The news lately has been big – Royal Weddings, Osama bin Laden’s death, tornadoes and more tornadoes; exciting and scary stuff. It’s easy to get caught up in big events. I had great fun at a Royal Wedding party last week – arriving at 4:45 a.m. to find the hostess in her pajamas and a hat serving scones, jam & cream and champagne! Other big news has not been as festive, but death and destruction have their rightful place on the front page.
At Loaves & Fishes we specialize in little news. I’d love to see a headline in the Charlotte Observer proclaiming the end of local hunger. No more children going to school without breakfast, no families suffering food insecurity, and no need for soup kitchens or pantries. But that is not likely to happen in our lifetimes.
What does happen day in and day out is the joint efforts of thousands of people – volunteers and donors who make little headlines in the lives of ordinary people. In three months Loaves & Fishes has provided a week’s worth of food to 23,712 people. Wholesome, nutritious food – to keep folks not just satisfied but healthy. Hot cereal on cold mornings, bowls of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and hearty suppers. Won’t make the front page, but makes a world of difference to 23,712 local folks.
You never, ever know what the next phone call will bring to Loaves & Fishes. Yesterday morning Bill, one of our long-term volunteer pantry coordinators, called the office with a unique problem. He said a woman had come into the pantry wanting to donate fresh eggs. Not a daily occurrence, but not that unusual. But she had arrived in a pick-up truck full of live chickens! Bill wanted me to tell him what to do! Well, after a few moments of fumbling around, I said, “Bill, I think you must tell her that we just can’t accept donations of live poultry.” I suspected that I was the target of an April Fool’s prank, a few days late. And sure enough, staff members had put Bill up to the fictitious phone call. I have a (well-deserved) reputation as a prank caller myself. I occasionally call the office with donations of interesting and unusual food – 40,000 pounds of ripe apricots, fresh road-kill, etc. – just to see how the staff will react. So it was payback time.
However, last week we received a donation of 29,000 pounds of chicken that was anything but a prank. Tyson Foods brought 16 pallets of chicken to our warehouse on Wednesday morning. We knew the donation was coming, but didn’t know the specifics. When we unloaded it and open the first box we were overjoyed to find skinless, boneless chicken breasts, packaged three to a tray! It is a perfect donation – solid protein, packaged exactly right for an average family, and looking like it had just been purchased at the neighborhood grocery store. I couldn’t have been more excited if the cases were full of gold – and in a way they were. Golden chicken to make wholesome and healthy meals for more than 45,000 hungry folks!
You just never know what the next phone call will bring to Loaves & Fishes.
One of the perks of having an office inside a church is the convenience of stepping next door for special midweek services. As I attended the noon Ash Wednesday service at St. Luke’s Lutheran, to mark the beginning of Lent, I was struck by a phrase used in a prayer: “Merciful God, accompany our journey through these forty days,…that we may provide for those who are poor.” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship.)
My experience with Lent has mostly been negative. Give up something I enjoy for 40 days before Easter. One year I “gave up” my passionate love affair with Mel Gibson. Mel’s later behavior made it no sacrifice at all to give him up permanently. But more seriously many Christians give up a beloved food, chocolate, caffeine, sugar or alcohol for Lent. I once worked with a woman who gave up coffee and cigarettes – by the end of Lent I felt like her co-workers made the biggest sacrifice of all.
But I like this other concept of Lent. Lent is not only about depriving ourselves, it can be also about providing for those who have less than we. Whatever you are considering giving up, I hope you will find time this season to consider which things in life really are important. For us at Loaves & Fishes, providing food for hungry families is our highest priority. How about you?
We often say at Loaves & Fishes that we don’t expect folks to say thanks when we give them food. Sometimes the current crisis in their lives obscures everything else, sometimes it’s just too hard to acknowledge that they are in a place they never expected to be. But when someone does say thanks it is always appreciated.
A client came into one of our food pantries and was so overcome with gratitude she couldn’t speak, but she could sing. She took her food out to her car and returned to the pantry, dropped down on her knees, and sang a beautiful a cappella rendition of Amazing Grace. Giving voice to her thanks brought tears to the eyes of all who were present. A simple, humble, and priceless moment in which true communication occurred. How sweet indeed.
A friend saw the line “every meal has a story” in a local grocery store. How true! It made me think of special meals in my life; not all banquets or even holidays, but significant meals. I thought of all my cooking mistakes as a young bride – I didn’t know you had to cook the rice before making rice pudding – honest. Meals shared while passing a newborn baby around the table – they always wake up when you sit down to dinner. Or more recently the first time my granddaughter made me scrambled eggs all by herself.
My dining room table has accommodated family birthday parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter feasts for 25 years; through highchair and teen years and now with three generations. The stories it could tell – menus straight out of Grandma’s ancient Betty Crocker Cookbook as well as the current issue of Southern Living.
I expect most of our client’s tables would tell a different story than mine. Perhaps holidays and birthdays when there wasn’t enough to go around, or even special occasions missed because there was nothing to prepare. One of my most poignant memories of working at Loaves & Fishes is the voice message left one morning. A young woman’s voice told how it was her son’s 5th birthday and she had no cake for him, until she came to a Loaves & Fishes pantry and was given a week’s supply of food, including one very precious cake mix.
One theme to all the stories would be the pure joy of sharing food with family and friends. One of the most important things that Loaves & Fishes does is provide food for people to take home and prepare for their families. Hopefully enough to nourish and to share.
What kind of stories would your table tell?
A co-worker likes to tell about one of her children who questioned why they were filling a shoebox for Samaritan’s Purse. “Why doesn’t Santa bring toys to poor kids?” Why indeed. I expect in the midst of the sheer overindulgence of this holiday season there are a lot of poor kids wondering – why me? Why can’t I have the latest electronics and toys that I see advertised everywhere? And their parents are probably wondering “Why can’t I give my kids the Christmas I’d love them to have?”
At Loaves & Fishes we see parents who are less concerned with giving toys and gifts to their children, than with basic food to feed them. With record cold temperatures and children home for Christmas break, the necessities of life take priority.
Makes me wonder what my own priorities are – another over-the-top gift for my well-provided for granddaughter, or a check to Loaves & Fishes so that the child who sits next to her in school will have a hot meal at home while school is out.
Wasn’t it just a few days ago we gathered round the turkey and transferred the stuffing from ole Tom to ourselves? Now it is all eyes ahead – some to celebrate Hanakkuh for the next week and for many the shining star of Christmas just three weeks away.
At Loaves & Fishes we have our eyes trained on the mail each day. A large percent of our yearly budget is raised by January 1. Although hunger will be just as biting in the spring and summer, most of our support is given during the “Holiday Season”. We must now gather in enough donated food and money to stock the pantries through the summer.
I hope this hectic and holy season will bring whatever your heart is longing for – a candle to light the darkness, a sense of meaning or maybe just enough groceries to feed your family for a week.
It’s almost here – the holiday that says FOOD like no other. At Christmas food is just part of the festivities. But at Thanksgiving, dinner is everything. Years ago I was helping in a pantry when a little boy, about 5 years old, looked at me and asked “Is that whole turkey for my family?” I thought about my kids who were about that age and took a turkey at Thanksgiving to be part of their birthright. This little boy’s eyes lit up when I said certainly it was all for his family.
One of the best, but least appreciated, aspects of Loaves & Fishes is that we give food to people to take home and prepare in their own kitchen. The satisfaction of sitting at your own table, no matter how small or crowded, and serving food you have prepared to your family is immense. And from a child’s eyes, it doesn’t matter where the food came from – as long as it includes a whole turkey!
In 1975 a retired secretary named Virginia Sampson, was concerned about hungry people in Charlotte. At that time there were no soup kitchens, no shelters, no where for hungry people to go and get food. Virginia rallied 4 or 5 close friends and neighbors and organized the first Loaves & Fishes pantry. They distributed food from her church, Holy Comforter Episcopal on Park Road. That first year, this small group provided food for 1,000 people.
This year we celebrate 35 years of ministry to hungry people. Our pantry network has grown to 18. The original half dozen volunteers have swelled to more than 700. And, we provided food for 102,638 in 2009.
We would love to work ourselves out of business. Until then, we will continue to change lives, one person, one meal, one bag of groceries at a time. Who knows what miracle that might be multiplied into. It’s happened before.
Ever had someone say something that reminds you of an old song? Then you can’t get the words (the ones you remember) out of your head. That happened to me last week. A sweet young woman was volunteering at our office. She was obviously handicapped but was so willing and eager to help. She overheard me say something about another volunteer – someone who goes far beyond the call of duty and always has a smile for our clients. This young woman, said “but that’s the glory of love”.
Her words stopped me cold. I forget that love is most often a verb and not a noun. Folks I know would be embarrassed to hear their actions be described as love, but it sure fits. Whether it’s answering a phone, greeting a client, schlepping boxes into pantries or sweeping the warehouse – it’s all the story of, and the glory of love.
