In the bag

On a beautiful day, I headed down to the Church of the Holy Apostles to volunteer at the soup kitchen and food pantry, my first time in a long time, and first time since covid-19. In the first of three shifts, about a dozen of us combined food from boxes of government aid with fresh produce of our own to fill 220 (!) sets of heavy bags of dry goods, produce, and protein: materials for thousands of meals. Another set of volunteers in another room filled snack bags to supplement the hot meals being distributed from the church door, and a third group will help distribute the bags we assembled. It was more physical labor than I've done in a year - not to mention laboring together with other people in an accelerating assembly line that reminded me of Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times"! It's important work and I was happy of a chance to contribute - covid permitting I plan to make it a regular thing in the next months.