I have always been stressed about my resume. Am I doing the right extracurriculars, could I be doing more? Do I have enough leadership experience and does this sheet of paper represent me well, fully, correctly? Ironically, the activities that have always turned out to be most important to me are those I get into by accident, the ones where I don’t even consider if they’ll be helpful for some ambiguous future career path. At the end of our freshman year, Holly and I didn’t technically run for co-presidents of the Canterbury House campus ministry at Bryn Mawr. I didn’t spend a moment strategizing about how this might help me in the future, what advantage it would give me. The former leaders asked us if we wanted to be co-presidents when they graduated, and I said yes because I had liked our bi-monthly Bible study and walking to Mass at Good Shepherd together, and because a friend had asked me for a favor. We didn’t really know what we were doing at first. We had vague ideas we wanted to make happen, and for a while Holly and I were the only two members not abroad in a club with an event budget of $0.00. We had Bible study once a week with a few freshmen, worked with other Christian groups on campus, and wobbled our way through the year.
This year, however, God has grown us into more than just some sporadic Bible study group. We’re a campus ministry with a real community. Before the 5 p.m. Mass last week, I was standing in the choir stalls, talking with the other students who had assembled, and for a moment I was overcome with how peaceful it all was. The jokes, the same old complaints about dining hall food or essay deadlines. Mass so often cuts to the heart of a person; there is a shared vulnerability in a room full of people coming together wholeheartedly in worship, in the confession of sins and the refrain, “Lord, I am not worthy.” And all of us at that 5 p.m. Mass had come together for something we considered serious and important, yet immediately before, we were making jokes about unfortunate roommates and the tragedy of actually having to complete the work for the class I signed up to take. At Bible study each week, we probably spend more time laughing than we do actually reading scripture. There is this incredible brevity to Canterbury House; we aren’t just simply told that coming to Christ will give us rest, we feel it.
I war with my resume—we’re rarely on speaking terms. The weight put on that one piece of paper feels impossible. Usually, when I’m thinking about how I spend my time, I forget that I am president of the campus ministry. The things that go on my resume are hard wrought and won, a checklist of tasks I have to do before I can do what I actually want to do (whatever that is). Campus ministry is so light, full of so much joy, I forget that it’s technically a leadership position, technically something I could toss on the resume. So much of college (to my great philosophical chagrin) is about putting things on that document, until you start to feel like your entire identity is boiled down to a couple hundred words, single spaced. In Canterbury House, though, Christ has led us and created a space where those things don’t matter; all the grades, the internships, the awards and accomplishments. When we come together, we are reminded of our inherent value in a hyper-competitive world—we are reminded that our identity, first and foremost, is found in loving God and each other. Our identity is found in Christ.
Scarlett Muller