Glide Hanging

For a long time, I'd had the desire to do something non-profitish and charitable...but like a lot of folks, I seemed to never find myself able to actually get around to following through with it.

The thing is, unlike most folks, I didn't exactly have an excuse. I didn't have the sorts of commitments in my life that left me with no time to do anything. My problem is one that repeatedly embarrasses and shames me: I'm hyper-shy...and neurotically social-phobic. The reason I wasn't doing any volunteering was that I was afraid I would embarrass myself by doing everything wrong, and screwing life up for whoever I was volunteering with.

I still have that problem--I probably always will, to some extent.

In the early spring of 2009, though, I took my first steps towards barging through that fear and giving some of my time to help feed the homeless and meal-less living in my City.

What finally pushed me past my fear pattern was the unusual kindness of a few individuals, one person in particular, around that time. I suddenly found myself evicted from the house I'd lived in for almost six years, in the aftermath of a long-term relationship that went south. It was a very painful experience to have to cede what felt like my whole life - my emotions, my sexuality, and even my home - to the new woman in my ex-lover's life. I frantically hit Craigslist looking for a place to live, but nothing was available that I could afford and that matched my needs. I'd been in a state of extreme despair when I received an email from someone offering me a place to stay for a few weeks while I tried to get on my feet. That person went even further for me and gave me a very-well-paying temporary job. Were it not for this help I got, I don't know what would have happened to me at the time.

I've lived in San Francisco for twenty-one years now. In my third or fourth year here, I began to conceive of a spiritual entity comprised of the entirety of a city, including its people, their pets, their machines and buildings and vehicles and the systems built to connect all these things to each other. I named this thing the Metrogeist, a word that's sort of a linguistic hodgepodge having both Greek and German roots, that loosely translates to "City Spirit". I noticed sometimes, when I'd look at a map of San Francisco, that it was shaped a bit like the sideways view of a person's head. Metrogeist can be seen as being like a singular brain, in which dwells millions of cells, and groupings of cells, that all have intricate pathways upon which they all interact.

I came to know Metrogeist over the ensuing years of life in the City, and understand how to feel the energies traveling along those paths, and sometimes, even predict their ebbs and flows...and occasionally, I found I could even influence them.

At any rate: I was receiving strong messages during that spring. The Metrogeist seemed to be personally telling me that I had a sort of karmic imbalance that I needed to repair. Energy had flowed in so many ways TO me, but not enough of it had flowed FROM me. This message was so strong that I braved my sociophobic disabilities enough to grit my teeth and approach the folks at Glide Church and ask them how I might finally do some volunteer work.

It turned out to be a very positive thing for me, and it surprised me how accepting the people I worked with were when I would pester them with questions and sometimes, occasionally, make mistakes. This was a massive relief for me. I wonder if they could have known just how nervous I really was, especially on my first day.

Glide Church serves three meals a day on weekdays, but it is the lunch meal that is usually the largest, best and most in need of volunteers. Persons wishing to volunteer for a shift call or log in to their website a day or two before the shift that they'd like to do and reserve a spot. Word is, though, that people can end up being flaky about showing up sometimes, so showing up about a half-hour before the shift starts will usually make the others working that day happy, since everyone has to cover for people who skip a shift, and sometimes, they end up with three or four people doing literally everything. (I managed not to flake on any of my shifts, which was something I was personally proud of, since I've sometimes tended to not be all that reliable in other endeavours I've been involved with.)

Upon arrival, Glide volunteers first stash all of their purses and coats in a special room, which to my relief was attended by one of their guards. Then, they will receive a hair-net and an apron. I'd never worn either of these sorts of items before and had to sheepishly ask one of the more experienced volunteers for directions.

Once I was dressed for the kitchen, I was shunted immediately downstairs into the noisy cafeteria and immediately plugged into the assembly line that prepares, scoops, arranges and serves each visitor their lunch tray. I was impressed by how efficient the system ended up being--even though apparently, about half of the volunteers working that day were first- or second-timers who'd never done their particular job before. One just plugged oneself into the rhythm of it, and did what needed doing.

I spent most of the two-hour shift handing trays to the people coming from the line into the cafeteria. After I relaxed into the job a bit, I became friendly, smiling and exchanging bits of small-talk and occasional jokes with the diners and other staff. I honestly hadn't thought I had it in me to act that way in public. I was getting something, it turned out, not just giving something. Occasionally, the person behind me would be called away to do something else, or break to go use the bathroom, and I would take over the role of counting out how many persons in line should enter the kitchen - all I had to do was watch and wait until five people left the room, then count out five people to enter once the fifth had gone. I didn't even have to ask anyone what I was supposed to do - I just picked it up from watching it get done as I was handing out the trays.

That day, the lunch was fish patties, mashed potatoes, and green peas. After the dining room started to empty out, the volunteers got to eat their lunch. I skipped the fish patties, never much caring for fish in any form other than sitting in raw slabs on rice, but I found the potatoes and vegetables surprisingly good for soup-kitchen food. The people who actually cook the meals are a separate cadre of volunteers, who receive preparatory training before doing cooking shifts. Maybe I'll try that some day, but I find that I'm a little afraid that I'll screw something up and cause a bunch of people to end up getting sick.(I've never worked a food service job before, and think maybe I should leave that part of the process to folks who have.)

The two hour workshifts go by a lot faster than I'd imagined that they would. After stacking up trays and leaving Glide, I find I feel oddly relaxed, rather than tired or worn-out.

Now that I have an apartment to live in and have financial concerns, I am a bit busy seeking ways to make money, and haven't been doing the volunteer work I'd been doing during the spring and summer. Perhaps this is a mistake. Surely, I can spare the two hours a day at least once or twice a week to do something to feed people who are, for the most part, an awful lot like myself, only without apartments to live in.

I came awfully close to numbering among them this year. I know I could never treat - or even think of - all homeless persons as if they were nothing but dirt-magnets and crack-monkeys--and I am deeply sorry that there was ever something in me that ever thought of them this way, up to the point where I found that I had sometimes tended to physically veer off from them when I encountered them, in order to avoid even looking at or speaking with them. It was as if their lack of housing were something that some part of me was afraid of catching, like a communicable disease.

Perhaps it's actually the other way around...and homelessness can accrue from the karma of assuming that you're automatically a better person, just because you've got a place to live and possess the sort of mental health that this obviously gives you. I have now come to think that what makes one a "better person" is the way one deals with whatever situation one's life is in at any given time. There are ways of dealing with a state of homelessness that tend to make improvement of that condition - including finding and keeping a home - more likely, and ways of dealing with it that do not.

An awful lot of San Francisco"s denizens are just a paycheck or Social Security check away from losing their own homes, too, and I wonder just how many of us have even stopped to think of what it would be like to have to queue up each day for their daily bread, in order to survive. Anyone who thinks about this in more than merely a passing way will probably find themselves called by the same Metrogeist-message that I heard, and answered. And even if it's just a few shifts at Glide - or perhaps St. Anthony's, Hamilton, or any other soup kitchen - they will likely find they also get something, as well as giving somthing, when they answer it themselves.

-Laura Carlson