from another perspectice...

June, 2009

Love in the Little Things

Being a Jesuit Volunteer means taking great joy in simple pleasures: a fellow JV taking your turn on kitchen cleanup after an especially trying day at work, a warm, sunny bike ride after an interminably long winter, or a smile and a word of thanks from one of the patrons at House of Charity. We learn to love these simple pleasures partly because we are called to live simply. After all, I eat shelter food five days a week, share one bathroom with seven other JV's, and have exactly eighty dollars a month to spend on myself. Extravagance is rarely an option.

My work at House of Charity calls me to do more than live simply, however. It has taught me to take great pride in the basic tasks I can perform for our patrons everyday. Scooping stew onto 200 lunch plates, handing out 50 bars of soap, or cataloguing and retrieving countless pieces of mail may at first seem more like mindless repetition than revolutionary social justice work. But if these tasks ever start to feel pointless or mundane, I can come home from work and pick out a line from the "Prayer of Oscar Romero" inscribed on the wall in our living room: "We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well." Every portion of stew means a full stomach, every bar of soap means a homeless person can feel clean and refreshed, and every letter received holds the promise of contact with a loved one.

All of these simple tasks reaffirm my love for the work I do on a daily basis, but every once and a while it's the little thing that a patron unknowingly does for me that humbles me and serves as a reminder that, in the end, I'm luckier to have the House of Charity than the patrons there are to have me.

At 71, he was dropped off on the House of Charity's doorstep by a family member who, for whatever reason, no longer had the funds or patience to take care of him. His life moves at a snail's pace, one foot in front of the other as his walker inches along. Gnarled fingers meticulously pack his pipe full of tobacco before he goes outside for a smoke. "Don't worry, it's not pot," he jokes. He has all the reasons in the world to complain. He froze in foxholes in Korea while bullets flew over his head. He laid down his life for his country only to be dropped in a homeless shelter 50 years later. But he never complains, all he asks for is a warm bed at night with a few blankets that he can wrap himself in tight to ease the "great pain" he suffers from everyday. He's afflicted with short-term memory loss but has an incredible mind. We recite Robert Frost poems together. He still has many miles to go before he sleeps, "the miles just take longer now" he says. I want to help him in so many ways. I want to give him his health, give him back the last 50 years of his life, take away those terrible memories from Korea that send him into nightmarish flashbacks every time he hears a firework go off or a car backfire. I can't do any of that. It's hard to even fully comprehend his hardship. But one night after helping him get his pajamas on and get into that "nice warm bed," I realize that I have given someone who deserves so much more than he has the one thing he truly needs. And in return, been taught yet another invaluable lesson on the importance of appreciating and loving life's simplest pleasures.

Jon Killoran
Los Angeles, CA