On delivering food to a soup kitchen on Christmas
When I deliver food to hungry people, people say I’m nice. When I avoid polluting, they call me extreme.
Yet both actions come from the same place in my heart and mind, which I can best characterize with the phrase “love your neighbor as yourself.” Whether you’re Christian or not, that advice has stood the test of time for a reason. Acts of love for neighbors are rewarding.
I just got back from delivering a big load of food that would have been thrown away to the Bowery Mission—a soup kitchen on the lower east side that feeds the hungry. People call me lucky that I have time to volunteer, often disparagingly or condescendingly implying I’m privileged—note: not privileged relative to the people I’m serving but relative to most people. Yet I spend less time volunteering most weeks than the average American spends on social media per day.
Over a year ago, some blowhard made it difficult for me to deliver food from stores that had overstocked it and would have thrown out to a community fridge anyone could take from for free. Recently, I resolved the difficulty. I delivered my first few loads recently, including today, Christmas 2024.
Sadly, the church that hosted the community fridge stopped hosting it. It’s winter, so we don’t need a fridge to keep stuff cool. Several of the volunteers are finding ways to provide the food while we can. In the meantime, we’re looking for new places to host the fridge.
Today’s load was one of my larger ones. The temporary fridge-less connection isn’t happening today, being Christmas so I brought the food to the nearby Bowery Mission. I arrived before their scheduled meal time. Aline of people waited to be allowed in to eat. To deliver, I walked past them to the front door, where sat a guard. When he saw all the food I was delivering, that I wasn’t coming to get food, he let me in.
The staff weighed the food I delivered: 160 pounds! That’s more than I weigh, so instead of me bringing some food, it was more like a bunch of food came with me tagging along.
I chatted with the volunteers inside, helping prepare food, cleaning, and so on. I didn’t talk to the people in line. It would have felt awkward on the way in to talk to them while I had a cart full of food but not giving it to them. Maybe I could have talked on the way out, but I only said a few words to a couple of them.
Can you imagine the experience of having to go to a soup kitchen on Christmas?
They expressed a lot of gratitude. I didn’t feel I deserved that much. I didn’t grow or prepare the food. I just brought it over, which, I guess, does count for something.
I didn’t inventory everything, but from memory, the delivery included:
- Apples
- Oranges
- Lemons
- Limes
- Peppers
- Onions
- Garlic
- Ginger
- A variety of prepared salads
- Kale
- Tomatoes
- Avocados
- Bananas, lots of bananas
- Cucumbers
- Bagged cut broccoli
- Packaged baby spinach and spinach
- Cherry tomatoes
- A squash
- Sweet potatoes
- Bread (ciabatta)
- Green peppers
- A red pepper
- Cilantro
- Mint
Probably more that I forgot. I figure the cooks at the Bowery can figure out what to do with all of it. I didn’t take a picture of today’s load, but I found this old picture from an old delivery. Today’s load was a little more full.
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