september 11th

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was commuting on light rail from my home in Mountain View to my job in Campbell. It was about 6:00AM when I boarded the train--still gray outside and fairly chilly--and there were two men huddled next to each other listening intently to the single earpiece of a 30 year-old transistor radio. In the entire year prior, I don't recall a stranger ever once offering me a piece of news, but on that morning one of the men looked up at me and said grimly, "a plane crashed into one of the twin towers." At that moment I recalled reading of a military plane having crashed into the Empire State building some decades earlier, and although it was certainly terrible, I thought nothing more of it.

But as I progressed toward my destination, an air of pain and panic began to grow thick amidst the gathering commuters. Whispered comments and gasps ran throughout the train as riders came and went; soon there were tears, and not long after, genuine terror as people gasped, covered their mouths, and frantically tried to call loved ones.

We all recall our personal whereabouts that morning eight years ago, and we are all still caught up in its devastating effects. But this year we as a people united decided to steal back the legacy of that fateful day. Instead of allowing it to persist as something ugly, destructive, and poisonous, we joined with others all across the country in recognizing the first annual National Day of Service and Remembrance.

On September 11th, 2009, we at Sacred Heart launched a new strategy in our efforts to realize our vision, an approach that takes our work directly into the neighborhoods and homes most affected by poverty and involves bringing the general public together to work side-by-side with our low-income neighbors in building a stronger, more just community.

Specifically, we brought together some 150 students, politicians, seniors, business professionals, members of faith communities, and people living in poverty, and spread out into low-income neighborhoods to install raised-bed gardens. Working shoulder-to-shoulder in small groups, these disparate members of our society joined one another to do something beautiful, something compassionate, something full of hope and purpose.

Now, as you might imagine, bringing off something like this is quite a logistical feat. Trying to organizing all of the volunteers, the materials, the tools, the transportation to 18 different sites was not easy. And there were some challenges.

Shortly after sending the volunteers out at about 9:00AM, my cell phone began to ring. "Um, Todd?"

"Yeah?"

"Were we supposed to have shovels?"

And then things got a little out of hand. My phone wouldn't stop ringing. "We don't have enough screws." "Can you bring us a drill?" "I thought we were going to have wood--how are we supposed to build the wooden planter?" "There's no one home." The calls came tumbling in, one after the next like row upon row of a malevolent marching band.

But in the midst of this onslaught, the teams really pulled together. We sent out drivers to borrow tools from groups that had already finished using them and to transport them to the teams without. Others rushed to hardware stores to buy more supplies. When I arrived at a site that was without a functioning wheelbarrow to move the huge pile of soil from the front yard to the back (their wheelbarrow's tire was completely flat), I found the family matriarch on her knees scooping dirt with her bare hands into an old paint can, and from there into a garbage can perched atop a skateboard that acted as a make-shift wheelbarrow: not only an amazing act of ingenuity, but one full of the sort of determination that we see every day in the faces of those we serve, the determination to keep struggling because giving up carries with it too high a price. And after all of this back-breaking work, this mother of two hurried herself into her kitchen to make the entire team enchiladas.

I learned a lot that day: first, that I'm more of a big-picture guy--not so strong when it comes to details; second, that something remarkable happens when those on both sides of the economic divide come together to work toward a common vision; and third, that the low-income community is not simply a repository of deficits--that there is much in the way of assets within those weighed-down by poverty, and in many cases it is just giving people the chance to exercise those assets that will help them rise to a place of dignity and self-determination.

These gardens, only the first in what will be 100 planted by the end of the year through our La Mesa Verde program, will not only provide a supplement for families struggling to meet their nutritional needs in regions of the city conspicuously devoid of fresh produce, but also provide the impetus to community. There is something special about gardens in the way they can draw people together; we saw this already as neighbor helped neighbor in the construction of these planters, and we will rejoice when the harvest comes and the produce is shared, the yield being more than most families will be able to consume themselves.

What's more, the first harvest will coincide with Thanksgiving and Christmas, and many of the new owners of these gardens have expressed an interest in sharing their yield with Sacred Heart as we distribute holiday food boxes to the greater community. 

To all those who joined in this good work--and to all those who will do so in the future--Thank you.