The Pipe Wrench Is My Rosary: How Volunteering Became My Practice

[lazy_violin_5641]

I'm a 47-year-old plumber and queer artist in Omaha, and I spend my weeks between pipe fittings and paint cans. Last winter I started volunteering two Saturday mornings at a small senior center, not as a chaplain, just as the person who fixes leaky sinks and listens.

I'm not religious, but I am a symbol person, so I do a small ritual before I go: I lay out my wrench, a short piece of pipe, a candle, and the tarot card I pulled that week. This month it was The Hermit.

The Hermit isn't about being alone. It's about carrying a small light into a dark room. That is service, at least in my experience.

It sounds corny until you're on your knees under a sink, watching an 80-year-old woman say she hasn't been able to sleep because the drip made her feel like the house was leaking out of her life. I fixed the washer, but the ritual was the attention.

I think service is one of the easiest ways to meet the shadow if you've spent too long in your own head. Jung talked about individuation as a process of becoming more whole through friction with what is outside you. I don't claim it's science, just a theory that fits my experience.

For me, volunteering is a container. I show up, I do a small practical task, I let the symbols do the rest. The tarot deck helps me name what I'm carrying: The Moon for uncertainty, The Sun for simple relief, The Hanged Man for work that stalls.

If you're not religious, that doesn't mean you can't have practice. A practice can be a weekly service to something outside yourself. It keeps the ego from becoming a closed system.

My only caution: don't turn service into a spiritual ego trip. The best volunteer shifts are the ones where I forget I'm being symbolic and just hand someone a towel.

(There's a deeper dive on this in our wiki: Mercury Retrograde Explained: What Actually Happens (Without the Hype) | Mystic Wiki.)

[over_thinking_893]

"The ritual was the attention."

Yeah, that’s the whole trick. I run a tiny breathwork group, and half my job is just making people feel seen before I tell them to exhale.

[over_thinking_944]

The Hermit isn't about being alone. It's about carrying a small light into a dark room. That is service, at least in my experience.

I agree with that, mostly because I’ve seen how much a “tiny fix” can mean when someone’s life is already fragile. I’m nineteen, a plumber in Austin, and I’ve done enough sink jobs to know a leak isn’t just water. It’s the sound someone hears at 3 a.m., the worry that the house is falling apart, the feeling of being too small to handle it. When I hand someone a towel or a new washer, the ritual isn’t the wrench. The ritual is paying attention without making it a performance.

That’s also why I’m a little wary of the tarot-as-service branding. A card can be a good anchor, especially if it helps you name what you’re carrying. But if the card becomes the point, it can start to look like the wellness version of volunteering: something you do to feel spiritually productive. I’m not saying your setup is that. I’m just saying the line between “symbolic attention” and “spiritual ego trip” is thinner than people want to admit.

For me, the best practice is the low-friction stuff: show up, do the small task, keep the container quiet. That’s where I stop needing to justify the work as mystical. If the service makes me feel more human, fine. If it makes me feel like I’m performing being human, I’ll just go back to fixing the pipe.