Hunger Is Not a Disease

Thank You for the Small Pains I Get in the Pantry

Lord, you know I do need them, of course.

For each sore shoulder pain or back spasm that goes away after a while:  THANK YOU!

The small pains remind me of all the pantry work that needs to be done every day. When the small pains come around, they remind me to pray for more volunteers.

So, thanks for the sneezing fits and scratchy throats I get every delivery day.

The last time I had a sharp pain on delivery day, I caught myself praying in surprise.  And, guess what!  The entire Roberts family showed up to help.  It was just a miracle – that’s all.

And, one afternoon, I had a shoulder pain during the pantry shift and a volunteer stepped out of the line and helped us all that day.  And, he kept returning every week for several months.

For me, these small pains are reminders that I should ask for help and be ready for it to show up!

What these pains mean is that I should also hold out hope for the coming miracles.

After all, miracles happened and I couldn’t hide from them.  I was in denial for the longest time but, eventually, I had to face facts.  When I finally owned up to their reality, I saw they were special miracles for a food pantry.

Stigmata, relics, icons, and visions weren’t appropriate for the pantry.

Nobody controlled how or when they happened, only whether or not they were seen for what they were.  I wasn’t focused on the miracles because I was busy paying attention to lifting boxes, stocking shelves, filling out forms, driving to the dump with the trash.

And, so, Lord, I promise to try to ask for help when the pantry needs it.

Meanwhile…thank you…and…Amen

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Healing 2: Serving the Hungry with Reiki and an Understanding Heart

The food pantry community included massage therapists, Reiki practitioners and other healers in the line.  At one point, I taught Reiki therapy to volunteers and attuned them to Reiki. Laren was among the students in the volunteer class.

Reiki is health care for the soul.  The pantry could definitely use this jewel!

Reiki changes people’s lives and she was no exception.  For most Reiki practitioners, the change is slow, subtle, gentle.  Some aren’t even aware of anything happening.

I knew Laren’s response to Reiki was exceptional in the first fifteen minutes of the Reiki I class.  She took the Reiki 2 class.  She took the Reiki 3 class.  Several months went by and she took one of my advanced classes.

Well, Laren could have taught that class hands down.  Every subject I brought up was one she had experienced.  Laren went on to become a Reiki Master Teacher and now attunes her own students.

Laren dropped by the pantry monthly and offered Reiki to the building.  I felt the energy shift as she invoked the ChoKuRei, the SeiHeKi, and the HonShaZeShoNen in the pantry room and the hallway.

Laren offered Reiki to the building as people rushed around the hallway, bathroom, and the pantry room, cleaning everything after the pantry closed and before we had to leave the building.  No one paid attention to Laren calling in the symbols as she walked around the rooms.

This was energetic healing at work.

She gave particular attention to the corners of the rooms.  Reiki energy transformed the pantry into a holy space, erasing the toxic fear of hunger so prevalent in the hallway and the pantry room.

The floors, walls, corners, became holy.

Fear of hunger wasn’t the only issue.  Fear of job loss,  illness, and fear for the children were common in the pantry.  Fear was often palpable.

Reiki therapy is a spiritual wand touching those around us who need blessings and healing.

Reiki practitioners know that when the time is right, Reiki takes on a life of its own, offering healing where it’s needed, using energy which passes through the practitioner’s hands.

Using Reiki, we align ourselves with our divine order to extend blessings.

When I am in the grocery line, or the traffic line, or on a sidewalk, or on a massage table, the space becomes holy when I invite Reiki in.

Reiki heals through chakra points located throughout the body.  In a Reiki session, the recipient is reminded who she is.  This self-awareness opens the chakra portals for the person to become who she can be.

The future blends with the present and the past at this moment.  Possibilities open.  This is a miraculous process.

Reiki is a holy ritual.  It’s hard to get too much of this divine energy because Reiki is all-loving and all-giving.  Reiki wisdom guides the practitioner’s hands during a session to the points of divine connection on the body.  Reiki shows us the meaning of life and the teachings understand the sacredness of this process.

Reiki is a jewel not bound by earthly things.

No wonder there are no contraindications to Reiki therapy.

Reiki is a light touch applied to a clothed body.  When offering Reiki therapy, I  often began a session applying this light touch to the crown of my client’s head.

After three or four minutes, I moved my hands to the occipital ridge at the base of the skull.

There, I placed one hand on the base of the skull and the other hand on the back of the neck.  After a few short minutes, I placed my hands on the person’s body, following the lines of the person’s chakras along the spine.

As I placed my hands on the recipient, healing energy traveled up and down the chakras, beginning at the head and ending on the feet.  I felt warmth, tingling.

Sometimes I saw images and color while the recipient lay in a sleeplike state on a healing table.  Whether or not the word “sleeping” was correct, the person was usually not conscious.

Chakras are the communication system of the body.  Chakras share information with one another as they physically, intuitively, energetically, and psychically communicate with one another.

They also talk with chakras in other bodies as well.  There is no limit to how chakras communicate.

The pantry visits themselves were healing because the pantry experience healed.  When shoppers and volunteers healed from the experience, they saw things in new ways.

When this healing happened, it made the person new.

In this new inner life and outer life, the person moved forward in ways impossible before.

Pantry volunteers served shoppers, volunteers, hungry people.

Distributing groceries all those afternoons in the pantry brought forgiveness and healing.

Fresh vegetables, eggs, and Bread Alone bread offered a healing experience with abundance.  As volunteers fed the shoppers, they helped both themselves and each other.  Did you want to be healed?  Healing and feeding were connected.

The pantry was a safe haven for everyone, both volunteers and shoppers.  Healing began and continued as people shared food.  This safe haven was necessary because the unspoken word here was the feeling that we were the wrong people.

Unspoken here was the feeling that one’s status in Woodstock could make things right.  Without the right status, a person would never be acceptable.

Health issues pointed to a need to cope with spiritual challenges.  Healing was on the agenda and getting well was something everyone sought.

In the end, healing was not easy.  Before the trip was over and a person felt healed, she experienced many things:  acceptance, belief, change, connection, forgiveness, laughter, persistence, and transcendence.

For me, this was amazing.  How can a person in a pantry line experience connection?  How can a person in a pantry forgive others?  The path is simply too rocky.

For some, it was giving up anger, drugs, or a lifestyle that changed when the house was in foreclosure.

Giving and receiving food brought everyone a little peace.

The whole experience was hard for people in the line who were unemployed, broken down psyhologically, economically, socially, spiritually, and physically,

As I watched healing in action, I saw patterns.  First came forgiveness which made the healing easier.  For sure, healing was harder when a person held a grudge.

The pantry visits themselves were healing.  The pantry experience healed.  When shoppers and volunteers healed from the experience, they saw things in new ways.  This healing, made the person new.

In this new inner life and outer life the person moved forward in ways impossible before.

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Miracles – Because Hunger is Not a Disease

Miracles happened in the food pantry.  It took me a while to realize this and then it took another while to accept that such a thing could happen in the basement of a small town church in Upstate New York.

I sneaked miracle stories in on the blog posts.  I sneaked them on the pages of   “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore”.  Finally, I gave them their own pages – as much as I had the nerve for anyway,  in a short book “Miracles”.

Research on miracles taught me some things.

I learned that miracles often include weeping statues, broken legs healing  straight,  relics, stigmata, and visions.  The pantry miracles included none of those things.

Our miracles never really cured anyone.  I never saw a statue weep, and no one came down with stigmata.

Instead, they  showed us all how to grow and love and forgive.  It was giving away the food that was the tip off for me.

As far as I can tell, the food pantry miracles were not the result of prayer.

God just showed up and brought food.  Once he came disguised as a fireman.  Each miracle was a complete surprise, a unique and different event.  God came when the pantry shelves were bare and the lines were long.

I don’t think the miracles proved that any of the shoppers or volunteers were more  faithful than anybody else in town.   Frankly, I think that some of us saw the miracles as coincidences or something.

However they were seen, these events made an impact on a small number of people who saw them as they happened.

The clincher for me occurred when I finally realized and accepted a few basic things:

Carloads of food never showed up when we didn’t need it.

Boots never appeared on the shelves disguised as toothpaste in the summertime.

Nobody ever brought a handful of nails to fix the barn when the wall wasn’t falling.

Two books appeared on my desk out of the ethers:  “Miracles” by Tim Stafford and “Looking for a Miracle” by Joe Nickell gave a feeling of legitimacy to my thoughts and memories.

Because of Tim Stafford,  I wrote my book entitled “Miracles”.    He was direct about a few things – one of them being that people should not spread “miracle gossip”.  Because of his feelings about what he called “miracle gossip”,  I’m compelled to relate the pantry miracle stories.

To sneak them in  blog posts  does not do them justice.

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Thurman Greco