The Pursuit of Contentedness

by Bill Walsh

	On the job for only a week, Habitat World editor Bill Walsh gets a taste of the Jimmy Carter Work Project in Benton Harbor, Mich.

On Sunday night, June 19, some 23,000 fans packed the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich., to watch the Detroit Pistons fall to the San Antonio Spurs in a squeaker and go down three games to two in an NBA championship that the Spurs wrapped up victoriously a few days later. Earlier in the day, thousands of volunteers from around the world descended on Detroit and Benton Harbor and other points all around Michigan. What drew them was cooperation, not a contest, and in this, there were no losers.

That is not the same as saying there was no final score when the workweek drew to a close the following Friday. Number of houses built: 238. Number of lives changed: about 1,000 that we know about, that being the number of souls moving into new Habitat houses after the completion of the Jimmy Carter Work Project 2005. Many others, volunteers--especially those participating in a Habitat build for the first time--also returned home changed by new insights--that the elimination of poverty housing and homelessness is attainable; that establishing global fellowship is anything but a pipe dream; that many hands do, indeed, make light work.

The state of Michigan--specifically Benton Harbor--was my first Jimmy Carter Work Project and came hard on the heels of my first day in the Habitat World offices just a week before. By way of introduction, my wife, Kathy, and I are Virginians who had been living in Indiana for three years, where I edited a small daily newspaper and she worked as a production assistant in the entertainment industry. Magazine publication figures fairly prominently in my background, much more prominently, I'm sorry to say, than the sweat I have expended on Habitat builds, which has heretofore been limited to a few Saturdays working on one-house projects.

These few months after the 2005 JCWP, I am still filtering all the information and impressions.

I was particularly dazzled by the care, planning and organization that resulted in the seemingly overnight creation of a full-blown community that is poised to merge seamlessly with the existing neighborhood. We write about the critical role that blending plays in infill construction elsewhere in this issue.

But like other first-timers, the most compelling image I took from Michigan was of volunteers working together, also seamlessly, and reflecting the selflessness that they brought with them to this project. Why they give so selflessly has been repeatedly addressed in this and other Habitat publications, and was exhaustively examined by radio, television and print media during the week of June 20-24. Those reports scratched the surface, mostly, because so few of the reporters--and, I dare say, so few, even, of the interviewed volunteers themselves--can really describe the itch they were scratching.

Is he suggesting that all the volunteers…who work on other Habitat builds on a regular basis around the world are…malcontents?

Jeff Terry, who is a senior manager for Whirlpool, a major partner on Habitat projects around the world, may have hit the nail on the head in an interview with assistant editor Rebekah Daniel which I sat in on as part of my first JCWP experience.

Nearing the end of an emotional recitation about Habitat and what his involvement with the organization means to him, Terry related that he is "a happy person, but not a contented person." I wasn't quite sure I knew what he meant until later, when the dust's settling gave me time to reflect.

Is Terry suggesting that all the volunteers who came to Michigan and all the volunteers who work on other Habitat builds on a regular basis around the world are...malcontents? If he is, I think he's onto something.

All the volunteers I met seemed happy, even joyous people. But they are no more content with the way the world is than Jeff Terry. Poverty exists. People live in substandard hovels. While this remains so, everyday life may bring us happiness, but contentedness seems almost inexcusable.

There are exceptions, of course.

Our only child, Sara, called me on Father's Day, which coincided with JCWP opening ceremonies and the gathering of the Michigan thousands. Her Father's Day gift was a donation to Habitat for Humanity in my honor.

That put my first JCWP week likewise off to a happy, joyous start. And for just a while there, no one could have convinced me otherwise that all was right with the world.

I look forward to a long and enriching experience with Habitat World and our readers.