While we're waiting...
Dec. 19th, 2008 18:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mapsedgeBefore I go back to bed I want to get Premiere going on some footage. It'll take all night to render. While I'm waiting for Premiere to import the footage, I've got some things to get off my chest.
Last weekend I was asked by the Seekers class at church to ride along and videotape while they prepared and delivered lunches to Kansas City's homeless. It was a long day, and difficult in ways that I didn't expect.
The hour's worth of video will be cut down into a half-dozen two to three minute snippets to be played in service to inspire the congregation - and other congregations, possibly - that stewardship doesn't end when you put money in the collection plate.
200 lunches prepared from meatloaf or ham, with chips, fruit, a sweet like a cupcakes or packaged cookies. In the bag there were also some toiletries, like a toothbrush and paste, comb, other things I didn't get a close look at.
We piled into three separate vehicles, each pointed at a different part of the compass. My van went into downtown. The man driving, a KC police detective by day, has done this many times before. Pull over, call out "Hey man, are you hungry?", pass the lunch (in a rather large bag) through the window, or, if needed, walk it down to the guy (or guys.) If the person needed a coat, we rummaged through our pile until we found something that looked like it might fit. Then we expressed good wishes for the holidays and a quick "God Bless" and moved on in search of the next.
I would never make a good photo-journalist. I'm not comfortable just pointing my camera at someone unsolicited. Only one person objected, and did so by holding the lunch bag in front of his face. I turned the camera away, made eye contact and nodded, hoping he would understand that he was in no danger of exposure from me.
It's an odd mix of feelings for me. On the one hand, it was obvious that many of these men were hungry or cold or both, and the gifts were gratefully, in one case tearfully, received. On the other, the cynic in me asks, how much did you really accomplish? At most, you're just buying a little time, but you're not really solving anything. It would be so easy to get all self-congratulatory and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, this van-load of overfed suburban white folk.
In the week that's passed since then, I've come to grips with it a little better. It sums up this way: It is better to do a little, than to throw one's hands up at the size of the task and do nothing.
The mission - as stated for the camera - was to reach out and help, and possibly bring souls to Christ. (I view this latter as Company Boilerplate, we all know better; the driver said as much.) And it's important to note that the mission isn't to reach out and solve; even the most starry-eyed left-wing Democrat ought to recognize that such a task is impossible. What we encountered in the few hours we were out points to a sickness deep in the gut of our society, and there is no fix. To suggest so would be naive at best.
Maybe that's all we did was buy some time, and in the end maybe that's all you can do. You hope and you pray that in the time you've bought, something will change, different choices will be made. Probably, though, the next time we go, the same people (those that are still alive and ambulatory) will come to the van for whatever we have to offer...
...and we'll buy more time.
Last weekend I was asked by the Seekers class at church to ride along and videotape while they prepared and delivered lunches to Kansas City's homeless. It was a long day, and difficult in ways that I didn't expect.
The hour's worth of video will be cut down into a half-dozen two to three minute snippets to be played in service to inspire the congregation - and other congregations, possibly - that stewardship doesn't end when you put money in the collection plate.
200 lunches prepared from meatloaf or ham, with chips, fruit, a sweet like a cupcakes or packaged cookies. In the bag there were also some toiletries, like a toothbrush and paste, comb, other things I didn't get a close look at.
We piled into three separate vehicles, each pointed at a different part of the compass. My van went into downtown. The man driving, a KC police detective by day, has done this many times before. Pull over, call out "Hey man, are you hungry?", pass the lunch (in a rather large bag) through the window, or, if needed, walk it down to the guy (or guys.) If the person needed a coat, we rummaged through our pile until we found something that looked like it might fit. Then we expressed good wishes for the holidays and a quick "God Bless" and moved on in search of the next.
I would never make a good photo-journalist. I'm not comfortable just pointing my camera at someone unsolicited. Only one person objected, and did so by holding the lunch bag in front of his face. I turned the camera away, made eye contact and nodded, hoping he would understand that he was in no danger of exposure from me.
It's an odd mix of feelings for me. On the one hand, it was obvious that many of these men were hungry or cold or both, and the gifts were gratefully, in one case tearfully, received. On the other, the cynic in me asks, how much did you really accomplish? At most, you're just buying a little time, but you're not really solving anything. It would be so easy to get all self-congratulatory and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, this van-load of overfed suburban white folk.
In the week that's passed since then, I've come to grips with it a little better. It sums up this way: It is better to do a little, than to throw one's hands up at the size of the task and do nothing.
The mission - as stated for the camera - was to reach out and help, and possibly bring souls to Christ. (I view this latter as Company Boilerplate, we all know better; the driver said as much.) And it's important to note that the mission isn't to reach out and solve; even the most starry-eyed left-wing Democrat ought to recognize that such a task is impossible. What we encountered in the few hours we were out points to a sickness deep in the gut of our society, and there is no fix. To suggest so would be naive at best.
Maybe that's all we did was buy some time, and in the end maybe that's all you can do. You hope and you pray that in the time you've bought, something will change, different choices will be made. Probably, though, the next time we go, the same people (those that are still alive and ambulatory) will come to the van for whatever we have to offer...
...and we'll buy more time.