The rains are back. Yup, it is drizzling outside and a bit chilly at that. But I’m enjoying a quiet Sunday morning reading some really enlightening spiritual material on the nature of compassion as demonstrated through the life of Jesus. I think I’m being shown the conclusion that the outward manifestation of the existence of love in our hearts is the act of compassion. Profound stuff.
I got to go the community service center where my Dad serves for the first time yesterday. The building was situated in what is considered to be the ghetto of Red Deer. I laughed when I learned this because I’ve ridden through places at midnight in Toronto that are 10 times worse than this. I guess everything is relative after all!
Anyway I wasn’t sure how helpful I would be to anyone. But I was soon cutting up buns and buttering them, tossing salads, and pretty soon I was in charge of washing pots and pans. I swear I still have a slight smell of Caesar salad dressing on my fingers!
After doing a dozen pots and several pans I joined the praise team in singing songs for the “guests” that were arriving in droves for the free food. I was fascinated by how diverse the group was. There were classic looking drunks who were not quite there and spent half the time with their heads buried in a bowl of soup. A young couple with baby sat to the side so the mom could nurse her child in relative privacy. They were just passing through on their way to better opportunities in the northern part of Alberta. There was a guy who had converted a child’s bike into a cruiser with a large basket attached to the rear. He packed food into the basket and rode off into the early evening.
The College Heights Pathfinder club (kinda’ like a scouts club) came out to help and that brought back memories of my days in the same organization back in California and later in Brampton, ON. These kids were really helpful and I got to chat with a few them as we worked on getting the food out. They were planning to make it to the 2009 Pathfinder Camporee to be held in Oshkosh, WI and were totally “stoked” about it. I resisted replying with a “gnarly dudes and dudettes! That’s like totally righteous… err on all levels!”
Well I need to get a major paper for my class completed over today and tomorrow so I had better get to it. Not too worried about it because I’ve been developing it over the past few days. But I guess its time to really get something concrete typed up.
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