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Hi Everyone,

I'm writing to ask your support for a benefit that I am doing for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen on Friday, June 13, at 7:00 pm. The venue is the Mildred and Ernest E. Mayo Concert Hall. I'm speaking on, "Healing Through the Mystery of Grace" and all the proceeds of this talk go directly to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. Through benefits for this soup kitchen, we've managed to provide almost 300,000 meals. I think we are all called to be of service to people in some way in our lives. My awakening, so to speak, to the reality of the homeless and the hungry in this country happened during the notorious winter of 1979 in Chicago. I was still in graduate school, sharing an apartment on Columbia Street, off Devon Avenue on the north side of Chicago. The city experienced a couple of brutal snow storms over the course of a few days that paralyzed the city and forced us all to use public transportation as no one dared moved their car lest they lose their parking spot. About a five days or so into the snow storm lock down, a neighbor I had never met came over to the apartment building and suggested that a group of us gather together and go door-to-door, just to check out if any of the neighbors need any help. Perhaps some elderly people, for instance, were in need of food or medicine. That thought had never occurred to me and it struck me as a moment of illumination. And so off we went - all four of us, ringing door bells and drudging through snow that was nearly five feet high, given all the snow drifts from the Lake Michigan. To be clear, while I lived in an apartment building right off Lake Michigan, which could give the impression of being rather "high end", it was quite the opposite. This was and remains a very modest neighborhood, highly immigrant, just above "don't want the streets too late at night." Still, it was an okay place to live during grad school and it never occurred to me that on this same street that I was living were people who were starving to death in their apartments - and I mean starving to death. That afternoon, for the first time in my life, I saw a starving human being - and not in India or some third world country, but on Columbia Street, two doors down from where I was living. I had gone into the vestibule of the building, rang all six door bells to see if any one was home, and got "buzzed" in by one elderly woman. She lived on the second floor. I told her I was a neighbor checking to see if she needed any held because of the snow - she said, "Oh, please come up." I walked into her apartment, which was neat but cold. Her heat was off. And then I saw cat food cans in the trash and on her kitchen counter. I innocently said, "Oh, you have a cat?"

"No, I don't. That's my dinner."

I honestly did not know what to say. She obviously saw that in my expression because she started to cry. "I'm so hungry," she said. I walked her to the couch and held her in my arms as she wept, telling me that she had not eaten anything but cat food for months. I felt nauseated just listening to her, not to mention more uncomfortable than I can describe. I wanted to run away so fast but this was a human being weeping from a type of pain I never wanted to know so long as I live. The truth is, everyone wants to run away from someone in her condition - and she knew it. She told me that she never believed her life could come to this, but it had. I promised to bring her some food, which I did, but my head was overwhelmed by the responsibility as a college student of feeding a human being hiding away in an apartment building during the ice cold winter of 1979. The horror of this story continues, actually, because on this one block long block that I lived on, I was to learn by the end of the day that my three companions had come across two other people who were also without food.

The turmoil in me from that day continued for weeks and then months and then it just continued until I could name it. I finally realized that my myth about the wealth and abundance of this nation was shattered for me, not that there has not always been hungry and poor people in America. But the numbers of them - and how fast the numbers are growing - that is something that exists outside the myth America holds of itself as forever wealthy.

From that day on, I have been devoted to helping the homeless. So, if any of you are able to come to my talk that evening, please do. The ticket cost is: $50.00.

If you cannot attend my presentation, may I ask you to please make a donation? As they say, no amount is too small - and that is the truth. Contact: Jamie Parker at: jparker@trentonsoupkitchen.org (609)695-5456 Ext 105

I thank all of you for your support in every way,

Love,
Caroline

June 2008
Caroline Myss benefit for Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
Healing Through the Mystery of Grace
Friday, June 13, 2008 @ 7:00-10:00 pm
Mildred & Ernest C. Mayor Concert Hall, Music Building, the College of New Jersey
609-695-5456 ext. 105