A Positively Poetic Priest

Sara Miles was so surprised that most of her volunteers for the food pantry were not members of St. Gregory's. "Jeff wasn't surprised at all when I told him we now had twenty-three volunteers -- only two of them from St. Gregory's, and the rest people who'd come to get groceries. "Why not?" said my spiritual director. "It feels great to give stuff away. Look what it's done for you." He added, "And if you're poor, how often do you get to give? Here, you hand good food to two hundred and fifty people in an afternoon, and they're all smiling at you and saying 'Thanks.'"" (199)

Sara Miles had an experience with someone who was a food pantry volunteer. The volunteer's boyfriend was regularly beating her up and threatening to kill her, so she stole his gun and brought it to the church to hide. "That's what church was for, I realized: a place to bring the ugly, frightening secret you couldn't tell anyone else about." (184) Sara Miles hid the gun  and the volunteer moved away from her boyfriend. Later, Sara and the St. Gregory's parish administrator, Steve, took the gun to the police. ""You just made the high point of my career as a parish administrator," said Steve. "I never imagined I'd show a cop something that would make him say 'Holy shit.'" "Yeah, well," I said, "I guess this is what you call the Christian life."" (185) While this was an extreme situation, Sara did care for and provide a safe space for that volunteer. When have you found yourself in a surprising...

"Volunteers would help out at the pantry for the same reason they became deacons or bread bakers or choir members: not because they wanted to go to meetings but because they wanted to do something, be part of something. And, I said, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who came to eat stayed to help out: After all, that's what had happened to me." (113) This has happened and continues to do so with our food pantry at St. John's, Shepherd's Green Community Food Pantry. We have people who help upstairs checking everyone in, we have people who help downstairs preparing the groceries, all who started because they came looking for something to eat. In many ways, this has happened to many of us who have come to church to take communion, and then stayed to help out with the events or mission or keeping up of what is going on here. The verbs of communion continue to be: take, bless, eat, give thanks, send out.