WHAT GOES AROUND. . .

Back in the summer I got started helping a friend with an organization that feeds homeless and destitute people in the city. I usually ride with him but yesterday I went by myself. Marc had been in a car crash so I took our (his) food to the park in downtown Kansas City for the Tuesday night meal. In June we set up tables on the sidewalk under pop up, sun canopies. At serving time (6:30) it was still 90 degrees and the sun was beating down. Ice was popular on the menu. Last night I arrived at 6:15 and it was dark already. The line was already forming but they were bundled up like Eskimos. The temperature was hovering around freezing and the organizer didn’t want to set food out too soon, lest it get cold. I was assigned server duty with a large aluminum pan full of tossed salad. By 7:45 the line had melted down from a crowd to a few stragglers, time to clean up and disappear. 

I am not a do gooder. I understand that life is what we get and then what we do with it. We don’t have much control over what we get but what we do with it is, to some extent up to us. In our culture we have a self righteous fixation that we are masters of our own fate . True, we must behave as if we are, even if that popular view is largely myth. I’m not trying to change the world but I do think we have a collective responsibility to help each other, especially when life has dealt bad cards. Nobody sets out to be homeless and people don’t make bad decisions on purpose. We do what feels right in the moment and live with the outcome. I believe good luck and random chance are at least as important as high minded industry. So I participate in the giving back, for the sake of the greater good. 

What I get back from the experience is an opportunity to treat people  who get little respect, with respect, and it is an opportunity. I don’t know when or where I adopted the attitude but I’m stuck with it: the way you treat people says more about you than it does the other people. Sometimes our hungry folk are grumpy and rude but I have a choice. I could say, “Beggars can’t be choosy.” but I haven’t been in their shoes. So I ask how I can help and wish them well. After all, I have a warm place to sleep and food in the pantry. If they wanted a self righteous insult they get that all the time. Life isn’t fair. To me that means, you don’t deserve what you get, even when it’s good. I profit by simply knowing I had a hand in meeting that shared responsibility; take care of each other. I also believe in Karma; what goes around comes back around. What you put out into the system may bounce around and connect through ever so many people but ultimately it comes back to the sender. So I’m doing the charitable thing in my own self interests as well. That’s my little sermon for the day. Now we will sing our closing hymn: “What Goes Around.”