Pruned

Well, it has been a while since my last entry. Free lunch has still been going on, but it has been business as usual, and not much has been different. Sometimes I don't know that I really have a lot to write about.

When I first started out, I had a grand vision of a local or regional charity growing out of free lunch, and when I picked my blog address, freelunch.blogspot.com was already taken, so I had to settle for freelunchproject.blogspot.com. I was a little disappointed with the "project" part of the address because in my mind at the time, it was not a project. A project has a beginning and an end from the outset, and my vision at the time was an organization that had no end.

As I am now learning, the title was a little more appropriate than I thought because free lunch is going on a leave of absence for a little while. And I don't know how long! Healthy things grow, and I can certainly see how this has grown over the past year. I have given 945 lunches to hungry folks since the 16th of September 2006. A little over $2,000.00 has been donated (unsolicited) with a total lunch cost of about $3,150.00. Over 50 people have volunteered, and there was starting to be a good number of very regular volunteers. All of this is very encouraging.

When a gardener plants a garden (I don't know very much about gardining, so I am talking about my limited experience), every winter, the plants are pruned back so that new life can grow in a new season. Over the last few months, I have seen this coming, and I knew I was going to have to make a decision. I could try to keep a plant alive through a cold winter (which wouldn't work), and then try to make it grow in the next spring (which also wouldn't work). I am sad to see things go, and also looking forward to a little break. Through no planning of my own, the timing is pretty good. Around the holidays, a lot of charities ramp up and a lot more people volunteer, so I can trust that the people I have been serving will still be served.

Even as I type this, and as I have started telling people, I can feel the resources of the existing growth being pulled back in to the roots, awaiting something new. It may come back and look exactly the same, and it may appear different in the next season, but I know that this root will not die. It is permanent. And if it does die, it will leave a hole.

When I started free lunch, my life was messy. It still is. I had $1,000.00 in the bank, and I decided if I was going to go broke, I was going to do it my way. There were a couple of times that I was spending close to my last dollars on lunch thinking I was crazy. Other parts of my life were messy too. Relationships in ruins, a poor attitude, making bad choices for myself, all these things were going on, and one truth I could hold on to was serving poor people matters. It really matters. And it doesn't matter what is going on in my life when someone else hasn't had a healthy meal for a few days. My struggles are easier than a person completely addicted to a drug that is ruining their life. Or a person who can't hold a steady job for a whole host of reasons. Or a guy who thinks he has to pull a gun on a white boy from the suburbs to protect his way of life, I am not under the pressure or the threats that guy is under. Or the guy who's wife is dying of breast cancer and he is sending the money he earns here back to whatever part of the world she lives in so she has a chance to live.

I don't assume to know anything about that kind of life, because I have heat and a bed and clean clothes. But I do know something about eating lunch. And it is good to eat lunch. And I love it when my friends come and eat lunch with me. In the midst of whatever is going on in anyones life, lunch with a friend is pure gold. And even if it is for a few minutes, I can enjoy some time with a new friend.

Thank you to everyone that has helped out over the past year. I could not have done this on my own. I appreciate everyone who gave money, and everyone who volunteered. We will see what happens in the new season.