HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

For the past 5 years, my family and i have spent Thanksgiving at the New York Rescue Mission. Thanksgiving day we go and help set up and serve people who don't have homes on thanksgiving and then after they leave, we serve the people who live in the mission, and we eat with them. Afterwords they all share stories of things they are thankful for and their back stories. This year a minister who works in another church came and ate with us. He was friends with the people who ran this one and even though he wasn't homeless, he was allowed to come. He told us about how his wife and children had just left him, but he had been sober for over 23 years. But he said that because god was with him, he would be strong and god would pull him through the fire he was engulfed in now. Other stories from past years include a fireman who fell through a roof of a burning building, broke his back and got hooked on painkillers, which escalated to heroin. His family had left him, and now he was homeless, but Jesus had found him, and now he was on his way to recovery. These were men who had lost themselves, and then found it again through religion. They tried to live better lives because they needed to be able to please someone else.

To me, being with these people is a normal thanksgiving. Every year i come out of there with a sense of purpose and fulfilment. These men have danced with the devil and lost everything, and now they were starting again, and they had a place to sleep, and a "family" to eat with. It is in no way a "typical" Thanksgiving, but we weren't alone. We were all there, volunteers, and residents, to celebrate and enjoy a warm meal. We didn't care about each other's past mistakes. We didn't judge each other on what we were wearing, or how much we ate. We did't care about the quality of the food. We were there because we all wanted to be in a place like that, and whether of not going home was an option. That was the place to find it. To listen to a grown man cry because he knows that he shouldn't be allowed to see his own children because of the things he has done is a humbling feeling. But the even more humbling feeling is the low echo of "Amen's" that come from throughout the room as the other men there feel his pain, because in one way or another, they have all been there.

After my family and i left the shelter, we went to my Dad's mother and sister, and then my Mom's Brother and his family. After leaving the shelter, and then visiting my family, i was brought back to light how hostile a family environment really is. Everyone is laughing and joking, but there are awkward silences where we are all silently judging. We ask each other for things, and we are forced to entertain. To me, that doesn't sounds all to much like the Thanksgiving we are told about. But i guess its because we are used to it. Not everyone can experience what it is like to volunteer in a homeless shelter, so instead they just go through the rituals of eating until they can't physically eat anymore. I guess it is about repressing emotions and hiding disdain. We all know we are going to die eventually, so on holidays, the family wants to be close together, so we can "bond." Maybe it is just because we have a small family, but i think the bigger picture is because we want to fit in with what everyone is doing. By working in the shelter, we have broken that, and now we can see things from the outside. That is more liberating then unbuckling your belt after your meal.