Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church
Date: Wednesday, May 06, 2015; 5:45-8:15 pm
I arrived to see that little Hannah was already there, along
with some of the regulars. I was
especially pleased to see Marianne, who had been missing the last couple of
times that I was here and she welcomed me warmly. My first task was to help out with some buns that
were being toasted. There was a volunteer
who was buttering buns and she said that she could use some help in opening and laying them on the baking pans.
I started doing that and there were 20 buns that were to be placed per
pan. The pans that were ready then went
into the oven for 3 minutes. This cycle
continued till we had used all pans for the 220 odd buns, meaning we were good
for 100 sandwiches. As we did that, the
volunteer asked me how long I had been doing this and I said 2 years. Wow. It has been a long time.
I had asked Marianne if I could participate in the "Spirit Feeding" that happens
here and she had said yes. They were
about to get started and so I went out and joined some of the regular ‘Moody Bible’ students as well as some
of our guests. We started by holding a
candle and saying aloud what had been bothering us recently and why we were
here this evening. Most of the students
mentioned that they were worried about their studies. I said that I was thinking about “short term vs long term” and whether we
should sacrifice something in the short term for a long term thing that may or
may not happen. We each had a Bible and
were studying ‘Mark 5:1-20’; a story
about a man who is possessed by a demon and Jesus helps him by sending the
demons to the pigs. The town people, who
had previously shunned the man, now tell Jesus to leave. The man wants to follow Jesus, is now told by
him to go back to his town and tell the people what had happened.
The folks at our table now took turns reading and then we
had some questions for discussing, especially our interpretation of the
story. I had interpreted the story as a
person who had “demons in his mind”
and that why he was hurting himself.
People had shunned him without trying to understand him. The pigs were symbolic of the differences between
humans, who have a choice, and animals, which do not. Jesus helped the man make that choice; and
even after he did that, the town people had a prejudice. The others were agreeing with my assessment
and it was a great conversation. We
talked about compassion and our facilitator asked if we have seen people with
compassion, who help others. I said
there are many with compassion but not everyone helps. This place was an example of people doing
something to help. This discussion got
one of our guests to open up about problems with her mom and how she had never
understood her when she was alive. She
was pretty torn up about that and the other guest said that she should not let
that affect her and use that knowledge to be better with her own kids. For the second time is 3 days I repeated, “Remember the past but don’t let it be a
burden”.
 |
| Our menu for the evening |
Time was up and we concluded with a prayer and our
facilitator asked everyone for something to include in the prayer. When it was my turn, I remembered what my “psychic” had said to me in New Orleans
and mentioned my “missing soul piece”,
which made it into the prayer. Dinner service
was about to begin and Marianne wanted me on juice, though I started with
salads. I was pleased to see that
finally, after two years of my complaining, we had moved to smaller bowls; meaning
less waste. The menu was “pulled pork sandwiches” with “refried beans”, “hot sauce” and a side of “corn
and beans”. Plus, for dessert there
was “bread pudding” and I asked Chef
Dani if that would have a topping of rum!
We started by following Marianne’s directions on which
tables to serve and once the first round was done, she asked me to count the
seconds. People lined up soon and
started picking up the takeout boxes and I was telling them to wait. I knew that Marianne usually wants to make an
announcement, but Chef Dani doesn’t believe in waiting for that and so
permitted them to start getting seconds.
I wish I had known the process before turning people away. But we got things going and soon had
everything running well. Once all the
takeout and seconds were done, I went and helped with the dining room clean-up. Before leaving, Marianne asked if I could come
on June 17th for their summer party.
She wanted experienced volunteers that night and I gladly signed up. It had been a good evening, especially with
the “Spirit Feeding”.
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