Walking Humbly with God

by Jonathan Lantz-Trissel

EMU's Recycling Coordinator

My job at EMU is to handle all the things that no one else wants to handle anymore. It’s heavy, stinky work that carries with it no prestige. I wasn’t necessarily aware of this when I took the job.

Soon after I was hired I asked for a title change, hoping that this new creation would veil the sordid details of my job description. Eldon said no to Trash Czar, my first choice, but he did allow the vague and technical title “Recycling and Waste Reduction Coordinator.” You see, in my overwhelming enthusiasm to do recycling, I failed to realize just how absurd I looked accepting this job.

Ambitious, young people who enjoy and excel in school do not return to their alma mater to collect garbage and take out the recycling. Where my job ranked me in the whole scheme of things was confirmed by Evie King, the custodial supervisor here at EMU. In a casual conversation one morning she mentioned to me that she likes to tell her crew that they are the kidneys and liver of EMU.

Being that I follow after the custodians, I had a hard time not laughing out loud as it dawned on me the embarrassing or maybe humbling place I occupy in the university’s anatomy.

How Did I End Up Here?

How is it that I ended up operating a trash truck called Pepe Le Pew and sorting recycling at the college I still write checks to every month? And why am I still here after two years?

I graduated with honors from EMU in 2000 fully expecting to find myself soon enrolled in graduate studies or working for peace and development at some respectable non-profit overseas. In the year after college while living and working in Philadelphia Heidi and I came into a way of thinking that said it is perhaps more important to do development work here in the places we are most familiar with, than in another country with Mennonite Central Committee.

How could we go instruct people in ways to live that we ourselves were unwilling to live? Why were sawdust toilets and solar ovens appropriate for poor countries, but not here?

So we moved out of Philadelphia and back to Harrisonburg to become covert development workers for MCC, so well concealed in fact that MCC gives us no money and has yet to acknowledge our position within the organization. Our goal was and still is to learn the necessary skills to meet our basic needs of shelter, food, and clothing—skills few North Americans under the age of 80 know well—and to use sustainable practices and appropriate technology wherever possible in meeting those needs. We lived for several years in a community with Pat and Earl Hostetter Martin, then later, we bought a house in Harrisonburg’s Northeast neighborhood where we try our best to appear to be living in a poor, less developed country.

My Start at EMU

After working for four years with a gaggle of missionary carpenters, I eventually found my way here to EMU by way of the closest thing to a Calling I have experienced in my life. Actually I think this particular call was placed by Grounds Supervisor Will Hairston.

Collecting trash and recycling is work fit for an undercover missionary and I am passionate about it because I contribute everyday in a very physical way to making this small part of the planet a safer, healthier, and more sustainable place, for me and hopefully, for my great grandchildren.

I learned my job from Nevin Bender, perhaps unrivaled as the most humble Walker with God on these 93 acres (and he does walk most all of them regularly).

In the spirit of Saint Francis who lived sharing the gospel by action more than by word, Nevin’s work here at EMU is a 24-year-long sermon on Micah 6:8.

How God Fits Into My Work

That is the story of how I got here, now I want to say a little more about how walking humbly with God fits into my work.

For me at the present, part of walking humbly with God means getting a paycheck for the work I do with my hands, at a wage that is lower than I could earn in this culture working with my head; it also means that I have to be careful not to be bitter or envious. Walking humbly with God means that I do my share of walking (and bicycling) in a world paved for cars; it also means that I drive my car thousands of miles every year, consuming more than my share of the world’s finite resources.

As you ought to have gathered from what I’ve said, sustainability is a big part of walking humbly with God for me. However, if you happened to have read my Micah Think Tank proposal you know I also feel passionate about Micah’s call for justice. I see sustainability and economic justice as deeply intertwined.

I wonder what does sustainability mean in a culture where working with your hands is not honored or paid equally to working with your head? Isn’t working with your hands at least as important to sustainability as working with your head? Will we eat more local food without the work of a farmer’s hands? Will we build more sustainable houses and schools without the hands of skilled carpenters? How is it that we strive for sustainability in a state that graduates thousands of advanced degree students each year, but has only one remaining master cobbler?

If anyone present needed to make his or her own shoes, I imagine walking humbly would take on a whole new meaning.

Walking Humbly: Doing Things the Hard Way

Lastly, walking humbly with God for me is often doing things the hard way.

U.S. culture likes the “Easy Button.” Unfortunately, the Easy Button usually means shifting the fulfillment of needs to someone else further down the pay scale or using more resources than are necessary. Either the Easy Button forfeits economic justice or else it sacrifices sustainability. I am quite certain the Easy Button is near antithetical to walking humbly with God.

Can we quantify the harm to our souls when we are unable, or worse, unwilling to take responsibility for our thousand little actions and inactions? Little actions that mean all to often that someone else cleans the toilet bowl, someone else works the fields for the food on our table, or even someone else dies for the gas in our car?

Why I Work at EMU

This is why I work at EMU. Because I need to do something that makes a tangible difference.

Every time I reach in and pull out a soda can from a bag of trash, I know I am saving a very small piece of my community. It is not always easy, and it is terribly small, but again, it is the thousand little actions we do that will either save our communities as we have grown up knowing them or drastically alter our communities for our grandchild to come.

Working at the bottom (pun intended) and trying not to do things the easy way might just save my soul. As for the community, recycling 500 aluminum cans can only help.

-Jonathan Lantz-Trissel