The first few days I spent in the shelter, I still had a few dollars on me. Since breakfast and dinner are provided daily by the shelter (with volunteers doing the serving), my only real expense was lunch every day. For a while, I had enough to indulge in McDonald’s value menu, but eventually my money ran out. For two days, I’d leave the shelter after breakfast, not knowing how I was going to feed myself until dinner that night. Those were two long, hungry days. One day on the bus I overheard two fellow residents talking about a church downtown that provided hot lunches for the down-and-out. I discreetly followed them off the bus and up the block towards the Church of the Good Shepherd.
I got in line as they queued up along the sidewalk, listening to the mingled voices of the crowd. There were a few familiar faces—guys from the shelter or people I’d previously seen around the downtown area. As the line grew longer, I battled with the feelings swirling inside me. “I don’t belong here” I kept thinking; “This place isn’t for people like me.” …”I’m not like these people.” The reality of my situation directly contradicted those ideas. If I didn’t eat there, I didn’t have any reasonable way to feed myself for lunch. I did belong there; this place was for people just like me; I was just like everyone else in line: hungry, and struggling to make it.
The line snaked down the block, into a small fenced-in alley that led into the fellowship hall of the church. Eventually the line led into a hallway, then into the hall itself. It was a smallish room, with about 15 round tables positioned tightly around the room. Each table was ringed with seven folding metal chairs. As we entered the room we were greeted by a volunteer at the door handing out wet naps. My first thought was that the wet naps wouldn’t make a dent in the filth some of the diners bore. But I guess that was a more practical nod to hygiene than expecting all those people to troop off to an unseen bathroom and wash up. It was evident that many of them were accustomed to eating with dirty hands anyway, so maybe the wet naps were more of a token gesture than anything else.
After being welcomed, we inched along the edge of the room until we reached the serving line. A smiling volunteer welcomed us again and handed each diner a tray and a single plastic fork wrapped in a napkin. The serving line was staffed by more smiling volunteers, each scooping a portion of their designated food onto a Styrofoam tray. The volunteers rarely asked if the diner wanted the food, they simply ladled it onto the tray and passed it along to the next volunteer. That makes sense, since there were signs by the door saying the staff wasn’t in a position to accommodate dietary requests. Religious, cultural, and medical diets weren’t observed. I guess the thinking was that there were too many people coming through the line to make each tray especially for each person, and if they were hungry enough they’d eat what was given to them. It didn’t matter to me—I was grateful to have something to eat and someplace to sit down and eat it.
The menu varied depending on the day and the group doing the cooking and serving. Sometimes it was chicken, other times hamburger patties, sometimes more than one meat. Sometimes the food would change over the course of the hour-long lunch, as they ran out of items and had to substitute with something else. Again, I was completely unbothered. I was more concerned with keeping the walls of my stomach from clapping with hunger.
One thing that surprised me was how good the food was. I don’t really know what I was expecting. I guess the phrase “soup kitchen” left me with images of Oliver Twist begging for another bowl of congealed slop. In reality, the food was damned tasty. Savory casseroles, hearty portions of beef, steaming pans of green beans—it was amazing to me. Though they couldn’t be concerned with dietary requests, they clearly took great pride in cooking delicious, filling food for us, and I was grateful.
After collecting our trays, we would pick a seat somewhere in the room and sit down to eat. Often, the pace of people coming into the hall exceeded the pace of the people getting up to leave. For the first thirty minutes or so, there would be adequate seating for everyone. After that, more and more people would be forced to wander around holding their trays, looking for an empty seat. It was a bit like the holding pattern of a busy airport, with planes circling the runway looking for a place to land.
The tables were decorated with vases of (relatively) fresh flowers, salt and pepper shakers, and napkin holders. The napkin holders were the kind that have plastic covers on the sides, meant to be used for advertising. Instead of ads for, say, Earl’s Auto Body Shop, there were hand-drawn signs on each of the holders. They varied from table to table, but each was a life-affirming message reminding us that we were loved. One of my favorites read, “You are precious in His sight.”
After eating our fill (I’m ashamed to say I could rarely finish all the food given to me), we dumped our trash and empty plates into a trashcan and handed the dirty trays through a window to a volunteer who loaded them into the dishwasher. Then we’d walk out of the fellowship hall, back out the hallway, through the alley and back into the sunlight of the street. There’s a certain comforting feeling when you’ve eaten your fill and have one less thing to worry about. I’d often find myself smiling and quietly thanking God for the good people at The Church of the Good Shepherd. As filling as the food was, it was the smiles and kind words that felt more nurturing. There was never a turned-up nose—even the teenagers that sometimes manned the drink table or circulated the room offering cookies looked like they wanted to be there. I don’t think I’ll ever be grateful to be homeless, but I’ll always be grateful for places and people like that—ready to make me feel welcome and remind me that there’s always room in God’s heart for all His children.
