By Dan May
Rotary Club of Orange
Dan May
The sign in front of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Route 1 in Milford reads, “You can belong before you believe.” If you happen to be looking for a church to join, this is a thought-provoking invitation to stop in to participate in what’s going on with the congregation there before you decide about adopting their faith statements.
I view it each week driving to a small storeroom in the back of D&M Carquest Auto Parts that generously stores the food which members of the Rotary Club of Orange deliver to a neighborhood Purple Pantry Box. Making food available at a local level to the food insecure is one of many activities that Rotary clubs work on together.
I like St. Andrew’s marketing message because I believe it is the best way to recruit people to any voluntary organization, be it a church or synagogue, a service group like Lions or Rotary, or any of many volunteer-run organizations that help support a community. Learn what they do, not merely what they say they believe.
As a Rotary leader, I try to recruit new members who would enjoy and might benefit from helping with the club’s community activities. And the best way to introduce a prospective member to Rotary is to have them come to one or more of these activities.
In the last few weeks, club members joined other volunteers to package meal packets for food pantries and shelters, distribute storybooks to kindergarteners and support high school juniors competing in an uplifting public-speaking contest about ethical decision-making.
This spring, the Orange club will sponsor a family bingo night on March 17 at High Plains Community Center, host leadership development conclaves for high school students on March 28 in New Haven and April 11 in Newtown, provide the labor to shred once-important household documents dropped off at the town’s Recycling Day on April 11, sell roses before Mother’s Day to raise funds for college scholarships, and serve pancakes to seniors as part of a regional day of service on May 16.
These are fun activities and all are welcome to participate. Any can also serve as a good introduction to Rotary and its members. The Rotary International motto is the lofty-sounding “Service above Self,” but our club also wraps other words around its logo – “Fellowship, Fun, Giving Back.” It’s enjoyable to connect with others outside of family, old friends and work colleagues in meaningful actions.
Rotary started in Chicago in 1905 and has since spread to every state and nearly 200 nations and territories. As a global organization, it has achieved success with polio eradication, literacy efforts and public health initiatives. But perhaps the best product exported from the US is the idea of local community service, which is practiced by clubs everywhere.
Civic engagement was noted as a distinct American virtue by French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville in his mid-19th century analysis, Democracy in America. Rotary has spread that virtue globally. Today about 300,000 Rotarians are US members, while over one million are international members. We would like to increase the US share and reclaim the title for civic engagement. Such engagement is also in significant need of renewal here at home.
I attended college in California in the 1970s, in the era of “finding yourself” and trendy institutes touting “internal exploration and emergent transformation.” My father would shake his head when visiting and remind me that “you are what you do, not what you say or currently believe.” I eventually took a course on ethics and realized he was paraphrasing Aristotle, who argued that living a good/happy/flourishing life (“eudaimonia” in Greek) is best achieved through daily habits and practice of virtuous activity. It’s not finding yourself, but making yourself.
One of the first steps to eudaimonia might be joining in activities with an action-oriented group that will help “make” you, often by helping others. It might be with St. Andrew’s or another church or synagogue, or a non-sectarian organization like Lions or Rotary, or a mission-specific group like Purple Pantry Boxes. But join. Action will follow and affect belief, and not incidentally, help others.
Dan May is the president of the Rotary Club of Orange.