Beautiful Morning

There's a place I go every other Thursday for four hours. I'm volunteering, but really I go because I like it, and because being there means I'm part of the body of Christ in this nuts-and-bolts, Henry Ford-like way.

Today I started out by scooping potato salad. We were filling up 325 lunch trays, and joking because all of it was yellow-- egg salad sandwiches, potato salad, and pineapple on the side. I get there at 7:30 and always see Pam, who works there, and M and J, who are also volunteers. J is short and pillowy and no-nonsense and wears a hairnet. M is also short, and wears a lot of eyeliner and a cap that makes her look like a train engineer. She was telling me how the shopkeepers she remembers from her time in Korea fill their tiny little storefronts vertically, and that they're constantly reaching for things up near the ceiling with long poles. "They eat for energy," she said. "I saw a women eating cucumber dipped in hot sauce like it was a banana dipped in peanut butter."

Yes! I thought. Something else to dip in peanut butter!

We finished with the lunch trays and moved on to dinner: meatloaf, brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes. I was the gravy girl, and for three hours, I dunked a tiny little ladle into this unappetizing swill of broth, pepper, and flour chunks. D was measuring the meatloaf-- 3.5 ounces per tray-- and telling us about her liver transplant a year and a half ago. It was hard, but losing her mother recently was harder. "Still, to God be all the glory," she said.

Murmurs of assent from some but not all, then easy silence.

We got into a rhythm only broken by the need to refill pans or change gloves greasy from breaking up meatloaf. I'd discovered a few weeks ago that one dip, dump, and refill of a ladle equals one Jesus prayer, but today I was just chatting and listening.

We finished the dinner orders and moved on to filling trays that would be frozen for clients' weekend meals. Pans of food were switched out as we filled orders for bland diets, vegetarian options, no egg, and renal patients. The mushroom gravy for the vegetarians looked pretty appealing. My sleeves were flecked and smelly.

Peals of laughter issued from the corner of the room, where a woman in hijab was trying to steal the nutritional labels from her compatriot. Rolls were thrown. A stern look from Pam and we moved back to our natural rhythm: weigh the meatloaf, dip the gravy, cram the brussels sprouts, scoop the mashed potatoes, send the tray on down the line. My back was starting to ache.

I looked up and saw us: D, the tall African-American woman; J, the short Jewish grandmother; P and B, blue collar and white collar retirees, respectively; a stay at home mother with a bandanna on her head, the woman in hijab, and more-- all of us working together, moving in concert, making meals.

We were, all of us, the body of Christ.