The Eighth Day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas my YAV year gave to me, eight items served for dinner at Rosie’s place. 
 
I described Rosie’s place, the drop in center for women in Boston when we worked the food pantry on December 26.  On January 1 we served dinner at Rosie’s Place.  Here is a moving video of their work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmt_Ef3kYg4 
and their website: http://www.rosiesplace.org/

The eight part menu was

1.       Bread
2.       Soup
3.       Turkey-stuffed-peppers
4.       Bean salad
5.       Rice
6.       Peas
7.       Orange
8.       Granola bar-rice crispy treat

Between the soup and supper we also had donated toiletries, lotions, shampoos, soaps for the women to take.  I stood behind a counter and served food and gave out some toiletries to women who just needed food and shampoo.  But why was I on my side of the counter and not theirs.

One lady kept talking about how her new sleeping bag could keep her body 70 degrees inside the sleeping bag no matter how cold it was outside.   

One woman spoke no English and we used hand signals to help her distinguish which toiletry bottles she grabbed were shampoo, lotions, and soaps.

I sat down to eat at a random table with some of the ladies who were almost finished.  They both spoke Spanish to each other so I awkwardly ate there smiling to my dumb white non-bilingual self until they left.
 
One woman said "Happy New Years" three times every time I saw her.

It is humbling serving people. They walk into this place and ask for soup, then they look at it and ask for more broth or less broth than what you gave them, in a kitchen I’ve never been in before. And we do what they ask from behind the counter. Here, now, I serve them. The women who come to eat are in charge. This may be the only place they have a say on what happens to them. Maybe it is not. I know very little about what happens to other people in real life.

It is a lifestyle I am learning more about every day.  I think it may be just a family inheritance and a house, utilities, and job provided by this YAV program that separates them from me.  How easy a job, money, a home can slip away.  We’re all people who need to eat, and to clean ourselves.  What is it really (besides a counter) that separates me from these people?  God doesn’t even see that counter as something to separate us.  He calls us to love people on my side of the counter and on the other side of the counter.  God even calls us to remove that counter that separates us. 

It is a cold night, and I’ve seen and handed food to women who may be sleeping out in it.  Thank you God for a house and oil in the furnace.  Thank you God for a warm place to sleep.  Help us provide these things for those who can’t provide them for themselves. 
 
Make this more than a prayer. Make it action.  Get on the other side of the counter.  We are the hands and feet of God.