Nothing Blue About Community

There’s a difference between fast work and meaningful work.  I think I just figured something out.  A few weeks ago, the ICTV Mighty 5 painted siding for Habitat for Humanity.  Board after board, we painted, for about five hours.

As we painted, we pondered:  Why don’t they just get a sprayer?  This was especially true when one team realized the other team had bigger paint rollers?  That’s why we switched places after lunch, by the way. Why don’t they buy the boards already painted, this case, blue? We got the answer to the latter. It is just less expensive.

As we painted we learned that our coat of paint would be just one of two on the dozens of boards needed.  Again, why all this manual labor?

But then a couple days later I see another organization painting siding boards at Restore for the home. There’s an insurance agency painting-blue over our blue.  Then came families painting on a Saturday.  The more I saw, the less it became about siding and the more it became about community.  The more hands on the boards, the more ownership each of us has in the house—tricky Habitat for Humanity, tricky.  You got us all invested in that house and that family.

I hope when the house on the old Forest Lake School lot is finished, that the Mighty 5 can attend the ceremony to see the layers upon layers of community on that home.   There’s nothing blue about that.