Forgiveness
Forgiveness
In the food pantry, forgivenes is as necessary as groceries. Opportunities to experience forgiveness pop up like dandelions on a spring lawn.
And, forgiveness, like those dandelions, finds its own time.
Forgiveness doesn’t undo the damage. It doesn’t mean the person who wronged you is going to become your new best friend.
You’re not going to crawl in bed with that person. You aren’t even going to have to do anything with that person at all.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean you win. Nor does it mean you get away with anything.
You don’t forgive someone for them. It’s not about what they did. You forgive a person for your peace of mind and inner calm so a better, more positive lifestyle can emerge.
Forgiveness means moving on with less baggage. The pain heals because forgiveness sets us free. Go forgiveness!
Forgiveness is an intensely personal experience involving your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional body.
When a person forgives somebody, frustration and grudges leave it through the thoracic region of the spine as a rush of hot wind. I sometimes feel this happening during a Reiki healing session.
Miracles and forgiveness go hand in hand. Asking for forgiveness invites a blessing because of the spiritual shift happening.
In the food pantry, a volunteer gives away the food. When you can’t give food away without strings, scorekeeping taints everything.
Food pantry shoppers and volunteers remake their lives when forgiveness erases anger, awful memories, feeling harmed.
“That person lives in Shandaken. He shouldn’t even be here.”
“You’re serving entirely too much food to these people. You can’t do that.”
“You shouldn’t feed fresh produce to these people.”
“You’re serving too many people.”
“You’re serving all the wrong people here.”
“You don’t feed this kind of food to these people. If they’re hungry enough, they’ll eat anything.”
“Are you sure the people in the line really need the food?”
“Those cell phones are expensive. How can they afford the fancy cell phones and still get free food?”
“How can you keep people from cheating?”
When shame, guilt, and disappointment move on, they separated the future from my past. Otherwise, these negative emotions would have defined my future.
The whole thing is a process. The first step prepared me to forgive someone else as well as myself.
After all, I needed to forgive myself.
Forgiveness doesn’t happen the moment a person says “I’m sorry.” Apologies and acceptances don’t create forgiving.
With the forgiveness process, I got to know myself better. Enough time passed so that I acted differently. It’s easier to forgive somebody when you come from a different place.
When this happened, I realized I wasn’t a victim anymore. Right away, I wanted to stay in this new place. So, I moved in here.
I discovered the old normal was gone when I felt lighter.
I wanted to smile more. I was surprised to learn about this place. The old fear of the building committee reduced itself to nothing.
I still knew the risk of losing the pantry was genuine but now I wasn’t a fear victim.
Forgiveness waited until the time was right, just like the dandelions.
Grandpa Woodstock
I saw him pushing his cart through Mower’s Meadow Flea Market today. Grandpa looks as good as he always did. It was as if the cops never threw him in the slam.
His adorable little black short-haired Chihuahua mix rides on his colorful cart eating stinky cheese bits he gives her whenever Grandpa wants to show her off.
He entertains tourists with his peace sign, his open smile, and his colorful cart. This particular little Chihuahua adds to the picture.
Although Grandpa Woodstock isn’t a scheduled tour bus stop in town, people come from all over to catch a glimpse and take photos of him smiling. His dog, his cart, and his peace sign add even more color to the scene.
Grandpa Woodstock is worth the trip. He’s a master street theater artist. Frankly, they just don’t come better than Grandpa.
Tourists find him to get a picture taken with him and buy an autographed photo from him.
Coffee at Bread Alone, a meal at Maria’s, a necklace at Gwen’s Gems, a find at Mower’s Meadow Flea Market, an ice cream at Taco Juan’s and a Grandpa sighting are on the bucket list of fun things to do in Woodstock. For many, a Grandpa sighting is first on the list.
I’m grateful to see him up close, and I sigh a quiet, hidden sign of relief when he smiles.
These days I look for what I call the forgiveness smile. People have a unique smile when they release small hills or even huge mountains of baggage. Grandpa’s got it. Go Grandpa!
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Nancy
“I’ve got my whole live organized…finally! I’ve got it down to three boxes.” she explained.
“See my first box: I’ve got five outfits in it. And, one of them is good. There’s even a pair of boots and a bottle of tick spray here.
“My second box is the bathroom box. It’s got soap, toothpaste, deodorant, and a kazillion plastic bags. And, Look, here’s the toilet paper I got out in the hallway a few minutes ago.”
“And, see, this is my third box.”
I saw a soup pot, a 2-quart saucepan for veggies, and cooking the eggs she always picked up in the pantry. I saw canned goods, and I saw something else our pantry rarely offered: paper towels.
Nothing was frivolous. There’s no room for frivolity as one’s life dwindles to three boxes.
Forgiveness is sometimes an internal, hidden experience. Without the forgiveness smile, it’s difficult to impossible to know when a person practices forgiveness.
By default, I sometimes know who didn’t because I see anger and a stuck life in a person’s face.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
LeAnna
“I’m so sorry I’m late today. I promise, promise, promise not to do this again. I was over at the pet store unloading dog food. Christie and Fraidy were entirely out of food, but now I have a big bag of kibble for them!”
“LeAnna,” I replied. “It was nothing. Christie and Fraidy are part of your family.”
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Dr. Catherine Ponder wrote several powerful prayers about forgiveness. .She wrote books about healing, abundance, and forgiveness. You can find her on facebook and her own website.
Healing 1: Serving the Hungry with an Understanding Heart
“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” – Psalm 63:1
“That person lives in Shandaken. He shouldn’t even be here.”
The pantry served shoppers, volunteers, hungry people. Volunteers fed everyone in the line. No exceptions.
Distributing groceries brought forgiveness and healing. Healing was an after thought of forgiveness.
For me, healing required some commitment and thought. Whether or not this was true, questions always arose:
“Am I ready to be healthy?”
“Can I get well if it’s scary?”
“Can I leave the old me aside if it’s necessary for healing?”
“Why am I going through this?”
“What is the meaning of it all?”
These questions could be painful. Healing can be hard on everyone.
The pantry line had massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, medical intuitives, and other healers.
As a healer, I know healing happens on several levels in our lives: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, mythical. Both healing and getting well were special challenges because many of the people in the hallway, the pantry room, and out in the parking lot didn’t have health care.
While he had his office, Woodstock had Dr. Longmore. After his office closed, things were tough for many. As health care became scarce, everyone became personally involved with the differences between healing and getting well. For some, this was part of the spiritual journey.
Hunger often went beyond a plate of beans or a jar of peanut butter. That’s why food is essential to healing. That’s where homemade soup comes in.
Sharing food in the pantry helped people heal. Fresh vegetables, eggs, and Bread Alone bread offered a healing experience with abundance. As we fed the shoppers, we helped ourselves and each other.
In some cases, the shoppers became the volunteers or the volunteers joined the shoppers. Shoppers came to get food and found they could volunteer. Volunteering changed them. As a person distributed groceries, the volunteer made contact with another person and was able to smile.
Pantry experiences coaxed us out of our own problems. Offering a sense of community gives back so much more.
Do you want to be healed? Healing and feeding are connected.
Sooner or later, we all get sick. Finally, we die.
No one escapes. This truth is harder on hungry people who have no $$$ for health care.
Hungry people are often blamed for their inability to deal with the situation. It’s as if it’s their fault for being down and out in Woodstock. If they lived right, they would be healthier, make more $$$ in their jobs.
If critics stopped and thought about how insufficient nutritious food, improper housing, and inadequate or nonexistent healthcare impacts a person, they might feel differently.
What did it matter that there were no jobs in the area and none of those that came open paid over $8.00 an hour?
Because they were down and out, they must be guilty of something.
They were negative thinkers, lacking faith, and basically lazy. Something.
They were gay, trans, promiscuous, alcoholics. Something.
They were freeloaders, irresponsible, flaky. Something.
Healing and getting well are two different things, acting in different ways. But, whether a person heals, gets well, or both, change happens.
“Do I want to heal?”
“Do I want to be well?”
“What if I come out of this experienced a different person?”
“What if it takes a long time?”
In the midst of this, the pantry offered some normalcy to the shattered lives of hungry people when they took pantry food home to wherever and whatever that was, fixed a meal, and served it to those in the household.
It was supper from the pantry.
Health issues pointed to the spiritual challenges which popped up on the path to the pantry. Healing was on the agenda. We all wanted to get well.
People getting well overcome symptoms. Getting well means doctor’s visits, therapy, pills, creams. These things were simply not an option for pantry shoppers because there was no money.
Symbolic healing occurred in the hallway on pantry days as shoppers and volunteers discussed their diabetes, PTSD, cancer, allergies.
Working and shopping in the pantry was therapy to volunteers and shoppers. These hallway conversations were cheaper than the physical and mental health services they had no money for anyway.
These conversations were essential because talking about a health issue promotes healing. Shared symptoms gave us all support, strength, validity.
Everyone walking through the door to the pantry, whether a shopper or volunteer, was asked to leave the past behind. This experience was different for everyone. But, think about it, how can we move forward into our new lives if we never give anything up.
For some, giving up the past means letting go of things lost: the job, the home, maybe the family, self-esteem, the car, good health, money, insurance, the pet, anger, or drugs.
As the past disappears, the remaining spiritual baggage weighs less and less. Prejudices become fewer. Fears diminish. We heal!
Some things surrendered were physical, some mental, and some emotional. But, one thing is certain, whatever the category, the experiences all had a spiritual aspect.
Giving and receiving food brought everyone a little peace.
Everyone coming to the pantry heals somehow. The pantry community supports and approves hungry individuals as they climb back on the road to wellness and something offering normalcy.
Nobody just wakes up one day and says “I think I’ll go down to the local food pantry and volunteer.” People spending time in pantries all travel down the path. Healing has signposts along the way.
Some needed physical healing. Volunteers occasionally came to the pantry so ill that they were barely able to make it into the building. When this happened, I stationed them at the Items of Dignity table distributing toilet paper, shampoo, razors. They offered one roll of toilet paper and one other item to each shopper.
Each week, Deanna slowly walked the two blocks to the pantry and then worked in the hallway a couple of hours while she gathered enough energy to return home.
“Don’t forget your roll of toilet paper, Judith. We’ve got some hand cream today. Can you use that or would you prefer tooth paste?”
When Deanna finally couldn’t work in the hallway anymore, Rachel gracefully sat at the Items of Dignity table helping shoppers choose their two items. Rachel lived in nearby Mt. Tremper. Her living situation seemed somewhat precarious because every few months she looked for a new place to live. She lived in her car a couple of times.
Thank you for reading this blog post. This is the first food pantry article on healing.
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Thanks again.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
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