The Volunteer Coordinator of the food pantry had us stand in a circle for last minute instructions and a blessing right before we threw open the doors to serve the hungry, indigent and homeless.
She usually said the blessing herself, but occasionally would ask someone to substitute.
I'd heard blessings in English, Spanish and Ukrainian and liked hearing the calm commitment evinced in the voices of the speakers. Even though the appeal to God and Jesus in the context of service or the afterlife had no appeal to me at this point in my life, I was moved by the presence of all the volunteers ready to assist the needy in what amounted to basically manual labor.
When you see people helping others, you want to help. When you see 60 and 70 year old retirees busting their asses carrying boxes and mopping floors, you want to help even more.
The Director asked a young Black man, a staffer, if he wanted to say the blessing. The request caught him by surprise. He laughed and said he'd wait for next week. The Director then looked at me.
Was it coming? Was an atheist and former preacher's kid whose family performed missionary service in Brazil from 1968-70 going to be called upon to provide these excellent people with something useful to the heart and mind in preparation to work?
I was hoping not. I wasn't ready to riff something new or hit up the standards.
The Director gave the blessing herself and it was short and sweet and without a single tired phrase. We then opened the doors and my shift began.
All that morning, I thought about a possible blessing I might have delivered, and my attitudes toward faith-based service organizations. I also though about my own Christian upbringing and its influence on me.
After my family's return from our missionary service, I became a preacher's kid and we lived in the preacher's house across the parking lot from the Oregon City Church of Christ and it's football field-shaped front lawn. There, my dad played football with my grade school friends and taught me how to go long and run the sideline route.
I remember my baptism from that era. I wore plastic coveralls. I was immersed in stagnant lukewarm water. There were underwater lights and a microphone. The congregation sang as I emerged from the baptismal, a newly minted Christian. I no longer recall the hymn. Even then, I knew it would never stick.
It was an interesting few years growing up as a preacher's kid and growing agnostic. I occasionally invited my friends for sleepovers in the basement of the church and we made terrible, gritty coffee in a gigantic percolator, played tackle football on the carpet, and chipped plastic golf balls into the baptismal. I was never made to attend church and sometimes stayed home to watch NFL games in the years before ESPN and constant highlights. If you missed an important game, you missed it forever.
Other memories: a summer Christian camp on the Yamhill River where I earned the coveted “Mr. Camper Award” and kissed my first girl. A few youth group outings that were mostly secular in nature, including one at Oswald West State Park where I built my first driftwood fort. A special Bible from my grandparents with all of Jesus' words in red ink, an atlas and color photographs of the Holy Land! (I still have it.) Potlucks and more potlucks with glazed hams, scalloped potatoes, green bean casseroles and Jello salads. Lots of Sunday school workbooks and puppet shows, and of course, lots of sermons from my dad, who never preached longer than 20 minutes, which was a miracle if there ever was one.
It all wasn't very inspiring to me then, but along the way, I learned the characters, stories, poems and metaphors from the Bible and they created one of the great foundations of my education. In due course, this education found its way into my writing, and sometimes even my teaching. You can't go wrong with the story of Jonah as a writing prompt.
And those three years in Brazil witnessing the staggering poverty, sickness, and gross inequity and injustice of Brazilian society was a formative experience in my young life. It was also most likely the seed of my sympathy for the downtrodden and desire to better my world. One could almost say it was the beginning of writing about the New American Diaspora, even though I have yet to write a word about growing up in Brazil until now.
The interesting question I often ask myself is: would any of my awareness, sympathy or passion for aiding the poor, particularly the poor students I aided during my coastal teaching career, and now thinking, writing and serving on the front lines of the homeless crisis, would any of this had come about had I NOT had a Christian upbringing? I will never know. I know many people who serve and have no religious upbringing whatsoever, although they might have had a spiritual or civic one that developed later.
That's what happened to me when I found the ocean, the waves, and the meaning of the water cycle. The religions that sprung from the deserts millenniums ago seemed so limiting and hierarchical by comparison. Still, over the years, I saw that traditional religious beliefs motivated many people to do restoration work in support of suffering humans, animals and watersheds and more than a few of these people believed in Donald Trump as some kind of political and cultural savior.
All of this meandered though my mind as the morning unfolded at the food pantry. Something else was on my mind as well. My Christian upbringing had prepared me well to give an impromptu blessing and I would deliver one if called upon. Oh yes, I would be ready and it would be a helluva blessing!
Part of your blessing is this piece including the experience from what I assume was Camp Tillikum and I look forward to the next segment. And I bemoan the fact that the word "evangelical" has become stereotyped as the mindless MAGA crew. This detracts from those who faithfully serve others and reject the Trump drivel.
What a wonderful piece! Thank you for sharing.
...I can't wait to hear that blessing.