On Saturday, at a meeting of team captains at the Kitchen to update us on the plans for the move, I was asked to join the Steering Committee for Matt Talbot’s $1.4M “Witness to HOPE” capital campaign that will be launched very shortly to raise the needed funds to relocate the Kitchen from their current location to the Carnegie Library area on North 27^th St.    

As part of the Committee, I am excited to be able to give voice to the many volunteers and supporters of Matt Talbot that hail from outside the Lincoln metro area.  About 20% of MTKO’s volunteers travel, like we do, to serve at the Kitchen, and I believe we will have some great opportunities this spring and summer to facilitate events in our area to tell the story of Matt Talbot Kitchen and Outreach and how important their mission is to the homeless and working poor in Lincoln.   

In talking with Sarah Sr. at the last meal, she indicated that they are thinking about a music festival fundraiser this summer as one possibility.  It sounds as if the campaign will have a significant “grassroots” flavor – small gatherings of people where the staff or Board of MTKO can interact personally with folks interested in the Kitchen and how they might help with the move.  Please be thinking of some other creative ways we might gather people together in our area to tell them about this great organization, and our experiences there. 

I will be attending the 1^st Steering Committee meeting on March 3^rd in Lincoln, and will give everyone an update on how this will unfold in the coming months.  If you have any ideas you’d like me to share with the Committee, just drop me a line before then!

I think it’s fair to say that the Tuesdays we serve at MTKO are fairly stressful for me.  I am a worrier by nature, and by the time “serving day” rolls around on the calendar, I’ve usually wound myself up pretty tightly trying to make sure that nothing has been missed and everything will go as planned.  Today, I had the added stress of having endured a couple of very trying days at work, and the knowledge that I am struggling to keep up with my classwork in pursuit of my master’s degree in engineering. 

After the rush to get everything loaded…ham , potatoes, cheese, sour cream, broccoli, peas, bananas, etc…drive to York to get Kellie, buy gas, get to Lincoln, unload at the Kitchen, scurry to get the peas and broccoli on to boil, unpack the coolers, get the potatoes back in the oven to reheat…no time to think about anything…  I became aware that one of the hearing-impaired guests we’ve served on a number of occasions was sitting at a nearby table, smiling, jotting something on a napkin, and watching us rush around like recently beheaded chickens.  You may remember him; he wears a plaid trilby-style hat…last month he was there with a number of his friends, and many of us were touched by the joyful and animated conversations they had with one another while eating.  Feeling very pressed for time, I nodded and smiled at him and went back to my furious unpacking of hot potatoes. 

Then he got up from the table, and handed me the napkin…

 …and it was just what I needed.

 I…….    I hope that someday I have the opportunity and dexterity to tell him how blessed I am to be able to do this month after month, even though I sometimes fail to take the time to enjoy it. 

Namasté, my friend in the plaid trilby hat.  May God bless you richly on your journey.

The same to you, my friends.

Switching gears a bit, I have been in touch with Pastor William Barth of Nebraska Prison Ministries (NPM).  After a brief introduction about our group and our interests in serving others, I inquired how A Place at the Table might be of service to the imprisoned, indicating that we might be particularly interested in volunteering in some way at the women’s prison in York (including an idea about a prison garden to feed the homeless), since it is in our local area.  He is willing to explore the possibility of facilitating such a partnership and has offered to meet with us as a group to discuss NPM, and particularly a new reentry/aftercare program that gaining some momentum in Nebraska.  He indicated that he would also like us to get in touch with a Ms. Lauri Westfall from Grand Island who is our local Operations Chief for this program in central Nebraska.

Finding a way to serve the imprisoned seems like a natural growth of our mission and I would very much like to invite Pastor Barth to meet with our group.  I would like to find a time and place where many of us could commit to be present to explore this with him.  If this interests you, please let me know so that I can gauge interest in this mission before I commit to a meeting.  I understand that “going inside” might be uncomfortable or even frightening to some, and I want to be sensitive to that.  But I also know that I feel driven to seek out those on the margins of society and I personally am willing to stretch past the unease I will undoubtedly feel.  I hope some of you will be as well.

Lastly, the last couple of days have been historic for any number of reasons.  Yesterday, Dr. Martin Luther King would have turned 80 years old, and today marked a new era in American politics.  I am reminded of a rather famous quote by King that continues to inspire me, and I’d like to share it with you:

 “Anyone can be great because everyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve… You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

I believe we can create opportunities not only for we ourselves to serve, but we can facilitate those same opportunities for others to serve those less fortunate than themselves, and in doing so we might all find a bit more wholeness within ourselves.  Please let me know if you’d like to join me in meeting with Pastor Barth.

Namasté.