Blankets, Toiletries, Socks

The short version: 

We are very much in need of blankets, toiletries, and socks.  Demand is high and our supplies are low.  You can help.  The last two paragraphs of this post tell you how.

Some of last year's bounty, long since handed out.

 The slightly longer version:

Imagine going without soap, without toothpaste, without shampoo.  This is the reality faced by many of the folks we serve.  We can really use sample sizes of toothpaste, dental floss, shampoo, conditioner, soap, and lotion.  Small sizes are best so they are easy to carry for folks living outside.  We can hand out 50 or more hygiene kits with these items at one Community Dinner with no problem.  So if you have little bottles left from your last hotel visit, if you have those novelty soap bars someone gave you last Christmas and you still haven’t used, if you feel moved to go on a shopping spree at your local dollar store or the sample aisle at the drug store, we will gladly take all the toiletries you can offer us.  One enterprising friend asked her dentist for samples and gave us over 50 tubes of toothpaste and packages of dental floss.  Maybe you dentist has samples they’d like to be rid of, too.

Imagine how your feet would feel if you were stuck in the same pair of socks day after day.  For folks living outside, clean dry socks are gold.  When one has no place to wash them, socks become disposable items.  Combined with walking many miles each day to access services and often being stuck with ill fitting shoes, the lack of clean socks contributes substantially is damaging to people's feet.  Would your church or organization like to have a sock drive for us?  Would you be willing to contribute a package or two?  We’re especially interested in white athletic socks as they hold up best.  There is no such thing as too many socks.  There is no shortage of people grateful to have them.

And it’s getting much colder now.  Especially at night.  As with socks, blankets get dirty quickly when one has no place to wash them, and stay soggy when one has no place to dry them after a damp night on San Francisco’s streets.  Imagine sleeping outside with nothing but a soggy blanket to keep you warm.  Do you have a spare sleeping bag you haven’t used in years?  Have any blankets that have been sitting in the linen closet unused?  Care to organize a blanket drive at your church or other organization?  We can take all the blankets you can give. 

You can drop any of these items off at 950 McAllister St., (between Laguna and Webster) Monday through Thursday during business hours.  Items can also be dropped off at the Faithful Fools at 234 Hyde (between Eddy and Turk), just call 415-474-0508 or email fools@faithfulfools.org to arrange a drop off time.

 

If you organize a drive and would like us to pick up what you collect, we are happy to do that in San Francisco, the Peninsula, or anywhere within fifteen minutes driving of the Bay Bridge or Golden Gate Bridge.   Just drop us a line at sfcares@saintpaulus.org or call us at 415-673-3572 and we’ll work out the details.

New Links!

Ok, so adding links to the blogs of our collaborators isn't all that exciting, but I wanted to highlight that they're right over there in the sidebar now.


You can read up on the Bible Study That Doesn't Suck.  You can see what's going on at the Faithful Fools or Welcome or the Free Farm.  You can see the DIY Guide to addressing Poverty and Injustice.  All right here from our little side bar.  (Ok, I do get a little excited when I figure out anything tech.) 

A table set and ready for the Friendship Banquet

In other news, we still need hosts for all of November for the Friendship Banquet and a group to cover lunch at Open Cathedral on November 11th.  So drop us a line at sfcares@saintpaulus.org or give us a call at 415-673-3572 if you'd like to come meet some really cool people and have a chance to feed them, too.

Service at Open Cathedral

Reading the blogs is informative, and hopefully inspiring, and coming out to help is a lot of fun, so enjoy the blogs listed over there on the right and then come on out to join us.

Vision, Faith, Abundance

This picture

highlights the abundance at the Free Farm that I’ve been wanting to write about recently.

I’ve also been wanting to write about this passage from the Gospel of Mark for a while now.

“He also said, ‘This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.’"

So here’s my chance to do both.

This scripture shows us a pretty wild vision of the kingdom.  Usually, in similar stories, we see the sower as God or maybe Jesus.  How wild is that?  God out scattering seed without taking any kind of control over how it sprouts - whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed does its thing.  God scattering seed and watching it grow and not understanding how it all works.  What kind of faith does that show?  God happy to take in the harvest, joyful over what has been given even is God doesn’t know exactly how it came to be.  It gives us a pretty different idea of God that what is usually preached.

Tree and the other good folks who run the Free Farm are not like the God represented in the passage I quoted in that they do know just what they’re doing.  This kind of plant will flourish best in this location, here’s how you harden off a seedling that’s been in the green house to get it ready for planting outside, this is how to make the best compost.  And everything is well planned at the Free Farm, this plant will go in this bed, here’s where we need more irrigation, time to take down the beans because we’re done harvesting them and we can put something else there now.  Unlike the God of this passage, Tree can tell you exactly how a seed sprouts and grows.  Unlike the harvest in the passage, the produce of the Free Farm does flourish under the abundant care of our many volunteers, not regardless of whether they sleep in or come to the Free Farm on workdays.

And all that knowledge and care results in the kind of abundance seedlings in front of Pancho in that first picture represent.  Abundance that goes to feed people in need who otherwise have limited or no access to good, fresh produce. 

But there is some faith involved too.  The faith of the folks who started the Free Farm that an old abandoned and littered lot that even after cleaning up looked like this:

could one day look like this:

Faith that each Wednesday and Saturday we can get enough volunteers out to do all the work required to get those seeds from sprout to harvest.  Faith that we can find someone each workday to bring the vegan lunch we always serve to our volunteers.  And, these days, faith that we can find another parcel of land equally as suitable to the Free Farm’s needs when we have to move in a few years to make way for development.

So come out some Wednesday or Saturday from 10 a.m. until 2p.m. and help us keep the faith.  We’ve got plenty of friendly people to show you around and a good lunch to share.  Chances are we’ve got a task or two suited to your ability level.  But best of all you’ll have a chance to help us grow some faith that as wild and wonderful a vision as the Free Farm can have a viable place in San Francisco. 

Occupy the Voting Booth

A year ago today, the Occupy movement began.  It gave me such hope to see people organizing in that way.  Even though PICO uses different methods to get the same jobs done, I and other individual organizers found ourselves grateful for the Occupy movement’s success in highlighting the questions and issues no one was talking much about before that point.

The movement gave us a shorthand for the unhelpful wealth disparity in this nation, 99%, 1%, are common parlance now.  They act as shorthand to keep us aware of the reality of wealth disparity and the systems that keep it in place.

The Occupations were important and made a real change in the consciousness of many.  Today there have been some protests and rallies in New York City, here in San Francisco and elsewhere.  They look to be in the hundreds rather than the thousands we saw last year at this time.  It will be interesting to see if a strong Occupation reemerges.  

Meanwhile, everyone who cares about the direction of our country has to also look at other avenues for change.  Though our democracy may be on life support, it isn't dead yet and exercising our right to vote along with our rights to free speech and free assembly can help revive it.

Too often I hear from folks who do not believe their vote counts or that voting makes one complicit in our current systems of injustice.  Neither one of these beliefs reflect reality.  The last thing the big corporations and the power mongers want is for you to vote, because your vote actually does have power.  You give that up when you refuse to vote.

 

I learned at a recent SFOP meeting that over 60% of the people who actually vote are wealthy, white, and seniors.  It was a crystallizing moment for me.  Why don’t politicians pay attention to the needs of young people, minorities, the poor?  Because they know there are not as many of us who vote.  Voter demographic information is tracked and the politicians can look it up as easily as anyone else.  We can hold all the rallies, sit ins, protests we want, but if we don’t vote, they don’t care.

It’s just that simple.

If your aren’t already registered, you can do it right now at https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/register-to-vote/ if you live in California.  That’s simple too.  Then get out and vote on election day, or send in a vote by mail ballot ahead of time and beat the rush.   

 

The way to break the power of big money is with a big vote.  If you want your interests to matter, you must get out to the polls and vote.  And, yes, I know about voter suppression laws and all the other tactics those who have the power right now have in place to keep power all to themselves. 

Not going to the polls doesn’t make any of that go away.  The way we beat it is turning out in droves.  If the politicians see a lot of us at the polls they will see and hear us better at the rallies, too.