Death and Rebirth

The following is a reflection prepared for Allison Guntz, one of this year's North House Volunteers. Allison shared this reflection as part of her community's Pentecost Reflections, which explores the movements of the Paschal Mystery. We began with "Good Friday", and the themes of death and loss.

In order for me to talk about death, we have to talk for a minute about what death means in the context of this year so full of life. To state the obvious, I am not dead. My housemates are not dead. I haven’t witnessed the death of any of my clients. However, there have been figurative deaths. I feel that I have lost parts of myself, that pieces of me have been shed, perhaps to give way to something new. In abstract ways, I have died to myself, and I am reborn, and I am not reborn.

I think back to the first few weeks of my work at Lakeview Pantry when I was making professional goals for the year. I was going to a) implement a composting system for bruised or oozing fruit we have to throw out, b) overhaul the way we store and rotate our entire stock, and c) single-handedly write a grant to get a wheelchair lift installed so people can get into our basement facility (which would naturally mean getting the entire space redone to become ADA compliant). Oh, and I was going to learn Russian. Did I mention all of this was in my first six months on the job?

What a colossal joke. As I settled into the daily realities of work, I realized it was practically all I could do to make sure I got my data entry done each week. I mourned the death of my work goals. As time passed and all of the items on my ridiculous to-do list remained unchecked, I felt less certain of the impact I could make. I began to recognize that as I accepted that I would not accomplish all of these things, I was also allowing some of my go-getter self, my “I’m-going-to-fix-a-broken-system” self to die. Slowly, and with some sadness, I realized that in some ways, that was necessary. I had to become more practical about my abilities. I have had to acknowledge the limits of my body, my time, and my energy. There is something liberating in that realization.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, I need to tell you of another loss I saw in myself this year.

I began the year ready to confront a system – the system, the capital-S System – that marginalizes and excludes the people who come to the food pantry. I thought my job was to alleviate the injustices of the System, and it is a little bit. But I think that I also am the System a little bit, too.

A large part of my job is interviewing people when they come to the pantry for the first time. I assess their needs and I explain the process. Often, though, my clients want to explain why they ended up in a food pantry – what they’re up against. And sometimes I have a line fifteen people deep and I can only spend two or three minutes with each person, and the machine does not keep running if I hold their hand and pass them the Kleenex, you know? I feel myself dehumanizing them to be able to do my job.  I feel it dehumanizing me too, to myself. I was so horrified to prod the clients along in the beginning, and then one day a woman told me she’d just left a situation of domestic violence and – I do not say this with any pride whatsoever – I didn’t care. I don’t mean this to say that that is the day upon which I ceased to care about the lives and pains of my clients, but I say this to explain that one stressful and trying day, I sat next to a crying woman and I didn’t care. I fear I am a cog in the grand machine that is the System, and that’s a death too.

But I think that’s also what makes me human. I thought it was my empathy. That’s one of the things I like most about myself, and it’s something that I’ve lost touch of in some moments, but again, I had to become more practical about my abilities. I have had to acknowledge the limits of my body, my time, and my energy. It turns out that compassion fatigue is a real thing, and it is very human, and I had to accept that, no matter how powerless and ugly it made me feel at times.

My fantastic supervisor Carrie hung up a quote from Edward Everett Hale next to my desk, and as the year has progressed, I have committed it to memory and taken it to heart: “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.”

Ultimately, I thought I came here to fix something, but in the end, maybe I was only here to bear witness to it. And maybe that’s okay.