an article about Night Out

For hours Philip chops up potatoes. Jason chops onions and laughingly comments on the militarism of the kitchen manager on this important day. Sadie patiently washes dishes and prepares huge bowls of salad, placing just the right amount of carrots in each bowl. As the day advances expected and unexpected volunteers spend hours or minutes chopping tomatoes, scrubbing pots, making perfect pies, sampling soups, rolling burritos, marinating meat. Many more self-appointed volunteers swing by to offer “smells good” “what’s that” “looks good” comments. Our Community Place begins to smile and lightly dance around the common room, draped in Indian cloth and studded with candlelight, celebrating OCP’s fifth Night Out.

Throughout the day, Night Out, a fundraiser for Our Community Place, slowly becomes a space for ordinary heroes to develop: washing heaps of rice strewn plates and soup pots, transformed from community member to black clad waiter, enjoying the four course meal with blessing in heart and hand. The building exhales quiet thanks all around – thanks for always having food to eat together, thanks for surplus (our faithful donor of fresh veggies becomes a buser), thanks for the transformation of daily spaces into candlelit beauty, thanks for the chance to share our community and to be blessed by the broader one that surrounds us.

As community volunteers scurry around throwing colorful clothes over tables of weekday activities, others arrange pictures of Haiti around warm lamps. Candle light reflects the smiling sunny faces of Haiti’s children; some will receive 25% of all Night Out donations. Those who use OCP as their daily home and address jump in to cut onions for Our Community Place and for families living on La Gonave, an island off the coast of Haiti where people eat a bowl of rice every couple days.

As Alice dishes rice onto a plate already steaming with Mediterranean haddock, Preston serves beef and potatoes and Teresa rolls silverware. Called by a need to help each other, Our Community Place holds hands around its space and sends out blessings to the world as it whirls.