Lucy Tobias

Millie likes to multi task. While slicing long loaves of French bread, she cradles her cell phone on one shoulder, reassuring a parent.

“We have to keep looking for any signs of fever, but the test was fine and she should be all right,” Millie says as she slices. The person on the other end of the line hasn’t a clue that this is Doctor Millie’s day off. She is not in the office but in a soup kitchen along with other volunteers.

“I like coming here,” Millie says. “I don’t have to think, or make decisions. They just tell me what to do.” She smiles. A professional’s dream, someone else in charge for a day and a way to give back to the community. Win win.

Brothers Keeper Soup Kitchen is an outreach of Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Ocala, Florida. Warm bodies, of any denomination, are welcome to help the last, lost and least seven days a week, some four to five hours a day.

Your columnist just joined the Tuesday crew. Millie is part of the Tuesday crew. So is Charlie. He got here the old fashioned way – through prayer.

“I was sitting in the living room, meditating, trying to figure out what I should be doing as service,” Charlie recalls. A Brother’s Keeper truck drove by the front of his house. He took it as a sign and started volunteering at the soup kitchen.

“It is part of my spiritual training,” Charlie says. Today his training has him putting mayo/mustard mixture on bread. It is the start of building sandwiches. And you thought it was just soup at the soup kitchen?

A little while later, Brenda says to Charlie “Hey, fancy sandwiches today, I see you are putting lettuce on them.” Brenda is a volunteer, the head cook, the big kahuna, which means she gets to decide the soups de jour, using ingredients sliced and diced by other volunteers.

“My mission in life is to find a way to recycle everything,” Brenda says and she is really good at it. A tray of potatoes forms the base of potato/broccoli soup. Pasta is always a favorite. She usually adds any meat that’s around to the pasta soup.

Sister Concepta is the soup kitchen nazi. Ah, wait, that was on a television show, now off the air. Larry Thomas was the Seinfield Soup Nazi – his best role. This, on the other hand, is real life.

In real life, Sister Concepta with the order Immaculate Heart of Mary has a PhD in spiritual development and came here from Uganda to the order’s mission convent in Ocala. Yes, we are their mission work. She expected to teach, what with a PhD and all, but instead was told to run the soup kitchen. It is an exercise in spiritual development.

“We take a vow of obedience,” Sister says,laughing at the irony of all that education and now – a soup kitchen where there are never enough volunteers,she is constantly begging for donations of food and an increasing number of guests keep arriving for lunch. Did they teach this course in grad school? Nope.

Sister takes her job very seriously. After all, we are enjoined to feed the hungry. Turns out, the hungry are hungry seven days a week. And their numbers are increasing.

Not just the walking homeless are coming through the door, packs slung over their shoulder. Right alongside them these days are the working poor, people who arrive in pickup trucks, some with signs for local businesses like roofing and lawn services. Day laborers who have wheels but don’t make enough to buy food. And then there are mothers with children. Those will break your heart.

Food. There has to be enough food for everyone. Rita, another volunteer, spends mornings running around town, picking up produce at grocery stories – they leave boxes on the loading dock. Sometimes businesses just stop by the kitchen – a chicken place sometimes leaves trays of fried chicken. It all has to be deboned, a nitpicking job great for spiritual training in patience and persistence.

Volunteers arrive every day around 9 a.m. In three short hours, everything edible gets chopped and in the soup pot, simmering, all sandwiches are made (usually around 140), French bread, slathered with butter and garlic, goes in the oven, salads are made and put in individual cups, some dishes get washed, water pitchers are placed on the table, desserts go on trays, trash is emptied, shopping carts by the back door are loaded with fresh produce to give away, loaves of bread are placed on back shelves for anyone to take. Whew!
At 11:30a.m. we form a circle, hold hands, hear a Bible verse and say the Lord’s Prayer, followed by few minutes to sit down and have a bowl of soup and then, ba-bing! It is noon. The “Open” sign is put in the window. The rush begins. People have been lined up outside for more than a half hour.

“Hello, would you like some salad?”

“The soups today are navy bean with ham, pasta with spaghetti sauce”

“What would you like for dessert, we have nice pumpkin pie here.”

The line thins out about 12:30 p.m. Some leave quickly. Others go back for seconds or sit and rest, knowing the soup kitchen is open for them until 1 p.m. Many people say “thank you” as they leave.

“It means a lot, hearing ‘thank you’,” Millie says. “We don’t hear that often in our everyday lives.”

Amen.

Need to hear “thank you” in your life? Call the nearest soup kitchen and volunteer. Hearing “thank you” especially from a child with an uncertain future makes it worth all the slicing, dicing and slathering. See you there.

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For Further Reading:

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Author Barbera Ehrenreich takes a job amoung the working poor and reports on life in the lowest wage brackets of America.

The 1999 Report on Homelessness in America by Housing and Urban Developement (HUD) provides a broad statistical look at the causes and nature of homelessness in America.

The organization Second Harvest helps to provide food for the hungry in America.

Many religeous and charitable organizations provide services to the poor, homeless and hungry. Check your local phone book under “Shelters” or “Charitable Services”.