Dear Friends

There were two years between my last two written updates. This time it’s just two weeks, but they have felt just as long. I could tell you that we are overall well, but it would be truer to say that we are all overwhelmed.

As I explained last time, while Marty and I have long felt called back to our original vision – a faith community serving the inner-city poor – it was only recently that we found a way to actually make it work in Cincinnati. The lynchpin of our decision to go ahead was the opportunity to enroll both our kids in one of the nation’s finest urban public schools – Walnut Hills High School– in time for the first day of classes. That is what drove us to move so incredibly fast.

The time between my last email and now has been terrifically stressful. As you can imagine, packing what we needed to ‘camp’ for a few months in Cincinnati, getting our house ready to sell, figuring out how to manage EAPE at a distance, and all the other practical matters of moving would have been physically and emotionally demanding enough, even without the trauma of my parent’s sadness and anxiety, and the heartbreak of leaving them and so many local friends so quickly. But there they were.

Not surprisingly, all four of us were sleep-deprived, anxiety-ridden, basket cases by the time we reached Cincinnati last Monday night. What we needed more than anything else on Tuesday, I think, was a great, hope-inducing, confidence-building first day of school. What we got instead was an utter disaster.

As academically excellent as it is, Walnut Hills turned out to be a very big, very intimidating, very unfriendly place for two kids long accustomed to highly nurturing educational environments. By the end of the day, Roman and Miranda were in tears, begging us for mercy. We’re happy enough to live in the neighborhood and serve the poor, they said, but we can’t go back to that school. Believe it or not, our two social butterflies were seriously arguing that they should be home-schooled.

I won’t recount all the stories they told us, or all the reasons our sweet, sheltered and emotionally drained suburban kids couldn’t cope with getting dropped all by themselves into a huge inner-city high school. What I will say is that when and where they most needed to find warmth and welcome, they found just the opposite.

What followed was easily Marty’s and my longest and most agonizing night as parents. There we were, having yanked our children away from everything safe and familiar to them for the sake of a vision, trying to convince them – and ourselves – that we weren’t betraying their trust by keeping them in a school where they were completely terrified. There we were, having blown up our comfortable suburban life on seriously short notice, trying to convince ourselves – and them – that we hadn’t made a terrible, foolish mistake.

Our family had dinner that night with the small community of friends here whose encouragement helped convince us to join them, and they were wonderful. Playing with their little ones was a joyful release for Miranda and Roman, and being fed and hugged and listened to by their big ones reminded us all that we are anything but alone. They shared our burden, but all of us together still had no solution to the problem, except to hope that things would somehow get better.

Lying awake in bed that night, Marty and I agonized about sending our kids back to Walnut Hills, and it took all our manipulative skills to get them out of the car and up the school’s imposing concrete staircase the next morning. Driving away, we felt more like executioners than parents.

For the next few hours, Marty and I watched the clock and worried, feeling helpless and mean. The more we thought about what the kids had said and what we had seen for ourselves, the more we realized that there was no way things at that school were going to improve enough, or fast enough, to justify all the pressure we were putting on Miranda and Roman to cope with so much change all at once. By 10 A.M. I was working the phone, desperately searching for some realistic alternative to just giving up and taking my family back to Radnor. One way or another, I told Marty, there was no way I was going to drop off the kids like that again.

By 10:30 I knew our situation was hopeless. The only other school in the city that folks suggested might serve our purposes was Clark, which happens to be the only public Montessori high school in the United States. Not only does Clark require incoming students to have backgrounds in Montessori learning; it was already more than completely full. Indeed, when I tried to speak with the program director there, even her voice-mail wasn’t taking any more messages.

It was only then, when I realized that we were out of options, that I knew what to do. After all, having run small, under resourced ministries for so many years, I have been out of options before. When you need a miracle, I have discovered, the best thing to do is to humble yourself, admit your desperation, and simply ask for one. It doesn’t always work, of course, but it’s still the best thing to do. I showered and shaved, Marty put on a dress, and we drove over to Clark. Lord, I said as we pulled in the driveway, I don’t often ask for personal miracles, but I’m asking now, because that’s what we need.

As soon as we walked in the door, we knew it was a good place. In the office, asking to see the Program Director, both Marty and I were literally shaking with desperation. When she came out and asked how she could help us, I answered her as honestly as I could. “I’m Bart Campolo, and this is my wife Marty,” I said. “We’re in big trouble.”

Her name was Marta, and she invited us in to talk. I like Marty’s description of what happened next: She looked at us, she immediately understood who we are and what we are about…and she decided to love us. Walnut Hills is a fine school, she told us, but it isn’t for you. This place is for you. She left the room for a few minutes, while Marty and I sat on the edge of our seats, not believing what was happening to us. When she came back, she was smiling. I can’t believe I’m doing this, she said, but I want you go get your kids. I need to meet them, and they need to be here.

I don’t cry very often, but as we raced across town to rescue our kids from Walnut Hills, I was sobbing. As soon as we got there, we ran up the steps, burst into the office, and told them we had a family emergency that required us to take our kids out of school right that minute. Only when we had them both in our arms did I finally relax again.

From then on, it was pure joy, first telling the kids what was happening, and then watching them positively beam as they talked with Marta about diversity and community building in the classroom, writing seminars, service projects, and teachers who hug kids in the morning and like to be called by their first names. By the time they were registered for next week’s first day (a week more of summer!), the entire Campolo family was absolutely unified, wildly happy and completely grateful. And utterly exhausted too, of course.

Tired or not, however, we still have a long way to go to being settled. We are staying at our friends the Brocks house in Norwood right now, while they are away on vacation, but before long we will need a temporary place of our own, on our way to finding a new house in or near Walnut Hills. In the meantime, I wish we had brought along more stuff from our house in Radnor, to create an atmosphere of familiarity for us in what is still, to us, a very alien environment.

I also wish I weren’t so busy these days, with both the practical and the emotional sides of this transition and also with a sudden flurry of issues with both Mission Year and EAPE requiring my immediate attention, so that I could fully respond to the incredible outpouring of care and support my family and I have received via your emails and phone calls. Truly your love has been our greatest sustenance during these crazy days, and your affirmation of our vision has been our greatest encouragement. If I haven’t written or called you back yet, I promise I will as soon as I can.

Here’s what I know so far: In our first crisis, my family stuck together like champions. Our friends here weren’t kidding when they said they wanted to share their lives with us. Our friends and family elsewhere are still with us, too. It’s going to be a while before we feel anything close to at home in Cincinnati, but nobody’s sorry we came. We don’t know exactly who or what we’re here for yet, but all of us feel strongly that our God is at work in our lives. Grace is the foundation of the Universe, or it has no foundation at all. Marty rocks, plain and simple.

Sincerely,

Bart

PS I wrote this: When you need a miracle, I have discovered, the best thing to do is to humble yourself, admit your desperation, and simply ask for one. It doesn’t always work, of course, but it’s still the best thing to do. Paul wrote this: When I am weak, then I am strong. Paul Newman, playing the sage prisoner Luke, said this: Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.

Dear Friends

There were two years between my last two written updates. This time it’s just two weeks, but they have felt just as long. I could tell you that we are overall well, but it would be truer to say that we are all overwhelmed.

As I explained last time, while Marty and I have long felt called back to our original vision – a faith community serving the inner-city poor – it was only recently that we found a way to actually make it work in Cincinnati. The lynchpin of our decision to go ahead was the opportunity to enroll both our kids in one of the nation’s finest urban public schools – Walnut Hills High School– in time for the first day of classes. That is what drove us to move so incredibly fast.

The time between my last email and now has been terrifically stressful. As you can imagine, packing what we needed to ‘camp’ for a few months in Cincinnati, getting our house ready to sell, figuring out how to manage EAPE at a distance, and all the other practical matters of moving would have been physically and emotionally demanding enough, even without the trauma of my parent’s sadness and anxiety, and the heartbreak of leaving them and so many local friends so quickly. But there they were.

Not surprisingly, all four of us were sleep-deprived, anxiety-ridden, basket cases by the time we reached Cincinnati last Monday night. What we needed more than anything else on Tuesday, I think, was a great, hope-inducing, confidence-building first day of school. What we got instead was an utter disaster.

As academically excellent as it is, Walnut Hills turned out to be a very big, very intimidating, very unfriendly place for two kids long accustomed to highly nurturing educational environments. By the end of the day, Roman and Miranda were in tears, begging us for mercy. We’re happy enough to live in the neighborhood and serve the poor, they said, but we can’t go back to that school. Believe it or not, our two social butterflies were seriously arguing that they should be home-schooled.

I won’t recount all the stories they told us, or all the reasons our sweet, sheltered and emotionally drained suburban kids couldn’t cope with getting dropped all by themselves into a huge inner-city high school. What I will say is that when and where they most needed to find warmth and welcome, they found just the opposite.

What followed was easily Marty’s and my longest and most agonizing night as parents. There we were, having yanked our children away from everything safe and familiar to them for the sake of a vision, trying to convince them – and ourselves – that we weren’t betraying their trust by keeping them in a school where they were completely terrified. There we were, having blown up our comfortable suburban life on seriously short notice, trying to convince ourselves – and them – that we hadn’t made a terrible, foolish mistake.

Our family had dinner that night with the small community of friends here whose encouragement helped convince us to join them, and they were wonderful. Playing with their little ones was a joyful release for Miranda and Roman, and being fed and hugged and listened to by their big ones reminded us all that we are anything but alone. They shared our burden, but all of us together still had no solution to the problem, except to hope that things would somehow get better.

Lying awake in bed that night, Marty and I agonized about sending our kids back to Walnut Hills, and it took all our manipulative skills to get them out of the car and up the school’s imposing concrete staircase the next morning. Driving away, we felt more like executioners than parents.

For the next few hours, Marty and I watched the clock and worried, feeling helpless and mean. The more we thought about what the kids had said and what we had seen for ourselves, the more we realized that there was no way things at that school were going to improve enough, or fast enough, to justify all the pressure we were putting on Miranda and Roman to cope with so much change all at once. By 10 A.M. I was working the phone, desperately searching for some realistic alternative to just giving up and taking my family back to Radnor. One way or another, I told Marty, there was no way I was going to drop off the kids like that again.

By 10:30 I knew our situation was hopeless. The only other school in the city that folks suggested might serve our purposes was Clark, which happens to be the only public Montessori high school in the United States. Not only does Clark require incoming students to have backgrounds in Montessori learning; it was already more than completely full. Indeed, when I tried to speak with the program director there, even her voice-mail wasn’t taking any more messages.

It was only then, when I realized that we were out of options, that I knew what to do. After all, having run small, under resourced ministries for so many years, I have been out of options before. When you need a miracle, I have discovered, the best thing to do is to humble yourself, admit your desperation, and simply ask for one. It doesn’t always work, of course, but it’s still the best thing to do. I showered and shaved, Marty put on a dress, and we drove over to Clark. Lord, I said as we pulled in the driveway, I don’t often ask for personal miracles, but I’m asking now, because that’s what we need.

As soon as we walked in the door, we knew it was a good place. In the office, asking to see the Program Director, both Marty and I were literally shaking with desperation. When she came out and asked how she could help us, I answered her as honestly as I could. “I’m Bart Campolo, and this is my wife Marty,” I said. “We’re in big trouble.”

Her name was Marta, and she invited us in to talk. I like Marty’s description of what happened next: She looked at us, she immediately understood who we are and what we are about…and she decided to love us. Walnut Hills is a fine school, she told us, but it isn’t for you. This place is for you. She left the room for a few minutes, while Marty and I sat on the edge of our seats, not believing what was happening to us. When she came back, she was smiling. I can’t believe I’m doing this, she said, but I want you go get your kids. I need to meet them, and they need to be here.

I don’t cry very often, but as we raced across town to rescue our kids from Walnut Hills, I was sobbing. As soon as we got there, we ran up the steps, burst into the office, and told them we had a family emergency that required us to take our kids out of school right that minute. Only when we had them both in our arms did I finally relax again.

From then on, it was pure joy, first telling the kids what was happening, and then watching them positively beam as they talked with Marta about diversity and community building in the classroom, writing seminars, service projects, and teachers who hug kids in the morning and like to be called by their first names. By the time they were registered for next week’s first day (a week more of summer!), the entire Campolo family was absolutely unified, wildly happy and completely grateful. And utterly exhausted too, of course.

Tired or not, however, we still have a long way to go to being settled. We are staying at our friends the Brocks house in Norwood right now, while they are away on vacation, but before long we will need a temporary place of our own, on our way to finding a new house in or near Walnut Hills. In the meantime, I wish we had brought along more stuff from our house in Radnor, to create an atmosphere of familiarity for us in what is still, to us, a very alien environment.

I also wish I weren’t so busy these days, with both the practical and the emotional sides of this transition and also with a sudden flurry of issues with both Mission Year and EAPE requiring my immediate attention, so that I could fully respond to the incredible outpouring of care and support my family and I have received via your emails and phone calls. Truly your love has been our greatest sustenance during these crazy days, and your affirmation of our vision has been our greatest encouragement. If I haven’t written or called you back yet, I promise I will as soon as I can.

Here’s what I know so far: In our first crisis, my family stuck together like champions. Our friends here weren’t kidding when they said they wanted to share their lives with us. Our friends and family elsewhere are still with us, too. It’s going to be a while before we feel anything close to at home in Cincinnati, but nobody’s sorry we came. We don’t know exactly who or what we’re here for yet, but all of us feel strongly that our God is at work in our lives. Grace is the foundation of the Universe, or it has no foundation at all. Marty rocks, plain and simple.

Sincerely,

Bart

PS I wrote this: When you need a miracle, I have discovered, the best thing to do is to humble yourself, admit your desperation, and simply ask for one. It doesn’t always work, of course, but it’s still the best thing to do. Paul wrote this: When I am weak, then I am strong. Paul Newman, playing the sage prisoner Luke, said this: Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.