My Band-Aid

I volunteered this morning at S.O.M.E. over on O street to cook eggs for the breakfast program that they have there. I saw the notice in the Foundry Church bulletin last Sunday and figured that since I generally wasn't doing anything at 6 in the morning, might as well do my good deed, right?

There is something simultaneously beautiful, and heartbreaking about learning that people have been cooking breakfast there for those who need it.. for 20 years. You feel like you can give yourself a pat on the back, for cracking 3 dozen eggs and leaning over a stove.. until you learn that you're just one more person that doesn't really make that big of a difference. Sure, you might leave more or less eggshells in the mix than somebody else.. But really, that's about it. Surrounded by architechts and statititians, kitchen manager and dishwashers, you realise that there will be somebody tomorrow morning to take your place, to cook the eggs, the make the wheel turn. The next day, and the next.

Bryan and I have differing views on the band-aid nature of soup kitchens and breakfast programs. Bryan focuses on treating the disease, the social programs and issues, whereas I see the incredible paradigmatic shift that would be required.. and keep applying band-aids. If I wasn't there, if S.O.M.E. wasn't there, they would undoubtably find somewhere to eat, somewhere to sit for coffee and a banana and eggs and bacon. Bryan believes that that's what should be done, that it only reinforces the problem, giving a ready solution that is all too easy to take advantage of. If you know that you'll be fed, do you not try as hard to buy your own food? I believe that those that "take advantage" in the negative sense, are few and far between. Human dignity and pride keeps most of us off the foodline, out of soup kitchens. I believe that people are basically and intrinsically good, and striving, and trying, and that occasionally, we fall short, and need a cup of coffee, and a banana, and a plate of bacon and eggs. The answer, I'm sure, lies somewhere inbetween. Between a band-aid that has been there for so long, that it's part of the system, and a system that is so rotten, it might fall apart without the bandaid.

But, however small the effect, however little the ripple, and the fact that I smell terribly like bacon and eggs... I'm proud of my little band-aid.