Lesson in Humility

First of all, the start of the year has been wonderful. The new staff had 2 great weeks of training where we bonded, became experts on service-learning, and pulled off StreetFest smoothly as a team after Emily Wolffis spent the summer preparing. It was a blast.

We wrote a new covenant. Some of you may remember last year's two word phrases. This year is quite a bit different, as is typical with a tide of new people. We have picked 5 main words that we will focus on this year. They are love, justice, hope, humility, and patience. Along with each word, we have written several questions that we will seek to "answer." These questions will never be fully answered, but maybe someone else can expound on the covenant itself in another post.

I realize that the title "a lesson in humility" is difficult to gulp down in and of itself. It's not really an attractive heading and some people may have even stopped reading right then and there. Who really wants to learn how to be humble? That is certainly not our natural mode in life. We prefer pride and self absorption, don't we? It is a harsh reality. I would rather think about my day and the set of problems placed on my plate, rather than spend time trying to understand someone else's worries. And helping them? Boy, that's a stretch. I am a college student, a nursing student, in fact. I will help people the rest of my life, why must I set aside time now to invest in understanding and helping others? Right now my sole purpose in life is to grow and learn as much as I can.

Here's the thing, I grow through my experiences and interactions with other people and the attitude I take while doing that changes how much I will truly learn. If you really set back and think about how much you are learning from other people, versus how much you are putting into other people, it's often disproportionate. Disproportionate because they teach you so much more than you could ever hope to give back. This is true for many relationships in life. Professor to student is certainly like that. I would hope that some of your friendships are like that. What about parent to son or daughter?* Realizing this truth is helpful in intentionally taking on a humble mode of existence. It is helpful in being open to other worldviews (yeah, I was going to try and avoid Calvin language, but I can't help it.) It is helpful in finding a sense of peace about your own imperfections. It is helpful in so many ways, I'm sure you can think of more.

This is the Service-Learning Center mantra. Reciprocity. Learning to serve and serving to learn. It's become so engrained in the way I think, I am hoping I've said enough here to fully explain. If anything, I hope that this is just a starting point for peer conversations. Also, feel free to add feedback or correct me in the comments. :)
Thank you for reading.

*There are plenty of cases where this is not true, after all, we are broken people. I have not meant to be hurtful and I apologize if this is off mark for anyone. Perhaps your relationship with parents is not ideal. I hope that you have then found a mentoring relationship that serves a similar purpose.

-Melanie Roorda, ABSL Coordinator