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  • Alums 2 opt2

    What 11 Service Year Alums Can Teach Us About America

    Guest Author, Kristen Bennett
    The Service Year Alums Awards recognize outstanding alumni for their contributions during their service years and beyond.
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  • About Us
  • Our Approach
  • Bonding
  • Bridging
  • Building
  • Belonging
  • Becoming Us
  • A Call to Connection

See our shared humanity in a new light

A Note of Appreciation

Send a poem, accompanied by a note of appreciation, to someone who allows you to feel seen, heard, and valued, someone who gives you hope or has made a difference in your life.

Invitation

By Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time
     to linger
         for just a little while
            out of your busy
and very important day
     for the goldfinches
         that have gathered
            in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
     to see who can sing
         the highest note,
            or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
     or the most tender?
         Their strong, blunt beaks
            drink the air
as they strive
     melodiously
         not for your sake
            and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
     but for sheer delight and gratitude—
         believe us, they say,
            it is a serious thing
just to be alive
     on this fresh morning
         in the broken world.
            I beg of you,
do not walk by
     without pausing
         to attend to this
            rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Small Kindnesses

By Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

I'll Hold it for You

By Lyndsay Rush

The worry you store neatly in your ribs
The breath you haven’t let out since 2020
The world that’s perched on your shoulders
The love that might tear you in two
I know you’re the type of person who hates taking more than one trip to bring in the groceries
But
That looks heavy—
give it to me for a minute
I’ll hold it for you

Willingness

By James Crews

So often it is willingness that shapes us,
a door left ajar somewhere inside
that lets in the wind along with the sweet
fermenting scent of the coming autumn.
An openness to change and a beginner’s
mind that welcomes every surprise
like a delivery you’ve been expecting
your entire life. A knock at the door,
and then you open your arms, accept
the package that’s handed to you—
not knowing what it contains, or even
who it’s from, only that it has your name
written across the top.

Fire

By Judy Brown

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

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