When I was a teen-ager/college student, my friend who lived next door to my parents' home had begun this Thanksgiving tradition. You see she and my group of friends from high school were enamored of the nightlife in Georgetown, a very old and posh section of Washington D.C. where there are many nightclubs and restaurants. The group liked to hang out there, and I being a follower rather than a leader, would sometimes do that too. I didn't do it as often because my parents were old fashioned and had strict curfews, whereas their parents were much more lenient.
Anyway, hanging out in Georgetown, we got to know the homeless who lived there. They sheltered under the bridge at night and during the day and evenings begged for money and food from the crowds of partiers that flooded the area on weekends. So my friend started doing this thing where the day after Thanksgiving, she'd take all the extra turkey from her family's Thanksgiving bird and make lots of turkey sandwiches. Her father died when she was young, so it was just she, her brother and her mother usually. Their relatives lived in Ireland and Pakistan. They visited them over Christmas and during the summer but Thanksgiving was a quiet affair for them. They always roasted a great big turkey though. So she'd buy a loaf of sandwich bread, gets lots of meat off of the bones, spread a little leftover cranberry sauce on to moisten the meat up a bit, and then she'd go down to Georgetown and hand out turkey sandwiches to all the homeless she knew there. I thought that was pretty neat.
Fast forward about ten years when Rick and I were newly married. I read somewhere that you could make Thanksgiving dinners for the homeless shelter named S.O.M.E. (So Others May Eat). There was this really cool priest named Father John who ran things and was well known the in local area as someone who really cared about the poor. So I started a tradition, that really only lasted about four or five years, where on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I'd cook up a whole Thanksgiving meal and Rick and I would take it down to the shelter on Thanksgiving morning. The tradition didn't last too long because I found it hard to do once I had more than one baby! So that fizzled out.
However, after a few years, I got involved in a little ministry my old parish did. It was run by this lovely lady whose son actually is now a priest in our diocese. (She passed away a couple years ago and I went to her funeral and it was so crowded! This lady had touched so many lives.) Anyway, once a month our parish was responsible for providing breakfast to this same homeless shelter. They divided up the breakfast though and you could sign up for certain items. I got hardboiled eggs. Six dozen of them. I became really good at making huge quantities of hard boiled eggs because once a month for about eight years that's what I did! I had to make them a day or two before they were due because I couldn't put hot or still warm eggs in the coolers. You see one parishioner let us use his driveway as a drop off place. He'd put out tons of coolers and people would come by and drop their food off. Orange juice, milk, fruit, donuts, eggs, coffee, and I'm not sure what else. When the lady passed away, they stopped calling me, so I guess the ministry petered out. I didn't follow up because by that time we had actually switched to another parish. I don't know why that made a difference, but maybe my name got taken off the list or something?
Anyway, for a couple years again, we didn't do cooking for the homeless but eventually I signed up again for something. My current parish works with few other churches (not Catholic, so it is an ecumenical effort) to provide what they call a hypothermia shelter. Somehow the word is out there that if the homeless can get to the last metro stop on the line that ends in our town, at 5:00 p.m. during the winter months, a big van will be waiting there for them. Someone from one of the churches volunteers to pick them up and take them back to the Unitarian Universalist Church. This is the church that actually lets them sleep in their heated building for the night. They also will get a hot dinner! The UU church doesn't provide the meals though, that's the job of the other churches including my own. Tons and tons of people take turns cooking dinner so that during the long winter months I usually am only called on to help with one meal. I have made huge vats of chili; some enormous meatloaves and sometimes I'm just asked to buy 6 buckets of KFC Chicken. The fact that I only do something once a year now when I used to do something once a month makes me feel very lazy. And somehow that one dinner always seems to come at an inopportune time and actually feels more disruptive than when I was cooking eggs all the time.
I keep wanting to do more. And I know that my church also makes sandwiches once a month for another homeless shelter, but I never seem to be able to attend. I know a lot of people do this with their kids and they've made it a family tradition, but alas, I have never gotten into the groove. Maybe I should try harder. I really should.
I am so glad, though, I am involved with parish life as it does make it so much easier to reach out and help, in varying degrees, those who are less fortunate. I think if I didn't have constant reminders in front of me, I would go into my shell and never really think about getting involved. When my friend way back in my teenage years started making those turkey sandwiches I realized with some guilt that that sort of thing would never have occurred to me. She had a naturally generous spirit whereas I have to cultivate the same in myself.
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