Motion and Sweat in Community Service
by Andy Bogart
Daybreak found an army of Nippon Kan volunteers stretching and chatting in Civic Center Park on the morning of October 19th. The clear sky promised a fine day to work, but the air’s nighttime chill still lingered, and hands were happy to hold a warm cup of coffee or to find the warmth of work gloves. The good people of Denver Parks and Recreation’s “Hands on Denver” project greeted us with warm smiles and coffee, and provided us tools, tarps, trucks, and work gloves for the day’s activity. We had gathered to take part in what has become a seasonal tradition in our dojo; it was time for “Beds to Bed”, this year being our twelfth annual fall volunteer project.
This year was a little different than years past, due to the fact that Homma Sensei was in Ostrava, Czech Republic to teach aikido and promote AHAN activities in that region. He was accompanied by Mary Powell, who has served as our volunteer project coordinator with the Denver Park Service for many years. With out our usual leaders in place, we were “home alone” on this one…
Our morning began without much in the way of fanfare. Regular members, old timers, family members, and even some brand-new beginners assembled to hear brief instructions from General Eric Farnsworth, while group leader Rick Rosthauser led us through familiar stretches, complete with “eeeeech!, neeee!, saaaaan!, sheeeeee!, goooo!”. And with that, the “Nippon Kan army” split into four teams, and we marched off, flags whipping majestically in the morning breeze, to our assigned flowerbeds to begin. For this army, volunteering for such projects and cooperating with partners was nothing extraordinary.
What was extraordinary was the efficiency and quality of the work we were able to do. We transformed the beds like wildfire: pulling flowers, hunting down elusive roots, hauling away the refuse, and turning the soil with shovels.
As has been our habit, we finished a great amount of work in a small amount of time. Perhaps as important, however, was the time spent between shovel-fulls. It was during these moments when we could swap stories of the year it snowed, or of how each of us wound up in Denver, or what was to become of all the mice we had just evicted from their flowery homes. Some used the time to decide the best way to steal the flag of a “rival” team of volunteers in the next bed over.
With our AHAN projects, we are actively putting what we believe about cooperation and blending to work in the world around us, making a little corner of our world into something we’re proud of. Its affects on the community are very tangible – even some of the homeless folks in the park were inspired to help carry the occasional tarp-load to the trucks.
Communities are born of shared values and shared experience. There in the muddy flowerbeds, Nippon Kan’s own community was strengthened and renewed for another year — to the benefit of the city of Denver, and to our own. Even being “home alone”, this next generation of Nippon Kan staff leaders did an excellent job.
Thank you to all of you who were able to give of your time, motion and sweat!
Andy Bogart
Nippon Kan Instructor