Get Your Service On!

Today Four and I spent the morning pruning roses at the Mission with about fifty other volunteers, most of whom were gratifyingly much older than me and kept calling us both ‘young lady’. It was a remarkably civilised affair despite the fact that they were serving coffee and donuts rather than tea and biscuits (I honestly don’t know what the world is coming to!) and we enjoyed not only the activity itself – Four being a keen botanist and collector of blooms – but also the community spirit and the feeling that we were actually helping to make something beautiful happen.

My parents were not much for local volunteering, unless it was to pop across the road for a bottle of wine and a packet of crisps before the evening news, so I did not grow up in an atmosphere of peaceful community giving.  They were, however, South African political exiles, thrown out of their country by an apartheid government for standing up against a brutal, racist regime, so we did go on plenty of lengthy, cold, loud, angry demonstrations where I and my other kiddie friends had to hold heavy signs for a very long time and shout slogans that we didn’t really understand.
I loathed it.
In retrospect, I am extremely proud of those formative experiences – not many can claim to be taken by their dad to see The Clash at the Rock against Racism rally on the back of a bicycle – but back then, and for quite some time afterwards, I shuddered at the thought of any group effort for change.This was before I was a grownup, though, or as Four said to me today:
“Back in the olden days, when you were young..”

I was in South Africa with my mother, no longer an exile, when Barack Obama won the election.  It moved us both to tears to see how different the world is now from the olden days when she was young.
And although many things are changing for the worse (global warming, the economy, the state of my wardrobe), a lot of things are changing for the better.
These include my attitude towards volunteering.

So, inspired in different ways and not necessarily equal parts by the new President-Elect, the Rose Garden, Hungry Timothy, the incorruptible belief in truth and beauty of Four and One, and my vague sense of shame at how I’ve done pretty much bugger all on this level in the past except lecture other people, I am going to pitch in and do some serious putting my money, or rather my time and effort, where my heart is.

In answer to Barack Obama’s “Call to service to create the change we want to see”, on Monday January 19^th 2009, Martin Luther King Day, I am going to volunteer at my local food bank. In fact the whole fan-damily is going to come along.
We’re going to Renew America Together!
(Well, not just us, obviously, even though we are a splendid bunch.)

 Ahh. That feels better.

 Oh wait.

Now that my sense of shame is gone, (so easily done! Marvellous!)  I’m going to go back to telling everybody what to do:
 

Answer the call.              Volunteer.             Start next week on MLK Day.

                      Go to www.usaservice.org/
 

There are thousands of events at a myriad of locations all over the country. 
You can even host one!
It’s very cool, very easy, and it makes you feel, if not presidential, then at least slightly noble, very good about yourself, and that change might actually be possible.

 Go on, get your service on!

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