What is the ‘weather’ like in Aberdeen?

In Doyt’s last post, he invited us to think about the “weather patterns” of our local churches; that is, to evaluate the needs and gifts and realities of our local communities. In this stage of my diaconate, I am working as a street minister in Aberdeen.

In Aberdeen, our first answer to a question like the one posed in the title is “rainy” (and boy hasn’t it been this week!). As one of the rainiest climates in the continental U.S., we are used to fog and clouds and a lot of rain.

However, the fog and clouds are becoming a sad metaphor for the general sense of disintegration and despair we experience as a town with no real economic base. The fall of the timber industry looms large in our collective memory and the fallout looks like growing numbers of people camping out along the Chehalis River or raising kids in falling down apartments. The industrial and extractive economy of big timber was never replaced by a local or sustainable economy. So we live with a great deal of uncertainty. Many people are working in the North Dakota oilfields for a season or two and others find work fishing in Alaska in order the feed their families, but jobs seem to be scarce for the people of the harbor. Others end up camping along the river under tarps.

Aberdeen has always had the reputation of being a rough town. It sits at the mouth of a good harbor, facing the sea that brings in fewer ships by the year, its back to the giant forests and a few stretches of fertile agricultural land. With a population of only around 17,000, it boasts one of the highest unemployment rates in the state and a poverty rate that has reached a whopping 25 percent. It seems to be easier and easier to find drugs and angry teens with little hope for the future form small gangs.

People say that Aberdeen, like so many other rural towns all over the U.S., has seen its day. Our bad news seems written all over our shuttered shops and closed farms and often empty harbor. But I also have grown up in this area of rural Washington. I know something of the people here and my ministry here only confirms what I knew. This is also a community of people deeply committed to this place. People have a fierce love and pride in their town and a commitment to care for their neighbors. I meet people with talent and dreams everywhere I go—from the church I serve to the camps along the river or the clothing bank I visit. Times may be hard and may try our souls, but we somehow cling to a thread of hope.

Mary Ann Hinsdale writes that communities, especially those that are economically struggling, often experience a collective dark night of the soul. And she reminds us that the dark night is where we most often find God, find each other, and find hope. I find the shadows of this hope as I pray with men and women on the street and hear their stories of faith and survival. I cling to the hope of resurrection life as we walk together in the shadows of death. In the shadows of broken down shops and under the overpass, we share prayer and hope. I watch people in the community come together in love—I see people give of themselves and I find hope.

It may be rainy in Aberdeen these days in more ways than one. But it is also the home to strong and brave people, who have kept faith in even the darkest night. Our gospel call, our gospel mandate is to hold to hope and to claim our dignity as beloved children of God. The church’s mandate is to hear our voices, from such a place as this, to hear the wisdom of our poor and to recognize the gifts of our people.

Sarah