Midnight Mission holds a special place in my heart. It was the location of one of my first "a-ha" moments about service my first year at LMU. MESA uses Midnight Mission as one of our service sites and we traditionally serve a Friday morning breakfast to the clients. This means leaving campus at 3:30am on a Friday morning, driving to Skid Row, preparing and serving breakfast, then driving back to campus and ready to go by 9am. It has always been a whirlwind experience, but the first time I experienced it I was completely overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed by the pace of the service, the military precision in which the Mission runs, and most of all, the overwhelming amount of people that came through the line. My first experience of breakfast I distinctly remember Michael (the volunteer coordinator) telling us that we served over 400 people in 40 minutes. Most of these people were middle-aged men, but there were also teenagers, women, elementary-aged children, and even a few babies.
I did not know how to process this experience. I did not know how to process the fight that broke out between two men over a surplus biscuit left on the table. I did not know know to how process the mom with two boys, aged 5 and 7 who had to sprint to the front of the line to make sure that they got fed before they hopped on the school bus that was right outside the shelter. I especially did not know how to process when one of my MESA participants burst into tears. Thank God Tom King was right there and able to debrief with her on the spot because I was totally useless.
MESA has returned to Midnight Mission each year and I'm happy to say that I become more and more comfortable every time I go. My AB trip to DC really helped me understand homelessness in ways that I didn't know I was capable of until that point. The trip and agencies we worked with were really committed to helping us not only connect with the issue of homelessness through service, but also through reflections, tons of debriefing and also learning about advocacy. This holistic approach completely changed how I viewed the issue and how I looked at my time at places like Midnight Mission.
This brings me to this past Friday. Since I got to LMU (and they ruined me for life!) I tried to do some kind of service on or around Thanksgiving. Two years ago AJ and I went up to Pasadena for an awesome Thanksgiving event that fed around 4,000 high-need individuals and families. Last year I made a bunch of sack lunches and delivered them to people in Venice. This year Thanksgiving snuck up on me. All of a sudden it was the day before Thanksgiving and I hadn't made any plans. Then I saw a status message from Nancy, one of the RAs in the first-year area. She was organizing a trip to Midnight Mission and had a few spots left. I was able to secure a spot and even got a spot for Nic, one of my RAs on my staff.
We loaded up in the CSA vans, drove down to Skid Row and started in on the work of the day. This was my first time serving dinner instead of breakfast so the work was a little different. We cracked over 3,000 eggs (I'm not even exaggerating...there was crate after crate after crate of eggs!), prepared drinks for dinner, and mushed pies together which was completely and totally awesome! It would take too long to serve slices of pie on the line so they take dozens of pies and then it was our job to mush them together so they could be scooped. It was so fun! We were elbow-deep in pumpkin and pecan pie and Nic and I both decided that it would be an excellent program idea during Finals Week. It was so relaxing!
We finished up and got ready for the line. As usual, it was quick and stressful and the faces started to blur together. Something that was different this time was the increase of families. I noticed that there were more reserved tables for families and it seemed like there were more children. There was also a baby that couldn't have been more than six weeks old which absolutely broke my heart. You try to be present to each and every person. Interacting with strangers has not always been a strong point of mine, but I harnessed my Woo and at least attempted a connection with the people that came through my line. It always goes incredibly fast and then you basically have to kick the people out of the dining area the moment that they are done eating and this is always a struggle for me.
During this experience, there was a moment on the line that the thought of whether the people that I was serving dinner to would be people that would do service if their life circumstances were different. This really got me thinking about what a privilege it is to do service. And I'm not talking about some sort of cliche humility that so many people get, but the fact that the place where I am in right now means that I have service privilege much in the same way that I have white privilege due to my race or heterosexual privilege due to my sexual orientation. I'm still unpacking this thought and haven't decided if this is earned or unearned just yet, but let's go back a step or two.
I say that I have service privilege because it was so easy for me to do service that day. I knew the right people. Nancy knew just who to call at Midnight Mission and knew to bring the waivers with her that day. We knew exactly how to get there and we had transportation all lined up. If we didn't have the CSA vans, we already had two people lined up to carpool us all there. We all had fancy phones with us and used our GPS to double-check our Google map directions. We had people in our group that had been there before and knew about the (not so easy to find) underground parking and the (even harder to find) elevator to get to the main floor. We knew where to find the hairnets, gloves and aprons, and knew to wait for our volunteer coordinator before we got started. We knew where the bathrooms were, where to get the key, where to get drinks for volunteers, and the procedure for clean-up at the end of the day.
There is so much privilege that goes along with this! I wanted to do service and within hours it was all set up for me! This would be such a stressful situation for anyone else. It's no wonder than more people don't do service! It really isn't just as easy as showing up. There is a lot of planning that went along with those four hours of service. Even the fact that I was able to go with people that I know was a privilege on its own, not to mention the great debriefing conversation we had on the way back to campus that our car had together.
All of this made me think about my students at LMU and whether they know what kind of privilege it takes to do service. My guess is no. My first year I had a ton of conversations with Dan about our students and whether they do service for the greater good or because "that's just what we do here." Sometimes I worry that service has been commercialized on campus and it is the "cool" thing to do. We talked about this a lot in my Leadership class and we debated back and forth about whether the motivation behind service matters or whether doing the service itself is good enough. Does it matter if people only do service while on an AB trip because it's the cool thing to do? At the end of the day, they are still doing service. I'm surely not saying that people should stop doing service, but I also think that by realizing how much privilege can be seen through the process, then the experience itself may be more transformational.
I guess I'll keep paying my rent, but start to think more about what that rent means, how much I pay, and who it goes to in the meantime.
Love this post.
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