spring

It’s very cold and the rain of spring has started in Richmond this week. I packed poorly so this means that I’m basically wearing every long-sleeved thing that I own, one on top of the other, and am very thankful that I packed a raincoat. Despite feeling a little miserable because I could never warm up all day long, today I am thankful for what I do have, and in particular for food. I’m thankful that not only when I’m at home in Canada do I have a wonderful husband who cooks spectacular meals and never complains about slaving away over the stove, but I’m thankful that I have food to eat at all.

In addition to working at the hospice, I’ve also been helping collect and distribute food to some of the poorest people I’ve ever met. On Thursdays and Fridays this means working at a soup kitchen where we feed school children what is quite possibly the only meal they may eat that day. I always look forward to going to the soup kitchen because the children are so happy and appreciative and I know it means a lot to them just getting a bowl of rice and cooked cabbage. We sing songs and play games and I worry about them while they run barefoot in a yard littered with debris, but these children are resilient and don’t seem to notice the garbage that I try not to step on.

Thinking about my life in Canada, today I’m thankful for the ability to cook food (even though I’m a terrible cook) because we unfortunately weren’t able to do so at the soup kitchen today. The pot was full of chopped cabbage, but the tanks were out of gas. There was some difficulty in getting new gas tanks to us, so we had to close up without serving any food. It baffled me – we have food, we just can’t cook it. It’s a situation I don’t think I’ve ever been in in Canada, where my kitchen is always stocked and my appliances are always functioning. The worst part is that this means all of the kids we normally serve will not get a meal today.

I’m not writing this to try to evoke guilt for living in a society where we’re able to cook and eat whenever we want. That’s taken care of by the news, covering the famine in the horn of Africa where people are dying and have no food because it hasn’t rained in three years – that should make us want to do something to reach out to those in need. But I’m experiencing the reality of people living on very little and if anything, I’m incredibly impressed by how happy they can be, and I’m hoping I can be as appreciative of the things in my life that I might take for granted... like the stove.