A Monday Evening at Iglesias

I do not know what it was that caused me to offer to help with meals that Milford Advocacy for the Homeless (MAH) provides, but I firmly believe it was a nudge from my Heavenly Father.  The appeal for regular contributors stirred something in my head and my heart, and so I made contact in January of this year, and before I knew it, was committed to providing a meal on the first, third, and (if there is) fifth Mondays of the month.

I enlisted the help of my fellow sisters at Carpenter Bridge Community Church, and there was enough support from them that it has become a regular happening.  Various women (and even my blood sister, Sarah) have pitched in and I think that in the course of these last ten months, there has only been one time that we didn’t deliver the food, hot and ready to eat on our scheduled night to the little Hispanic church on the edge of town, that we know as Iglesias.

I’m 72, as is my husband, and usually we deliver the food, and leave, and the Monday evening supervisor, Dana oversees the meal, with help from the staff of the church.  Honestly, by the time we deliver 3 gallons of hot soup with some extras, this old lady is plumb wore out, and though we’ve been invited to stay and help serve and meet our neighbors, it just hasn’t been part of what we have felt called to do.

But one week, I decided that we would do Taco Salad.  This calls for several servers, and I asked my good friend, Martha, who has helped make soup betimes, to go with me.  “Let’s go and stay and serve the taco salad,” I said to her.  “We will do it together.  It will be interesting.”  And she, good friend that she is, agreed to go with me.

So, on this particular Monday evening, we packed the minivan and set out.  When Martha and I came into the parking lot and parked, there were immediate helping hands to carry and hold doors, smiles, and words of welcome. The serving room at Iglesias is not pretentious.  There are tables and chairs, a serving area on one side with chafing dishes  and serving space, yet not even a stove or a kitchen sink.  Somehow, in its serviceable simplicity, it is both valuable and worthy. 

In the months leading up to this, I had often noticed a small, elderly Hispanic woman who hovered around, helping wherever she could.  She didn’t talk much, but what she said was almost entirely in Spanish.  She was very obviously a beloved member of the church.  She was largely inconspicuous, but still so fully present. On this evening, she was busily helping Martha and me set up, and then she stationed herself by the coffee bar and we waited for the van to arrive.

The van was later than usual.  Martha and I stood by our kettles, and the expectation felt a bit uncomfortable.  “I think we should have some music,” I said.  “Can anybody sing?”

“Sister Juana can sing,” said someone indicating the diminutive, little lady standing to my right.  “She sings in church!”

“Really?”  I asked her.  “Would you sing?” 

She looked a bit confused, but then her eyes cleared and in a small voice that gained strength she began to sing while a few neighbors that had drifted in and the rest of us listened.  The song was clear, the words in Spanish, but the tune familiar.  She sang with quiet dignity and feeling, and I felt a stirring in my heart that reminded me that I was on Holy Ground.  I found the teaching of acapella harmonizing from my childhood rising, first in my heart, then into my own voice as I found the notes that danced below hers in quiet harmony.  She sang in Spanish, I sang the words I knew in English, and when I didn’t know the words, I hummed.

It was a privilege, an honor, and a sacred moment for me. It has been easy to overrate our own importance when we get into something like providing food and serving the people that much of society looks down on.  It can feel like we are a pretty important cog in the wheel.  But I listened as the notes rang through the room that would soon be filled with people who needed to be seen and treated with dignity, rather than another charitable project.  People whose unwashed bodies, broken lives and uncertain futures are not the sum total of who they are. Behind every face, there is a story and a person who isn’t so different from me.

I listened to the words I didn’t understand, heard the notes die away as the van arrived and unloaded, and watched as the room filled with noise and people. The moment, lost then, came back to circle around in my head in the ensuing days with defining importance.  I realized that this was so much bigger than I am.  I am only an infinitesimal part of a huge chorus.  The music is strange and sometimes feels cacophonic, and I don’t always understand the words, but I know the tune and can choose to be a part of this choir, singing my own words, humming when I don’t know any right words, and harmonizing in the only way I know how.  The Choir has a Message, and in a very real way, my part is an offering of praise from a very grateful heart to Jesus who gave far more for me than I can ever give.

And sometimes when I can barely sing, when my voice falters, and the words escape me, He hears my song, knows my heart, just as He knows the hearts and hears the songs of each person who occupies space at the tables of Iglesias on Monday nights.

And it is enough.