reborn,” not in the sense of suddenly being “saved” and protected from life, but in being drawn into the very midst of living where the sacred and secular are mixed and the Holy is present.

— Send e-mail to Thad Holcombe at ecmku@ku.edu.

Jeff Miller, KU student and Alternative Spring Break participant:

In a classroom setting, it is common that we lose sight of the fact that human reactions to mass social currents do not emerge from a vacuum outside of our kin, but from the collective behaviors of individuals as us negotiating the parameters of their lived environments guided by the preferences, needs and desires that all humans build up over their lifetimes.

Alternative breaks draw us out of the university and remind us that neoliberal economic policy and urban migration are not the stuff of term papers and databases, but massive categories of policy and decision-making that trickle down to actively shape humans’ experiences of daily living.

Engaged with populations tangibly marginalized by these processes often treated as theory, the separation that so often exists between academia and emotion dissolves. Indifference to those structural inequalities observed grows impossible unless one simply regards their host-community as standing outside of that human circle worthy of dignity and fair treatment — and the very structure of these programs works to dissolve the thought.

More often than not, members of host-communities feed and house us. Come sunrise, we sit together and receive their sustenance into our bodies; come sunset, they receive us into their homes. As in all good human interaction, shared interest is discovered, mutual understanding of lifestyle and behavior thickens and empathy arises. A more subtle picture of those relevant political and economic structures reviewed in the classroom embeds itself in all five senses, for we see how these processes are made manifest in the family structures, culinary traditions, and social lives of all involved. A regard for the human sovereignty of abstracted “populations” has now flowered into regard for individuals with whom you’ve broken bread and shared conversation.

Participants in these programs have just now picked up the right to vote and make their voices heard in our nation’s legislative process — the contact made possible by alternative break programs is essential in expanding our understanding of human community, imparting relevance to our study, and leaving us with the knowledge that our direct action, or lack of it, echoes and comes to shape the life experiences, good and ill, of our human kin far removed from this Lawrence community. Be it obligated by faith or ethical imperative, we are made to begin the long process of considering how we would like to make this presence felt in the lives of others.

— Send e-mail to Jeff Miller at j.lealand.m@gmail.com.