I wrote about the women and the overheated car. That was Tuesday evening. Thursday morning, I checked my e-mail to find information about an organization called The Project Downtown. It's a small but growing group of people in cities across the country and now across the globe that started with three men taking 30 sandwiches out to the homeless on the streets of Miami. It's still the same mission...to feed, to, to talk with, and to listen to the homeless. To be a resource there on the street. Not a formal organization. A friend. Someone who will spend an hour or two and share a meal and a willing heart with people who are struggling to survive.
I responded immediately, and got an e-mail back telling me the place and time to meet on Saturday. I went. This "chapter" of the group, headed by three truly amazing young men, was ...I am not sure exactly what word I want....
inspiring?
uplifting?
humbling?
fun?
eye-opening?
prayerful?
awe-inspiring?
The right word is somewhere among all of those, a piece of each. After we distributed sandwiches and cold drinks and talked and listened, we had had a brief meeting among the volunteers, then a closing prayer.
I was invited back to the Mosque afterwards and went gladly. We spent another 1-2 hours talking, planning for this group, and discussing obsticles to our program (the police, a local women's group...they apparently regularly harrassed the group for handing out free food to the homeless.)
"There is a big beautification move on in the cities here," I was told. "So they only want the homeless fed indoors. Out of sight. "
"The homeless are not beautiful to them, I guess."
Sad.
Wrong.
Very wrong.
Next Saturday we will be there again. I will be there again. And the hungry and homeless will still be there too. With their beautiful souls.
Perhaps not beautiful to a city...
I'm just that G-d and the people who started this group see with different eyes.
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