By Rev. Michael Tutton
In a corner of the drama classroom at Lockview high school in Fall River, boxes and bags of donated food are filling up and being shipped out.
On Dec. 5, I sat chatting with Nick Flores, a Grade 12 student, nearby this collection area. He’s a leader of a Christian youth club, known as Alpha, which mobilized to collect this food. (To be clear, it’s one effort among the many in the school to raise funds to support charities and food drives.)
The 17-year-old explains the act of giving in this way: “We should be humble, and we shouldn’t hold everything to ourselves, especially money.”
In the seasonal buildup of food and gift card collections, you can gain inspiration from the efforts, while pondering some hard questions on why it’s necessary.
First, let’s speak of the inspiration.
Since late November, the Alpha group had put up posters and canvassed for donations. The approximately 40 attendees also talked about this effort when they’d meet at the gymnasium during their lunch hours each week.
As of Tuesday, 12 large boxes had been stuffed with non-perishable necessities. Some students contributed cash, asking Alpha’s teacher adviser, Ashton Sponagle, to purchase supplies.
The pasta, tinned vegetables and other staples are delivered to people in need through the Beaver Bank community food pantry and Lockview’s youth health centre.
The request for help to Flores’ Alpha club came about the same time they held a session discussing the question: “Why and how I should read the Bible?”
While people contribute to these efforts from a variety of religious backgrounds, and often no religious affiliation, Jewish and Christian scriptures give very clear direction on the topic.
Isaiah’s prophetic poetry says part of life’s purpose is to share your bread with the hungry, saying “If you extend your soul to the hungry … then your light shall dawn in the darkness” (Isaiah 58).
The Jesus that Flores now puts at the centre of his life identifies himself as being among the hungry you may have met in your journey through life (Matt. 25). Put simply: it’s part of who He is.
Anne-Marie Kelly, food bank manager at the Beacon House Interfaith Society, spoke to me on Monday after an exhausting but fulfilling morning providing 75 Christmas hampers in a few hours.
Its 13 member churches gather up items including cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, coffee and juice, while funding from Feed Nova Scotia provides the gift cards for the proteins people will buy for Christmas meals.
Kelly said they’ll distribute hampers to 619 households this Christmas, up substantially from the 500 last year.
The Lions Christmas Express has also been gathering non-perishable food from various schools and will be packing and distributing hampers to people in Fall River, Waverley, Wellington, Windsor Junction, Oakfield, Fletchers Lake, and Enfield areas.
The Caring and Sharing Angel Tree food bank in Enfield, N.S. is providing gifts and food orders to more than 250 families.
I am almost certainly missing naming some of the efforts underway, but you get a sense this is a widespread movement.
Now, to the questions it all gives rise to.
At Feed Nova Scotia, an organization that distributes three million kilograms of food annually, the web page headline bluntly states: “Nova Scotia is in a food insecurity crisis.”
The group goes on to note this crisis is rooted in “low wages, inadequate income support, and unaffordable housing.”
The agency adds that food is “a very basic need,” and these efforts to provide donated food and gift cards are part of how gaps are filled.
Still, I’m left with questions for our community and religious leaders: why can’t we find a way to reduce housing costs, allowing the poor more space in their budget to nutrition?
Here’s another one: Why do we expect a single parent with a child on income assistance in Nova Scotia to survive on the monthly amount of about $1,000? After rent, what’s left over to put supper on the table?
“Unless something is done about cost of living, these food drives will keep growing,” said Kelly.
These are issues for Lockview’s students – and all of us — to mull over during these weeks of preparation for Jesus’ coming on Dec. 25, and throughout the year.
In the interim, the boxes and hampers keep filling up, destined for hungry stomachs as the underlying causes of food insecurity await action.
(Rev. Michael Tutton is a former national journalist who writes about his new life as an Anglican priest in Fall River and Oakfield)
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