Find YOUR soul food...and then eat like a pig.

Do you feed your soul?

Do you do an inventory, throw out all the weeds and toxins and take steps to FEED your soul?

Well, you should.

On Thursday afternoons I hop in my car and drive a short distance to a place that feeds me.  It also, conveniently, feeds a few hundred people from our community each and every Thursday night.  It’s called the Community Café, and it sprang into existence when the food bank that was housed in this particular church had to move.  There was still a need, and hands from the church that wanted to fill that need.  And so The Community Café was born, and it serves an incredibly wonderful hot meal to those in need.

I worked with a lovely woman in summer school last year who worked/volunteered at the Café.  She was so enthusiastic about it, and I was thrilled to find out about it.  She worked her magic and secured me a place on her “team”.  The teams work on a rotating schedule, and serve at the kitchen about once every six weeks.  I was filled with such happiness and peace after working one night that I decided to go every week.

And so this particular “part-time job” has been one that has given me an amazing gift.  

I see familiar faces each week; some in the kitchen and many in the serving line. We laugh and exchange pleasantries.  Our cares are left at the door, seemingly unimportant compared to those that will be carried in on the backs of the weary and hungry that very evening.

We work like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around finishing all of the final details that the volunteers who have been cooking all day have told us to do. We finish the plating of the deserts, the placement of the bread, butter, salads and soups.  We do all of this with the knowledge that those we serve are fragile, and that it could very well be one of us standing on the other side of the counter.

So sure, each Thursday night I join many other lovely volunteers as we feed those we come to the Café.   But really, I am the one who is leaving with the best meal of all.  

Because I’ve had a heaping, overflowing bowl of soul food.