The amazing power of being in community
This is one of those times when it becomes extraordinarily clear that being in community is comforting and healing. I’m sitting on a sandbag in the middle of a steamy parking lot one block from a flooded intersection. Dozens of smiling, busy strangers are bustling around me. I’m holding an empty bag and a teenage girl is filling it with sand, lifting a shovelful at a time from a large sandpile. Once filled, the sandbag is heavy and I drag it behind me, where another young woman picks it up and ties it securely. Someone else comes by and hauls it off, stacking it onto a pallet. Eventually a truck shows up and a number of folks load it up with the filled sandbags.
Answering the call
We’ve all arrived by bus, having answered a call to volunteer to help protect residences, businesses, restaurants, and public buildings from rising floodwaters. We don’t know one another. We are of all ages, sizes, and genders. There’s the grey-haired guy with the biking t-shirt, a mom with her two teenage daughters, a young couple in their twenties. Once we arrive at our station, there’s no one who seems in charge. People are busy doing the jobs of filling sandbags. As a newbie, I hang back for a few minutes, looking for a place where I’m needed. I see a corner where some sandbags have been filled and I start tying them up and moving them out of the way.
Hundreds of sandbags get filled. This is a hardworking group. There’s not much conversation, really; just a few comments here and there. We get busy and get things done. It feels good. It’s something we can do in a time when we have been watching helplessly as water fills up the city streets.
From helpless to hopeful
The last few days, I’ve been feeling oppressed by worry, watching the rainy weather, seeing the videos on tv of the flooded cities upstream, hearing the predictions of 500-year floods in this area. As the streets in my town are closed, I start feeling trapped. Working together with these committed people today has been a revelation. After working to my capacity, I get back on the bus and go home – tired and dirty, but with a great feeling of accomplishment. Hopeful. I have seen what a community can do and I have been a part of the solution. I’m coming back tomorrow.
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