serving … the story

View from behind altar (from USSB Facebook page)

On a cool summer morning on the central California coast, I parked outside the church and carefully lifted the bouquet of flowers I’d just picked up at a grocery store. 

I was glad for their presence. The purple irises made me feel somehow less alone, and more connected, to the scene I was about to enter. I only attend the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara once a year, whenever I can make it out here from Massachusetts to visit friends. Even though I attend on-line, I always fear that someday physical geography will transcend spiritual geography, leaving this an empty ritual from which I must move on.

But the flowers won’t let me.

They gave me a particular purpose – the seeking out of their assigned home. This gave me a reason to with someone I recognized from past visit. In this case, it turns out to be Sally, the mother of the pastor. I was glad to see she recognized me from last summer’s visit, my in-person return after the quarantine. She told me to take my bouquet to the sanctuary.

 I place my purple irises at one end of the altar that is still relatively sparse, with a dozen or so modestly sized groups of flowers. There were black-eyed Susans, a pink peony … and, I’ll admit it, I don’t know much about flowers.  

I do know this is the 100^th anniversary of the Flower Communion, a Unitarian tradition that began in post-World War I Czechoslovakia. During the upcoming service, Rev. Julia Hamilton will fill in the details. She explained that the creator of the ritual, Rev. Norbert Capek, responded both to the need for more distinctly Unitarian rituals – and to remind parishioners, during times of fascism and war and recovery from war, to remind parishioners that even in the hardest of times, one can still find beauty, joy, and peace in nature. And when the next world war came less than two decades later, the ritual’s creator was said to have led the ritual with his fellow inmates at the concentration camp in Dachau, where he would be tortured before being gassed to death. Meanwhile, his wife, Maja, had become the pastor of the Unitarian church in Massachusetts, where she would keep alive the Flower Communion … which would then spread to Unitarian churches elsewhere in the nation.

My contribution to the service

So what on the surface seemed like a stereotypical California ritual – would there also be flowers in our hair? – was born and sustained amid harsh realities of suffering and loss, injustice and, eventually, genocide. Sitting in the pew, I was reminded of George Orwell’s humorous and yet earnest essay, “Some Thoughts on the Ordinary Toad.” It was published in 1946, only a year after the dropping of two atomic bombs in Japan. He argued that in such challenging times, it wasn’t only appropriate, but necessary, to revel in all the hilarity and rambunctious of observing toads noisily mating in London ponds.

As Orwell concluded, “The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”

The group that gathers here today faces its own challenges. We’re all coping with all of the disturbing trends toward injustice, the destruction of our climate, and worries about the next variant of whichever deadly disease comes next. My own participation in this church also came out of a mutual loss: The last event I flew to before the 2020 lockdown was a memorial service for a former girlfriend, Karena Ryals, who sang in the choir. In her memorial, the choir was led by her brother Ken – who would die, although not of Covid, less than a year later. Unlike Karena’s service, Ken’s was remote; more than 200 attended on-line, however, with more than two hours of testimonials and music, the nature of the medium allowing wake, service, and reception to merge into one powerful testimonial. 

For both me and for this congregation, there have been many, many more losses in the time since that memorial.

Yet here we were, miraculously in person – and, despite my doubts, I felt very welcome despite the distance. We listen to another eloquent sermon by Rev. Julia Hamilton, whose extraordinary on-line presence helped me feel connected during those trying times of living alone in the lockdown. She shared, in greater detail, the history of the Flower Communion. 

Then it was time to, well, commune. We proceeded two by two, pew by pew, down to the altar to select a flower to carry back to our seats. I gravitated toward the brightest, a sunrise of a flower, blazingly yellow, orange, and red.

We saw a video of a pastor, speaking in Czech and then in English, the opening words of the communion.  Finally, forming pairs, we read to one another a dialogue written for the first Flower Communion. My partner was a tall woman, whom I’d never met, and might never see again. But I’m sure we both saw the wisdom of the words, which listed the things that flowers should remind us of, from “diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection and devotion… the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike” and, finally, the realization that “whatever we can do, great or small … the efforts of all of us are needed to do thy work in the world.”

The Peruvian lilies I chose at the altar

Eventually we sang our final hymn – it turned out to be far easier to sing in rounds when in person – and Rev. Julia delivered the benediction, declaring: “For this is the day we’ve been given; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” And we moved out into the rest of the church grounds, people seem to be plenty glad, partly because of the flowers, gifts from unknown givers, that we sometimes balanced with coffee or cake. 

I renewed some old connections, including some I’d first to come to know through the late Karena and Ken. She would take pleasure in my enjoyment of my flower; Karena was a seeker who always found the spiritual and the romantic in nature, so she would’ve loved this ritual in particular. Together, we had hiked out in the Channel Islands 20 miles west in the Pacific, and rambled about Walden Pond when she visited me back east – and each of those adventures included some meditative gesture of gratitude

Like a lot of us these days I’m not nearly as youthful and adventurous of spirit and body. But in the five days to come, I would resurrect some of that former self, writing on the balcony of my hotel room, my laptop and book sharing the table with a water bottle, the new vase for what my sister would tell me were Alstroemeria, also known as Peruvian lilies. Gifts from a stranger, they would appear almost as fresh Friday as they were Sunday. By then, they would have inspired me to begin drafting what you’re reading now, my first blog post in two years.

Before departing the church, I lingered by the flat memorial stone dedicated to the dearly departed Karena and Ken. They were partially framed by plants I would later learn were coral bells; although not yet in bloom, the leaves of yellow, red, and purple lent cheer to the memorial marker. Beneath my friends’ names, I contemplated the quotation: “Anyone Can Sing. What is harder is to proclaim the soul.”

 On this particular Sunday, the Flower Communion found a way.

Editor’s Note: Most of you already know Vinnie Sullivan-Jacques, but you may not know that he has now taken on the role of Partnership Coordinator, succeeding Susan Hayes, who served us well for 12 years. Vinnie brings some of his most important responsibilities in Campus Ministry over to Community Service-Learning: The restructuring brings the Reach Out Center into Community Service-Learning. While the latter is tied to academic courses and the other is not, both  responsibilities require building and maintaining partnerships between Assumption University and scores of non-profits who have facilitated service experiences. I must add that Reach Out and other programs Vinnie’s worked with haven’t been tied to courses, they’re almost always educational in one way or another. One obvious example: The Light The Way Scholars, which Vinnie brings over to us from his previous work in Campus Ministry.

I must add that while he didn’t officially start his new role until January, he has been a part of the CSL community for roughly a decade, serving on our CSL Advisory Council and participating in our annual CSL Faculty Workshop. He also helped create one of the most important ventures in my personal service life: He worked with me and Paul Belsito to create a SEND mission trip to my hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, after a deadly tornado mowed an almost mile-wide path. While SEND remains with Campus Ministry, his ability to orchestrate so many of those trips – often simultaneously – is just one more skill Vinnie brings over to our office.

As a way of saying hello, Vinnie has provided the reflection below.

Those of you who know me are well aware that Jesus’ statement in Matthew 25:40. “Whatever you did for one of these least of mine, you did for me” is a passage that reflects my worldview and provides a guideline for living a life that matters. In my 10 years with Assumption Campus Ministry, I have learned a lot about Jesus’s message in Matthew 25 and many of those lessons came journeying with Assumption students, staff, faculty and alumni.  Our SEND program has adopted a relationship-based approach to service with a special emphasis on “being with” and embracing a ministry of presence.

During my time traveling with SEND groups, I had the privilege of walking with students as we listened to people from Ecuador share stories not only about their deepest heartbreaks, but also the joys of caring for one another in the midst of poverty and living the Gospel call of true solidarity.  We received a glimpse at the face of Christ by playing soccer in the streets with children and visiting a hospital for people with Hansen’s disease (once known as Leprosy) where we sang Christmas carols and “Sweet Caroline.”

In Camden, we met community members trying to repair their neighborhoods destroyed by societal neglect and an oppressive drug epidemic. Throughout this nation, we encountered people struggling with homelessness and addiction who challenged our understanding of race, class, and what it meant to encounter Jesus in the poor.  I enjoyed countless conversations with students about how this type of service was their church and how they ran into God in unexpected ways.

On campus, I spent time being with students as they “walked in the shoes” of migrants, supported local farmers, educated peers about the plight of climate change refugees, camped outside in frigid weather to remember our Worcester neighbors out in the cold and advocated for marginalized brothers and sisters. Many of these remarkable students went on to become social workers, post graduate volunteers, teachers, youth ministers, immigration advocates, and other vocations rooted in concern for the common good. Their passion and desire to move our society closer to God’s Kingdom has had a permanent impact on my life and shaped me in profound ways.

Recently, I have transitioned out of my position in Campus Ministry and have taken on a new opportunity to carry out the mission of service and justice at Assumption in Academic Affairs. While I will genuinely miss my work as a minister, I look forward to seeing how the Spirit moves me and how I can continue to support students as they build relationships out in the Worcester community. Over the past ten years, I have learned that service work becomes transformative when we spend time reflecting on our experiences before and after encounters with people at volunteer sites. Through thoughtful reflection on service, students can begin to analyze their place in society, recognize unjust structures, and develop a greater sense of how they can contribute to the common good.  In my new position, I will work with faculty members, students, and community members to uncover the educational nature of community engagement experiences. Service-learning has the power to motivate students by helping them discover their gifts and strengths while exploring the needs of the world.

According to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’” What excites me about working in Community Service-Learning and directing the Reach Out Center is that I can witness the mutuality of service that will take place for Assumption students and the greater community. While our students experience reaching out to a wide variety of community partners, our courses and programs provide the greater community with opportunities to share their talents and lives with our students. Volunteer coordinators and non-profit directors get a chance to serve as mentors, clients in many of the partnerships have the ability to share wisdom from their lives, and Worcester youth can motivate our Assumption students to become more resilient and more excited for what tomorrow brings.

Personally, I am welcoming that change and eager to continue making a positive difference in the lives of students and our neighbors in Worcester. 

            Dr. Carl Keyes vividly remembers that semester in 2014 when he served as the interim director of the Community Service-Learning Program at Assumption College.

            It was his first time in an administrative role of any kind at Assumption, and he was undertaking it as he was also going up for tenure as a history professor. Plus, the person he was subbing for (me) would be hitting the road for three-and-a-half months.

            But he had an ace in the hole: CSL Partnership Coordinator Susan Hayes.

            Seven years later, at a January 21^st farewell reception on Zoom, Dr. Keyes expressed his appreciation to Susan. “I want to thank you for being my guide in many ways during a time that was scary, because I didn’t want to mess it up – and you made sure I didn’t mess it up,” Dr. Keyes told Susan.  

            “There was no way it was going to get messed up with you on the scene.”

       I know how Carl feels. When I succeeded Susan Perschbacher, the co-founder and first director of the CSL Program, I was immediately confronted with the seemingly dozens of things that staff does for faculty, who wind up getting a disproportionate amount of the glory. While many of those duties were clerical – important in their own right – Susan’s job went far beyond that. For 12 years, she was the one building and maintaining partnerships with the more than 80 non-profits with which Assumption CSL profs have worked at one time or another. She was the one who built and maintained the relationships with dozens of volunteer coordinators out in the Worcester community, the one who helped train our students on how to behave at volunteer sites, and the one who sought feedback from students and agencies on how those partnerships were going. Professors creating a new CSL course usually met with me and Susan; while my role was to help shape the academic vision of the course, Susan was the one to offer the expertise on specific partnerships, thus providing the reassurance that we were going to find a way to make the course work for them. Increasingly over the years, I could have left the meeting altogether – if only they weren’t being held in my office.  

      So pervasive was her role, my biggest anxiety as a CSL director was what the program – and I – would do without her. Fortunately, her role is being filled by one of CSL’s friends on this campus, Vinnie Sullivan-Jacques, who has deep experience with partnerships. Still, those who gathered on Zoom January 21^st all had their own distinct view of the many-angled thing that is the community partnership position she helped mold.

      Dr. Susan Perschbacher, the CSL director when Susan was hired, remembered how many questions both of them had in those early days. “Susan, you just hung in there. You really created the job. I think now about how crucial you’ve been to the establishment of the whole community service-learning program. I think the role that Susan plays was developed by Susan. And without Susan, there would be no service-learning program, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. We owe you an incredible debt of appreciation and appreciation.”

      Donna Connolly, an Assumption alumnus, runs the Collegiate Success Institute, in which local colleges and companies pair off with particular high schools. Assumption students pair with employees of Hanover Insurance to teach after-school classes on the worlds of college and the workplace beyond. Susan oversaw every aspect. 

     “Susan, it was always important to you that wanted to get students in a comfortable space and made sure access to computers,” said Connolly. “You wanted to make sure those students were fed well when they came on campus.” 

     Several professors recalled how Susan helped them turn their pedagogical vision into a reality; sometimes she even accompanied the professor on a visit to the agency. One such prof, Dr. David Crowley, said that his biology class’s partnership with Community Harvest provided “one of my most memorable teaching experiences [and] really helped our science faculty become excited about going out into the community.”

     Even though Susan didn’t get to teach a course at Assumption, she did teach students a thing or two, both in volunteer training appearances and in supervising work-studies in the CSL office. Tom Angell worked for Susan for three years. Tom, now in his first year as a history teacher in Shrewsbury, found himself jotting down key words from other people’s remarks before it was his turn. One of those words was “mentor,” and another was “office space.” 

     “That office was definitely more than just an office. We had a lot of amazing talks about llife and the world. It wasn’t just going to work, it was, ‘Oh, I’ve got to see Susan!’ My friends were like, ‘Who is this Susan? Who is this person you’re always going off to see?’ Many of my friends didn’t have the same experience in their work studies.”  

     One measure of this connection, even now, was that Tom lingered after the reception was over so he could have yet another treasured with Susan.

     Of course, the departure of Susan Hayes doesn’t mean she’s done with community service or with making a positive impact on people’s lives. She will continue at Ascentria Care Alliance, where, in addition to administrative duties, she’s served as a caseworker. Among her many service commitments is her work with the Interfaith Hospitality Network, where she serves on the advisory board alongside another member of the  Assumption community.

     “In our last board meeting earlier this week,” Dr. Jim Lang said, “she announced that her congregation is making one of the biggest donations we have ever received from a congregation. I’m sure that was due in large part to the energy and commitment Susan brought to keeping her congregation involved.” 

     As for the star of the gathering, Susan Hayes marveled at the refreshing change that came with a job that combined higher education and serving others. 

     “The faculty have been so inspiring and I loved just being around the higher ed environment,” Susan said. “I’ve loved the conversations that either I’ve had or overheard, the energy I get being in higher education, and the excitement of the partnerships that come together. I’ve been happy to share that with you, and it’s because of your work that I was able form those partnerships out in the community.” 

     Even though Susan had been involved in community service before, the educational context provided a new dimension. 

     “Before, it was just service,” she said. “I wish everyone could take a service-learning course because it changes you – especially when you add that learning component.”

Scott Hayman, left, with Lionel Romaine

Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to be speak as part of a panel of colleagues who, one way or the other, promote community service on the Assumption College campus.

Struggling to find an intriguing thought that could frame my own presentation, my friend Scott Hayman came to mind. That figures. Leave it to a poet to figure out how to bring themes of community together.

In fact, he considers community itself to be a poem.

“A good poem is living and breathing, and has multiple perspectives and multiple contributors, and is really quite dynamic,” he told me during an interview back in 2014. “And there is a form, but within that form, there is everything in the world that could happen.

“And the way you approach a poem involves a covenant in that you’re not going to just read it, that it’s not a one-way street, but a two-way street. That’s definitely what community is all about.”

Meanwhile, the phrase most relevant to my recent presentation concerned how, when he worked with a clearinghouse program charged with collecting furniture for the less fortunate, he became a little too stressed with the surface goal. Finally his supervisor had a word with him.

“He told me, ‘You know, Scott, it’s not just about the sofas,’ ” he said with a soft laugh. His supervisor went on to explain that their altruistic enterprise was also about all the relationships being built through the effort – including friendships that would be there for him decades later.

“This act of gathering stuff from some people and giving it to other people is breaking down barriers in a whole variety of ways.”

ACE staffer Tereza takes her turn on the runway. (Photo by Rose Wine Photography.)

During my presentation a few weeks ago, I used the “sofa” metaphor to describe how any act of service hopefully has not just the stated overt goal – which remains important – but a deeper level of community. This includes the chance to learn more about diverse kinds of people by working alongside them toward an altruistic goal.

Now, the day before Thanksgiving, it occurs to me that one thing to be thankful for as been how that community has saved me this year, time and time again.

It’s been a particularly hard and challenging fall – in the last three months, I have lost first my father, then a dear colleague, then a friend who had helped me to develop a consistent spiritual practice. But amid the hard slog of grief, I’ve found myself turning to the joy, warmth, and purpose of various service communities. On campus, there have been the inspiring examples of altruistic endeavors by colleagues, both in the form of innovative teaching and extracurricular mission opportunities.

Off campus,  there has been the work of my students at African Community Education. I’ve been blessed by ACE for five years now, ever since I showed up to volunteer as a tutor. A year later, I entered the mentoring program; I was lucky enough to be paired with Therence Nthinduka. At the time we met, Therence had only been speaking English for a year. But through his hard work and sheer intellectual curiosity, Therence was a quick learner; by the time he graduated in May, he was vice-president of the Student Council, a member of the Honors Society, and recipient of eight college acceptances. When Therence moved on to Worcester State University, his little brother Freddy took his place as my mentoring partner.

But, as with Scott’s sofas, the tutoring is only the start of the benefits of working with the ACE community. There is the inspiration, energy, warmth and joy of being with the kids themselves – and the same can be said of the staff and volunteers who keep the program going. This semester my own CSL students have experienced the benefits. One class is both tutoring and blogging for ACE; another, consisting of two CSL Minors, have joined me in team-interviewing ACE’s co-founder, Kaska Yawo.

Assumption students at the Gala: From left, Julie Craven, Maria Barrett, Morgan Maddock, Sydney Tappan, Grace Corbett, and Skyler Hesch. (Photo by David Niles.)

Many of my students went above and beyond by helping work the ACE fundraising Gala at Mechanics Hall – a joyous celebration of all things ACE, including, most importantly, the ACE students. Those kids gave speeches, they danced, they drummed – and they even strutted their stuff in a runway Fashion Show, to much applause. It was one of those nights that allowed my heart and mind to expand beyond my own troubles – into a larger community that’s given me not only as much as I’ve given, but more.

As Scott said, community, like a poem, is not just a one-way street. To enter the world of serving is to enter a covenant ourselves – to give ourselves over to a communal poem in which we actually participate, each of us changed, and for the better, by the other.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful to be part of the poem called Assumption College – and, of course,  the one called African Community Education.

Way back in the first month of the new millennium, I was a newly graduated academic on the job interview circuit, with my share of campus visits behind me. One way I sought to alleviate my anxiety was to have more than one goal for the day-long interview. Even if I didn’t get the job teaching English at Assumption College – something ultimately beyond my control – I could at least collect amusing anecdotes to tell my grad school buddies.

Enter Chris Beyers.

Chris had volunteered to lead me on my campus tour – a walk-about that came less than two hours before the most challenging part of the day, my teaching demonstration. Just a few years removed from being in my shoes, Chris took my mind off this challenge with candid, yet balanced, observations  that made the campus feel more real and thus more comfortable.

Then we entered D’Alzon Library. Back in 2000, the college was putting up portraits of various faculty holding a prop – usually a book, but sometimes something more creative. (Years later, my prop would be my dog.) Chris gestured at one such portrait. “When I get mine done,” he declared, “I will be astride a noble steed.”

Mission accomplished.

Newly relaxed, I wound up with the job, and one reward for my achievement was 19 more years of Chris Beyers witticisms. I quickly became used to Chris wandering into my office, coffee mug in hand, and launching immediately into some hypothetical puzzle he was trying to solve, often one he was about to lecture in class. It didn’t matter that I often hadn’t read the work in question; my role was to listen closely and to appreciate the sheer presence of Chris’s personality. I came to see myself – a journalist after all – as the host of an Assumption version of The Today Show, and Chris as some fabulously witty guest from Broadway. (Nathan Lane often came to mind.)  When he left – usually shortly before walking across campus with that same mug of coffee, which somehow he never spilled – I felt blessed to be in a profession that put me in the presence of people as wise and witty as Chris Beyers.

Later the talk-show roles would be reversed. Our campus used to have occasional happy hour gatherings in one of the science labs – there were refrigerators there – and when the diligent hosts stepped aside, Chris filled that void. Not only did he take time to order beverages for the occasion – including craft root beer – but he also came with hypothetical questions to pose to whomever came, just to stir up interesting conversation and keep us from falling into the usual shop talk and departmental cliques.

I think of all those stories, and so many more, these days because Chris Beyers is gone, dying unexpectedly. My sympathy and that of our department goes out most to his son Will, a sophomore at Assumption. Meanwhile, his colleagues and students are left in shock and sadness; less than three months ago, Chris and I were at a local jazz club, listening to Peruvian jazz guitarist Carlos Odria, with me enjoying the observations of the colleague who always had jazz in heavy rotation in his office.

Now, inexplicably, an inspiring colleague and beloved friend is gone.

All this said, those who know Chris might be surprised that he’s appearing in a blog dedicated to community service. After all, Chris wasn’t exactly a “Cumbayah” kind of guy. As far as I cold tell, My friend’s interest in group-building activities didn’t extend much beyond coaching his son’s soccer team. Mission trips? He would’ve resisted the emotional bonding, and the  nightly reflections about feel-good moments of connection was something he probably would’ve challenged at times, making students situate their experience in a deeper social context. While he respected experiential learning, he often argued on behalf of the shy but engaged students who didn’t want to do “active learning” – who wanted to quietly absorb readings and lectures without jumping through the hoops of classroom activities hoops like seals at a public aquarium. (And, yes, Chris would’ve made that observation more crisply, and thus more witty.)

But Chris’s life represents the kind of service that is often overlooked in all the photo opps and feel-good stories of volunteerism.

For they also serve who work alone.

Take Fresh Assumptions, a Chris Beyers invention. The annual review featured the best work by first-year student writers – giving them, at age 18 or 19, an essay published in an actual book. In one sense, this was a communal enterprise that touched many a life. But what impressed me most was the solitary nature of the labor. When everyone else’s role was done, Chris was the one who had to edit the prose without robbing a student of her or his voice. He had to lay out the pages. He ultimately had to create the book, get it to the publisher – and get the books into the hands of the students-turned-authors. Chris was as private as I was public, but he proved time after time that they were two ways to the same goal.

I saw that pattern repeated many times with the kind of work Chris volunteered for over the years at Assumption. So, sure, service – along with teaching and research – are the three areas in which tenure or tenure-track professors are evaluated. But there is a huge difference in the degrees of service that professors do. Chris probably tackled more than most, and he seemed drawn to work that involved championing those with less power. He helped students with his creation of opportunities to serve as Writing Fellows – and even his challenging interviewing of students at the English Department Senior Colloquium were aimed to make them smarter and, ultimately, more confident going out onto the job market. He also consistently spoke with both sensitivity and passion for faculty who were either part-time or full-timers striving to negotiate the perilous path to tenure. The latter, of course, meant Chris was poring over what had to be hundreds of pages of documents of almost everyone going up for tenure and/or promotion in a given academic year. He extended the same compassion to fictional characters, delineating in detail the predicaments of people marginalized by race, sexism, or disability.

Chris’s willingness to serve was also reflected in the wide range of courses he’d agree to teach.

This came up the same week his colleagues learned of his death, as we evaluated how we could compensate for the loss of his versatility. Meanwhile, toiling in my own office to craft midterm exam questions, I had to fight the reflex to run them by Chris, just as I also felt the urge to stop by for more general insights, some about things scholastic, some about other matters equally engaging and sometimes entertaining. When the talk shifted to my own writing, he sometimes would urge me to stick with my own writerly voice, showing his poet’s ear.

The rhetoric of community service-learning and volunteerism in general often ignores the deep kind of service that unfolds in the jobs we are paid to do. There’s just getting by, or using cynicism as an excuse for not doing one’s share – and then the kind of service that occurs when a person goes above and beyond the call, month after month, year after year.

Whether boisterously making an argument in a meeting or in his quiet labors in the solitude of his office, Chris was that kind of person – making the most of his own gifts, putting them in the service of both colleagues and students.

For so many of us these days, the gift we miss the most is, of course, the gift of his presence. But his voice, and his example, will be with me always.

Most mornings when I manage to write, I do so to the tune of the Soundscapes Channel on my television.

Well, to be truthful, the meditative music on Soundscapes often seems to barely have a tune at all; its very appeal is its lack of melodic busy-ness, the refusal to insist that you pay the music any attention at all.

Only, since it’s TV, there are slides, and the slides include inspirational quotes. I seldom write them down; I’d never write any of my own words if I did. But I made an exception a month ago with a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Every man,” Rev. King stated, “must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

“Creative altruism”: The tension between those words intrigued me. In one of my earlier lives, I’d left Alabama – and a life filled with volunteer obligations – for a creative writing program. Wary of the threat of my extrovert tendencies posed for any kind of solitary writerly endeavor, I shirked volunteerism as if altruism itself existed in opposition to creativity.

Of course, I came to know better: Service can involve a wide range of creative and even ingenious acts. Still, for the last few months, I haven’t been sure what to do with the quotation from MLK, even though it reminded of its existence every time I scrolled to the bottom of the word document I use as my writing journal.

Then came Lisa Pastille. Lisa is the sister of the late Professor Catherine Pastille, one of our most creative practitioners of community service-learning at Assumption College. Lisa saw my recent blog about Catherine here at Serving … the Story, and I was blessed to read two emails from Lisa afterward.

Lisa noted how her sister thrived when she merged business expertise with community service, putting her students to work for real-life customers.

As Lisa put it, “Assumption made it possible for her to express herself and her passions.” The result, Lisa said, was like “plugging a wire into an outlet.”

Lisa, an artist herself, was reminding me of my earlier life lesson: That the obligations of community service don’t exist in opposition to the creative life. Instead, service itself is an energizing form of self-expression.

And when teachers use service-learning in the classroom, we’re expressing several things  at once: Our need to design learning experiences that might make a difference in their lives decades after they graduate, our passion about fostering awareness of community needs and issues, our commitment to imaginative teaching that sets aside the safety of old classroom for something more adventurous – because that, after all, is what creativity, and altruism, are so often about.

Catherine Pastille with African Community Education’s Kaska Yawo and student Lauren Cranston.

When Catherine Pastille came to teach Management at Assumption College in 2012, she didn’t waste any time applying the principles of community service-learning to her coursework. Even though Catherine was new to Worcester, she began forming CSL partnerships in the community as soon as she arrived, leading to CSL components in two courses and four total sections in her first year.

Her Management 311 course emphasized the need for students to actually experience Corporate Social Responsibility: “By working alongside professionals from corporations that take their responsibility to the community seriously,” Catherine wrote, “students are able to see how modern organizations strategically integrate their service to the community and their responsibilities to the natural environment into their everyday work life.”

The one I experienced directly, however, was her Management 100 students boldly taking on the planning and execution of a College Access Day for kids from African Community Education, an organization devoted to helping African refugees and other immigrants close the educational gap they encounter in adapting to an English-speaking school system and myriad other challenges.

Enjoying lunch amid the ACE College Access Day.

In the process, Catherine Pastille created plenty of challenges for herself and her students – one can easily imagine every logistical hitch that can arise in transporting a busload of kids to a college campus, moving them through every phase of a campus visit, and getting them home again. Especially when part of the challenge is giving one’s students space to do as much of the planning, execution, and critiquing as possible … yet students and professor teamed to facilitate a great day for refugee children, helping expand their vision of future possibilities in their new country. (You can read more about that extraordinary day in an earlier blog about the occasion.)

Sadly, the Assumption community lost this innovative and altruistic teacher and colleague this June after a long illness. So this morning I find myself launching the revival of Serving the Story by writing about her. I’m even reading the grant applications and syllabi from Catherine’s CSL courses – so bold and ambitious, the mark of a fearless teacher with a broad vision.

Of course, as I read what she wrote and scan the photos, I feel the sadness of what the Community Service-Learning Program and Assumption College as a whole lost with her passing. But my heart is warmed by memories of Catherine moving through all the steps of that day with a bemused grin, teaching her students how to navigate all the unknowns with a well-struck balance of serious focus and a sense of humor – and, in the process, help our students farther down the path to being mature, confident professionals and altruistic, empathetic citizens.

We will continue to miss Catherine Pastille – but we’ll continue to be inspired by her example.

One of Catherine’s students enjoying a visit with one of ACE’s.

In Tempest Williams country: The Bryce Canyon I beheld in June.

When I hiked through the spectacular desert landscapes of Utah last year, I can remember where I was for so many things. That when the sun rose on my trip’s second day, I was standing on an observation point at Bryce Canyon – absorbing the way the ghostly hoodoo towers materialized from grey shadows into their sandy orange of their daytime selves. I remember that the very next morning, I was working my way along a narrow ledge path, fighting my fear of heights long enough to see the Delicate Arch up close and person, then working my way back down, back to the stone wall. Then there was the third day, the white-water rafting down the Colorado River, reddish cliffs rising in  the distance in almost every direction.

But I don’t remember where, or when, it was that I picked up Terry Tempest Williams and took her along for the ride. I reckon it was some National Park gift shop or the other, either at Zion or Bryce, Arches or Canyonlands. Anyway, somehow, someway, I grabbed An Unspoken Hunger, the fine essay collection that, since I was too busy enjoying Utah through direct experience, I wound up saving for another grey winter in congested Worcester, Massachusetts, clear across the country from the sweepingly open homeland that the author invokes so vividly, I feel like I’m there instead.

I reveled in what I read. Tempest Williams writes of nature with a hypnotic blend of lyricism and practicality, writing about the people of the West – including Abbey and Georgia O’Keefe – with almost as much vividness as she does nature herself. There’s meditativeness and there’s mirth, reverence and irreverence. There is a haunting weaving of mythology – sometimes Native American, sometimes Greek – that suggests a visionary imagination. A biologist by training, she clearly knows her natural science, but her soul feels more like that of a poet.

But I write about Terry Tempest Williams here – in a blog focused on community service and related issues – for still another reason. Even as Dave Eggers – the writer I featured in my last blog – turned to helping start an imaginative tutoring center in San Francisco, Terry Tempest Williams has turned both her words and actions to social issues. Some causes, of course, are painfully personal. Her 1991 memoir – Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place – included the essay “The Clan of One-Breasted Women,” exploring the possibility that the high incidence of cancer in her family is the result of living downwind from nuclear weapon tests in Utah. But she’s journeyed east to D.C. at different times to protest in public and to testify before Congress itself, and – journeying even farther from home – worked as an artist in war-torn Rwanda.

No matter how deep one’s convictions run, the life of the activist and advocate requires spiritual renewal. As Tempest Williams herself puts it, “Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.” If you feel in such a reminder these days, turn to the beauty of nature, and wildness, and art, that I just discovered in An Unspoken Hunger.

Terry Tempest Williams in the land she loves. (Photo: Cheryl Himmelstein.)

Dave Eggers, writer and advocate. (Photo from Huffington Post.)

One stereotype of authors is that, more than anything, they want to be left alone. There’s a profoundly individualistic side of the craft – a deep need for the flexibility of schedule that allows them to play out the conversations in their heads, and the exacting work of shaping those conversations into something of lasting creative merit. It creates a fear of distraction that makes each potential commitment to the community seem like a career-ender of a threat to one’s productivity.

Leave it to the ever-original Dave Eggers to find the flip side of the situation – one that turns writers’ need for freedom into an opportunity to serve others.

Eggers burst onto the literary scene as an author with his self-parodying memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a brilliantly self-conscious approach to storytelling in which he recounts the death of his parents within 35 days of each other and how he and his sister moved to San Francisco, where they raised their eight-year-old brother while also pursuing their own dreams as 20-somethings. But after this both moving and frequently hilarious book focused on his own family and friends, his vision expanded far beyond his own relationships or even the United States. You Shall Know Our Velocity! is a novel about two friends traveling the world trying to give away a huge amount of money, What is the What tells the story of an African refugee, Zeitoun focuses on the hardships of an Islamic family from Syria, and Surviving Justice offers interviews with the wrongfully incarcerated.

Meanwhile, during a 2014 road trip – in which I volunteered my way across the country in search of my own next cause – I came across Eggers again, in the form of his preface to a book about San Francisco’s famously activist Glide Memorial Methodist Church, where I volunteered myself. Eggers introduced Beyond the Possible by focusing on what seems impossible – living up to the church’s goal of “unconditional love” for any person who walks in the door.

In that preface, Eggers writes: “Could an individual person keep his or her own lights on, their arms and doors open, at all times?”

“It’s hard, that’s for sure. It’s really damned hard. There’s always someone who annoys us. … Wherever you are, there is someone who is unwelcome.”

Particularly, you might add, when you’re trying to write.

Yet Eggers and his fellow writers at McSweeney’s found a remarkable way to keep their own doors open to all – by opening the literary magazine’s office to children in need of tutoring. Eggers tells the story of the tutoring organization, 826 Valencia, in a TED talk that, like so much of his writing, uses his quirky imagination and outright hilarity to move and inspire. Of course, the subject matter is intrinsically amusing and inspiring: 826 Valencia combines a tutoring center and the magazine office with a pirate supply store “for the working buccaneer.” (The latter because, as it turned out, real estate zoning required them to sell something.)

Since its start, 826 Valencia has inspired similar centers from coast to coast – the Brooklyn version includes a crime-fighters supply store with a “capery”, and the Los Angeles version offers a time travel quickie mart. Eggers stresses the local leadership of all these places, but what they all have in common is the merging of the adult writer and school children, who even generate their own books. Underlying the entire project seems to be a deep and abiding belief in the power of the imagination. Ironically, one of the things that make it possible is that due to their flexible schedules, creative types locked into individualistic pursuits are the most available to help future generations of writers and artists.

I urge anyone interested in education or community-building – or anyone who loves the life of the imagination or even just a good laugh – to check out Eggers’ TED talk, as well as my previous blog on Eggers and Glide As well as deeply consider the challenge Eggers makes to his audience at the end of his TED talk – to reach out to our own local schools and ask how we can help.

Once you embark on any endeavor to serve others, there are almost always unexpected opportunities to make a difference for some people – or, in the case of a dozen state troopers from Massachusetts sent to Puerto Rico, some dogs.

Some storm-surviving canines were fed by the state troopers, and eventually found their way to a Sterling animal shelter recently for adoption. See the story – and of course plenty of dog pictures in the Worcester Telegram.

Meanwhile, even as this commendable act of kindness unfolded, a more sobering article details the recent federal aid package for Puerto Rico, as well as how far it falls short, in the February 8th The New York Times.

The fact that, 12 years after Hurricane Katrina, we’re still paying aid in Louisiana is just one indication that we can’t afford to forget these disasters once they fall out of our daily news cycle.