First Journal Entry in Mississippi

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.