Body and Soul Together

28 people were in line when we opened the gate at noon. Rebecca, our CDSP seminarian, blessed the gathering and the meal. We began scooping the chicken and salad. Volunteers from our Episcopal church had prepared over a dozen trays, and it looked like we had too much food. Not to worry. The line grew to 50 in the next half an hour, and the guests kept coming back until the food was gone.

At Sandwiches on Sunday no one is turned away. Most diners are dressed casually, but a few are nattily appointed; they would fit in nicely at Stanford Shopping Center or the shops at Union Square. Some drive to the community center, but most arrive on foot or ride in on bikes.

We distributed the packages as the diners departed. Every Saturday for the past ten years the parishioners of St. Pius Parish assemble eighty (80) brown-bag lunches and store them overnight in the walk-in refrigerator. Marge packs her Toyota with six large boxes on Sunday morning and meets us at the community center.

One gentleman insisted on giving me two dollars. I turned it over to Marge to help defray some of St. Pius' expenses. To my surprise Marge said that she was not a member of St. Pius; she is a Lutheran who likes feeding the hungry and stuck with the program after she had been introduced to it years ago. A Lutheran helping some Episcopalians in an outreach activity run by a Catholic parish--five centuries after the Reformation and Henry VIII's divorce there's still hope that the Body can come together.

The community garden is flourishing.