Saturday Morning.
My friend Rachael phones me up in a more than perky mood, "Hey friend! Whatcha doin'? Are you out of bed yet? I'm leaving my house to pick you up now with coffee in hand, and OH, I have this hilarious story..."
Although loving the mornings, I haven't seen the great city of Tuscaloosa at THIS time in months. I'm a credible reference able to say that 6:00 a.m. does, in fact, exist.
We drive down Greensboro and over the railroad tracks to a church to meet up with our fellow cooks and servers for the morning.
After stirring, scooping, chopping, heating, pouring, and doing every other verb that involves preparing ginormous pots of grits, eggs, and oddly enough, ample amounts of donated pizza, the reason for setting multiple alarms, leaving my warm bed, and downing some coffee becomes apparent.
With tired eyes and graciously sweet smiles, the people pour in the doors and patiently wait to be served a warm breakfast. You've probably seen them riding a bike or walking the streets of Tuscaloosa and I don't mean on campus. If you work at a food joint, they might have come in to ask for some free water, and like me, you probably were annoyed with this simple and quite humbling request of theirs.
Perhaps the words compassion, understanding, empathy, sympathy, care, mercy, tenderness, love come to mind? I raise my hand to all of them.
Whether it's the orphaned Malaysian children or some down and out Tuscaloosa natives, people get hungry. We don't have to go across the world to love people, and besides a little less snoozing, nothing is lost.
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