Volunteer Blog

The theme for our annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner was "It Takes a Village -- to Make a Village!!"  150 volunteers enjoyed a "village" feast prepared by Sandra Smith and Co.  Davidson students danced across the stage while the Charlotte Community Drummers (Foli Kan) entertained the crowd with some authentic West African rhythms.  Bill Parish (pictured with his Margaret, also a "forever" volunteer) was honored for his dedicated service to Urban Ministry Center.

As many years as I've been counseling at UMC, I sometimes feel better than other people. More often I simply feel more fortunate. Its no wonder that God groans in exhaustion at such a faithless generation. During twenty five years of marriage I've learned that love is impossible without forgiveness; and that forgiveness is impossible without understanding. Jesus said you will always have the poor, but you will not always have me. How tragic and beautiful this truth is.

Can I love the poor since  I'm better?  Can "service" entail simply giving from my fortunate excess?  I doubt either are true, and if that were so how far would I go? How far should I reduce my excess before having done "my share"?  How long would it be before I walked away sad like the rich young man in scripture? 

It seems to me that people are hurt before becoming become poor, and that the financial lacking is only the visible aspect of their poverty. In counseling with the neighbors it seems that poverty is always the result of a deeper hurt, a more secret barrenness. It may be psychological, emotional, or physical, but there is always a source for the pain that manifests itself in a very visible way. To love one another is to relate to each other's hurt and walk the long and painful path of forgiveness.

Counseling provides me with a chance for this connection.  Relationship made with neighbors can lead to understanding, and perhaps a small glimpses of hope along this road of forgiveness.  If I am not poor, it is because I am fortunate, not better.  An I think its our need for love, rather than fortune, that draws us to service. It obliges me to provide the same coins given by the widow; those that hurt the most.  Together on this road we are all poor and poverty is ever present. Perhaps that's what Jesus was talking about.

The urban ministry is at the dead end of a road. Trains no longer pick up passengers from its station. From one perspective, no one is going anywhere.  But that’s probably just the visible part.   

-- by Paul Duffy


 

Every month for an hour prospective volunteers sit in on an orientation session, learning about UMC's history, its mission and more about homelessness than they could learn in a graduate course.  Then they get a tour of the property -- soup kitchen, showers counseling rooms, front desks, phone and mail service areas -- all the basic weekday goings-on.  Then it's off to the Depot where art, soccer, gardening and other change-making programs are showcased.  This is where the October group -- larger than most, more than 20 this month -- got an unexpected lesson. 

Volunteer Coordinators Jo and Barbara try to present a realistic picture of homelessness -- the challenges our neighbors face, the tendency for them to process life from a place of "survival", the hard, long road out of poverty.   The participants had just been told that to work here, they must adjust their expectations for "success", accept that they can't "fix" everybody and know that overnight miracles would be ...a miracle!

And there he was, standing in the Art Gallery talking to Ray Isaacs, seeing the old soup kitchen through new eyes.  Miracle Man.  Man in a coat and tie, standing next to his proud wife.  Man who used to sleep in the woods where our new building now stands.   His testimony to the group was the perfect surprise!   And the lesson that we hope our new volunteers took home with them -- don't expect huge miracles, but sometimes they happen anyway -- and that will make the surprise all the more worthwhile!

Volunteer Blog