S Sorrensen
Larnook. Friday, 8.20pm
The teenagers are weaving through the tables, a plate of food in each hand, delivering meals. They’re dressed in black and wear serious faces – not because the world we’re handing to them is in such bad shape and, according to many in the know, beyond repair (which often causes me to wear a serious face); but because, well, what they’re doing is serious business; serious adult business. They’re serving dinner.
Hospitality and service are hallmarks of developed adults. Those qualities signify empathy, which is the most human of values and is taught to us by our elders, mostly through example.
Sadly, these qualities are unfashionable (and revolutionary) in a corporatocracy and many current role models do not display them. Turning away people who need your help, for instance, is not adult behaviour. It’s childish and immature.
Poisoning your future by poisoning the Earth is certainly the work of wisdom-challenged juveniles. Luckily these teenagers have progressed beyond infantile self-centredness, which is good because they’re inheriting an Earth that desperately needs wisdom and service.
Fortunately for them, this community in the bush has role models who know that service to a greater good is the noblest action a person can take. The young have watched their elders volunteer time and skills to grow a village where the value of service is understood and fostered. Service to others; service to the Earth.
The young people here are learning that service to others provides its own reward: a reward that the pursuit of personal gain can never match.
Right now, the mission is to get meals to the tables as swiftly as possible. Everyone eating together is an important feature of the night – along with the music and comedy. And that’s no mean feat when there are more than 100 people to be fed.
The teenagers, appreciating the importance of their mission, swerve and glide through the table jungle with a youthful elegance and speed.
The community is hosting a night of entertainment in its hall. A troubadour has just finished his set of tunes, and has packed away his guitar, mandolin and fiddle. These tunes brought the audience in from outside where a full moon hangs over the valley, dropping light on the freshly mowed lawn. Cars lining the dirt road glint moon from their bonnets. Trees sparkle. Roofs gleam.
Sitting on logs and steps, some people were drinking, some smoking (they’re not all dead yet) and everyone was chatting. The teenagers showed the arriving audience to their allocated tables. The young servers hung in a pack near the ticket table awaiting direction from the ticket master.
‘This group for table 12,’ he said, and one of the teenagers, a young woman with white hair, ruby lips and flashing eyes like her mother’s, stepped forward. Her smile was brilliant but brief, quickly replaced by a grave expression that showed her commitment as she led the group to its table.
The hall is a beautiful building. Unfinished of course, but beautiful. Its interior is glowing from two dozen candles set on two dozen tables. Soft up-lights accentuate the poles that support the roof, and on the stage a microphone stands ready in a circle of light.
A young man brings me dinner. I remember him as a toddler, then as a student, and now he’s a big fella serving me dinner.
Look, I’m fearful of the what the warming world will bring him, but I’m glad he’s learning his adulthood here and now.
Sure, I feel so guilty about the damaged world I pass to him, but I’m proud to be a part of this community that is teaching him to serve for the greater good.
Dear S
Lovely piece.
A parable about how the getting of wisdom gets to be passed down to those who most need it. That’s what elders are for.
Well done.
Kenrick