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Kim eyes a power drill

Repairer of Broken Walls

Kim Guthrie wanted to know. She’s a thinker, after all. A woman who lives in the here-and-now, she’s always on a quest to “learn something different.”

“So I wanted to know if I could really do that for four days,” she recalls over a lunchtime sandwich. After all, she entered the social work field because she “really wanted to do something — not sell something — but repair something.”

A social worker “by nature,” Kim spends her days connecting with support services for people with disabilities, brain injuries, and persistent mental illness. She’s employed by the Iowa Department of Human Services. “It feels good,” says she of this case management work, “to make a difference from a distance.”

So could she do it? Could she get dirty, sleep on a cot, live in close community with 24 others, and repair homes stricken by the 2008 flood in Cedar Rapids? Yes, she could. And it changed her.
The experience “crystallized some things for me. It was a reminder to keep it simple, to keep to the basics. Love God. Love others.” Kim had to set aside the social worker in her, the natural impulse to quickly size up people and situations. “It wasn’t for us to put the judgment in it. We didn’t have to understand the whole story. I could put my mask on and get back in there. It’s okay.”

Cedar Rapids was a step on Kim’s journey. “It builds,” she says of faith. “It just kind of happens.” From a Roman Catholic upbringing to a stop in the Unitarian church, through a library of spiritual books like Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace, Kim is “always looking for clues.”

Relationships open up new avenues for glimpsing God. Her father’s early-onset Alzheimer’s has turned out to be a gift of love renewed. Friends coaxed her to St. Paul and ALPHA.

A woman who is most comfortable in t-shirts, the casual nature of our contemporary Open Spirit service caught her. But it was grace that has truly grabbed Kim. “I can’t explain it but I can feel it, and that’s enough to start,” she says of the pathway to St. Paul.

So here she was in April: Four days laboring in houses damaged by flood waters. Drywalling. Ripping out rotted lumber. Repairing homes for people she knew little about — only that they needed the help of a stream of people before Kim — and after her.

“Cedar Rapids was the very first step in living what I think, what I believe,” reflects Kim. “This was a way to simplify, to get to the basics. There’s a sense of gratitude. My own vocabulary isn’t big enough to describe this.” She imagines water engulfing these neighborhoods, “a woman in a boat holding onto the porch roof.” It’s all bigger than she is.

“I’ve always been one to try to figure everything out — that until the math adds up, I can’t be caught by it.” That was before Cedar Rapids. These days, she “can’t even pick up all those books,” says Kim of the resources that have guided her spiritual walk. “I just want to honor the mystery of God.”

Cedar Rapids left Kim speechless — and grateful for muscles that repair, for the random luck that gives her a safe home and warm shower — and more.

She’s not a “group person. I’m better one-on-one or in small groups. When I’m with people I don’t know, it’s very difficult.” Here she was, living in close quarters with 24 others.

“I never spoke up during the devotions. I’m not one to lead a prayer. For me, the sharing that people do, that is brave.” But she listened. Her heart and mind took it all in. She safeguarded her privacy and kept a distance. And she got the basics of Christ’s message: Love God. Love others.

The prophet Isaiah declares: “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed… then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday… and you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”

Grace has grabbed Kim Guthrie, set her down in a desolate Cedar Rapids neighborhood, given her confidence to tackle the job — and she too has became a repairer and restorer. Thank you, God.

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"The truth is that work has a spiritual function. It is done for the sake of the soul, not for the punishment of the body or for the gratification of the ego." ~Joan Chittister