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Community Corner

MLK Day a Chance to Volunteer

"A Day On, Not A Day Off" continues beyond the holiday.

Editor's note: This column was originally published in January 2011 and has been edited to reflect the current year.

For many of us, today means another day off of work, a day without mail or a day that kids weren't in school.

But it's also to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and his commitment to, as the King Center website puts it, the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service.

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It's that last noble ideal that has more and more considering the holiday “a day on, not a day off." In honor of King's lifelong work toward a better country with equality through peaceful demonstrations and integration through love and not hate, the day has grown into a sort of national day of volunteering.

After all, I personally have witnessed no other non-violent event, activity or action that brings people closer together in a more peaceful, productive and positive manner than the bond of camaraderie that is shared among volunteers working together towards a common goal.

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In speaking about volunteering, King put it another way in his sermon The Drum Major Instinct:

“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's Theory of Relativity to serve. You don't have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant."

Consequently, the “Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service” movement has grown. There is even a website that coordinates the effort nationwide. You can type in your zip code and a traveling radius to find nearby volunteering opportunities. The nearest opportunity listed is donating coats to Burlington Coat Factory in Joliet.

But there are other ways to help out locally today or this week, whether it's donating to the food pantry or helping out at MorningStar Mission's Treasure Chest.

Undoubtedly a wide variety of results will come up with on-going projects and opportunities to, as King once said, “work unceasingly to uplift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a higher plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness." 

Set aside even just an hour or two today to feel better about yourself while helping to improve countless others' lives. 

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