From my good friend Kevin Tones' Facebook page:
"Perhaps the most difficult thing about mission trips is not the exertion or exhaustion, it is the crash. The week is something of a high, a continuous time of being in a moment that is real and wonderful the whole time. Generally you are disconnected from the outside world and in a state of calm and peace.
Then you come home to all the rest of it. Right now the crash is pretty hard. Good thing we have a short week and I can have a bit more time to recover."
This is my experience as well. One of the things that strikes you when you are on mission trip is just how different your experience of reality itself is. There is a phenomenology to mission trips, and it is striking. Time works differently, for one thing. This is the result of increased mindfulness. You are focused on what you are doing, right there, right then. This makes it impossible to 'feel' how long you have been there. You cannot, at any one minute, be sure whether you've been on the mission trip but a few hours or for your whole life. Time takes on a very different feel.
Your sense of self is also muted. You are focused on others: on God first and foremost (more on this in a moment), on your fellow missioners, and on those you go to help. The ego is muted, but as the false self of 'me' disappears, a larger more inclusive self appears. You feel more a part of a whole. Usually, this kind of sensation must be found through extensive meditation, and then can be achieved only for moments. But on mission trips it goes on and on, you care less about your 'self' and more about the entire community, indeed the entire world.
The focus on God is ongoing. Even when God isn't being talked about (and He often is), His presence is a background thought in your mind, almost all the time. You 'pray without ceasing' and you do that without much struggle. It just happens. Your mind is focused on big issues, big ideas, and on all those spiritual matters that usually get pushed into the background of everyday life. This also tends to push away all the daily struggles that normally drown out the spiritual. The news of the day no longer acts as an oppressive force. You don't worry about what is going on in parts of the world you can't effect, you naturally focus on what you actually have control over: your immediate task and your internal spiritual state. The world's problems are not ignored, in fact big issues of national concern are often the topic of discussion. But these problems are no longer an endless string of tragedies that one rails against to no effect. Rather, they become part of the focus on the here and now, for the work you do in that moment is the most effective route you have to actually making a difference on that larger scale. No longer oppressed by what you cannot control, you can be more effective in what you do control. This happens, again without struggle and quite naturally, on mission trips.
So in a sense mission trips allow you to live for a week closer to the life you should always be living. It is a nodule, a reality bubble within which the real Christian life is made manifest. It is like practicing for heaven. I have spoken elsewhere about a 'counter-world' that we experience when engaging in things like play and humor, and how stepping into this counter-world is part of the justification for believing in God. In mission, this counter world is entered into for an extended period of time, perhaps longer than any other experience can make possible. But as Kevin says, you cannot stay in that place for long. There are many reasons. For one, the spiritual warfare that also takes place in the world of the spirit cannot be engaged in non-stop, a rest must be taken from living as spirit. We are physical as well as spiritual beings, and the physical must be attended to. You physically waste as you spiritually ascend. Moreover, there is other work to be done, and it must be done by someone. We have roles in this world that we have to fill. Only a precious few are chosen to live in the world of the spirit without end, like monks and true missionaries.
Coming back to the world, one rests one's body but the soul takes a beating. One physical recharges by spiritually feels assaulted. This doesn't happen at first...the first day home is often the height of euphoria, the entire experience of the mission work crashes in on one in a symphony of divine light. But three or four days in, the rest of the world starts to weigh on one's grace. Inevitably, I experience a very dark and difficult spiritual assault. Demonic visions or dreams are not uncommon (though this time around, they are tempered by other visions beautiful and beatific.) In the end it is too easy to be a holy man on the top of the mountain. We must find some way to take the vision of the trip and bring it into the everyday. That is very difficult indeed, and much of what we gained will be lost. But if a nugget, if a grain of the way the world is meant to be which is discovered on those trips can be brought into the world of 'normal' experience, then a real difference to the normal flow of things can take place. It is grain by grain, drop by drop. "And what is an ocean, but a collection of drops." (Cloud Atlas)
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