By BEN CORNO
For months, I have wondered how to promote the Second Annual Salt Spring Island Volunteer Fair, helping to make it a successful event for everyone involved.
Of course, I could highlight the importance of the attending organizations and their need for help with their missions, but I should do more: explore, and expand.
Is it fair to call the Volunteer Fair a “fair?” All fairs share two characteristics: a fair is a gathering, and it provides entertainment or facilitates commerce. I bristle. Becoming a volunteer is more than a physical sacrifice, the acceptance of a burden, a transactional share in supporting the community interest.
Maybe I should commodify fulfilling feelings. The investor, the volunteer, would be repaid, and we would have a “fair” trade? But our community needs to be able to give, not just trade. That’s why the Volunteer Fair exists in the first place: to facilitate the connections that make giving into a group project, not a lonely sacrifice. Connection is the commodity traded between everyone at the Volunteer Fair.
I am reminded of a Buddhist prayer prompt I was offered nearly 15 years ago at a monastery in Vancouver. I offered the Buddah a persimmon I had bought and, with gratitude, was asked to imagine the persimmon multiplying into so many persimmons that they filled the entire room, spilled from the monastery, and flooded the streets until all of the city became a mountain of persimmons. I still love the feeling of this prompt. So, the persimmon IS connection. The connection filling the Gulf Islands Secondary School (GISS) Multipurpose Room could be so abundant that it will overspill the doors of the venue, and flow out into the soccer field, wash across Rainbow Road and pour into Ganges with torrential force. Uphill, Swanson’s Pond will be inundated with connection due to the pressure inside the room sending connection over the banks of the pond. The connective potential inside the space will be like the totality of the persimmons in the monastery, and everyone will go home full from new sweet connections they have made.
So, here’s the idea: please join us on Saturday, April 26 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at GISS to offer your persimmon of gratitude and be a part of the power of connection. You don’t need to find yourself volunteering with one of the 30-plus organizations in attendance to have a successful visit. Rather, successful attendance will be measured in the gratitude you have experienced and shared, and the connections that you have strengthened in the sharing. Creating our supportive and vibrant island is the result of unimaginable instances of historic connection leading to a durable, trustworthy community fabric.
Thankfully, not only are persimmons sweet and delicious, but they are also high in fibre, a key component of an integrated, hardy and delectable community!