By
Anne-Marie Hughes
“It helps, now and then, to
step back and take a long view.”
Theology on Tap speaker Brittney White
chose to spiritually open her presentation in Saskatoon Oct. 19 with that
opening line from martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero’s reflection “Creating the Church of Tomorrow.”
“Taking the long view back” is how
White led participants through her life, demonstrating how the ordinary brought
extraordinary moments of grace and blessings in her ministry, both in
Edmonton’s inner city neighbourhood and in the poverty of Guatemala.
“I am just a very ordinary person in
ministry who has been blessed extraordinarily,” says White who in addition to
coordinating projects in Guatemala and Edmonton’s core, also works counseling
high-risk youth.
In her talk “Extraordinarily Ordinary: Finding Christ in the Ghetto,” White
recounted turning points on her life journey. Being inspired to work with youth
in crisis, getting a theology degree, seeing the Pope in Germany and
undertaking ministry in a foreign country did not come out of inspired moments
but often from her own brokenness, she described.
“I had a pretty average life as a kid
growing up in St. Albert. My dad was a police officer and I had a stay-at-home
mom. But I found myself in trouble as a teen. I got into some bad stuff,” said
White. “But it was my experience in that life that brought me into ministry.
Ministry is born of struggle. Paul was blinded, Mary Magdalene had shame she
needed to feel, Martin Luther King had Rosa Parks on the bus and Jesus
sacrificed himself for our brokenness. We gather because we are broken and our
brokenness is a gift.”
“I got myself into a lot of trouble,
but in the end it motivated me to get into ministry,” recounted White. This
early experience also taught White the importance of one person “stepping out
of the circle” and taking the time to reach out and to confront teens who are
getting into trouble.
“In Grade 11 I had a volleyball coach
who gave me a slap on the wrist,”' recalled White, who was heavily involved in
the sport at the time. “She told me ‘if you don't quit the stuff your into, you
are off the team.’ She stepped out of the circle.”
A change in attitude led White to
attend university and to study psychology, as well as to her search for
something deeper. “I found the theories didn't make sense to me. The one
consistent thing I found in my life was God, so I incorporated that into my
work, and of course my marks went down.”
She fell into theology quite by accident.
“ I heard from a friend on the bus that Christian theology courses at St. Joe’s
were an easy way to boost our GPA so I went, and met the most amazing woman
professor. This was a class at the U of A and she knew everybody's name. We
learned a lot about each other and what it's really all about: living the
gospel faith,” said White. “I could see Christ in her and learned what it is to
witness. The world could use less teachers and more witnesses.”
White's search for a higher average
eventually lead to her pursuing her masters of divinity from Newman College
which she hopes to complete by June 2012. Sometimes extraordinary things come
out of ordinary experiences: like a suggestion on a bus.
On another bus, a friend casually
suggested another experience that turned out to be life-changing. “She asked me
‘do you want to go to Germany to see the Pope?’” recounted White. “I said yes,
because I thought it would be a fun trip.” A wrong turn looking for lunch at
World Youth Day and the ordinary pilgrim found herself in the midst of the
extraordinary experience of being 40 feet from Pope Benedict XVI in a secure
area, using her newly-acquired university German to listen to him speak.
White’s missionary service in Guatemala
could have easily been missed, through the toss of a letter into the recycling
box. “I was working in youth ministry for someone's maternity leave when
through my priest a letter came from the Oblates in Guatemala. When I first got it I thought it was something
we could never do, and I was just going to recycle it. Then my priest and I talked and prayed about
it and made it happen. I could have recycled it but we decided to respond to
it."
A few months later, White found herself
in a van with eight others in Guatemala, not knowing exactly what they were
going to do there, but trusting in God. “It was kind of crazy looking back on
it. But I really learned how to pray down there.”
Since that trip. many more volunteers
from the same Edmonton parish have gone down to work with an orphanage for children
with HIV. Mutual exchanges have meant volunteers from Canada go to Guatemala
and youth from that country come back to Edmonton.
“Approximately 6 million Canadians have
been on missions. Many go once and they don't go back. In our missions we have volunteers
who have one back a few times.”
The mission effort has become a big
source of support for the small community in Guatemala. One program helps 2,000
kids attend school. Recently a volunteer in the United States secured a deal
with a major retailer for 40,000 pounds of food to be shipped there every
month. “That volunteer is just 21 years old,” noted White.
The Guatemala experience often impacts
parishioners when they come back to North America. “They realize the
distractions that keep people from each other and the busy-ness that’s used
against us. We take so much for granted.”
She described how one young man named
Santos who came to Canada from Guatemala was surprised by the lack of joy
during Mass here and the rush to leave when the celebration was over.
When Santos was very quiet after mass White asked him if everything was
okay and Santos responded to her saying,“I used to get so mad when Mother
Teresa said being poor in spirit was worse than physical poverty. Now I
wouldn't give up my family and poverty for anything you have here.”
After many trips, Guatemala has become
a big part of White's life. “On one trip I was in a truck driven by a priest
when all these strangers just piled in with us for a ride and we had to stop to
let all these chickens cross the road. It was crazy. I just started to laugh
with joy and couldn't stop. I just realized that six years ago I would never
have dreamed I would be doing this.”
Held regularly throughout the year at a
Lydia’s on Broadway pub in Saskatoon, Theology on Tap is offered to young
adults ages 19 to 35 years. Theology on Tap is coordinated by the youth
ministry offices of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy and the Roman Catholic
Diocese of Saskatoon, and the St. Thomas More College campus ministry team.
Speaker Brittney White (front row, third from the right)
of Edmonton joined participants at Theology on Tap Oct. 19 in Saskatoon,
speaking about how ordinary moments in her life have led to extraordinary
experiences in faith and ministry.
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