What Would Happen if We All Answered the Call to Serve?

 Many years ago, I accepted a position as a 7th grade English teacher at a school that served a neighborhood of Mexican immigrants struggling to make ends meet.  I had no doubt in my teaching skills after all my years of reading and writing with first and second graders.  But something else pulled me in: service.  I was using my gifts and talents to guide these students to become first generation college graduates.   This was a school that lived and breathed service.  There was an intern program supporting student teachers; the staff worked an 8 hour day with 3 different shifts.  The kids were there from 7 AM to 6 PM incorporating time for homework as well as athletics into their schedule.  The students were served breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack from a soup kitchen.  The faculty would often muse at the fact that these middle schoolers would one day become accountants or lawyers and tell the story of their meals from a soup kitchen.  But something else was going on in that soup kitchen that became a goal for me in later years.  Every Friday morning, our kids shared their tables with volunteers making sandwiches for the poor and homeless.  They were an ironic combination of retired men and women wanting only to give mixed with parochial high school students earning their service hours.  The retired women were all nicely dressed while the men wore their Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts.  The students were getting their hours in before school started so they usually sported their school logo shirts and jeans.  I loved being a witness to the camraderie that set in between these 17 and 70 year olds.   It all looked like great fun as they found the perfect technique of spreading the peanut butter and jelly or the most efficient alignment of the ham and cheese.  The older teachers all set this as a life goal - someday that's what I'm going to do; when I grow up I want to make sandwiches for the poor and laugh with these high schoolers.  Today, that dream came true.  I have been toying around with service and exactly what my call has been as I learn to embrace my twilight years.  When I saw sandwich making as an option on the volunteer calendar, I jumped at the chance.  And it was everything I dreamed it would be.  Present was a staff member teaching the fine art of efficient sandwich making and I was joined by fellow retirees and high school kids.  We laughed with and at each other and we all learned something about ourselves and one another.  Eventually the conversation came around to what brought us there; the common element was service.  The question that lingered in the air was what would happen if everyone did something to serve the poor.  What kind of world would we live in if our vision was outward; if we could see there was a need and do what we could to alleviate it?  I, for one, plan to offer this tiny little service again next week and see where it leads.