I was in the car of a close friend driving along the narrow streets in the west end of Toronto when she slowed down the vehicle as her eye caught the pushcart by the gate of one of the old houses. A man, probably in his late forties was by the stairs of the house picking up some empty liquor bottles. He was shabbily dressed and probably had not had a shower for a few days. His pushcart was laden with probably all his earthly belongings.
My friend honked her car softly and waved and the man looked up. He was at first confused but when my friend continued to wave and call his name, his face broke into a sweet smile and he waved back. It was such a beautiful smile that lighted the weary face. “He is one of my regular guests at “The Sharing Place”, my friend explained. She further told me that this man had been sick and now homeless. He is known in the area and people leave their empty liquor bottles by their stairwell for him to pick up and sell in the local liquor store. In a good week, he would earn about thirty collars. That was all his income. He does not get any welfare cheque. He does not care about applying for it. He sleeps in a local men’s shelter, gets his meals at different places during the week. He takes a shower now and then at some public baths.
On Thursdays, he goes to “The Sharing Place for breakfast and dinner. He is just one of the regulars who are from twenty-five to sixty being served breakfast and dinner at this little place every Thursday.
The Sharing Place has been at this little church at Annette St. for years. It has served the poor and the homeless in the area. It is a very welcoming place that provides material as well as spiritual needs. The people need not be members of the church. They are considered as guests when they come
The place has a pleasant dining room with decent tables for the meals. Hot nutritious meals cooperatively prepared by volunteers are served. In one big room is a pantry where donated food is stored. Every week, the director of the place who is my friend goes to the food terminal with some of the volunteers to buy big bags of potatoes and other produce. There are also bakeries that regularly donate fresh bread every week.
In another room, donated clothes are stored. Those who need clothes can go to this room and select what they need. Some of the things in this room are new, donated by some stores. Even the used clothes are in very good condition and quite attractive and fashionable. People who often change their wardrobe every year or had just put on weight and found the clothes tight donated them.
The Sharing place does not receive government funding. Private individuals and churches that are aware of the work it undertakes support it. Many volunteers come to help in the numerous tasks to be done like bagging food that the needy individuals and families can take when they come to the place. Some of the volunteers are also recipients.
People often came to bring food to the place. Sometimes boxes of chickens arrive. There are those who were formerly recipients who have gotten over their financial problems and are now either volunteers or donors at The Sharing Place.
It is sometimes difficult to believe that in this country wherein two of the biggest problems are keeping down one’s weight and what to do with too much garbage, that there are people who do not get three square meals a day, and a great number of children who go to school without breakfast. This morning, a television newscaster announced that the number of people using food banks has considerably increased in the last few months due to loss of jobs and the working poor who do not earn enough to make both ends meet. In the west side of Toronto where The Sharing Place is located, there are humungous homes that cost more than a million each and yet there are these families who do not earn enough for a decent existence, as well as those who are not sure where they would lay their heads down each night. To see a lighted window and an open door wherein one would be welcomed in with a hot meal is indeed heartwarming.
“What we are doing is not really enough,” the director of The Sharing Place remarked. “We can only offer meals once a week. I am hoping that we would be able to offer at least coffee and some cookies and muffins every morning so that these people can come in from the cold. But our resources cannot afford to do this.”
The guests of The Sharing Place do not just come for the meals, the bags of food or the clothes. They enjoy the camaraderie, the exchange of jokes and stories to tell and listen to. It is a place for meeting friends or for even sharing problems and disappointments. There is the mother who comes to help because her son is there as a volunteer. It is a place where people connect, and are accepted with dignity.
In these lean times, when almost everyone is concerned what the New Year will bring, when people are talking of less shopping for the holidays and limited budgets including for charities, let us think of what being poor means. This director of The Sharing Place and a good friend of mine told me the other day, “There are many kinds of poor. We may have all the materials things in the world and still be poor. I am talking of those who are poor in spirit.”
Indeed, there are hoards of wealthy people who are miserable and cannot sleep without taking pills. There are also the greedy ones that contributed to the economic downturn that we now experience. There are those who would leave their millions to a cat or a dog because they could not control their children or grandchildren who were the rightful heirs. We have heard of CEO’s of corporations who manipulated the pension plans of their employees. In the Philippines, we know of landowners who have kept the tenants forever in debt while they work the farms from sunrise to sundown; of politicians who are shareholders in large malls while the young and the old dig at “Smokey Mountain” for scraps of food or whatever can be found to keep their body and soul together. These are all the kinds of poor, poor in their inability to share the material goods they possess with their fellow human beings. They are poor in their lack of dignity of the human spirit.
As were prepare for the upcoming holidays and as we think of the lavish gifts for our loved ones, let us not forget that there are those whom nobody remembers or do not have enough for the regular meals, those lonely people in nursing homes, those who do not have a roof over their heads especially the mentally ill. Find a way of sharing no matter how little you can afford. Share a place in your heart for these fellow human beings.
It is not how much we share but how we share whatever we can afford. Create a Sharing Place in our hearts.