Make a difference by volunteering in your community

Although we process so much of our world in terms of news bites and policies, the people who bear the brunt of the realities of American injustice are real people. Every day I see them. I hear their stories. As I sit here with my wife and children, dumbfounded by the chaos of our country, I’m not just humbled but startled by the privilege of a dinner in our fridge, and our warm home amongst caring neighbors.

These blessings are becoming more and more rare, for so many Americans. We are surrounded by constant examples from the highest levels of government, of our neighbors’ lives, treated as disposable labor, inconvenient trash or expendable leverage. Confronted with this, we are all faced with a choice. Life has placed me in the unique situation however, of being faced with their faces.

I know families ravaged by income inequality, hunger, uncertainty of vital services, and ICE raids on their homes. I run a large food pantry, Martha’s Choice Marketplace, with my amazing partner Eli Wenger and a family of over 100 volunteers from all walks of life.

Working for the thousands of families that come to us in need of food, alongside all these amazing folks, I’ve learned that although human relationships are messy, and our society seems to be disintegrating before our eyes, simply being present with, and serving “the other” can allow us to live with a radically new lens. That lens can only point us to love. And the power of love makes us a stronger community.

It would seem, the divisions and disasters all around us, are, at their core, a failure to love. Isolated from our neighbors, as our culture is so inclined to be, we cannot know our neighbors. In isolation we can’t even know ourselves. It can become easy to see fear as prudence, racism as overblown, and the fate of our neighbors born in a different country, as not our concern.

But it is impossible to see the face of the terrors we have allowed to enter the homes and childhoods of our brothers and sisters, and not be moved to love. I see it everyday. I see volunteers from all ideological backgrounds meet the devastation of poverty, racism, and xenophobia with love, in their own ways.

The call to dedicate ourselves to policy advocacy and collective action is urgent. I pray often, as Dr. King said, that “Those who love peace [will] organize as well as those who love war.” But for now, in my small corner of the world, I see a scrappy food pantry community of clients and volunteers, rich and poor, young and old, black, brown, and white, liberal and conservative, the quiet and the loud, as a battlefront for the soul of our country.

I am inspired and honored to be a part of a community, that has wide diversity of cultures and perspectives, but is learning to understand itself, by serving one another and loving one another. Whatever the answer to the madness around us, a first step is to love. And to love, we have to step towards people who are unknown to us.

Progressives rightly highlight the importance of systemic change, and structural justice over traditional charity, as many charities fail to address the root causes of the injustice they alleviate. But these structures of injustice remain because of an ignorance and fear that permeates law. We pass on unjust societies to our children because of factors much, much, deeper.

So in this season of social horror, and national pause, consider volunteering on some kind of regular basis. Go anywhere you can be present to help someone who is in need. Go anywhere you can meet someone who you don’t understand, not because you will have fixed everything, but because the atrocities of our country are not just headlines, they are reality for another human being, just like you.