I ran late today. This was the third morning when I got up at closer to my old wake up time. My body just didn't want to move very rapidly so I got away from home late. However, there was help at Haywood Street when I arrived and others brought in the three big boxes and one large bag filled with clothes.
Phyllis and Karla and Linda were there from Mars Hill. Lora and Marie were back and busy. Someone had changed everything the day before. Phyllis took the overflow of winter clothes to Goodwill. I won't bring anything like a coat from now on even though we had several people come asking for coats. They sleep in them. It is still cold here at night. Phyllis went to her car and looked for the right size since she had already loaded the winter boxes into her trunk. We found a big plastic box full of children's shoes and a few adult women shoes and a few athletic shoes. The shoe lookers are looking for sandals now and there were only two or three pair of them.
The bags were gone and boxes of Kleenex went quickly along with toilet paper. Diapers and ladies'sanitary products were in much demand as were socks and hats. There are no socks in the drawers except infant socks for newborns which I brought. So much to provide . . .
At 11:30 I went to the dining hall to find someone to ask about the pink purse luncheon next Friday. Dee told me she'd connect me with someone. The lady who looked so familiar and I discovered how we knew one another -- she and her husband used to go to Weaverville UMC. She said they liked Linda very much, but that the church was not involved in much mission work at the time and they wanted a contemporary service. I told her the church was now very much involved in mission work, had lots of young families, a great youth group, and had started a contemporary service. She said her husband was committed to the choir in the church they attend so they wouldn't change now, but she was glad that WUMC was moving in all those directions. We never discovered the woman responsible for the Pink Purse affair so I asked Shannon to put me in touch and she said she would.
Lunch was delicious, as usual. It was a Greek meal, Greek salad, wild rice, braised fish, marinated veggies, pita and tzaziki, and peach cobbler a la mode. I sat at the table of Sarah in the back and around me gathered quite a group. The young black man with the great colored glasses came first. His glasses are just frames, no glass in them. They were orange last week. Today they were lime green. He was very sweet. He had eaten with the first seating and was back for more. That is not encouraged, just because there are limited chairs for each seating, but no one cared. They encourage people to get second and third helpings instead of going away and coming back. This young man was a strapping youth and I am sure it took two plates of food to fill him. Around the rest of the table were several women and quite a few men. One young woman reminded me of my aunt Margaret except she was prettier. I was confounded to discover that there were two young women that reminded me of Margaret. I am going to have to study their features so I don't get them confused.
The chair to my left was empty until just before the blessing. A nice looking young man of about 30+ took it eventually. He had on a University of GA t-shirt with a ballpoint pen stuck in the collar. He was not clean shaven, but he was clean cut looking. I asked him how he came to be there this day. I expected him to say he was a friend of Brian's and had been out of town and hadn't been to lunch for a couple of weeks. Instead, he said he had been to get food stamps and the man had told him how to get to Haywood Street and that they had lunch every Wednesday. He said he was just learning about how to get along without money. Something about that rang true. He said he was working out of town, had his laptop and phone stolen, and then the company he worked for couldn't pay him for his orders because they were not sent in when he lost the laptop. He barely made it to Asheville with the money he had. I told him about the Clothes Closet, the library, the haircuts upstairs, and the acupuncture that would be back next week. We could see the garden out the back windows and I told him they were going to have chickens soon to supply fresh eggs. He asked about the table names. I said something to him about Emmaus Walks and how the tables there are named. He said that it was funny. He had talked to his dad in Florida and he was going to an Emmaus Walk service at Asbury Lake this past weekend. He wasn't familiar with it beyond that, but then he wondered if it was like the Criseo(that may be misspelled) that his Episcopal church sponsored when he was younger. I said it was. I said that the tables remind us that these meals are like Emmaus Walks where we encounter Christ in strange and new places. I even said who would have thought he'd be having a wonderful meal at a church on a Wed. at lunchtime. He laughed and said he certainly wouldn't have. He wanted to know what time the service was on Sunday. I explained it wasn't on Sunday. It was today a few minutes from then. I described the service and Brian and told him I hoped he'd come upstairs when he'd finished dessert, but I never saw him again. I hope he comes back. He's searching. Losing his laptop, though very awful, may be a blessing if he lets it be. I told him about Brian taking a group to Habitat on Thurs. Maybe he'll come back and help there.
Then I went upstairs for the service. Edward was playing and the church slowly filled. It was full soon, but it took it awhile. The first hymn was "Spirit of the Living God" and Edward played it once with the singing and then he conducted the congregation a capello. It was very lovely. The liturgy was about being a friend of Haywood Street Congregation. It was a commitment to claim it, covenant before God and our neighbors to walk in Jesus footsteps, pledge to share our divine gifts in this fellowship of manna and mercy, and promise to welcome all with the love of Christ.
Then Brian passed the church registry, a piece of paper on a clipboard. This was new to me.
Prayers were offered and Shannon directed that. Then a man sang the Confession of Faith and the congregation repeated the song. Shannon reminded us that we confess so that we can release all the burdens of our sins and those that others have put on us and feel the love of God.
The Word was from Acts 11:1-18, "Why did you go and eat with them?"
It was about Peter being called before the mother church in Jerusalem to explain himself. He had been eating with Gentiles and the church was upset. Good Jews did not eat with Gentiles and the early Christians were mostly Jews, especially those in Jerusalem. He didn't deny the charge, or explain it, or argue about it. He told a story about his own experience, seeing in a trance God telling him it was okay to eat whatever was offered, that there was nothing profane. Then a man, Cornelius, had sent for him and he had gone to him in Caesarea. The Spirit told Peter to go to Cornelius and when he arrived the Holy Spirit fell upon his household just as it had fallen upon the Apostles at Pentecost. When the church heard this, they were silenced. They said, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." Brian told his story about being a boy who ate with his father and he started picking up trash at McDonald's on his way out the door. A man stopped him and told him a black woman with a uniform was being paid to do that and black people were put on this earth to clean up after whites. Brian's father told the man the woman was certainly doing her work, but that it was okay for Brian to do what he was doing and for him not to denigrate the woman. He also told the man not to ever say such a bigoted thing to his son again. There are no colors in God's eyes that separate us and no food that defiles us. The Church was converted that day by Peter's story.
A man was in the congregation who wanted to thank the church for baking the cookies for the prisoners at Marion. They baked 2700 cookies over the weekend and they are going to be delivered this next weekend.
In Haywood Street there is no East or West or North or South. It is one great fellowship of love. They feed the hungry, cloth the poor, visit the prisoner, and proclaim the love of God to everyone. It is a strange and wonderful place.
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