The work of justice requires us to show up

Last Chapter: One More Thing

When my school added social justice to my list of instructional courses last school year, I begged them to switch the class with anything else in the department. I announced to the other teachers that I would pay them a significant amount of money if they swapped one of their courses with my social justice duty. A thousand dollars, to be exact. I was joking – a little. I didn’t want one more course on my plate and all the groundwork that goes with adding in a class I’d never taught, but really, I didn’t want to teach it because I felt completely out of my element.

As a former evangelical, there was a time I didn’t even known what social justice meant in the context of the faith. We didn’t do service hours. Sure, we did good deeds, and we cared about policy-making, but social justice wasn’t woven into our faith formation as carefully as it is for Catholics.

What did I know about this topic? The students knew more than I did, and probably had more passion about the subject than I could muster. I went all the way to the top. The principal looked at the master schedule and informed me there was nobody else to teach the class.

It became a running joke in department meetings. How’s the social justice class coming along, Denise. Great. It’s just peachy.

In truth, it was great. The class I’d taken and books I’d read on social justice many years ago gelled. The passion in the eyes of my students inspired me. They decided on a class project: a victory garden. The produce would go to the local St. Vincent de Paul food pantry. Then Covid-19 hit, and our classroom garden was moved to my back yard. We made it through two months of distance learning, and I picked up the pieces of the semester. The new master schedule came out, and my next year’s load resembled my personality far better. Things were looking up.

A simple review of conscience, during the summer of Covid social distancing, revealed that I needed to think about the semester and why I had felt so out of my element. From my earliest days, I have been schooled on the need for sharing the faith. Evangelization is part of the fiber of my being. If I don’t share the Gospel, the rocks themselves will cry out. When I am sharing the Kerygma, it feels like I’m on fire. I can’t sit still. It’s like hitting a homerun or catching the ball in the end zone.

What have I done for you, oh Lord, that doesn’t involve words? Anything? Oh, sure, but I mostly just talk and write about it.

My thoughts turned to that garden now overrun by weeds and the food pantry that was supposed to have benefited from it. My husband works at our SVDP pantry. He said the bitter lettuce and miniature radishes would be difficult to hand out and really wouldn’t go very far. I looked at him and the invitation he gave me over a year ago needled at me.

“What if I join you at the food pantry to work?” I asked him, tentatively.

He told me the offer was still on the table. Many of the workers were over the age of sixty-five and the whole Coronavirus-scare had them a little nervous about working. SVDP was looking for a younger set to fill in the gap. I’m barely younger than that age group, but I am younger. The bonus was that I could work with my husband. My first Saturday was in June.

I didn’t feel on fire when I was there. It wasn’t like hitting a homerun or catching the ball in the end zone. But something good happened in me. I love the way the shelves are so organized, and cans are streamlined to yield the quickest packaging and most positive experience for the clients. My husband and I fulfill the order, together. We exchange smiles and maneuver the narrow aisles.

I don’t have to be great at it; I just have to show up. Some may say it is such a little thing, this one more thing of food pantry service. And it is. I see other people doing a hundred different “little things” in parish ministries, and they never brag, but if I can add one little thing, I can add one more little thing, and I can aspire to be a saint. It all begins with one more thing.

So what’s your next one-more-little-thing?