Susan and I spent a remarkable day working at St Gregory's distributing food to around four hundred people. The workers began arriving around eight in the morning. Many of the workers are from the neighborhood and receive food themselves to help supplement retirement income. They worked like beavers crating in the food and placing it at stations around the Lord's Table where we celebrated communion last Sunday. The food consisted of wonderful fruits and vegatables from the nearby valley, fresh breads, some rice, cereal, beans and chicken sausage. At around ten thirty everyone stopped for coffee and a cookie. Then work continued until everything was set up around 11:30(see photo). At that time tables were set up for lunch. While the volunteers had been working setting up the food, Paul, the church's pastor and Sara Miles who worked to set up this food ministry as a way of extending the Lord's Table into the community, had cooked lunch (see photo). When all was prepared we ate together and got better acquainted. After the lunch was cleared away each of us was assigned a station where we distributed one item. I did carrots and Sue did plums (see pictures). The people who came in were given assigned times to show up. One group (the red group) comes one week for food and the other group comes the next week. I would say ninety percent of the people who came for food were beyond retirement age. Most seemed very appreciative for the food.
In the brightly decorated sanctuary with all the dancing saints it seemed the community of Christ was taking form again as food was provided for the tables of those with need and as community formed among those who volunteered to serve. In talking with those who served I learned some were devote Catholics, some attended St Gregory's Episcopal, some were not attending any church, and at least one woman said, "My mother would turn over in her grave if she saw her in church. She'd say,'What's wrong with you, going to church? You are a nice Jewish girl."
Today volunteers were brought together around the table not by a common creed or belief, but by a simple desire to care for others. It was a good place for Christ to be found.