Last night Michelle and I volunteered at Dignity Diner. Dignity Diner is a program, operated through my church, that serves a vegetarian meal every Tuesday night to the hungry/homeless folks of Chicago. About 50 people are served. It's not a typical soup kitchen as it's a sit down meal and the diners are served their meals (like in a restaurant). Their motto is "dignity is always on the menu".
I was really looking forward to helping out but walked away a little surprised by how I felt about the experience.
Most of the diners were very nice. We met a man named Wade who walked up and shook our hands. He said he helps set up and tear down after the meal and he also dines there. Wade was really nice and polite and probably the best person I interacted with that evening (besides the volunteers).
Now I understand that mental illness is a leading cause for homelessness and I was expecting to see some mental illness in the group of 50. But there were a couple of men who, I felt, were overstepping my comfort zone. But I didn't know how to handle it and no one was really around to help out in those situations.
One man kept walking up to Anne, Michelle and I and shaking our hands and staring and saying "niiiice". It was very uncomfortable and poor Anne got cornered by one diner who talked to her for at least 15 minutes. But he also kept sort of petting her arm and just doing what I would consider uncomfortable touching. She handled it really well but I know I would have not been ok with that.
This other guy, who had been sort of following Michelle around a bit, came up to me and asked me for some cold water in his glass. I said 'Sure' and went and filled the cup up. I brought it back to him and he took the cup and just sort of stood really, really close to me and then he put his arm around me. I tried to pull away but he leaned in and kissed me on the side of my cheek.
And I feel bad admitting this (like i'm not being very christian or something) but i really didn't like that. not only was the kiss a total invasion of my comfort zone (hell if a guy at a bar did that i would be upset too) but it was wet and gross and he smelled really bad and i felt like there was nothing i could do about it. like i couldn't say 'don't do that!' cause then i would have looked bad. and there were people who lead this volunteer effort and they weren't really doing anything about it either so then i really felt like i couldn't say anything.
while we were cleaning up the man who kissed me was following Michelle around and kept putting his hand on her back. There was just a lot of touching going on. And I don't really care for when any strange man touches me but these were obvious touches in that I knew their intention was to 'get off' on it. Does this make sense? And I don't think I'm being shallow or over dramatic about it...because they weren't touching/following all the volunteers. They were just doing it to Anne, Michelle and I and sometimes Meg. Donnelle didn't get touched (she's a little older and a bit heavy set). None of the male volunteers got hugged or touched. A couple of the older lady volunteers (in their forties-fifties) didn't get touched.
Anyway. I enjoyed serving the people that were respectful and kind. I really enjoyed working with the volunteers. But I don't know if working at Dignity Diner is part of my personal ministry because I left feeling very uncomfortable and towards the end of the meal...I just really wanted to get out of there.
2 comments:
I'm going to blog on this too, but I think you made some good observations. There should have been a brief 5 minute orientation before we started where we were asked if we've ever done this before. We should have been prepped. The difference between this experience and my last experiences was that there was no barrier. Last time I did this we (the volunteers) were behind a serving station. I understand the desire to bring dignity into the mix by having us bring food to them, but maybe the men should be doing it and not the young ladies. There were some uncomfortable moments, but I left feeling positive about volunteering there and I'll do it again. Next time I'll be more aware of the touchy-feeling types. And will most likely talk to the other girls and give them a fair warning.
yeah, if i volunteer again i think i'll come prepared to be a bit stronger in my boundaries.
my mom made a good point last night that just because i serve them food doesn't give them the right to kiss me. and it's ok to say that.
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