Reflections on Shelter Week
Read: Hebrews 13:1-6
Ground beef vegetable soup, chopped salad with a selection of dressings, warm dinner rolls and butter, and a heaping tray of homemade chocolate chip cookies! Coffee, decaf, tea, and lemonade were Thursday’s dinner during shelter week. Hot popcorn, bags of chips and pretzels, tea and hot chocolate, and quiet conversations completed the evening. I overheard the breakfast menu: Toasted English muffins with turkey sausage and fried eggs–the eggs made with egg rings so they fit the English muffin precisely! The following morning’s breakfast menu was to be egg strata.
A basket of toiletries was available for anyone’s needs. So many considerate provisions! It seemed evident to me that shelter week was a labor of love involving thoughtful reflection on what would help make guests most comfortable.
My first time as a shelter week volunteer brought to mind something I’d read in The Long Loneliness (1952), the autobiography of Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, who. had established hospitality houses in New York the 1930s. During an interview with author Robert Coles, she was asked how she’d like to be remembered:
I hope for some of the talks here with our guests; I hope they remember I tried to make good coffee for them, and good soup! I’ve enjoyed getting to know them- they have been good teachers. You listen to them, hear the troubles they’ve faced and you realize how much courage they have needed to go from one week to the next…I hope they have earned my respect.
Day explained that as the hospitality houses and breadlines grew in number served (hundreds came twice a day for meals), so did the hospitality:
…with the best of whole wheat bread made from whole grain which we buy by the half ton. What a delightful thing it is to be boldly profligate, to ignore the price of coffee and go on serving the long line of destitute men who come to us, good coffee and the finest of bread.
“This is our favorite church,” I heard a GPUMC guest say.
“Thanks for listening to me”
“God Bless” were themes in their conversations.
During this relentless winter, I have gratitude for a warm home and food, and gratitude that I could do this one small thing: being present for a couple of hours. “Not all of us can do great things; but we can do small things with great love.” (attributed to Mother Teresa).
Holly Feen-Calligan
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