Dishwashing in DC

It's Tuesday, so after a quick breakfast I head out the door to Capitol Hill United Methodist Church, just a few blocks from our apartment. It's the church I've been attending since we've been here. CHUMC has awesome pastors, great adult education opportunities, an inviting spiritual community . . . and a "Weekday Breakfast for our Housed and Unhoused Neighbors" called "Our Daily Bread." It's recently celebrated its 9th anniversary of service in the neighborhood.

Capitol Hill United Methodist Church

It's a chilly morning, so the park in front of the church is empty. I walk around to the side entrance of the church. Inside the door, James is sitting in his usual chair. With his long graying beard, lanky frame, and calm demeanor, he looks like some kind of zen prophet.  He's one of the regular guests at the meal. I don't know his story, but I do know that besides eating a meal here, he also lets people into the building, and mops the floor after the meal.

"Good morning, James," I say as he opens the door to let me in.

"Good morning. You're Jane, right?" he asks.

"Yep," I say. "Good to see you this morning." He nods and I head down into the church basement, the fellowship hall.

In the fellowship hall, the tables are already filling up as people wait to be served a hot meal. I drop off my jacket and purse in the big closet where Rob's bike leans up against shelves of canned and boxed food. Then I grab my dish washing gloves and head to the kitchen.

I started working at Our Daily Bread, about a month ago. I'd heard at a church gathering that they needed help with dish washing. "Sometimes Rob and Margot are there until 11 am, cleaning up," someone said.

Well, I can wash dishes, I thought. So I bought some dish washing gloves and started showing up. I've settled on being there twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday. I arrive at about 8:30, after the early crew has already prepared the meal--some of the volunteers leave then to get to work.

It's a professional kitchen, so we have one of those sterilizing dishwashers. But as anyone who's worked in a kitchen like that knows, you have to prewash the dishes before loading them on racks to put them through the Serious Dishwasher. That's what I do: prewash and load.

Prewashing

The Serious Dishwasher

Today I get a few pans and trays scrubbed and through the dishwasher before it's time to go out and serve the meal. Then Margot gathers us all together for a prayer.

"Thank you, God, for these friends who are willing to serve here . . . may this breakfast bring peace to those who attend so that they can feel calm, no matter what the day brings. Amen."

I love the thought in that prayer:  we don't just serve food: we serve peace, something that we hope will carry through the rest of the day for anyone who's here--volunteers and guests alike.

Although the daily meal is served at breakfast time, the food is more like lunch or dinner: spaghetti or mac and cheese or--on Thursdays--burritos (donated from a local restaurant and warmed up here). Plus roasted broccoli, potatoes (mashed or roasted), toast or bagels, salad. And soup! Like a regular old soup kitchen. There are always desserts, too.

Before we serve, Rob calls everyone to attention. Like James, Rob is tall and lean, but unlike James, he's white, as are all the other volunteers today. Rob and Margot head up Our Daily Bread, making decisions about what food is served and directing and mentoring volunteers like me.

"Welcome to Our Daily Bread, where everyone is created in God's image, and so is treated with dignity and respect," says Rob. He says it every morning. It's a good thing to remember.  "Does someone want to lead us in prayer?"

One of the guests volunteers and leads a heartfelt prayer. Then everyone lines up at the serving tables for food.

I've taken off my gloves and join the volunteers who are serving. "Can I get you some vegetables or salad?" I ask people as they come through.

The guests--about 35 today--are mostly middle aged, mostly male, mostly black. They politely shuffle through the line as we welcome them and serve them. I only know some of the guests' names. There's Dallas, whose cerebral palsy doesn't keep him from helping out with serving coffee. Nathaniel is earnest and energetic, but I can never understand what he's talking about: people coming in a spaceship or the amazing look of a particular coffee cup.

And John is quiet today, though usually, he keeps up a constant ongoing patter about surveillance being done on him by Hillary Clinton who says he is a bigot but he's not a bigot and he's not a racist he doesn't know why people say that about him those people keep saying he's racist but they're wrong they're the ones who are racist HAH!

Probably a number of the guests have mental health challenges. The National Coalition for the Homeless says that 20-25% of homeless people have severe mental illness, compared with 6% of the rest of the population. (Not all of our guests are homeless, some might have other reasons for eating a meal here.) Yes, it would be difficult to hold down a job if your mind wasn't working right and was constantly telling you that you were seeing spaceships or that people were out to get you.

Today, some of the guests are just agitated. One young man, Chris, keeps shouting at someone else sitting at another table. His shouts get angrier and angrier--I can't figure out what's going on. Rob goes and sits next to him, trying to talk with him, and Margot goes over to the other man.

"Chris. You need to stop shouting or you'll need to leave," says Rob in a firm voice.  Eventually, Chris settles down after Rob gets between him and his view of the other man--all without touching him, I notice. I'm glad I'm behind the serving tables.

"What was going on there?" I ask Margot.

"Who knows?" she answers.

Our Daily Bread isn't a place for the soft-hearted. Or it is, but you also have to be kind of tough. You just do the work you need to do for the people who need it.

Working here is "Martha work." As in Mary and Martha in the gospel, where Martha was the one busy making the meal and setting the table and serving the food. And while Jesus did encourage Martha to maybe be a little more like Mary, the one who was just sitting and conversing with him, he also says MANY times in the gospel that we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, etc. etc. In other words, we need to be Martha, too, do just do the work.

I'm not really a Martha-ish person. I'm the person who doesn't notice that the food needs to be prepared because I'm involved in a conversation--or maybe I'm just daydreaming. I don't notice that someone should be clearing those plates, because I'm thinking about what you said. And I'm too soft-hearted, broken up by those who are broken. So this work is good for me--it stretches me spiritually.

I'm surrounded by good-hearted Marthas, and I'm learning from them.

Before the meal, and during it, workers from various organizations circulate around the guests. Today it's someone offering socks and washcloths to those who need them. Last Thursday, it was a doctor with a stethoscope. Other times there are people who help the guests connect with housing services, or mental health care or transportation. There's someone upstairs who offers nice clothes for people who need something for an interview or job.

The rest of us keep serving food.

Once everyone's gone through the line, I head back to the kitchen. Waves of dirty dishes come through the serving window. I scrub the food off, stack the dishes onto heavy racks, and send them through the dishwasher.

Other volunteers dry them and put them away.

Mike, one of the guests, comes up to the window with his dirty dishes, and thanks us for the meal.

"Do you know that he has a Master's degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from The New School for Social Research?" asks Margot, after he leaves.

"Wow. So what brings him here?" I ask, amazed.

"I don't know his story," she says. Something knocked him off course, she surmises--deaths in his family, depression, maybe. The tragedies of life--who knows when they'll knock someone completely off course?

Eventually the pile of dishes stops growing and we make our way though it. The other volunteers start wiping the counters and start to leave. Margot and I run the disposal one last time and take off our aprons.

"I'll be here again Thursday," I say as I head out.

"That will be great. Thanks so much for your help," says Margot, gratefully. She says that to everyone when they leave.

I grab my coat and go out, saying goodbye to James as he slowly mops the floor.

As I cross the park in front of the church, I see Mike, the Harvard Ph.D., sitting on a bench with a large tote bag. Inside is a folded-up blanket. I wonder where he's going, with his blanket and his mind full of economics and sorrow. I hope I see him next time.