February 7, 2025

 Dear friends, 

After every meal, all of the coordinators share what they served, statistics, stories and successes in an email thread. Two days ago, I wrote:

“We are new; tell us what to do!”  Eight fresh volunteers were introduced to OOTC.  They were eager and before long, they were laughing and singing in four languages:  English, Hebrew, Spanish, French.  Hunger knows no borders and cooking brings people together.”   

This morning from Janice and Kathy in our office:

Dear Team OOTC,

Your message fills our hearts in the office, Cindy!! Thank you - for providing a welcoming space for people to experience the richness of HOOTC!!! For those of us lucky enough to experience the joy in a kitchen full of people creating food for perfect strangers, we completely understand. 

We had a call today from a guest (Jason B.) who called to say "thank you" and "You guys should be so proud of yourselves!" He would also like you to share some recipes because he said "seriously, your food is so good!" 

We want you to know that in your kitchen you create amazing meals and pour so much love into every single one!! Thank you for continuing the work out in our community. 

Kathy and Janice 

The staff of Erskine Presbyterian and The Colin MacDonald School absolutely love the aromas and sounds created by all of you. It brings them such inner strength and warmth to be present along with our program.

This all reminds me of a message presented by Rabbi Angela Bukhdahl this week. (I edit quite fiercely but please listen to the teaching in its entirety here: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/central-synagogue-podcast/id1480041703?i=1000683950776)

“This new definition of tikkun olam is presented not as fixing the world as we usually think about it, but braiding the world together. We all know what it's like to imagine that the world is broken and needs fixing, and that we are the ones who can fix it. …There is much hubris in that kind of thinking…..What if the tikkun that the world and we ourselves need is not fixing, but braiding? A return to the awareness in the deepest part of our beings that we are all interconnected. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, “Each person is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a gift of pure water then I'm responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human's education is to know those duties and how to perform them.” 

Rabbi Bukhdahl continues,  “What if we went through the world and understood that our responsibility for Tikun Olam was not to go through the world with a hammer and a nail, like a carpenter looking for broken things that we would come and fix. But if Tikun Olam was imagining ourselves as a thread looking to weave into a thicker fabric of society. Braiding is so very different than fixing.”

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to perform this mitzvah with all of you. Enjoy a little longer break before we see you again on Feb. 26, March 5 and March 19.

Shabbat Shalom,
Cindy

January 12, 2025

 Happy New Year Dear OOTC Friends and Supporters,

We are almost halfway through our 2024-2025 Season, so how about we check in on the progress we have made so far.

Committed Volunteers!!! Just before last Wednesday, when our staffing was going to be lighter than usual, I suggested we’d benefit with a few extra people and longer shifts, you all complied so generously with your time. 

We even welcomed an unexpected new person: Public Health Inspector Kristy. The facility and our team passed! Kristy said that she has inspected a lot of groups in operation but never witnessed a group having so much fun doing good. I’m soooo proud of all of you and “You Look Mahvelous” in hairnets.  Keep up the good work.

The meals are so delicious, hearty, nutritious and the portions are VERY generous.  For instance, on Wednesday, guests picked up bags filled with pea soup, meatloaf, green beans in a Greek tomato/onion/garlic/oil slurry, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, mixed bean and vegetable salad, bananas, bread, cookies.  Cases of free beets, artichokes, endive, radiccio, sno peas were offered to our guests at our open-air market.  Sunny, very little wind, -7 degrees. Two hundred and fifty-two meals were prepared, 238 distributed curbside and the rest were delivered to The Locke Street Fridge and The Hub.  (They received a half case of bananas too.)  

Meals prepared this season: 914
Meals delivered curbside: 860

In preparation for an OOTC retreat next week, I reviewed our food costs for the last two seasons and this season so far.  (The retreat will be focusing on everything from a review of our last 5-year plan to a new plan, reviews of surveys from community partners, guests, volunteers; strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities; group reports, income and expenses.) Prices for fresh produce have risen dramatically. Overall, we are spending 40% more on food.  Meat represents 35% of our food costs.  We purchase meat when it is deeply discounted and use it right away or freeze for future use. So, if you see wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen near the chicken or ground lean beef, load up for us please!!

We all agree that the addition of the Colin McDonald school at Erskine is a win-win.  Just before Christmas, the children learned about our program and the people it serves and the faith communities who respond to poverty in their neighbourhood.  We were so overwhelmed with emotion to read the 250 messages of love, hope, reassurance and kindness that the children created and were placed in our takeaway bags.  Check out the picture. 

Since we began this season, we have made space, metaphorically and physically, out there on the driveway and curb to chat, kibbitz, listen to our guests, learn their names, find something new and warm for them to take away.  Civil law is built around rights; Jewish law is built around obligations.  A man recently shared, “Two years ago, you saved my life.” He, like many others, trust us to be their consistent partners, to use positive language in our greetings and conversations and to make their challenges feel just a bit lighter.

Keep doing what you’re doing and if you want to be part of our greeters out there, you are warmly welcome!!

Finally, the remaining OOTC dates are Jan. 22, Feb. 5, 26, followed just a week later on March 5 and our final dinner March 19.

See you soon, Cindy

April 22, 2024

 Dear Friends,

On the precipice of Passover, we haven’t far to look for commonalities between the Feast of Freedom and our response in the form of Hamilton Out of the Cold. Our obligation to remember that we were once vulnerable slaves in Egypt makes it incumbent on us now and forever to fight for those who struggle.

Knowing another person’s or community’s struggles may be the only way to bring about real social change. Human rights attorney, Bryan Stevenson, writes about the need to get proximate to those who are suffering. “We cannot change global injustice today if we isolate ourselves in places that are safe and removed and disconnected. To change the world, we're going to have to find ways to get close to the people who are living on the margins of society.” We can't solve problems or build bridges from a distance. Only when we are in relationship can we hear things we wouldn't otherwise hear, be exposed to ideas and context we wouldn't otherwise consider. As Stevenson says, “There is power when we get proximate. Only then can we have mercy and compassion.”

The Out of the Cold program enables us to do just that. Did you know that chatting with guests who are sorting through clothes from the trunk of your car can be bonding?  Me: Why do you need to replace socks? He: Because the rainstorm flooded the tent, completely drenching sleepmats, blankets, … everything.

Me: Can you stay with anyone? He: Used to stay with my sister but now, she stays with me.

Me: I’m sorry we ran out of meals; can we give you cans of tuna and chili? He: Yes, anything is good.  My meal was going to be ketchup.

Me: Where is your accent from?  She: I’m from Palestine. Me: It’s terrible what is happening in the Middle East. You must be worried for people you know there. She: Yes, it is terrible.  I have little food; they have less.  Me:  The Out of the Cold group hosting today’s meal is the Jewish Community and I am Jewish.  My prayers always end with the wish for peace.  She and Me: hug.

Some statistics: Ever grateful, 1,245 guests picked up 2,636 meals over 11 weeks. (Last year, 1,257 guests. I don’t know that much about Auston Matthews target of 70 goals in one season, but at 69, I know enough that he can’t be branded a loser, nor are WE!)   The huge difference lies in the cost.  Our food costs alone increased by $2,327.  Each Wednesday meal cost on average $790. Each curbside dinner cost $3.30, 71 cents more than last year.  Just imagine how much more it would be without the generous ‘donations in kind,’ from Lococos and Fortinos and the ‘to-the-ends-of-the-earth’ shopping trips to source discounted or free food!!

More importantly, we must look beyond the statistics because, at HOOTC, we are focused on PEOPLE, the ‘us’, the ‘them’, the ‘collective.’   Rabbi Shai Held writes, “As Jews, we have moral obligations which are incumbent upon us because of the simple fact that we are human beings. In its recurrent appeals to memory, the Torah seeks to amplify and intensify those obligations, to remind us, even when it is difficult to hear, that the fate of the stranger is our responsibility. This mandate may seem overwhelming at times, and its concrete implications may sometimes be difficult to discern. But loving the stranger is fundamental and lies at the heart of Torah…we have no choice but to wrestle with these words and to seek to grow in empathy and compassion.”

There is no better place to grow in empathy and compassion than in the OOTC kitchen and halls with volunteers who bring energy, humour, wisdom, creativity and flavour from their own life experiences. Ask any coordinator (aka task master hiding whip) how thousands of bags of sustenance get to people in need, and all will look to YOU.  Commitment to caring is everything. Although, HOOTC is finished for the season, your purpose doesn’t end. As Rabbi Sharon Brous writes in The Amen Effect, “The answers are found in the service. Practice asking yourself at the start of each day, how can I be of service today? What can I do today to help another person? Just the questions will awaken you to the many daily opportunities we all have to do something small, even seemingly insignificant, for another person. When we habituate to seizing those small moments, we may discover that without even meaning to, we've landed on our purpose.”

May you and your families experience the upcoming seasons in good health and may we all be together again soon. Chag Pesach Sameach.

Cindy