This from Chris Wiers, Habitat volunteer recruiter for Hope Church:
Last week I spied my first robin, our so-called state bird: Seasonal turncoat, a fair-weather friend. He was pecking fecklessly at a
patch of frost-blasted ground beside a salt-encrusted, rural road. There was a about his motions a quality of agitated twitchiness, as if the weary traveler was shaking the jet-lagged torpor after a red-eye return. For that moment, I thought I could read his mind in his motions: “Maybe I should have stayed a few weeks more.” Winter is a mood as much as a season.
This year’s Habitat Unity Build commenced three weeks earlier than last year’s. Perhaps that partly explains how hard it’s been to rouse volunteers to fill the shifts lately. Is it too early in the season? Are our regulars seized still by a lingering lethargy? Do plans of an imminent spring break crowd thought of any other activity? Even now, do those prospective volunteers stand listlessly at a window wondering, “Will spring never come?”
I’m here to tell you that a Habitat project is a better encourager of spring than the robin. Join our Habitat crew now. See the sappy stirrings of spring firsthand. Feel the desuetude dissolve like the last leftovers of snow. Before you know it, spring will be behind you, and you’ll be leaning longingly into summer.
Bob, bob over to the Habitat display in the gathering area at church to sign up for a shift. The glow you’ll feel will radiate more brightly than a red breast!
Chris Wiers, hedgehogarts (at) centurytel.net or (616) 875 7070; or use the Contact Us page on this website to indicate your interest.