The Pendulum Swings

After three pleasant weeks spent in Lafayette, Louisiana rebuilding a flooded Boys and Girls club, Delta One was redeployed to Albany, Georgia for immediate response to the tornado that struck the city. We'll have completed our second week here this Sunday and are slated to remain until mid-March. A tornado disaster looks quite different from floods, but the end result is similar, or at least it is here. Albany is a very poor city, and many people lost what modest livelihood they had with little or no immediate recourse other than the generosity of fellow citizens who were fortunate enough to have escaped storm damage.

In support of the relief effort, our team is again working in a warehouse like we did for two months in Baton Rouge, though it is quite a bit different from our previous experience. The disaster is different, the community is different, the volunteers running the relief and recovery effort are from different walks of life – and we ourselves are not the same as we were on our first deployment six months ago.

We've had a little more contact with the affected community this time around, though not as much as I might like. I understand logically the benefit of what we're doing in the warehouse, but it is very difficult for me to really feel for what these people are going through without meeting them and listening to them tell their stories. That's why, though I still really wish we had more time in the field, I was very happy to have spent just one afternoon out in the community with my teammate Carlos and two volunteers from the warehouse.

There was a large, mainly Hispanic trailer park community in Albany that was especially hard hit during the storm. There were many deaths there but because the people who died were undocumented and not citizens, the loss of their lives was not counted in the official reports. Now many of the survivors in Albany are hiding from representatives of the official relief efforts for fear of deportation. There are a number of community leaders who are trying to seek them out to give them basic aid like food, hygiene products, clothing and cleaning supplies for the remaining trailers which are now drastically overloaded after those with intact roofs took in those whose homes may be wrapped around a tree. The two volunteers at our warehouse took it upon themselves to do the same as we are a hub for donation reception and distribution around the city and uniquely positioned to help any and all who may be in need of assistance.

Carlos and I were asked to come along that day because our team leader had informed these volunteers that we spoke Spanish. I tried to make it clear that while Carlos is fluently bilingual, I'm conversational at best and slow even at that level. They took me along anyway if for no other purpose than to pick heavy things up and put them down, but it quickly became clear that my presence would make very little difference to the outcome of the day. Carlos could translate and communicate perfectly well on his own, and the volunteers' knowledge of their native city combined with Carlos' knowledge of Hispanic communities as the three put together the pieces in this quest to find a people in hiding. It was thrilling to watch their minds work at the puzzle in real time – but what really struck me was how big the hearts were of the two women volunteers who took this humanitarian quest upon themselves. One is a stay at home mom, another an eighteen-year-old high school senior. Both have, like so many others we've met here, dropped their plans and given most if not all of their leisure time or even quit their jobs in the last month to help out not only freely but endlessly cheerfully as well. It doesn't matter where you stand on immigration policy, the financial particulars of disaster management or the politics of poverty; these people and others have taught me that sometimes the right thing to do is to put societal restraints on hold or even to go far, far out of your way to break societal barriers in order to show human compassion to real people in need.

This, happily, is the common thread that binds all three disasters I've personally had experience with, as well as others that I've heard about: when a community that has long been at odds over issues of politics, race, religion, immigration, crime, or economic disparity is literally torn apart by insurmountable forces of nature and shocked back to its most basic core of urgent human need – then the healing of these deep societal issues tends to follow the stitches sewn by neighbors helping neighbors at the basest level by offering food, shelter, clothing, medical supplies and their own time or the sweat of their backs in an all out effort to comfort one another in the wake of overwhelming loss. Towns and cities are broken and remade stronger than they were before.

I can freely admit now that emphatic moments like these where I really understand the meaning of the work I'm doing and so commit to doing it cheerfully, wholeheartedly and with every ounce of will I have are very few and far between. Personal pride in a job well done, fear of letting others down and a work ethic instilled by good parenting fill the gaps when passion ebbs, but a drive fueled by primarily internal reasons can only go so far. I've reached those limitations before in college, and have again this year in a much more emotional connotation.

I envy those who seem to have compassion written like an unspoken law on their hearts, for whom every difficult day is fueled by a genuine desire to make someone else's day better. I'm sure in reality that the people I view as paragons of compassion have their darker moments, and that I'm catching a glimpse of flawed people in their finest hours – achievable examples of what it means to be a good person. But their undeniable personal causation seems to stretch their finest hours to last weeks, months, years – and lifetimes.

A volunteer at the warehouse said today that service is negligible when you enjoy it. It's only really service when you're doing something you don't want to do, that is difficult or unpleasant for you but you do it cheerfully because you really want to help someone. I don't know if I agree with that. An author in a compelling book I read a long time ago said that when a person is trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing with their lives, they should not be asking what the world needs, but what makes them feel alive – because what the world needs is people who have truly come alive.

God gives us all talents and gifts that we should use for the betterment of others. Many of these gifts we may really enjoy using. A person with a gift for connecting with children can revel in the mutual joy of those special connections, and someone may enjoy simply sharing the gift of youth and good health to help an elderly neighbor do yard work or repair their home. But on the other side of the spectrum, someone may have been given the capacity for leadership and though they have a family, a business and children of their own that they'd rather spend time with - they may work long, hard hours using that gift to organize a sprawling relief organization in their city's hour of need. They may get up tired early each morning and go to bed late every night after hardly a static moment during days of fending off questions, requests, arguments and endless logistics until they're so drained they can hardly talk with their own children at day's end – but through the pain and struggle of each day, they gain a deep satisfaction because they truly care about who they're doing for and they know that day they lived to their fullest potential on behalf of another human being

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I suppose to be really, truly alive then is to be open to feeling the heights of joy and ease at some points of life and the depths of pain and struggle at others. But I believe that the struggles and even the joys are meaningless if lived only for oneself. At its core, that's what this year has been about for me – trying to learn how to live beyond myself from those who already know the secret. A friend once described volunteering as a selfish selflessness, and it's true. For all it might look like I have given on paper, I've received far more than I ever could have imagined, even when my reasons for working aren't always what they ideally should be. I can only imagine how much more rewarding it must be to serve when you've reached the point in your heart where selflessness on behalf of another person is in itself already it's own reward.

As always, thanks for following along! Til next time,

-Danny