By Calvin Brown, BVS Unit 335
Spending any significant amount of time in service has a wonderfully seismic quality about it, one that truly breaks and shifts all of one’s being and what one might know to be true. This confusing and exciting sensation was alien to me, even as I considered myself a fairly charitable person, and only emerged after some time in my BVS placement at the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland.
Corrymeela is a peacebuilding and reconciliation center, where most of the volunteer work is hospitality oriented. During my time here, I have become well acquainted with the dishwasher and mops, far more than I have with peacemaking dialogue and mediation. Often, this is a source of great frustration, the feeling that I should or could be doing more. I still feel this way. However, these are not the feelings of one who wishes to experience transformative service. These feelings are those of the pedestrian servant, putting one’s own desires before the work that needs to be done.
This is also the kind of servitude that we enact in our own private lives. We often ask ourselves: What can I do? We might donate to charity, sign a petition, or even volunteer some of our time at a food bank. These are good actions, made by good people. But I would argue that we are asking the wrong questions. What I have taken most from this year in BVS is the question: Who can I be?
For transformative service, there can be no clocking in and clocking out. I have learned that service must be embodied, not performed, and that every day one must ask oneself: How can I make myself useful? This is the greatest gift that my time in BVS has given me, and one that I hope to take into the future as well.
