Feeding the Hungry Feeds the Heart

Sarah Barker
Sun, 02 Mar 2014 13:51:24 -0800

I woke up yesterday to a damp and more-than-a-little dreary Saturday morning, and my mood reflected the seeming melancholy of the day. I had absolutely no desire to get out of bed at 7 a.m., and even less interest in driving through the series of miniature wading pools dotting the roads and highways between Burbank and Vernon. But, sigh ... I had made a commitment (what on Earth was I thinking) to head up the Sunday Assembly crew's participation in distributing food to the hungry with the L.A. Regional Food Bank, and by uh ... God, I wasn't going to welsh.

I arrived at the food bank by 8:15, with legal waiver in hand, sporting my disheveled Sunday Assembly L.A. T-shirt, my eyes scanning the giant warehouse for anything resembling coffee. At that early hour the facility was filling up fast with high school kids and college kids wearing colorful sorority and fraternity sweatshirts and T-shirts. The kids were spirited and relaxed with each other, and I quickly learned, after speaking with a soft-spoken high school junior, that these kids were required to be here. Apparently community service is now pedagogy. I smiled to myself and couldn't help but to notice that my determination to be "grouchy" today was lifting.

Within minutes I was joined by Josh and Kendall Williams, a delightful and down-to-earth couple and fellow members of the Sunday Assembly L.A. family, and perhaps despite myself, I'd somehow moved from sulky to spirited in a "nano." I mean here were these bright-eyed, friendly folks who traveled just as far as I had (we discovered we were neighbors) and they were anything but glum.