Service to others is the heart of community

Around November every year, Elsie O’Bryan, and the other longtime volunteers who make the Christmas Friendship Dinner possible, began to shake their heads and question their collective sanity.

Only one thing could motivate a community to work together to prepare and share a Christmas feast for 4,000 people — love. What else has enough raw power to accomplish such a feat?

Day-to-day life in the Mat-Su is so rich it can be difficult to single out just what’s best about living here. But if we were preparing such a list, we’d positively include the Christmas Friendship Dinner. We’re in awe of its scale and impressed by its 22-year history.

A few years ago, these volunteers put their helping hands together with Santa Cop and Heroes and the Mat-Su Special Santa programs to look for ways their groups can maximize the ways each serves the community. There’s no need to pick a favorite in this crowd. All three of these non-profits would certainly make our short list of very good Valley things.

We see these groups as examples of what’s best about Valley life — we help each other. None of these groups has paid staff or office space. These undertakings are neighbor helping neighbor, which has always been the Alaska way. Sometimes, even in these modern times, our very lives still depend on the kindness of strangers.

There is something powerful and restorative that happens to a person when they volunteer. It’s different to perform a task when the motivation is just love. It’s fun and meaningful to work together toward a common goal with no expectation of reward or remuneration. It’s also a great way to meet your neighbors.

We are all very busy with our own lives. But it’s worth pausing this time of year and reflecting on our shared accomplishments and challenges. Looking back over 2013, it’s clear we are richly blessed here in the Mat-Su Borough.

We count it among our blessings that these sort of all-volunteer, neighbor-helping-neighbor efforts are part of the Valley year-round. This is always who we are, not just at Christmas. In fact, we created the Mat-Su Good Neighbor Awards in celebration of our 65th anniversary in 2012 as a way to honor the best examples of this trait.

It seems part of our nature as humans to divide ourselves into small groups of like-minded souls. But volunteer efforts such as these offer proof that there is plenty of common ground in our community for cooperation, regardless of any perceived differences.

Looking forward, we resolve to keep our focus on that common ground. We ask you, our neighbors, to join us in our resolve this New Year to focus less on what divides us and more on what unites us.

In the words of one appreciative Christmas Friendship Dinner diner, “This event is always such an inspiration. If the ‘whole’ nation did this, we would have a ‘whole’ nation.”