(Embarrassingly, it took this First Things piece to make me realize I'd never posted this blog entry...But honest, I was thinking about that piece of music in mid-February, though not as thoughtfully as Stephen Webb).
A few years ago, I happened to be sitting next to my
favorite Catholic Communist at a university event. One of the speakers was a
young woman who shared her experience doing service work in Central America and
noted how very, very lucky she felt when she got home and got in her hot
shower—a sharp contrast with the reality of the people she’d met. My friend and
I looked at each other and sighed --and then had a vigorous discussion about
the problem with her attitude. Because it is the thing we both hate about
service work. To be clear: I think service work is a good thing; even a great
thing. I’d dare say even a necessary
thing. Many people do it beautifully and sincerely. But too often, it is
undertaken or encouraged in a spirit that is antithetical to the task: It
easily becomes a sort of Post-Modern neocolonialism. Oh, look at these poor
people! They have nothing. We, on the other hand, are fat and rich and happy.
We will go and help these poor people with all our money and talents: they will
learn from us. And we will remember how good we have it back home when we
return. A win-win: how good we are, and enlightened, too! At the end, we get to
come home and live our regular lives, feeling even more smug and
self-contented. (Though this recent post really took down the voluntourism
phenomenon, in a pretty rough way: http://pippabiddle.com/2014/02/18/the-problem-with-little-white-girls-and-boys/.
She’s on to something, though I’d say Pippa misses something, too).
Another story: When
I was living at home about fifteen years ago, my father got hold of a CD. It’s
Gavin Bryars’ recording of “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” and it features a
recording of a homeless man singing that line repeatedly to instrumentation. It
moves me to sobbing tears every time I listen to it. Music has a power to touch
the soul that is impossible to explain, and I won’t try to penetrate its
mystery fully. But I know that part of what moved me was the fact of this poor
homeless man singing this song of praise and gratitude—a praise and gratitude
that is and was much rarer to find coming out of my lips. This man wasn’t
grateful for his home or his clothes or his accomplishments or his talents. His
gratitude was more elemental: he was grateful for his very being.
This gets to the heart of what service truly is: something I
do because I need it. Selfish me, I need to be reminded of my need to give myself by giving of
myself. I need to see people who are
truly needy and aren’t spending all day faking it so I can remember that I’m needy. Then, I get a chance to understand who I
really am. And my experience with service can become solidarity,
self-realization, and true self-giving, rather than naïve and patronizing work
which may or may not really help the people I set out to serve. The more deeply I realize my need, the more I
can give myself truly.
The most extreme and beautiful case of this awareness is a
place in Kampala, where women afflicted with AIDS live with a tremendous hope:
a hope that is visible in their approach to life. I learned that these women,
sick with HIV and poor themselves, had taken on extra work to make money to
send to the Katrina Victims. And I thought, how lucky these women are! To see
the world through the lens of their own need and their own gratitude without
polluting influences. I’d like to go there and learn to live like that. Because it’s what I need.
Here’s the trailer to a documentary made on the life and
hope of these women in Kampala: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfhAGscOam0
This is why our SoC tries to read a bit of Giussani's piece on charitable work before we go make our meal for the women at the shelter--- it's too easy to make charitable work and volunteer and service work into a feel-good exercise.
ReplyDeleteGreat observations, Becca. The fact that the types of volunteers you describe aim to build relationships and NOT abandon work begun is what makes AVSI so unique in their "service work." Isn't it funny how we do charitable work because we need it? As you note, our human ''need'' is an ironic combination of giving of oneself to both give and to receive--but I think it's receiving in a different, more pure, unselfish way than what our common conception of what it means to receive.
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