Brand-New Socks
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Volunteering & Giving Back
By Daria Schaffnit

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
~Henry Miller

I spent two weeks in 2007 as a seminary student at Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe, completing a course in transcultural ministry. We’d been invited to join a group of people who took water and breakfast to a local park where day laborers gathered, hoping to be chosen for work. We pulled up and let down the tailgate of the truck carrying the bottles of water and the rolls we handed out to the immigrant men who gathered around us. My classmates and I spoke with the men, hoping to learn more about their stories. My friend Kim and I ended up in conversation with a Mexican man in his forties named Natal, handsome with his long black hair. He wore a T-shirt and faded jeans. Next to him, on the low wall where he sat, rested a large backpack and a bedroll.

Natal spoke very little English and we spoke even less Spanish. Nonetheless, we had a wonderful conversation, ranging from the difficulty of finding work to artwork, from Santa Fe history to Natal’s “beautiful home,” as he described it. As we sat under the protection of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose image was carved into the metal roof of the gazebo so that her shadow appeared on the concrete floor when the sun shone through, Natal told us of his travels in search of work. He had traveled all over the U.S. and Canada, taking jobs where he found them, meeting people, and seeing the sights. He told us he’d especially loved Oregon. (Keep reading)