author intrusion

mercy kitchen

Fourth and Final Part

Before I head into the last question, I'd like to thank Jimmy for taking time to answer these questions and for providing thought-provoking material for this blog for the past week! May God bless your church, your ministries, your family and your wonderful self, Jimmy. If this series meant something good to you, please let Jimmy know in the comments! Or visit his blog, Woodshavings.

Your honey is incredible. I'm drinking some in my tea right now! Would you tell us about the bees and being a beekeeper, Jimmy?

The buzz of the bee hive is God's voice singing a song of grace to me.  I can go into the bee yard in the middle of the day and hear God working in His garden.  I can almost capture the sight of Him tending His creation with the tools of His trade. 

The bees are a sacrament for me.  Caring for them, tending them, pours out a part of God's grace and mercy in my life.  There are times when the buzz of a colony places me in a spiritual position where I am born again again.  I connect with the finger print of God left on all creation by taking care of the bees.

I never tire of watching them, following them, wondering where they go. I watch the color of pollen change through the year and hope and pray they survive the dark cold nights of winter. 

The bee is an engineering marvel.  She is built to fly, carry food, create wax and turn sweet nectar into thick sweeter honey. She is the only insect that creates a food humans consume.  With every new thing I learn of the bees, I see a new mystery to be solved.

In the sting of the bee I am reminded that creation is far beyond the taming of man.  Every time I open a hive, I balance on the sharpest of razor blades, teetering between sheer terror and ecstatic fascination.

By keeping the bees, I am daily involved in God's words spoken at the beginning of time..."Let there be..."  His words still reverberate through all of creation and speak softly in the buzzing of the bees. As she flys out to gather nectar or pollen, she is moved forward by the rumbling vibration of the voice of God spoken eons ago.

The honey I gather has come from the flowers of plants and trees in my community.  Every flower touched by one of my bees has spread the pollen needed for fruit or fertility.  The bees bless by their presence in the garden and I am blessing my neighbors/community by caring for the bees.

While other men of God will pour over scriptures to gather understanding from Him.  I will look at the bees and see God and know His pleasure.

mercy kitchen

Part Three

Tell us about a few of the kids!

The average age of the kids is about 8-9.  There are one or two who would be 12-14, but for the most part, these are young school age kids.  They are in families that are attempting to make the bold transition away from poverty.  The parent or guardian is working at least part time and many have full time employment in the area.  If a parent struggles with employment, it tends to be because of illiteracy or several generations of poverty and educational failure. 

They are kids!!  They laugh easily and desire to learn, but have never had many of the opportunities we all take for granted.  Many have never traveled outside the county.  To travel in an aircraft is a fantasy.  Most of them do not have books of their own.  Xavier is big on wanting little kids to have and read books they own. He does attempt  to take them on trips if and when he has the resources.  Their vocabulary is more elementary then we would speak in our family. 

I was invited to attend the end of summer celebration.  An African drum troop living in Durham had been teaching them all summer at the community center.
the kids involved in the reading program could also attend a drum class.  They performed well and joy was the theme of the event ...we did experience the joy of children playing music.  I met the reading tutors and they gave me good reports of the advances made over the summer.  I believe reading well in one stepping stone to leaving poverty behind.

They are beautiful children who live in MY community.  We must do all we can to push them forward in this world.  Jesus would expect nothing less of us.

mercy kitchen

(The Chalmers Family)

Part Two 

Why do you feel feeding kids in the summertime is important. Isn't that "their parents' job?"

 It is important because if we as people of faith do not respond then children will go hungry during the summer. It is ungodly in a nation where wealth abounds that little ones who have no choice in being on the planet go hungry.

In the world where I grew up it was the parents who took care of their own children. My folks have been married 56 years. They have survived the death of a child and near bankruptcy more than once. I was fortunate to have parents that would risk and sacrifice all to care for me. We are foolish to think ALL adults who have kids are like generations of the past The poverty rate in NC averages about 14%. I cannot change that today or tomorrow, the reasons are many and varied; but in the meantime, children are going hungry. I believe there are parents who want to take care of their kids, but the past has dragged them down to the bottom. I believe there are parents who do not know how to take care of children. I believe bad folks have kids. In all these cases and more, I do not see a way for me as a person of faith and mercy to just turn my head and walk away. The "just get a job" mentality will not feed the hungry bellies of innocent children.
 

If each community of faith would find one family in need to help long term it could change entire neighborhoods in a generation. There is a real reason we will not. People who really need a helping hand sometimes have $h!++y lives and to help them, you have to get down in the $h!+ and pull them out. You end up with it all over you and for many of us, we love our comfort more than the grawling bellies of children.

A personal note from Jimmy regarding my question:

It was written very quickly to capture my thinking and feeling of the moment.  It may be a bit dis-jointed and in the end harsh, but remember, it is coming from a man who a few years ago had a "just get a job" attitude lying under much of what I though about poverty.

mercy kitchen

Part One

This week I'm featuring a friend of mine, Jimmy Chalmers; highlighting the experience he had this summer when he saw a need and said, "This one's up to me."

Jimmy lives in NC with his wonderful family. He is the pastor of a church called The Carpenter's Shop, a contractor and a beekeeper. I'm enjoying a jar of his honey these days in my morning tea and it's every bit as wonderful as he is.

Jimmy, tell us about what happened to you this summer?

This past spring I attended a one-day conference, attempting to synthesize food, faith and farming in the lifestyles of local churches. One of the speakers was Jill Stanton Bullard.  She is the founder of the Inter Faith Food Shuttle here in central NC.   During her speech she started to give the statistics for children, especially those who are involved in the school breakfast and lunch programs in this area. In approximately 8-9 counties in this region there are way over 50,000 kids who are involved in the school breakfast and lunch program.   My first question as a fiscal conservative was "how many people are scamming the system?"  I began to put a mental pencil on the mathematical equation.  I finally settled on what is a pretty high number – 50%.  So if 50% of the kids involved in the program are scamming the system, that means that 50% are not.  50% of the children who go to school in this region everyday are dependent on the school breakfast and lunch program for a percentage of their daily nourishment.  That means that 10s of thousands of children in one of the wealthiest regions in our nation need the schools to provide them one or more meals a day. 

After checking the numbers, I found several thousand kids in Granville County use this program.  That means that five days a week, during the school year, these children have an opportunity for a nutritious meal.  What about the weekends, holidays and the 12 weeks during the summer?   After coming home from that conference and I had a conversation with my wife and children.  We suddenly saw a large need in our community that needed someone to step in and take care of it. 

Several days later, I contacted Mr. Xavier Wortham from the Oxford Housing Authority.  I asked him one simple question … "do you have hungry children in your apartment communities?"

He gave me a very simple, shocking answer.

"Yes". 

Once I knew that we definitely had hungry kids and a contact within a community that we could help, it was then I went to our faith community and told them what I'd learned.  We began to put together a plan of how we could feed children during the summer break.  Xavier explained that during the summer he already has set up a reading program.  This program has children in the community who need and want help learning how to read and there was great opportunity to dovetail bag lunches into his program. 

So, after some prayerful consideration and concern we decided as a congregation that we would be responsible to prepare lunches for 24 children, 5 days a week during the summer break.  We did not have any idea how much food it would take, how much time and energy it would require, but we truly believed that the compassion of Jesus compelled us to do something.   

We started off with $100, asking our congregation and other people of faith to contribute food or cash to help us feed these 24 kids. 

So early summer our kitchen was transformed every morning into a bagged lunch assembly line.  Everyday, 24 sandwiches were made … peanut butter and jelly, cheese, bologna, lunchmeat.  All those sandwiches were then placed in sandwich bags. Those sandwich bags were then placed in a brown lunch sack.  Each sack would then receive a piece of fruit (apples, bananas, fruit cups, applesauce).  We always made sure that there was a juice box to go with their lunch as well as a sweet snack or salty treat.  We truly wished that we could have prepared these fancy, nutritious gourmet lunches, but we also knew that we didn't have the facilities or the resources to make that happen. 

Our first goal was to make sure that little bellies had a lunch five days a week.  The 24 lunches then had to be transported to the community center in downtown Oxford, where tutors were working with these children on their essential reading skills.  At the end of the class as they went home, they would each be handed a bag lunch. 

There were some weeks, at the beginning of the week, that we didn't have the funding or the resources to make 120+ lunches for the week, so we would purchase the items out of our family budget, but each and every time during the week someone would send us a check or hand us cash or drive across the county with items they just purchased.  By the end of the summer, we took the "leftovers" to the community center (6 bags of juice boxes and peanut butter and jelly). 

After the summer, Xavier contacted us and told us that this had been the most successful reading program he had ever had and he was thankful to us for helping him with the more than 40 kids that were involved in the program.  That was when we realized that he had more than 24 involved in his reading program.  To us that meant more than 16 kids went home everyday without lunch.  So, now we are trying to figure out how to feed all the kids involved in the summer reading program for 2008.  We don't have the slightest idea how we are going to do it!

Put Jimmy and his family on your prayer list, won't you?

you say tomato, i say . . . tomato?

This is our kitchen table at Third Street House today. Will's become Mr. Tomato this summer. And they're coming in like crazy! A good thing.

We love having guests and Will loves making red sauce. These babies are just what we'll need this winter and there are plenty more a coming from the community garden where our main plot is. Here on Third Street we have yummy yellow baby tomatoes and man, are they sweet! Just an explosion of goodness the way God intended it to be, right in your mouth.

We'll be delving into the whole canning experience this year. (Personally, I think freezing does the trick but Will is all about trying this, so why not?) But last night while I was writing I roasted some tomatoes for freezing. This is so easy folks and really yummy.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Halve Roma tomatoes,
Lightly grease baking pan with olive oil.
Arrange tomatoes face up on pan (seeds showing)
Sprinkle with Kosher or sea salt (this is important because you want to extract the moisture)
On the middle rack of the oven bake for an hour or until your preferred carmelization level
You can cool them and throw them into a freezer bag. (You might have to remove the skins upon thawing because they can get tough during the freezing process.) Or make a roasted tomato sauce right away with the hot tomatoes.  Here's how:

In a food processor:

Roasted tomatoes
fresh basil and oregano
Olive oil
Good salt
Fresh cracked pepper
A smidge of Balsamic vinegar if you'd like
Or a splash of red wine
Some garlic cloves you either roasted with the tomatoes or sauteed stovetop
Sauteed onions? (your choice.)

Whiz it all up to desired consistency and put over pasta, or chicken breast, or fried eggplant. Even over burgers would be delicious. Oh, or an omelette with some mozerella cheese and I am just sayin'! You can see it's more of a principal than a recipe up there. Something for you to try and perfect to your own taste. And easy, easy, easy!!

the gift of bread

As rewarding as watching your child taking her first steps or say his first word, there's something extraordinary in watching your teenager turn into the young woman/man God is calling him/her to be. One really exciting development in the Life of Ty has been seeing her become a baker of bread. For some reason, this just tickles me to no end, and gives me a nice dose of that Mommy pride and thankfulness.

This morning, we had fresh baked cinnamon rolls for breakfast and in the picture to your right are the loaves of ciabatta that are rising on our counter as I write. I've told her, "I don't know why God's given you this gift of baking bread, but I truly believe it's going to come into play in your life someday." I really do.

So, if you're ever in Lexington, well, we've got Ty's bread, Will's red sauce and a big kitchen table. We like to share all three in the house of hospitality known as Third Street House. The more the merrier.