“Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.”
– Walt Whitman

The first year I was in Chicago, my heart broke at the homelessness everywhere. In my hometown in Ohio, there were no homeless people. At all. And in the “big city,” which was Akron, you’d see one or two homeless people a week. It just wasn’t heard of, and when you did see them, you were safely in your car so you didn’t have to make the hard choice to lie to them and say you don’t really have any spare change in your pocket.

So, suffice it to say, in such a pedestrian town (as a good friend so appropriately named our fair city recently), I must pass 2 or 3 homeless people each direction as I walk the 2 blocks to and from the train station. And, part of me thinks, “Sure, I can spare a few coins here and there.” And the other part of me asks, “What is this person going to spend that money on?”

And of course then I just nod my head and move on. After 7 years here, one gets numb. It’s almost as if they don’t exist.

Ugh.

So I got a letter in the mail a couple weeks ago from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, in their normal holiday appeal for donations, and I realized that this could make up for my numbness in the face of human suffering. So I wrote a donation for $100 and sent it off. A one time deal to appease my guilt over not doing more to aid those in need.

And yet …

As I think over it (and punch a few numbers into the calculator), if I were to give $0.25 to every person I passed on my way to work, I’d hit $100 in 6 months. Instead, I took that money and gave it all at once to a place I know is going to make sure hungry people get fed. Not a bad deal really.

What’s also pretty cool is that the Depository only spends 7% of your donation on administration and fundraising costs. The rest goes directly into buying food and delivering it. And you can be sure they don’t care what the people they’re feeding believe, so it’s a sight better than donating to the Salvation Army of all places.

So pay them a visit: www.chicagosfoodbank.org .

Charity — it’s good for your soul.

Filed by Stephen at 10:56 pm under Religion, Activism