Sunday afternoon

Sunday afternoon came around, and it was time for the "dog'gone dogooders" to head downtown to the weekly Potluck in the Park. This is a completely volunteer run event that just celebrated its 18th year of service.  Every Sunday afternoon, rain or shine, a free meal is available to anyone, and we are talking a nutritious and bountiful hot meal.  Various salads, casseroles, yogurt, breads and fresh fruit are just some of the choices available to the almost 400 folks that come by.

We showed up early to sign in and orient ourselves.  There were a lot of volunteers helping out and that isn't counting all the folks who had been gathering food donations all week long and cooking the food on Sunday morning.  There was a tourist couple from NYC who registered as volunteers through Hands on Portland, with the intention of participating in the place they were visiting.  Brilliant!! Once again, I was really impressed by the number of kids that were volunteering that day.  My own world as a young person was so self indulgent, I can't begin to imagine the effect it would have had on me to offer my time in support of another human being.

Once I started serving food, it was a whirlwind of activity peppered with moments that made me laugh and moments that slammed into my face the reality of poverty and homelessness in this country.  It is only recently that I am beginning to experience relationship with another person across class lines.  I am realizing that I have come to rely too heavily on my assumptions of another person based on how they look, making me lazy and likely to dismiss.  Assumptions have stunted the curiosity that leads me to want to hear another person's story.  It feels like a tool I misused and neglected.  I've also become aware of how much censoring takes place in the formalities of my day to day life.  Time spent around people experiencing homelessness has been filled with personal questions, outbursts of anger, exclamations of joy, contained quiet, random acts and a huge spectrum of personal space boundaries.  Its dynamic, it feels like vibrant complicated life.

Rooted

Keeping up

As I sit here, a big pot of heirloom tomaters from the garden is bubbling away on the stove. Another round of canning tomato sauce for the winter is underway. It almost, and I emphasize almost, makes me sentimental for the coziness and the hearty meal of a dark winter evening.


This is our first season preserving the bounty, and I am humbled by the amount of time and labor that needs to be invested. But oh...what an investment in riches it is! We have canned cucumber bread and butter pickles, cucumber relish, jalapeno peppers, pickled beets, and tomato sauce. We have been racing to turn our basil jungle into tidy little pockets of frozen pesto. We have frozen grated zucchini for many future zucchini breads (chocolate chips to be added upon baking). All those mighty little seeds we started so many months ago have turned into plants, thriving and ripening and eager to feed us. It fills me with a deep sense of contentment to acknowledge the riches I have now and to set them aside, to tuck them away for later. Jars that are to be opened in the depth of winter, to nourish a gathering of friends and family.