The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism
by Robert Coles
This book was inspiring and just down right interesting. Especially right now, in my life. In it, Robert Coles recalls his encounters with volunteers, young and old, who have given something of themselves to others. From civil rights activists and charity workers, members of the Peace Corps and the military, volunteers in shelters and inner-city schools, Coles writes the testimonies of the satisfaction that comes with "something done, someone reached." He has been a "witness to idealism" and he has written about all he has seen and learned.
Coles is a child psychiatrist and in 1961, he worked, at the behest of Federal Judge Wright, with the four black six-year-old girls who initiated school desegregation in New Orleans. In one chapter, he describes the ordeal of six-year-old Tessie, who had to fight her way through angry, threatening mobs every day for months. He describes how every morning he would sit with Tessie and her grandmother while they waited for the Federal Marshalls to arrive to escort her to school. Tessie's grandmother would pray for her and while she would finish her breakfast she told her, "You see my child, you have to help the good Lord with His world! He puts us here - and He calls us to help Him out. You belong in that McDonogh School, and there will be a day when everyone knows that, even those poor folks - Lord I pray for them! - those poor, poor folks who are out there shouting their heads off at you. You're one of the Lord's people; He's put His Hand on you. He's given a call to you, a call of service - in His name!" Tessie later told Cole that service meant serving, and not only on behalf of those she knew and liked or wanted to like. Service can mean an alliance with the Lord on behalf of people who are even mean or unfriendly. "If I can help the Lord and do a good job, then it'll all be okay, and I won't be wasting my time. The marshals say, 'Don't look at them, just walk with your head up high.' My granny says God is looking too, and I should remember that it's a help to him to do this, to change those people's minds."
I too believe in a call of service. As a teacher at an Alternative Ed high school, my days are filled with pregnant and scared teenage girls, gang members who are scared and lonely, abused and lost youth who have never met their fathers and are being raised by relatives. This world is a broken and scary place, and it is up to us to take the time to get to know each other, to take an interest in one another, and to help each other heal as much as we can.
Earlier this month, a group of teachers and myself had the first of many meetings with the head of the California State Department of Education - Charter Division in Sacramento. It has been a long journey here. Our "service" to the students of our school have landed us on the capitol's steps so to speak. It is inspiring to see how far a group of teachers will go to insure an equal and equitable education for their students and I feel privileged to be serving with this group of amazing women.
"For of those to whom much has
been given, much is required."
been given, much is required."
-Luke 12:48, and quoted by John Kennedy
