We All Went to Elementary School Together: The Joy of Growing on the True Vine Together

Jayla Frith from CFMS Class of 2011,
and current Cornell University Student prepares
mac and cheese for a homeless shelter.

by Jodi-beth McCain, Director of Religious Education/Lower Elementary Catechist

It was a snowy day in January.  I was helping to transport trays and trays of cakes and mac and cheese made by college students home on break. I helped them carry the trays into the homeless drop-in shelter.  One of the volunteers there asked if I was the teacher and the college students were my students.  I said “no,” but wasn’t sure how to reply.  One of the group looked around and then answered, “We all went to elementary school together.”

Since graduating from CFMS everyone in the group had spent at least a week in Tijuana, Mexico, building houses through a group called Esperanza.  And they kept in touch.  When fellow alum and Tijuana volunteer Zach Misleh died last June, they were all at his funeral, and they heard how he had slept outside on many Christmas Eves as a way to be in solidarity with the homeless. Now they gathered in College Park to serve food and play chess with the homeless.  They shared about who Zach was and how they were there that day in his memory.

Ever since that day the response, “We all went to elementary school together,” has stayed with me.  As I presented the parable of the Good Samaritan in the atrium, I thought of Zach and these alums and how they seemed to be doing likewise for those in need, just as Jesus instructed in the parable. After the death of their friend, I also wondered if in some way they identified with the traveler who had been beaten and was in need.  It wasn’t a physical wounding, but the pain of loosing a loved one to death creates great need.  That day at the shelter it was as though they were both the wounded traveler and the ones who were offering healing.

Micah Shenk-Evans (University of Maryland), Aleja
Hertler-McCain (Pomona College), and Jayla Frith
from CFMS Class of 2011 prepare food for a homeless shelter.

I also thought about them as I presented the parable of the True Vine. Jesus said, “I am the Vine. You are the branches.” Your children so quickly rejoice in our being branches all connected to one another – to those we do and don’t know, and to those who have come before us.  I have been comforted that Zach is one of those branches, and I give thanks.

I pray that all the children of CFMS, those who are grown and those who still shake hands at the morning door every day, may know the strength and comfort in the call to be Samaritans and in the joy of being branches of the True Vine.