The power of community... not an ordinary mitzvah.

-by Elle Vatterott, IWM serving in San Antonio, Texas

It is amazing how much is accomplished in one school year.   A school year has the power to impact an individual's, as well as a community's, life. Now that less than a week remains until the start of summer vacation, I feel called to reflect on the importance of my faith life, my individual part in creating a nurturing community and the compassion and service I offer to others.

Community played a much greater role in fostering both my personal and spiritual growth than I would have initially imagined.  Through community prayer I found the value of daily reflection in bringing myself into a more unified consciousness. I feel blessed to have such intelligent women as community members, in that they have provided the most exceptional wealth of knowledge and guidance since day one. All of these wonderful things that I experience from community have very organically trickled into the children’s lives as well.

Children need a nest of caring to shelter from the outside. Within their Visitation House community, these children learn values by living them. The infusion of stability, healthy choices and positive energy creates an ideal environment to nurture the intuition and creativity of each child. More directly, I witnessed the impact of the congregational community on the children when Sister Kathleen took on the challenging task of teaching one of the boys here, PJ, who has dyslexia, learn to read. I feel that I have mentioned this particular child in nearly all of my blogs, so one more time won’t hurt!

Just a brief recap: PJ is a third grader who, as a result of his school’s insufficient funding for LD programs, read at a Kindergarten level. At the end of the third grade school year students begin taking The Texas Education Agency Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills Test (TAKS). Four of the five sections of the test were read aloud to him, the exception being the reading portion, which happens to be the only test that third grade students must pass to be promoted to fourth grade. The odds of passing the TAKS were indisputably against him. Nevertheless, everyone pulled together to prepare him for the test.

April 25^th came sooner than I would have liked. I tried my hardest to appear calm for the children, but for those following three days I was an emotional wreck.  Everyday thereafter, before I picked up PJ from daycare, I had to mentally prepare myself to receive the results. I wanted him to pass more than anything, so he could concretely see his reading progress and better realize his potential.

After a month had passed since he took the TAKS exam with no news of results, I broke down and emailed his teacher. She replied later that day, just as I was walking PJ into the house for his reading session with Sister Kathleen. While he went to the bathroom I opened the email (these are the moments when I love my Blackberry!).  As I scrolled down to read that he had passed the entire test, I thought I was going to pass out myself.

When he returned to the reading room and sat down, I asked him if he was keeping anything from Sister Kathleen or me. I should have phrased it differently, because I could tell he thought he was in trouble when the pitch of his voice went up a few octaves. He is a pretty sensitive little boy and tends to get extremely upset in the time it takes to blink your eyes, so I immediately broke the news to him.

He was so overcome with joy and so proud of himself that he has not stopped smiling since that day! I managed to hold it together in front of PJ but tears of gratitude and bliss were flowing down my face on the car ride to pick up the other children. At that moment I believe I experienced something similar to what my Jewish friends love to frequently refer to as a mitzvah.

The way to God is a way of God, and the mitzvah is a way of God - a way where the self-evidence of the Holy is disclosed. We have words to express feelings, but we know how to live in deeds that express God. A mitzvah is where God and man meet, in which we come to an inner certainty of his realness, upon an awareness of his will. Such meeting, such presence, we experience in deeds.

I like to think that this was not an ordinary mitzvah.  What I experienced was more of a mitzvah with a twist… a “twitzvah” so to speak.   There is no doubt that at that moment I had met God and felt his presence.  However my “twitzvah” differs to the fact that it happened not from one man’s deeds alone, but from a compilation of an entire community of women’s good deeds.  

So for now, I am focusing on keeping this positive energy flowing in the Visitation House community... I have a feeling that this is going to be very “twitzvahtic” summer.