om By Mar Yvette Easter is Sunday, April 24 this year (a little later than usual), but that just means you have more time to figure out where you’re going to ce consistency. We also did a lot of direct work with the youth served by the program -- while I let kids dress me up in a ridiculous butterfly costume, bury me in foam stamps, and climb all over me (leaving me with purple bruises for weeks), others from our group encouraged the youth to open up about their lives, lost to them in ping pong, and cooked up a storm. It was an incredible week; not only because of the work we were able to do, but also because of the tight bond we formed as a group. Both within our group and among those we collaborated with, I saw such profound love and reciprocity -- whether it was the conversations we had with fellow volunteers about the Humanist value of working to better the conditions of life for all, or the simple joy in a little girl's eyes when one of our student leaders, an Applied Physics Ph.D. candidate named A.J. Kumar, gave her a piggyback ride. At every moment, I was reminded of one of my favorite Gandhi quotes: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." Not only did we find ourselves -- we found one another, and those we worked in solidarity with. Our experiences that week truly put the "human" in Humanism. A month after our trip, I am reminded once again of the fundamental importance of Humanist service work. Just a few days ago, I organized and ran a community service project for the American Humanist Association's (AHA) annual conference -- the first time the AHA has featured one at its annual conference. After years of attending interfaith conferences and Humanist/atheist conferences but only encountering community service events at the former, I realized that if my community wants to be seen as equally ethical individuals, we will need to make good on our values. That we must actualize our commitments to justice and compassion -- for our own sake, if not in respect to how we're perceived by others. It was open to the public, and of the 400 conference attendees, about 40 participated in the service project. I was very pleased with the turnout, and happy to hear many who couldn't make it express their belief that it had value; but someday, I'd like to see nearly everyone who attends the AHA conference participate in a group service project. I don't think it is sufficient to gather for education and fellowship -- we must also act upon the values we discuss. This is a call to Humanists and atheists everywhere: Can we set aside intellectualizing and debating, even just for a moment, and start putting our money where other people's mouths are? I hear a lot of talk among my fellow Humanists about truth and knowledge -- but not yet enough about love and compassion. The Humanist case for compassion and engagement is so compelling that it should be more than an afterthought. Until we make this a priority, we will likely continue to be seen by many as mean-spirited and immoral -- and we will be hypocritical for making the criticizing of the religious our top priority while failing to act on our values with the incredible frequency that religious people do. In this year's groundbreaking American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Robert Putnam and David Campbell revealed that the religious easily beat the nonreligious in the arena of civic engagement -- that those actively involved in religious communities are much more likely than the nonreligious to volunteer their time to causes, give more money to charity (both religious and secular), and be more involved in their broader communities. Until we can show that the nonreligious care just as much about improving the world as the religious do, we've got no business saying that "religion poisons everything." We've got to shift our priorities and start focusing on how H