A Fierce and Joyous Voluntarism

Last year, my butternut squash really struggled.

Voracious chipmunks devoured the seedlings, necessitating multiple replantings.  Deer savaged the spreading vines.  It was a horticultural debacle.  I got a quarter of my usual yield.

This year, things are different.  I moved our bird feeder out of the front lawn, reducing the attraction for rodents.  I've been more diligent about applying deer spray.  

Out front, it's a riot of sprawling fan leaves and questing vines.  The most vigorous of my butternuts this season is, as it happens, not one that I planted at all.  It's a volunteer, one that came up early in a four by four raised bed where I'd intended to grow okra.  I didn't, at first, even know it was a butternut.  I could tell it was a squash of some sort, but that thumb-high sprout could have been zucchini, or perhaps a cuke.  Cucurbits...that's the common name for that family of plant...all kinda sorta look the same early in their development, at least to my amateur eye.

I thought about rooting it up, as I often will with volunteers.  I Had A Plan, after all, one that involved okra and not butternut.  But I had okra growing elsewhere.  Given the failure of my squash crop last year, I was inclined to give it a chance.  That, and if it turned out to be a butternut, it would have room to run, and butternut does the best when you let it sprawl out wild and free.

It was a butternut, and Lord, has it run.

It quickly leapt out of the bounds of the raised bed, as every single day the tendrils extended their reach.

  Its goal, best I could tell, was the sun, as it pressed due East towards the dawn.  The plant is now about thirteen feet long, the striving vines and sprawling leaves inscribing the shape of a beleafed comet onto the green of my yard.  Along those abundant vines, the glorious yellow blossoms have drawn a host of bumblebees, who will often fall asleep deep inside of the flowers, cozily cupped and pollen-drunk.  

From the female blossoms, with the help of the bees, a half-dozen squash have begun to form and fatten.  More than my entire harvest last year.

From just one plant, that showed up unexpected and was given the freedom to use its gifts.  This feels, as so much gardening does, flagrantly metaphorical.

There's a tendency amongst Professional Jesus People to assume that our task is to set agendas and establish plans and be all Leadershippy and stuff.  We are the prophets and the vision-casters!  We dream the dreams!  We know the knowledge!  Without the byzantine complexities known only to us professionals, poor hapless amateur Christians would wander around like little lost lambs in the great deep darkness.  

This is a spiritually dangerous assumption.  It's why we pastors overfunction.  It's why we're so prone to getting anxious, exhausted, and overwhelmed, as we take the entire weight of our local universe onto our shoulders.  It's why we can become megalomaniacs in microcosm, and get prone to doing things we oughtn't.  

Our pastoral task, instead, is mostly to encourage, inspire, and occasionally give some gentle redirection.  The vital and creative energies that keep our communities healthy extend far beyond our egos.  They rest within the souls who choose to give their time freely and joyously to music and mission, to service and care, to teaching and reaching out.

The best measure of a healthy church, as some of my choir folk so perfectly put it while chatting before the service this last Sunday, is that people want to be there together, pursuing a commonly held joy.

The heart of a vital and free society, as Alex of Tocqueville famously put it, is "..the art of pursuing in common the object of their common desires."

Without our fierce and joyous voluntarism, nothing good can stand.

I Hate Community Service

I wended my way back to the local clothing closet today, to spend a few more hours sorting and prepping clothing for folks in need in and around the county where my church is located. It was a rather sparse day for the center, as it was pouring rain...hardly the sort of weather that brings out folks who are struggling financially.

It was a good time to get stuff done, and I got into a crankin' groove, racking jumpers and pants and sweaters in a functional voluntaristic Tai Chi. After sorting and hanging several racks full of clothes, one of the clients who was just sorta hanging around watching me work decided it might be less boring if she helped out. "You're working all by yourself, honey? They've left you all alone? Lemme help out!"

She was a youngish African American woman with a big swatch of blue died into her hair, and she and I passed a few genial moments. She'd worked up until about six months ago, until she got sick and couldn't work. She didn't have kids, but loved 'em. As we sorted through little donated jackets and tiny skirts and dresses, she cooed and laughed, and called over to a very young Latina with a toddler on her hip whenever something struck her as particularly cute. "Hey, Chica! OOOOH!" She dangled a little skirt just the right size for the little girl. "Es muy bonita!" She was helping out. Making someone's day. Feeling useful. "I like this," she announced to everyone and anyone. "I'm going to do this again."

As I vacuumed up the place after closing time, there was a little cluster of local teens hovering around the center manager. They'd been there the whole time, and been working more-or-less diligently. Now, though, it was time for them to get paid. Meaning, they were getting the community service hours mandated by the county school system. "I've been here since eleven-thirty," one said. I should get three and a half hours." The manager seemed skeptical. Negotiations ensued. Forms were filled out. More negotiations ensued.

I've always disliked the community service requirement that seems to have spread throughout the school systems in my area since I graduated from high school. The idea, of course, is that requiring community service of all students as a prerequisite for graduation will teach the value of voluntarism. In order to graduate from high school in the county, you need 60 hours of service this year...which will be upped to 75 hours of service in 2011.

While this is certainly well-meaning, it's always struck me as a bit off. Why? Well, to start with, mandated voluntarism is an oxymoron. If you're being forced to serve, it ain't volunteering. It also doesn't seem to reflect the why of a service ethic. It can't be about racking up the hours. The act itself is the benefit. You serve because you're moved by the value of service. It's something you do out of the desire to help, for the simple joy of being a part of something that you recognize as valuable.

At some point, someone has to introduce you to it, true. My parents were the ones who nudged me into service ministry at my home church, and I was quickly hooked. In a world full of meaningless self-seeking and back-biting, here was something real, entered into without coercion, for the simple pleasure of serving another.

But the moment you make it a mandate, the moment you impose upon it coercion or the dynamics of a paid transaction, you've abandoned the ethic that calls people to volunteer. What this teaches, I fear, is that the reason to volunteer has everything to do with requirements and obligations and mandates. That approach may get teens into the shelters and clothing closets and food pantries. What it would seem less likely to do is get the adults that they become to choose to participate in the organizations that are the heart of our communities and the hope of those in need.