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We went to Christ House on Columbia Avenue near Adams Sunday afternoon to prepare and serve food to the people under its care. Angela and Frank are impressions of saints. Their smiles are complimented with crow’s feet, and their charitable actions over a lifetime have proven their hearts. Angela has always been in the service of goodness. As a nun, she taught teens in the hardest part of Jersey, where sunshine does not always reach. She married Frank, whose flaws are negated by his inherent altruism: his unfaltering commitment to other people’s happiness.
Angela directed us immediately as we began preparing the salad and cutting vegetables small enough for the elderly at Christ House to chew. Our preparation was complimented by the bright aura the cook, Michelle, provided us with. She was eager to show us where the food comes from, a small downstairs piggy bank stocked with canned and boxed food from individuals and Sysco corp, churches and good samaritans. When directing us to the restroom, she took us the long way, bringing us to the upstairs hospital where they take care of up to 30 people from the streets, the sick and broken, who otherwise would be lost to the cold. She gushed with joy in telling us that Christ House was able to open 16 new housing units before Christmas, close enough and cheap enough so the poor could afford the piling medicare and housing bills with their incoming welfare and social security payments, while still being fed by the food they were given at the home.
This is not a place where people ride the welfare machine. The people Christ House serves are those whose medical conditions and poverty level make it near impossible to find work. People eat there and receive medical care on charity, but Christ House provides job-finding services, a disciplined schedule, and nourishment.
The impoverished said a prayer before eating. God was there, so I folded my hands and listened. Said amen. The trouble with zealots is refusal to believe in anything other than high opinion. The trouble with atheism is that it does not give a manifestation of hope. Hope has a voice. This is the hidden power of God.
As we served the chicken, vegetables, potatoes and dessert, it was apparent how grateful people were. Smiles and appetites hid a usual guardedness. Earlier, Angela pointed out a young man, silent and on crutches, saying “He’s about your age. Imagine what could have been.”
I asked his table if they would mind me sitting with them. I pulled up a chair and began eating. Aside from chewing, the men were silent. Trust is not given to talkers, so I listened to the silence. “Thank you for coming,” one of the men said after the wait. I responded that it was a pleasure. He began to speak, perhaps a cathartic release of what had been inside, perhaps just starting conversation. I asked questions. He told me about his wife who died, how he loved her, and showed me his forearm where her name was tattooed and scratched out from the long razor slanted scars that covered it. He was from Berlin. He was a master chef who dreamed of creating robust artistic buffets. He envisions platters with ice sculpture accoutrement where people are reluctant to scoop food on the plate for fear of disturbing the aesthetic beauty of its presentation. Alcohol has clouded his dream.
He was six years old when he hated Christmas. During one Christmas Eve in WWII Berlin, he rushed out the door to find the source of the most tremendous noise. Before him was the most beautiful God-sign: An illumination in the sky, the fullest bolt of orange-red clouded lightning that made the night day. It was in the form of a Christmas tree. “Mother, look, a tree!” he exclaimed to his shrieking mother, who pulled him inside to shelter him from the bombings. His house was destroyed that evening as he was sheltered in the basement. The morning after, he had seen the dead as the reaper knocked on his childhood door. His life became barnhouses and shelters. “It is all for the best,” he said, “we deserved it. Six foot six, blonde hair blue eyes, they would have turned me into a murderer without question, because that is what they taught children to be. I am lucky.”
Nobody else spoke. I understood.
We are all people. This is our greatest connection and our greatest flaw. The mind provides every tool to become successful. These tools can also be used to destroy; to commit suicide slowly. A continuous flow of yin and yang, battling for superiority against the pressures of this sometimes-ugly-sometimes-beautiful world. We can connect with each other through our flaws and strengths, but the discipline to be strong under external pressures is a responsibility that many have not had the opportunity to grasp. Charity like this opens eyes. Human pain is hard to weigh in the heart. Providing hope where one can is the remedy. You don’t have to believe in God to speak It’s language.
