Passion for the People

Stretching out through the front door are people waiting to eat; that is, primarily to eat, but also to connect. Now, after sometimes years of coming to the same place twice a week for dinner, they know each other. “How was the weekend?” “Any luck with that job?” “Did you get to that doc like I told you?”

The food is good – always. It should be. Intentions are for fresh foods to be turned into good tasting, plentiful, happily-served meals. Tables are always decorated and have lighted candles. Greeters know the regulars and push out sincerity and warmth to the newcomers.

It’s a soup kitchen in Idaho. Idaho!!! Before I came back home after forty years away, I thought soup kitchens were only in big cities with lines around the block and with AA meetings downstairs. But here it is in cowboy America in the third largest dairy area in the nation and hundreds of people are without food, proper clothing, transportation and shelter. Hundreds! Thousands, in Idaho. Literally, in this little town, thousands fed, winter, summer, spring and fall without fail, on time, no matter the holiday or weather.

I’m one of those with a passion to serve although unemployed a year now myself. The place I rent has a huge apricot tree and last year I made jars of jam and then made Apricot Bavarian, Cobbler, pie, more Cobbler, fruit salads, and more Cobbler for the soup kitchen.

It got me a volunteer job greeting, managing food boxes given out once a month to each family, and sometimes making more coffee.

I believe that my own pain and sense of loss as being a viable part of the workforce was lessened as the Box Manager. One day, two weeks into it I looked out at the group of 120 at table and was overwhelmed. I’d connected with every single one on the way in and shared a part of their journey, their present-moment energy (read Soul), their unspoken need, and the spirit to do another day.

This isn’t Darfur or the Congo but there are commonalities. A primal scream held down enough to seek the highest level of comfort available in this moment: food, a kind word, a clean place: enough to take a few more steps.

But not enough. Not enough there in Africa, my heart tells me, and not enough here in Idaho.

Like never before I want to make a difference. Help me God to find a way to encourage those- who- can- to restore the passion of all –to improve the total human condition. Not just technology for its sake, or more oil or gas for its sake, or money for its sake, but passion for the people – for their sake.

If the People are the priority, I believe the state of our planet and our future endeavors will rise up to new realizations and reasonings that will shake lose those bound up in hatred, greed and smallness. How we need the luxury of their voice and passions redirected to this most worthy cause.

Even now I can hear, can’t you, our higher angels applauding such a world?