I’ve never considered myself racist, I always do my best to treat everyone fairly. But in that moment, I realized that skin color is something I notice and something that matters to me, not in conscious higher-level thought, but almost at an instinctual level. I felt a sense of unease being surrounded by black people, black children.
I was surprised after just the first night how much of a difference the group prayer made for me. I felt lighter, more hopeful. My emotions didn’t feel so crushing. It was like I had been underwater since the start of the quarantine and the group prayer was the first time I had come up for air.
We usually think of volunteering as weeding a garden or picking up trash (those are important too, of course), but it can be more. It can be making someone’s day just by showing up. It can be learning things you never knew from someone who experienced it first-hand. It can be the satisfied feeling you get when someone laughs at a joke you made. Volunteering isn’t just mundane tasks. It’s knowing and feeling and connecting with people.