I'm moving my newsletter to Tuesday and Thursday for awhile.
Today's entry is by Andrew Wendkith. Subscribe to his substack here.
I would call today's essay "Blessed are the Doers." So much of creating community is about the little things we do together. I loved this message as soon as I read it. I can picture the church dishwasher, the group that takes out the trash, the Thursday craft group cleaning out the kitchen cupboards in Rindge.
It is resistance to keep doing those ordinary things as a way to keep the community going.
The Commercial Dishwasher
Part of my job involves accompanying young adults into the community and helping them learn job skills. Sometimes I am doing more direct coaching but sometimes we just work together on a project.
The other day I was having a rough day. I woke up in a not-great mood after going to bed in a not-great mood and the schedule at work was a little confusing so by the time the afternoon rolled around I was feeling pretty fried. We got to my student’s job site, a soup kitchen, and they asked us to run the dishwasher and work through a big pile of dishes.
After an hour of working with him on the dishwasher, alternating taking turns with spraying and opening and closing and putting dishes away we had worked through all the dishes and a good amount of my brain fog.
One of my former congregations had a sign hanging in the kitchen, “Blessed are the Doers.” I could not even begin to tell you how many potlucks and spaghetti dinners and fundraisers and church auctions I have cleaned up after in my life and, so often, some of that clean up was so much more meaningful than whatever the event itself was. I find the time spent cleaning up, whether it is stacking the chairs, washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, or putting everything back in the weird cabinets with their mismatched shelf liners has led to so many jokes and friendships and fun moments.
Years ago the young adult group I used to belong to did a community dinner that we all cooked and ate and then cleaned up from. It was nothing fancy, spaghetti and… something that required whipped cream. Except we had forgotten the cream and it was weirdly hard to come by some at 7pm on a Tuesday night in Harvard Square. We ended up buying a full cup of heavy cream from Starbucks and then taking turns attempting to whip it with a hand crank beater that may have been a historical Puritan artifact for how well it worked and how old it looked. After the meal everyone sort of looked around, asking if anyone knew how the dishwasher worked and I got to induct a new crew of commercial dishwasher users.
Last fall I was at a retreat and a new friend and I, exhausted from the weekend and feeling more than a bit punchy, spent probably close to an hour doing dishes and just laughing with one another. Once the youth group volunteered to run a pancake breakfast and I volunteered to help facilitate that; the other adult volunteer and I spent so long cleaning pancake batter out of the dishwasher after someone tried to help that by the end all we could do was laugh at the absurd mess and situation.
I don’t remember almost anything else about those pancakes or the spaghetti dinner. I don’t even quite remember why my friend and I ended up on extra dish duty and that retreat was only a few months ago. The little bits and pieces surrounding those events have fallen away, condensed into all the other community dinners and breakfasts I’ve had over the years of working in and around religious organizations and non-profits. The pieces that stand out will always be the little bits that go into building community. Stack the chairs, sweep the floor, wash the dishes, fold the tables.
There’s no great power in knowing how to use the commercial dishwasher, or knowing where the mop bucket is kept, or understanding the terrifying industrial range and how to make it be a stove (there is power in knowing how the coffee is made, but that’s another story) but there is power in showing up to do that work. There is intrinsic love of community built into those small acts of service.
There’s a children’s book I adore called Someone Builds the Dream. It’s about the behind the scenes work that goes into making things happen and honestly I think it should be required reading for everyone.
An artist makes a stunning plan
A masterpiece from mind to hand
A fountain both unique and grand
But…
Someone works to dig the trench,
lay the drains, solder seams.
Someone needs to plumb the pipes.
Someone needs to build the dream.
“Church kitchens” don’t usually make my mental list of spaces I feel safe and loved but maybe they should. I love being in that space, wherever that space is, with those people, whoever those people are. It’s a comforting place of people and service and transforming mess into order which, you know, is kinda what communities are, too.
Where are the places you really feel church? Who are the people you work with to create church? What does safe space feel like? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
Get a copy of "Someone Builds the Dream" at bookshop dot org.
Join the marches on April 5, in D. C. and in towns near you. Register here with the Women's March. In collaboration with 50501 (50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement).
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