Did the woman who just passed me on the sidewalk really pick up a discarded cigarette butt from the waste bin and move on down the street?
As the woman walked down the sidewalk, I realized she was a bit disheveled. But there was nothing else to alert me to the fact that I had just brushed shoulders with one of the needy of my hometown.
Christ told his disciples, "The poor you will always have with you."
A priest put an interesting slant on that for me by explaining that Jesus wasn’t just saying the poor would always be around. No, Jesus meant that, if you’re a follower of his, the poor will always be with you, emphasis on the "with you." That’s what it means to be a Christian.
It was a blustery late-October day when I was caught unawares by the woman’s hurried gesture. I proceeded into the warmth of one of my favorite spots, a locally owned bookstore. But as I roamed the shelves, I couldn’t get that woman off my mind.
Back home, I’d been reading an old book called "Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement" by Janet Poppendieck. In some ways the book is outdated because it was written in the late 1990s.
But actually, it fits our current vicious economic hard times because it describes the food banks and emergency food kitchens of the ’90s and how they had burgeoned since the 1980s when there were relatively few. Now, they continue to proliferate.
Of course, the Great Depression fostered the sight of breadlines — something Americans thought of as a national disgrace. In the 1980s, when the worst recession to hit America since the Depression descended, it was the beginning of huge charitable endeavors to feed the hungry. Our national safety nets fell behind and continue to lag as we experience this dire recession.
At my parish, leading up to the first week of Advent, we are organizing what we call a "food stamp challenge." Those of us brave enough (or foolish enough) will commit to living a week on an average of $1.64 per meal — the equivalent of food stamp benefits.
We will spend the equivalent of a "mobile food pantry" voucher on vegetables, milk and perishables, and we will buy the equivalent of one U.S. Department of Agriculture commodity emergency food program package.
This means I will get a 3-ounce can of tuna and will, if I want to eat, be forced to buy one can of fruit cocktail and one can of green beans.
There will be no lattes, probably no coffee at all, because if I spend money on even the smallest can, it will cut deeply into my food allotment.
I will not be able to buy those large, economical containers from the warehouse stores, because the poor can’t afford to buy memberships and invest in economical quantities.
A friend may take me out to lunch once, but can’t spend more than $4.50 on me.
Why are we doing this challenge?
It will make us more aware of how adequate or inadequate the food is that is available to the nation’s hungry. It will also encourage us to be better advocates.
But mostly, it will open our eyes a tiny bit to what our citizens in poverty go through. It will awaken us to the kind of want we seldom experience. And for a week, it will keep the poor just a little bit more "with us."
