I will be back to visit Mississippi tomorrow and thought that I would share my first journal entry from this past summer when I was there for ministry with Catholic Social Services. Amidst the struggles of poverty and racism in the area, many of the people that I have met, began their stories with grace. I learned and experienced what God's grace was all about during my entire stay and it started out in day one.
June
4, 2012
As the lightning and thunderstorm welcomed us to
Mississippi last night, today was our first full day in the state. The ten-hour drive thanks to the stop at St.
Louis was quite enjoyable as I am able to cross out the Gateway Arch from my
list of what I always wanted to see.
Mississippi is certainly different from Chicago. There are acres and acres of fields of crops
and wildlife is more prominent. The
humidity and the southern accent are some things that cannot be missed.
The first day, as always, is introduction day and getting
everything settled for the next few weeks.
After touring around the facilities, I was assigned to the food pantry
to help out since two of the volunteers were sick today. I was surprised of the amount of donations
that was received because most of the food banks in Seattle were all drying
up. The need these days are high and due
to the bad economy, donations aren’t able to keep up. Just being in the food pantry and looking
around at the food that was being passed out, moved into shame. Most of the food that was stocked was food
that I wouldn’t consider eating on a typical day. I come from a place where organic and fresh
foods are the norms so canned foods are looked down upon on because of the high
preservatives and low nutrients.
Although I still eat canned foods, it wasn’t something I depended upon
to survive on a daily basis.
Non-perishable foods aren’t always the tastiest food there is.
Interacting and getting to see the people who come
into the food pantry was interesting. It
wasn’t my first time helping out at a food bank or pantry, but every time I do,
I always experience something new. There
are some people who believes that the poor abuse the system and I do agree,
there are some that do. But many don’t
and there are too many people who depend on such programs that they shouldn’t
be penalized from something that the few does.
For me, it is difficult to imagine my kitchen being completely empty of
food because I never experienced that before.
But the reality is that there are families that go hungry every night
because they simply aren’t able to provide due to various circumstances. If you don’t have the basics to even get a
chance to try hard to succeed, you won’t even have a chance to try at all. It is survival mode for some of these families
and sometimes you want to give them everything.
Of course “everything” is not possible because of
the vast amount of needs. You need to
save your time, energy, and other form of assistance for all those who come
in. If you give out all the food to one
family, the families that come in after that won’t have any. How can one give out grace equally? That is a question only God can answer
because I don’t think humanity can ever be totally non-biased. I know for me, I have the tendency of
dividing the resources as evenly as possible to help the maximum number of
people as possible. But doing so
eliminates the opportunity to be generous.
It becomes so systematic sometimes because of your calculations to
satisfy your own ideals the reach the maximum number of people that you forget
that God gives out grace freely. The
good news is that I am not the Messiah so I need not be perfect. I think God loves us for our imperfections as
well as our attempts at perfection. You
see that in Rick and Linda (names changed), two volunteers with Sacred Heart Southern Missions. The two aren’t the most workaholic people,
but you can see they put their heart into what they do. While I was calculating how many canned food
to give to a family of three versus six, they were calculating what else would
a family of three versus six needed? It
was okay for them to both give two chickens to a family of three and six. In my head, I was thinking of the injustice
for the family of three, but there is no such thing as just and unjust in God’s
grace. There is only love and joy when
speaking of grace. They might not be the
fastest working people I ever seen, but they are certainly one of the fastest
grace-giving people I have ever met.
They don’t care about numbers, dividing the resources up evenly, or how
to pace up the process, they only care about what else could they give to the
family and what more do they need.
I was depended on the stability of the food pantry,
therefore self-stability and therefore, one’s own stability, instead of the
stability from God. Grace isn’t
something that can be calculated, it is given generously and all we can do is
accept it.
