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I was asked to put together a presentation on our mission trip in July. Over the weekend of July 27, four members of St. John’s and two from Canadochly set off to the mountains of West Virginia, my home state, for a mission and cultural immersion experience. I had two goals in organizing that trip.
To tell a bit of the story of the mountains, their history, their culture.
To offer an opportunity to serve others in a context different from one that we might have here.
In many ways, those goals are informing the way I want to do this presentation today. So I want to begin with a question. What image pops into your mind when you think of Appalachia? Of West Virginia? What do the people who live there look like?
That’s the stereotype. The one we’ve all heard. The one we’ve all seen. The redneck. The hillbilly. Backwards, inbred, primitive, poor. But that is not reality. The people of my home state, my people, are a people of deep culture and passionate feelings. They take pleasure in family, faith, and beauty. They craft and build wonders.
This is Tamarack. One of the sites we visited during the trip. This is a marketplace for WV crafts and artistry.
We stopped there for lunch (It was delicious).
Here’s a bit of WV culture already. Ramps are a wild onion that grow in the mountains and we West Virginians make everything out of them. So Ramp Salsa is available for sale at Tamarack. A literal taste of WV.
Here’s some more.
Glasswork
Sculpture. This odd fellow was our neighbor while we ate lunch. I’m still not sure what it is exactly.
This is Charleston, the city that hosted us. This is a view of Capital Street with its shops and storefronts. Doesn’t look all that different than any other city anywhere else in the United States.
Our capitol building. Tallest of all capitols in the 50 states and taller than the national capital. That’s real gold filigree on the dome, by the way. We’re passionate about our artistry, as I said.
Our cultural museum. Sadly, we did not have the time during our visit to go inside.
WV Artistry extends to the performing arts as well. This is a shot of Mountain Stage, a popular radio program of mountain folk music.
Of course, we have this passion for beauty because that’s what we see around us. Everywhere. This is Hawk’s Nest, one of our stops.
The New River Gorge with its famous bridge. Once the tallest standing bridge in the world, it spans almost 900 feet above the river below.
Kanawha Falls. We passed this on the way home on Monday.
Some of our esteemed group at the New River Gorge.
This was not one of the places we visited, but I slipped this in anyway (Call it personal privilege). This is Blackwater Falls. This is where I used to live when I served in WV for 11 years.
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Just astounding natural and cultural beauty. But there is a dark side to all this. That dark side is summed up nicely by a word we use a lot in the church: sin.
Our faith teaches that we humans, when left to our own devices, will act in ways harmful to ourselves and others. Sin has been a part of the WV story as well. And this is what it looks like.
Poverty. Destitution. Environmental destruction. Exploitation. This is the dark side of the Appalachian story. And much of it can be laid at the feet of one business in particular: Coal.
You cannot talk about WV without talking about coal. The coal that powers the very electricity we use throughout much of this country was mined in the mountains of Appalachia. In the early 20th century, a miner could get a $0.20 wage per ton of coal that he mined.
And this is how he did it. On his belly, in the depths of the earth.
The ceiling could collapse. Poisonous gases could be released. He could get caught in an explosion. And all he got was twenty cents per ton of coal. The coal company sold that same ton of coal for around $5.
Some of that profit went to build schools like this one we visited.
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It went to build towns, churches even. But most of it went into the pockets of the robber barons of that era; Only twenty cents of that $5 went to the miner and his family.
Scratch that, because that family had to buy most everything at the company store. His gear to do his job. The food you fed your family. Books for your children to use at school. All bought here and all at wildly inflated prices. Of that $0.20, the company got back pretty much all of it.
And all of this used to be legal.
The sin of the mountains is the sin of greed. And it is an insatiable sin at that.
Things are different now. The mines are safer…mostly. The wages are much higher. We toured an unused mine as part of our trip and this is our guide.
Even today though, our guide was adamant that being miner is NOT a job anyone truly wants. The greed of the coal business has been tempered somewhat, but it has not gone away entirely.
Now they do this to the land. This is what they call mountaintop removal.
Once they get the coal out, it is not unheard of for them companies to leave things looking like this.
Whatever they can get away with, they will. Greed doesn’t care about beauty. It doesn’t care about people’s lives.
This is Buffalo Creek. The site of the nation’s worst mine-related disaster. In 1972, a reservoir filled with waste water from local coal mines burst and rushed down into the Buffalo Creek valley. Over 100 people lost their lives and hundreds more were driven from their homes.
The sign makes clear that someone dropped the ball on Buffalo Creek. Neglect of safety practices. Safety costs money and that’s something the mine owners are not willing to spend. As a result, every year, people die from “ignored safety practices” in the mines and in the supporting industries.
This is a Google Street View of Freedom Industries. Last January, these chemical tanks, which stored chemicals used in the coal industry, leaked 10,000 gallons of poison into the drinking water of the very city we visited. Half a million people in WV had to use bottled water to even bathe for several weeks. And yes, it was due to “ignored safety practices.” Note however the billboard. Nothing unusual about a political advertisement, but this one is decrying the President and the EPA for having too many regulations. Too many safety rules.
Life, it seems, is not without a certain sense of irony.
That’s the history. The background. The legacy in this day and age of this sin, this greed, is rampant systemic poverty. Not only did we look at the causes of misery in the mountains, we got to see some of it first hand.
Trinity’s Table is a food ministry run by our host congregation, Trinity Lutheran in Charleston. Each Sunday, they prepare a meal for whoever walks through the door. Most of those who do are the poor and homeless of the city of Charleston. And they are numerous.
The program was started by congregation with the support of this gentleman, former Pastor Ron Shlack (right).
Some years ago, Pastor Ron and two other pastors took a bicycle ride across the whole United States to raise awareness for hunger and poverty issues. When he returned to his congregation in WV, the members proposed Trinity’s Table as one small way they could address the concern of hunger in Charleston.
Under the current pastor, Randy Richardson (who is somewhat camera shy, it seems. I do not have a picture of him.), the work has expanded. Each week, this church, whose average attendance is around 100 persons, puts together over 700 meals for those who come.
The meal is free to all comers. And you can get multiple servings. The Sunday we were there, we made burritos. 740 meals of burritos.
These are shots of us preparing those meals. A certain portion are set aside for people to take home with them, so they have a decent meal at some other point during the week.
The food is donated by congregation members and local businesses. Panera Bread, for instance, provides bread each week. The work is all volunteer.
Desert is included, of course.
740 meals. That number still staggers my imagination, even though we were there and we did that. And for the two hours we served, the line was constant. Unfortunately, that means I don’t have any pictures of our guests, of the people who came to eat.
It was quite a mix. There was one fellow dressed to the nines; tried to charm Shannon with a flower. Another fellow that looked like he’d stepped out of one of my vampire stories: Goth with the trench coat and makeup to match. Families with kids. The whole gamut.
St. Frances was said to have instructed that we “preach the Gospel always. If necessary, use words.” In many ways, that’s what we did. We stared evil in the face; we saw the legacy of greed that has pillaged its way through a beauty land and a beautiful people. But the Church was there, showing that evil does not have the last word. That there is Gospel in a hot meal and a cold drink even in the midst of poverty and suffering. We were a part of delivering that good news to hundreds of people, just as the congregation of Trinity does every week.
This is what the Church does. In West Virginia, here, and everywhere in the world. Bring light into darkness. Sometimes, it can all seem very abstract. Sin, redemption, salvation. It’s not. It’s real. And on the front lines, you see that.
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