I wrote a diary yesterday about my volunteering this weekend in Grundy, VA. It was the second of two about this experience, and has the title Health crisis - lessons learned from Grundy and Wise. If you did not read it, I hope you might take the time to do so.
I was having trouble unwinding, even on my 6th beer (yeah, I know), and wrote a comment that I think may help communicate this experience.
Thus below the fold is that comment, unedited.
I will not be able to tend this diary. I will go to sleep by 1 AM, must be up by 4:30 to pack and head out for the final morning of this fair.
I wanted to share it with you. Thank you for reading.
tonight is a bit unusual
for one thing, knowing that I will be up in the 4 O'clock hour, I am still up.
For another, I am now finishing a six pack. That is rare for me.
I am still processing beyond what I have written in this diary. In one sense, were I to write it now it might be somewhat different, and not because of the alcohol.
I have a vocation, about which I am passionate, and that is teaching adolescents.
I have a passion to make a difference politically, which is why I am active in Democratic affairs, both in Virginia and to some degree, using my access to people in DC, nationally.
But I am finding myself getting - how should I say it? - almost consumed by what I have experienced in Wise and Grundy.
As i write, I listen to my favorite singer of any genre, Mary Chapin Carpenter. I have eclectic musical tastes that are very broad. And like my musical taste, my concerns also may seem electic, almost random.
But they are not. I think ultimately what concerns me is also why I became a Quaker. George Fox wrote that we should walk gladly across the earth answering that of God in each person we encounter.
I do not know if I "believe in God" in a sense that question is almost irrelevant to me. What matters is the human before me. S/e may irritate the hell out of me, cutting me off on the highway, or the student who refuses to try, or the politician who is totally stubborn about ideology and oblivious to the effect on real people.
But despite all that - or maybe even because of that - when I encounter a change to answer "that of God" I do not know how I can turn away.
Perhaps that is why my experience in Wise was so life-changing for me.
Do I wish this diary were at the top of the rec list? Of course, because then it would reach more people with something I think matters greatly.
But the rec list is not my concern. The persons - I prefer that word to "people" because it maintains the importance of each unique individual - they are what matters. Each one.
And it is that reason that I find drives my response. It is heartbreaking to listen to some of the people who come to places like this, truly heartbreaking.
I wish I had sufficient gift of words that I could invoke the same response in each person who encountered what I write about this, that my title were clever enough to at least draw a click to read above the fold.
I am both heartbroken and spiritually elevated - I cannot fully explain why. The heartbroken is easier to explicate - that fairs like this are still necessary, that so many are still in need, that their condition has gone untreated for so long that all we can do is offer radically treatment - full mouth extraction for far too many, with no commitment to when they will get dentures.
But what keeps me going is the spiritual elevation. It is them - the patients - that give me that, even as I honor and recognize the service of the dentist, hygienists, dental students and more - the guy helping run the show is a salesman for a dental supply company. He was assistant trail boss in Wise as well. Robbie is a good guy. He cares. We all do.
But we are sustained by the trust and hope of those who come to us. If you have not experienced it, perhaps you cannot understand.
Which is perhaps why if you have any chance you should find an opportunity to do this kind of volunteering. It WILL transform you. It has transformed me.
Peace.