Our community spent a few hours helping out at Bend’s Community Center yesterday serving lunch to the homeless folks that came through. Such an amazing experience and I hope to continue the relationship with Taffy, the woman who runs the Center. They could really use volunteers.

Hungry, eager for a hot meal
They come
Steady rush they file in
With a hush that comes
from not knowing when the next meal will be after this
One after another
grabbing plates
Piling high with everything that will fit
Free food is good food
Hot food even better
Getting hotter as the room fills up
Steady ebb and flow against the banquet laid out on the table.
Staying for a while
Coming back to refill before its gone
Some food given some made
But never enough
For the rough shaven men and the thin women
To stuff themselves while they have the chance
How’s it going? I offer to man
hardened by long cold nights under the open sky
Not complaining, is his reply
and if I did would anyone listen?
His response hitting me between the eyes
Moses (or is it Jesus today?)
Enters in his purple robe
His hands shaking as his spaghetti falls off his plate
We have to clean up after him
Taffy says with sadness
Not enough hands to feed the open ones
Who can’t feed themselves
Forty churches asked for help and five or six respond
They come wanting to pray
Preach, lay hands, give little books with formulas that say
Here is the answer
Get in the kitchen, serve the soup,
You won’t save their souls if their dead in the woods
Kids, mothers, fathers, seniors, vets, disabled
All hungry, all unable to do it alone.
And here I am in my own little world, thinking I can…

We lie to ourselves when we assume
they don’t need us and we don’t need them