Service Reflections, Part 1

This past Thursday started off an odd mess of a day. Twice I found myself in awkward conversations: in the first, the person with whom I was talking was being overtly and obliviously racist. In the second, the other person displayed homophobia so aggressively and venomously—ironically using Christianity to support not just the position but the attitude with which the position was conveyed—that I was left simply speechless.

The world seemed filled with hatred and spite.

And it was cold and dreary and raining, and I did not much want to go volunteer at the Baptist Children’s Village as I’d planned. But I had told students I would be there, and I had told the coordinator to expect us. And so I went.

For an hour or so it was just me. My job was to run envelopes through a machine that sealed and printed postage on them. Easy work, monotonous in a good way. And it was pleasant to chat with the young woman who worked there.

But as my trays of sealed-and-printed envelopes grew into higher and higher stacks, which needed to be sleeved and carried somewhere else, and as we chatted less and worked more, and so had more time for thinking, I realized I wasn’t over those conversations from earlier. The world still felt mean, mean, mean. And on top of that, I was disappointed: my students still hadn’t arrived. We hadn’t set a specific time, so they weren’t exactly late, but given the weather and how the day had gone, I was less than hopeful. I checked my watch—again—and started on another tray of envelopes.

And then the door opened, and in walked three. And soon after, a fourth. Making good on their promises, willing to do whatever was needed—including moving those envelopes about ten times faster than I could’ve.

When I finally had to leave, the four of them were still working. I walked out to my truck in the chilly drizzle, surrounded by a thousand shades of grey.

And the world felt a little more hopeful, a little less mean.