Learning from other people's stories

At the Unitarian church my family attends, this past Sunday was the special day that the first graders receive their Bibles – illustrated versions designed especially for kids their age. 

The minister addressed in very simple terms the relevance of the Bible to the Unitarian Universalist faith, which has no written creed. She told them that the Bible contains stories about things that happened to people in the past and stories about how people lived. She explained that unlike some faiths, Unitarians don’t see the Bible as an instructional manual telling us what to do but rather a reference for us to learn about choices and actions committed to by other people.

It occurred to me as she explained it that this is really the value of almost all stories, whether fiction or nonfiction. I have often thought that biographies, memoirs and novels generally have far more impact than self-help books on readers like me. In a way, it’s a bit of a paradox. In order to make compelling literature, each character – whether actual, historical or fictional – needs to have a unique story. 

And yet in order to have meaning, stories must be universal, must have some element that resonates with any reader. So the goal of good story-telling, fictional or nonfictional, is to be able to home in on these universal elements while also telling a story we haven’t heard before in just those same words or under just those same circumstances or with just that same outcome.

My father, who taught English for 40 years, recently told me about a high school junior who marveled over a character in a novel she was reading for class, “That’s just how I feel! But I didn’t know anyone else felt that way!” My father told me that to him, she seemed a little bit old to be making this discovery for the first time; most readers discern this aspect of literature when they are still children. But in fact, most readers have this experience again and again, and for some of us it feels new each time.

When I interview article subjects or memoir clients, I look for what is unique in their story but also what will resonate most with readers. Unsympathetic characters are just less interesting than those with whom we have some small element, however small, in common. As our minister said, Bible stories tell us what happened – whether historically accurate or not – to other people and give us ideas about how to live (or how not to live) our own lives. So do novels, biographies, and memoirs. From each person’s experience, we derive common experiences. And from each character’s lessons, be they fictional or nonfictional, we all learn.

David, Goliath and me

It was my turn to teach Sunday school, and according to the syllabus, we’d reached the story of David and Goliath, whom I admit I have generally tended to confuse with Samson and Delilah. One of the best reasons to teach Sunday school is that it compels me to acquaint myself with material that I should already know. After a few hours of preparation for the class, I felt familiar with the basic details of the story.

But the best-laid plans, and all that. At our church, attendance fluctuates throughout the year. While we all love the tenets of religious freedom that govern the UU faith, those same tenets give many families the assurance that soccer, baseball and birthday parties are all good reasons to miss church. And Carlisle is a town full of skiers, so the pews empty out noticeably after Christmas, even on a low-snow year like this one.

When the director of religious education and I had a look at who actually showed up for church yesterday, we did some quick juggling. Only one of my anticipated six to eight members of the grades 3-5 class had appeared, whereas seven from the grades K-2 group were in attendance. It was decided on the spot that I would instead teach David and Goliath to this younger group.

I was a little disappointed. I’d put a lot of time into planning this class, and hit a number of minor obstacles along the way. Earlier in the week, the Director of Religious Education had suggested that I have the kids act the story out. She happens to be someone who loves theater and has had great success with putting kids on stage. I, on the other hand, couldn’t quite imagine urging a group of seven- and eight-year-olds to pretend to slay each other with slingshots. Our progressive textbook wasn’t much help either; the exercise the teacher’s manual recommended for helping the kids to imagine a giant like Goliath was to ask the tallest man in church to come to our classroom, lie down on a piece of paper, and let the kids trace his body. All I could picture was Gulliver’s Travels, with my eight tiny charges swarming over the poor man. And the fact that I’m currently reading a novel about the priest sex abuse scandal – a novel that happens to revolve around a false charge – gave me all the more reason to think having my students run over a church member with crayons was not the best lesson plan.

Instead, I decided to base the class on group discussion. First I mentioned that we hadn’t had a class in several weeks, due to the Christmas pageant and the holidays, and did anyone want to share a memory from their holidays or their vacation? Yes, all eight of them wanted to share something. All the boys recited the names of the electronics they’d received for Christmas; all the girls listed which relatives had stayed with them during the holidays. I now know that Carlisle houses were full of video games and grandmothers during vacation week.

Then I read them a version of the David and Goliath story and asked what they thought the life lesson it contained might be. “Don’t throw a rock at anyone because you might kill them,” said one student.

I agreed that this was an important and interesting aspect to the story, but what else? We talked about the concept that being smaller than other contenders doesn’t mean you are intrinsically unfit for a task: sometimes, as in David’s case, having faith and courage compensates for lack of might. I asked them for examples of times their abilities were underestimated because of their small stature. Two of the boys shared stories of turning out to be much better at football than their older brothers expected them to be. I asked if any of the kids who had younger siblings had themselves ever underestimated a younger and smaller child’s abilities. A girl told the story of the time she closed the door to her room, thinking it meant she’d have privacy, only to have her two-year-old brother break the knob to make his way in.

Before dismissing the class, I emphasized that the important thing about the story for our purposes was not that a large soldier could be felled by a rock catapulted from a slingshot but that faith and courage sometimes matter more than age, size and strength. “That’s what I think about driving!” agreed one of the boys. “My parents won’t let me drive, but I just know I could do it! I just need to keep begging until they see I’m not too small.”

I didn’t have time to explain that wasn’t quite the same principle. I’m the first to admit I’m not that great a Sunday school teacher, but during ski season, I’m often the best my church has to offer. And at least I can recycle the same lesson plan in another few weeks when the third through fifth graders filter back to church. I still don’t think I’m ready to try the trace-the-tall-guy exercise. But I’ve got the story straight in my own mind now and won’t confuse David with Delilah again.

Although perhaps to underscore the Biblical connections among the stories, we could get the woman with the longest hair at church to come to Sunday school so that we could trace her while we discussed whether faith and courage are enough to win a small child the right to drive the family car.

Pausing

Our church service yesterday morning focused on the theme of taking time to pause and concentrate and absorb. We sang a hymn I hadn’t heard before about the need to behave like cows and sheep, standing in the fields watching and thinking. Our student minister read the well-known poem by Mary Oliver in which she describes spending a whole afternoon contemplating a grasshopper. And in the sermon, our minister described a classroom method biologist Louis Aggasiz practiced at Harvard in which students were required to stare at dead fish for days on end and describe it in detail, only to discover time after time how very little detail they were actually absorbing.

This was good for me to hear. I hadn’t been to church for several weeks because of other options on Sunday mornings. A couple of those weeks I’d been out of town, but other weeks I’d wanted to concentrate on other priorities: spending time with my sisters and their families when they were in town on a rare weekend visit in mid-October, going for a run with a friend another Sunday in early November and urging her to stay for a cup of coffee so that we could catch up a little bit.

So sometimes, going to church feels to me like the opposite of pausing and concentrating. Sometimes, I avoid going with the excuse that when Sunday morning comes, I just can’t rush around anymore. I rush every weekday morning to get the kids to the schoolbus on time; I hurry throughout the course of my work day; I hurry to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour; I hurry to get to bed early enough to try for seven hours of sleep. On Sunday mornings, sometimes I just need a break from hurrying – even if hurrying means something as theoretically contemplative as being at church. I need to pause at home and regroup.

But being back after several weeks away yesterday reminded me that in some ways, the only time I really can stop and concentrate is in church. I tell myself some weekends that I’ll have a leisurely, focused breakfast and maybe even read the paper, but more often than not, I eat while simultaneously unloading the dishwasher and making breakfast for the kids. I imagine going for a leisurely run instead of church, but instead I run with one eye on the clock, calculating what time I need to be done and showered in time to be on time to the next commitment.

I’m not good at pausing and concentrating, and during the holiday season this tendency for distraction only grows worse: instead of letting my mind absorb the present, I’m thinking about the next party, the next cooking project, the next holiday performance on our schedule.

So it was good to be in church yesterday morning to hear this message, and also to be able to enact it just a little bit. In church, there is nothing to do but sit and listen. I couldn’t unload a dishwasher or go for a walk even if I wanted to: it’s church. So that’s the one time of the week when I know I really will just sit still. And it was good to be reminded yesterday of what an important priority that is – at any time of year, but perhaps on the brink of the holiday season most of all.

Volunteer lessons

The kids still have more than a week of school left, counting today, but I feel as if my part of the school year is over, because my last volunteer commitment ended today. As one of two room parents for Holly’s third grade classroom, I presented the teacher with a scrapbook (ably assembled by the other room parent – a fact that should be obvious for anyone who knows me and knows what the results would look like if I were left in charge of assembling a scrapbook) and a gift card redeemable at a number of Boston restaurants.

Both of the kids had a fabulous year at school. In third and sixth grade, respectively, they learned a lot, earned impressive grades, fostered new and existing interests, bonded with teachers, and matured in their relationships with their friends. So we’ll look back on the 2010/11 school year as an overwhelmingly positive experience, for them and for us adults.

But if I am to be honest, I know I didn’t earn nearly as good grades as the kids did, even though my grades are strictly hypothetical. I took on too many of the wrong kind of roles, and in a way it put a little bit of a damper on the year for me. Not enough of a damper to keep me from being happy overall, but just enough to serve as a nearly constant reminder that I’m not always realistic about where my talents lie.

As the school year began, or even earlier, over the summer, I was already experiencing a nagging anxiety that I’d made poor choices in terms of what I’d agreed to do. Along with room parenting, I was once again coordinating the school library volunteer program. I was also heading publicity for the sixth grade Spaghetti Supper and chairing the Walk-to-School Committee, whose flagship event was a walk-to-school day in which we arrange for crossing guards, “walking car pools,” media taking pictures of walkers, and prizes for all. I’d agreed to be one of three Sunday school teachers rotating duties throughout the year and one of three church “greeters” responsible for welcoming people as they arrived on Sunday mornings. I was also leading an ad hoc committee at church intended to evaluate multiple aspects of our performance as a worship community. Late in the winter, I took on the job of heading up publicity for the spring house tour. And when June came, I was in charge of the faculty/staff appreciation luncheon. That event took place just two days ago.

It wasn’t quite the right mix of jobs for me. Even though most of these efforts came with plenty of gratitude and praise from participants and onlookers, I was grudging about several aspects of what I had to do. I’m not a good Sunday school teacher for a number of reasons. I should have recruited more help for the two publicity committees I served on. The walk-to-school day was successful but culminated with the committee essentially dissolving because we felt that our mission – to get more school-aged children to walk or bike to school, and to ensure they could do so safely -- was unworkable. Tuesday’s faculty/staff luncheon worked out well, but it would have been even better if I hadn’t been quite so hesitant in going after contributions.

So I’m ending the school year feeling a little bit worn out: not resentful of all the things I was asked to do but doubtful of my own judgment. It just seems that I need a better perspective on where my strengths lie.

Of course, some of my volunteer responsibilities worked out well. Although Holly’s teacher ribbed me at times for being such a delegator, always sending out emails to find chaperones for field trips and never actually attending a field trip myself, every classroom need was met. The library program ran smoothly, with volunteers happily covering the shifts they’d asked for. The church evaluation committee delivered a well-received report to the congregation.

But I still think there are lessons to be learned. I still think at some point I need to figure out how to be more honest with myself about what I can reasonably do and which efforts I’d be better off assisting someone else with rather than heading up myself.

And that’s fine, because I’ll have plenty of opportunities to improve on my volunteer skills. Yesterday, I agreed to coordinate next spring’s faculty/staff luncheon; while it’s still all fresh in my mind, I want to think about how I can make it better. I’ll do the library volunteer scheduling again in the upcoming school year, and I’ve expressed my willingness to be a room parent again if needed.

Plus there are always new challenges. Tonight there’s a meeting of the sixth grade parents to discuss volunteer jobs for the class play. I’m trying to think about whether something different would be a good change for me: assisting rather than leading a committee, perhaps, or doing something not as closely aligned with my professional roles as publicity.

Since there’s no end of requests, there’s no end of chances for improvement. This year was a learning experience. Yes, I made some mistakes in what I agreed to take on. But I learned from them. Next year I’ll try to put experience into action.

Just being at church is grace enough

It was another one of those days when I debated with myself as to whether to go to church or not.

This is easy for Unitarian Universalists to do. Unlike in many other faiths, going to church isn’t really a requirement for us. As our covenant says, “Service is our prayer,” and many UUs take that message to heart; there are several members of our church who put in hours every month assisting with construction for Habitat for Humanity, serving at a food pantry in a neighboring town or helping out at a women’s shelter in Lowell but almost never show up at a Sunday service. And this is okay: service is our prayer, and they demonstrate exemplary Unitarian Universalist values in what they do day in and day out.

So I wasn’t so sure about showing up yesterday morning. There are plenty of Sundays every year when I’m committed to teach Sunday school, serve as entrance greeter, or both, and on those days I have no choice about getting myself to church. On mornings like yesterday, when I’m obligation-free at church, it’s easy to contemplate staying home to catch up on the Sunday papers and maybe make a pot of soup.

But I went, because in general my conscience tells me it’s okay to miss church but I have to have a reason more compelling than inertia: I have to not go because there’s something more important I plan to do at home, not just because I don’t really feel like it. And as always happens in these situations, I was so glad I went. The guest speaker, a disciple of Mary Daly, was excellent: both educational and entertaining, plus the service began with an announcement about a new hire that I was glad to know about.

But more than any element of content in the service, it’s just good to be at church. The branch of forsythia in a vase below the pulpit shimmered with a golden glow cutting a bright line through the air: a simple branch of blooms rather than the more elaborate floral arrangements we have at other times of year. (Even our flower arrangements reflect our locavore priorities these days.) The candle wax smelled soothing and old-fashioned. The soft seat cushion of the pew, the sunlight slanting in through the east windows, the occasional flutter of paper as someone opened the program or flipped through the hymnal: all soothed my spirit and reminded me of the ineffable spell of a hushed room.

It’s good to be at church because often, that’s the one time of week when I spend an hour sitting quietly and listening. I could chalk this up to the busy pace of daily life or the onslaught of stimulation from the radio, the internet, the newspaper, and real live people around me; but really it’s just that spending an hour listening isn’t something many of us do regardless of the reasons. At church I sit still and I focus on what other people are saying. One hour a week isn’t really enough, but to do that at all as a regular practice should be a priority.

As we filed into coffee hour after the service, I chatted with a long-time acquaintance from another town who was attending yesterday as a guest musician. She confessed that she never goes to church if she’s not performing, but that every time she goes, she leaves feeling intellectually stimulated and spiritually soothed.

I do too, and that’s why I need to keep making it a priority as many Sundays as possible. As Woody Allen said about life, a lot of what you get out of church happens just from showing up, and I’m always glad when I do.

Doing church

Although my parents and I practice the same religion – Unitarian Universalism – and live next door to each other, we attend different churches. They are members of First Parish in Concord; I go to the First Religious Society in Carlisle.

Last month, my father invited me to attend church with them because he wanted me to hear the student minister. Due to an impending snowstorm, however, the student minister was absent and a different minister gave the sermon. Afterwards, my father apologized for encouraging me to attend, though no apology was needed and the circumstances were clearly well beyond his control.

“That’s okay,” I answered at the time. “No matter what the service is like, any time you attend church, you feel better having gone than you would if you didn’t go.”

I thought of that again yesterday morning back at FRS in Carlisle as I sat in the pew waiting for the service to begin. “I have a lot to do, but at least I’ll have the benefit of knowing I ‘did’ church,” I told myself, and then wondered just what sentiment lay beyond that somewhat senseless thought. It was as if for a moment I caught myself believing that going to church is like going to the dentist: you leave after an hour with a tangible reward – such as freshly polished teeth – that no one could dispute you are the better for having, regardless of how the hour itself went.

But church isn’t actually like that, I reminded myself. It’s not like that at all, in fact. I’m not leaving with the benefit of a good teeth cleaning. I can’t prove that there’s actually any aspect of my life at all that I’ve improved by having attended church this morning. So why do I feel like there is, and why did I say to Dad that one always feels better if one attends church than doesn’t?

After all, we’re Unitarians. Church attendance is not part of our creed. We can attend services, or we can stay home and read Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gandhi, or we can write poetry, or we can go for a walk – none of those puts us on weaker footing than any other choice as far as our standing as Unitarian Universalists.

And yet someone there’s no question in my mind that a simple one-hour visit to church on Sunday mornings makes a positive difference that staying home would not. Just being in a community of other church-goers is stimulating. We greet each other; we hear each other’s personal updates – health, visitors, travel – we push ourselves to reach out to those we feel less comfortable around. There’s music at church that I wouldn’t play at home. There are reminders about community activities, but also about problematic world events that I know I should be thinking about even if I stay home on a Sunday morning but, in reality, might not. There are words of wisdom, insight, or provocation in the sermon, words and ideas I might not have sought out if I were alone with a choice of what to read.

Sometimes as the service is starting, I indulge in a sullen mood. “I could be at home right now,” I think to myself. “I don’t know why I bothered to come in. There are all kinds of ways to learn and grow, intellectually and spiritually; I could have stayed at home and read, rather than going to the effort of getting myself here to church.”

But the feeling always passes within the first few minutes of the service, because I know intuitively that what I told my father is true for me. Regardless of the content of the sermon – and most sermons are great, including the one I heard yesterday, but every church community has the “off” day now and then – I’m a better person after an hour of worship than I was before. It may not be as quantifiable as going to the dentist, but it’s something that on some level I can’t dispute. At church, quite simply, we reach beyond ourselves. And I think it’s that stretching, that exertion of mind and spirit, that compels me to attend.

Back-to-church time

Although not all Unitarian Universalist churches observe the “summer break” plan – my parents’ large church in Concord, for example, runs a year-round program – it is typical for small- to midsized UU churches including the one I attend in Carlisle to take the months of July and August off from regular services and either offer an alternative style of services such as lay-led or simply close altogether.

Returning to church yesterday morning after three months off (official Opening Day was last Sunday, but I was driving Rick to the airport), I realized as I sat in the pew how beneficial the time away had been for me. I often end the church year with twinges of burn-out. It takes a lot of volunteer effort to run a church like ours – smallish in membership numbers and even smaller in terms of paid staff, but robust in its range of offerings and initiatives – and by June, I’m usually more than a little worn out from the effort of doing my meager part. I’ve had enough of teaching Sunday school, baking muffins for coffee hour, mixing up brownies for bake sales, attending committee meetings, writing publicity notices, weeding the church garden, and figuring out what I can afford to pledge for yet another year.

And over the summer, I never feel any regret that I’m not at church. In fact, if I’m to be honest, some summers – including this past one – I sometimes start to wonder why I go at all. As a faith, Unitarian Universalists aren’t required to attend church. Our covenant says that “service is our prayer”; you could be a good UU without ever setting foot in a church, if you instead devoted your time to community service and charitable works.

In the summer, I bask in the extra free time. I sleep late on Sundays, fit in more walks and bike rides, make better Sunday breakfasts for my family, read the Sunday paper over coffee, take weekend trips, have brunch with friends. “Why bother with church?” I ask myself at those times. “Isn’t this” – whether ‘this’ is running along the beach or talking with friends – “a worthwhile form of worship in its own right, and just as valuable? Would it make more sense to devote Sunday mornings to quality time with my family rather than rushing everyone out the door to church once fall arrives?”

Yesterday morning, though, I’d had a long break, and everything felt fresh and new, and it all reminded me of why I go to church. The music – choral, organ, harpsichord – was far more beautiful than anything I could have re-created in my own home. The sermon drew upon Bible accounts I wasn’t familiar with and made salient points about the importance of stepping to the plate when voices of dissent are needed. Our minister’s face was comforting and familiar at the pulpit. I saw friends I hadn’t seen since June, and during coffee hour heard about one parishioner’s great new job and another parishioner’s newborn twin grandchildren. Acquaintances I don’t know well inquired after my parents and expressed concern over their recent health challenges.

Besides, on top of everything else valuable about church – the music, the rituals, the covenant, the sermon, the readings – it provides an hour of quiet uninterrupted reflection. And no matter how much I might claim I observe some form of Sabbath throughout the summer, I don’t sit in a pew for an hour meditating and reflecting. I just don’t.

The church year is still new. I don’t have to teach any Sunday school classes until the middle of next month; the committees on which I’m currently serving haven’t started meeting again yet; and surprisingly, no one approached me yesterday about duties for the Harvest Fair. All of that will happen, and I might once again grow a little bit weary and wonder if it’s worthwhile to go.

But then I’ll try to remind myself of how it felt yesterday: quiet, peaceful, welcoming. Sitting in the pew of a building more than a hundred years old, which houses a congregation that has been meeting for more than two hundred and fifty years, is indeed different from observing the Sabbath in any form at home. July and August convince me that it’s effective to take the summers off, but September convinces me it’s worthwhile to come back. The music, the readings, the fellowship…that’s what makes a church. It brought me in yesterday morning, and it will bring me back again throughout another church year.

The power of positive thought when the fire whistle blows

I don’t know how unusual this is, but our town still has a fire whistle that blows in a designated pattern when firefighters are needed to respond to a fire. The pattern, a series of monotones with spaces between them, like Morse code, is determined by the address of the fire.

To me this has long seemed anachronistic. We have an on-call fire department, meaning that no one staffs the station; all the men on the force -- and at the moment it is all men – transform into uniformed firefighters only when called to respond to an emergency. The rest of the time they are at their day jobs, with their families, out biking, and doing all the other things that Carlisle adults do. So I understand that once many decades ago, the code informed the firefighters of where they were needed. But today they all carry beepers and cell phones through which an address could be instantly text-messaged, which is surely much easier than parsing out the code as you listen for the pattern of seven tones, space, three tones, space, six tones, repeat from the beginning, or whatever it might be. So I don't know why we still use the code system.

But this week in church, I saw a different side of the issue. The minister was talking about ways that we as a congregation offer help. She was making the point that we help others both close to home and far away: it might be a neighbor facing foreclosure; it might be earthquake victims in Haiti. We each make choices all the time about where we are going to direct our charitable resources and our generous impulses.

And just as she was emphasizing the point about helping close to home, the fire whistle went off. As the one firefighter who happened to be sitting in the pews that morning jumped up and gathered up his belongings, the minister had the presence of mind to offer a blessing on his efforts and a brief prayer for safety as he hustled out of the room. It was all fast and spontaneous, and yet remarkably appropriate given the situation.

In a few minutes, we could hear distant sirens, and although it was a very good sermon, I think at that point everyone’s mind was half on Kevin and the other firefighters. That made me wonder for the first time if maybe the purpose of the fire whistle system is not to summon the firefighters, which could just as easily be done by phone or beeper, but to alert the community to the fact that someone in our town was experiencing a household emergency and that several other townspeople were off tending to that emergency, and that our hopes and wishes should be with all of them. Maybe by directing our thoughts toward them in that way, we were increasing the odds of a good outcome.

As it happens, the question of whether it helps to direct positive thoughts to people in need is a topic of ongoing debate in our congregation. Like many Unitarian Universalist churches, we devote time during every service to Candles of Community, a ritual in which parishioners can opt to light a candle and speak a few words to express, in the minister’s words, “a joy or sorrow in their lives.” Some people believe that asking for thoughts or prayers to be directed to, for example, someone who has just undergone surgery actually results in a faster healing time. Others maintain it’s just a way for parishioners to stay in touch with each other’s lives, and those who choose to announce personal joys or sources of sadness are doing so just to forge a stronger bond with fellow church members.

I’ve never believed in the former idea, that asking a roomful of eighty people to think healing thoughts about your uncle who just had open heart surgery will actually help him to get better, because I maintain it turns faith into a popularity contest: that is, why not attend a bigger church that day, so you could have twice as many people directing healing thoughts to your uncle? But it’s fine with me if sharing intimate issues is just someone’s way of reaching out and asking for the community’s emotional support, even though it’s not something I choose to do myself.

Still, hearing the fire whistle that morning made me reconsider a little bit. Maybe every time the fire whistle goes off in town, some number of people stop and hope for safety for the firefighters and the victim of the fire alike. Maybe that helps. In church that morning, it certainly felt as if Kevin was rushing out to the fire station on a wave of well-meaning prayer.

It turned out to be a minor event – so minor, in fact, that Kevin was back in time for coffee hour. But it was an informative moment for me, and gave me a new way of looking at our seemingly anachronistic community notification system. Sure, we can instant message or email to get word out, but there’s something symbolic about the whole community listening to a fire whistle blow. We’re all hearing the same news at the same time, together. And though I know this probably isn’t the case, maybe on some level that was the purpose of the system all along.

Pitching in, pitching out

I’m feeling entangled in deadlines and lists this week. My paid work is not the problem. Although I have four articles due for the Globe, an appendix to assemble on a master plan that a municipal client is about to submit, and an obligation to edit at least ten articles a day for an on-line editing site, I can do all of that. All of that is my job; I know how to get it done. It’s the volunteer work that’s bogging me down this week, and even keeping me awake at night.

The problem is so many of the functions that have value to me run largely on volunteer effort. I’m part of a church community, a school community, a civic community, an arts community, and all of those require a significant amount of participation from interested parties. But there are times, this week being one of them, when it just doesn’t seem to me like the system is working. Each of these institutions seems to need too much help, too much volunteer participation. Not only from me; from everyone involved.

In church, rather ironically, I’m on the Nominating Committee: the committee that identifies people willing to fill vacancies on other committees. So at the very same time that I’m soul-searching over the necessity and value of all this committee work and volunteer work, I’m trying to track down – and then persuade -- more volunteers to serve on more committees. Without all of us helping out, goes the traditional perspective, how will we put on a coffee hour every week after our service? How will we make decisions about building maintenance, and church funding, and Sunday school, and social action projects? It’s exhausting just to think about, let alone to find people willing to do all of these tasks.

At my children’s school right now, I’m co-chair of the June teachers’ appreciation luncheon. On the first Tuesday in June each year, the parents put on a lavish luncheon with a gorgeous array of homemade culinary offerings. I sent out the first batch of emails yesterday, imploring parents schoolwide to offer help in this yearly endeavor. But right now my spreadsheet is empty: I have to find fifteen people to make entrees, twenty to make salads, a dozen to make desserts, a few to provide paper goods, some to help with setup and serving and clean-up, and even two or three more to decorate the lunchroom ahead of time. Though I know every year it works out sufficiently, this is the part of the process when I’m close to hyperventilating with anxiety over whether we’re going to get the volunteer labor and the contributions we need.

It’s a frustrating dilemma to me. What would my life be like if I opted out of all of these volunteer obligations? I wouldn’t be part of as many groups or have as many friends. We live in a very close-knit community in which there’s always something to get involved and always people to share ideas with, if one is willing. But I can’t seem to find the balance, and neither can anyone else who serves in any of these functions with me.

Just today as I was trying to get a grasp on the various tasks I needed to attend to, I received an email from the president of our PTA asking if I wanted to help organize the semi-annual Walk to School Day. This is part of a statewide endeavor that our town has participated in for about three years: on a designated day in the fall and spring we raise a lot of publicity for the idea of walking to school, and then we set out making an event out of it. There are designated spots within a mile radius of the school for groups of kids with parent escorts to meet up. There are water stations and refreshments along the way, and as each walker arrives at school, he or she is given a little prize and a raffle ticket. Then there’s a big raffle with lots of big prizes.

I wrote back to the PTA president. “Couldn’t we make it simpler?” I asked her. “Have a Walk to School Day on which we skipped the refreshments and check-in stations and raffle tickets and prizes and just, you know, walked to school?”
That one seemed easy to solve. The others don’t lend themselves as well to an organic, “let’s just do it without making a production out of it” approach. We can’t invite 150 teachers and staff members to a luncheon and then just hope we get enough food and paper plates to make it work out.

I don’t know the answer. And for the next couple of weeks, I’ll still be waking up in the middle of the night worrying about whether we’re going to run out of desserts at the teachers’ luncheon and whether we found enough new members for the church’s Finance Committee to meet the requirements of our by-laws.

But I do think on Walk to School Day, my kids and I will just do that: walk to school. In a way, the idea of organizing this event seems like a perfect example of overkill when it comes to volunteer effort. Put one foot in front of the other. There, I’ve organized a Walk To School Day. Some things are just easy, and when they are, we’ll take advantage of them.