Guest Post: Quaker Food Pantry, by Christine Hoang

My friend Christine Hoang is a parent at San Francisco Friends School. She coordinates the school's participation with the San Francisco Friends Meeting's neighborhood food pantry, which is a local outpost for the San Francisco Food Bank. I was clerk of the meeting when we went through the discernment process to create the pantry, and I'm pleased that not only has the pantry expanded to serve more people, it has helped keep the relationship between the school and the meeting vibrant.

The following piece by Christine was originally published in the school's "Circle Back" newsletter and is reprinted with the author's permission.

Quaker Food Pantry
At the Meeting House

By Christine Hoang
SFFS Parent & Board Member

Saturday mornings, the Friends Meetinghouse on 9th Street begins its bustling day with deliveries from a wide variety of vendors. There’s the regular delivery from the San Francisco Food Bank, which drops off staples like pasta, bread, fresh fruits or vegetables from suppliers or farmers; deliveries from Food Runners which picks up fresh and prepared food items and pastries from specialty stores like Whole Foods; and a very special bread delivery from a volunteer named Al. Al spends his Saturdays gathering bread donations from Safeway and other stores and delivering his bounty to the Meetinghouse. Al’s bread delivery now accounts for over half of the bread distributed by the Pantry.

Three years, ago, when SFFS first began partnering with the Quaker Pantry, the Pantry served 60 – 70 people every Saturday; now, the Pantry serves well over 100. Clients are slotted into twenty-minute windows in which they can shop. Each client usually brings one or two bags to fill up with groceries for the week. For most clients, the Pantry is their only source of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as staples like bread or pasta.

SFFS families contribute to the Pantry in vital ways. Several families contribute financially, a commitment that has allowed the Pantry to feed another 25-35 clients a week. A few parents are also trained to work as shoppers, going to the Food Bank to order the week’s delivery, and filling in when volunteers are short. Most families though, contribute time. For the past three years, each SFFS grade has adopted a month in which families are responsible for staffing the Pantry. The day starts around 10:00am, when the first deliveries arrive. Working alongside delivery drivers and Meetinghouse volunteers, SFFS families unload crates and boxes off of food trucks and create a real store! Vegetables and fruits are placed into large bins or buckets, cans are sorted, pastries and perishable items are arranged delicately on tables, and loaves of bread are stacked into towers.

Another wonderful aspect of the project is that kids work alongside adults.  As SFFS parent Tawni Sullivan has noticed, “Kids feel empowered by really owning their own jobs, not just helping the grown ups with theirs.” Younger kids blacken bar codes on donated bread, organize and stack cans, and count out the vegetables for clients. Older kids break down cardboard boxes and do the math necessary to ensure a fair allocation of food for everyone. 

Around noon, the Pantry opens its doors and the first clients filter in. Most of the clients are elderly; many are monolingual Cantonese speakers; several are homeless. The Quaker Food Pantry affords them regular access to healthy, fresh food. During the shopping hour, all volunteers work at distributing food, handing out three oranges a piece, two onions, or a can or two. For Jen Maeder, “working side by side with your classmates and their families on a weekend really cements the SFFS tenets of community and stewardship. Playdates and soccer games are a great way to socialize with the school community on the weekends but there is something different about once in awhile rolling up your sleeves and working alongside your classmate on a weekend. To me, it shows my kids that I take seriously what they are learning about community and stewardship in school. It’s not something I just expect of them, but I am choosing it for myself as well.”

This is my younger son at the food pantry in 2010,
when it was just starting out.

Music-based lesson in Firstday School

In spring 2008, I taught a Firstday School lesson that involved playing recordings of music having a spiritual theme and wildly different styles.

I asked the students to listen, then to comment on how they felt and what they thought of when they heard it. There were seven children, ranging from six to 11. It was too big of an age range.

The two 11-year-old girls loved this lesson. They were very engaged, and they really enjoyed listening and then commenting. They had a rich variety of observations to share.

The 10- and 11-year-old boys did not show much interest. One of them (fortunately not my own) kept reaching for his book to read, until I put it out of reach. The same boy mostly said he didn't like the songs, but he couldn't or wouldn't articulate why not.

One six year old boy was just too hyper for this lesson. I spent a fair amount of the time following him around to get him to put things down. I encouraged dancing to the music (don't let the ancient Quakers know), but it wasn't enough to engage him. The other six year olds, a girl and a boy, seemed content just to listen. The girl got her hair braided by one of the 11-year-olds, and she (the 6-y.o.) was surely in heaven about that.

I played the songs on a boombox with CD and cassette. I left my own at home despite having pulled it out of the closet and left it near the door. Fortunately, I called someone who lives near the meetinghouse, and she had not left yet and she did indeed have such a boombox. So I was saved by the community -- thank you, God, for your manna!

Here is the list of songs I chose:
Ensemble Project Ars Nova, "Lucis Angeli" (medieval polyphony)
Anonymous 4, "Jewett" and "New Britain" (two very different versions of "Amazing Grace" from the American Angels CD)
U2, "Yahweh"
Godspell, "Prepare Ye" (from a tape I made of the original vinyl album I have from the early 1970s!)
Reading of the passage in Isaiah 40, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord..."
Lisa Gerrard, "Abwoon" (an atmospheric rendition of the Lord's Prayer in ARAMAIC!, from a solo CD by the Dead Can Dance'r)
Moby, "God Moving Over the Face of the Water"
Reading of the beginning of Genesis, the source of the image for the song title
Incredible String Band, "The Mountain of God" (very postmodern in that it combines snippets of lyrics from hymns as well as a glancing reference to Christopher Robin)
Five Blind Boys of Alabama, "This May Be the Last Time" (this upbeat R&B gospel song was the most popular of the set, by far)
Willie Nelson, "Uncloudy Day"
Carin Anderson, "Instrument" -- from a lovely album by a member of San Francisco Monthly Meeting, now living in southern Arizona, the song is a prayer to "Make me an instrument."

Carrie Newcomer in Berkeley 3/30/08

Carrie Newcomer is a Quaker singer-songwriter from Indiana. She's been performing for years. I don't know a lot of her songs. Lisa of Rooted and Grounded in Love introduced me to a couple of her songs, including "Bare to the Bone," which I really like a lot.

Carrie will be doing a show on 3/30 at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. I've never been there, but I've heard numerous shows announced there on KALW-FM's Saturday folk music line-up over the last 13 years, so I'm excited to go. We just left a message for the babysitter tonight. (Let's hope she can do it!)

Oh, and I'm writing this now because Carrie's manager emailed me today in my role as clerk of S.F. meeting. I would have written something eventually, though perhaps after the fact. Anyway, that was really smart marketing on his part, so I'm going to just reproduce part of his message here:

"One of Carrie's songs ("Be True") has recently been included on a compilation CD ("Out of the Extraordinary") benefitting ELCA clergy who have lost their jobs after coming out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.... She will be donating 10% of the proceeds from the tour sales of her new album to the American Friends Service Committee.... Carrie's performance at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley on March 30th at 8:00 p.m. may be of particular interest to your members. I hope you might help us publicize the performance so that San Francisco-area Friends can attend Carrie's show. If you feel your community would enjoy hearing about this performance, we would love to be included in your weekly bulletin, newsletter, or announcement board. Below you will find a link to a PDF flyer for the upcoming show... (with) free music download information for those unfamiliar with Carrie's music. For more information about Carrie Newcomer, please visit: www.carrienewcomer.com."

Here's the aforementioned flyer. If you're in the Bay Area that weekend, maybe you could join us.

Why not make a day of it? It will be the fifth Sunday of the month, so San Francisco Meeting will hold its now-customary extended meeting for worship from 9:30 am to noon earlier that day. Please join us for that, too!

Spiritual Formation at San Francisco Monthly Meeting

Here is a flyer I created to highlight upcoming opportunities for spiritual formation at San Francisco Friends Meeting. They include a session on Pacific Yearly Meeting's advices and queries for the first month, on meeting for worship; and a five-week series on our relationship with God, with the Bible as our record and guide. All are welcome! (Sorry, you'll have to come to San Francisco; we don't have webcam hookups -- yet!)

In the past we've labeled these sorts of events "adult religious education." Somehow that sounds too formal or stuffy, even if it's accurate. I'm influenced here in my choice of vocabulary by Catholic religious orders and the authors who like them, like Kathleen Norris.

Clerk's corner

(I wrote this for SF Meeting's newsletter and decided to publish it here, too.)

There is a waterfall at the new development where Robin & I live now. The water flows from 7 am to 11 pm. The lights under the water go on around dusk and turn off at 11, too. It’s a terrible waste of energy, and of water because of evaporative loss, yet it’s beautiful. My children are captivated by its loveliness. They now sit at the breakfast table in the two seats that enable them to see the water start flowing at 7 am.

The timed artificial waterfall contrasts with the flow of the Living Water, always present, always flowing, somewhere in the very ground of our being. Do we take time to notice it when we are not in meeting? For that matter, do we find it in meeting?

Be a Quaker without Ceasing: How would it feel to live every moment aware of that flow, living every moment as a Quaker? To have that integrity, to achieve that level of integration, that centeredness within at all times? Interesting questions!

Of course, I’m thinking of Paul’s exhortation in 2 Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing.” For me, getting anywhere near that place starts with mindfulness, being present, as in Zen meditation. From being present comes awareness of Presence itself.

(By the way, there are many other good lines in that chapter of Thessalonians: “5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day… 13b. Be at peace among yourselves…. 15 See that none render evil for evil unto anyone; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all.” One of the names early Quakers gave themselves was “Children of Light.”)

Speaking of “Extreme Quakerism”: What did you think of the extended meeting for worship on 9/30? Ministry and Oversight seeks your feedback about this experiment, which we did on the fifth Sundays in July and September. Email Jeff Mead, M&O clerk, jeffbikedog --at-- gmail.com.

Faith and Practice group: The last few months, Ministry & Oversight held Sunday morning sessions about Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice, including the advices and queries and the sections on meeting for worship and meeting for business. Friends had a rich time of discussion and reflection at the two I attended. We will continue organizing these sessions from time to time, focusing on topics identified by participants. One future topic will be clearness committees, the method Friends use for membership, marriages, and discernment around life changes. By the way, you can find the full text of Faith and Practice online at www.pacificyearlymeeting.org.

Meeting for Business: The October meeting for business will have a longer period of discernment around queries from our environment subcommittee.

Quakers in the News: Cal Broomhead was quoted and photographed for an article in the S.F. Business Times, on green home renovations and building. Robin Mohr has an article in the October issue of Friends Journal. And I was quoted in the Peninsula edition of the Examiner, as part of a series looking at the struggle that low-income families face in S.F. and San Mateo Counties.