It’s been an interesting week at The Men’s Shelter On Phinney Ridge. It’s been cold. We had snow in the city. It may sound funny for a Seattleite to be amazed and somewhat confused by snow, but we’re used to seeing snow in the mountains. We go and visit snow, in the mountains. When snow appears on the hill in front of my house we worry that all those inexperienced California drivers will crash into us. And everyone in Seattle lives on a hill. People who live in other parts of the country laugh at us because we don’t know how to drive in snow. They get a lot of snow in the Midwest. But if you live in the Midwest, you don’t live on a hill, and there’s hardly anyone to crash into.

Living in an ever more crowded city makes a person nervous. You get tense because you might crash into someone. Especially when it snows. But it’s warm and dry at the Shelter on Phinney Ridge. That helps.

Speaking of help, we are officially in the post Thanksgiving volunteer slump. There are plenty of open nights to serve a meal to men who will greatly appreciate it. It’s good to have a day, or two, each year when most everyone in the country remembers to be thankful, and remembers to give. We need reminders. But remember that the meal you cook, the socks you donate, the help you give is all just temporary.  It’s a hard thing to accept that today’s giving needs to be done again tomorrow and every day.  It gets a little boring. We Americans just want to fix something and be done with it. But that’s not the way it works. You and I should do what Jesus asked us to do every day, not just on Sundays and Thanksgiving. And, like the Bible says, “It is in giving that we receive.” I take that to mean that the opposite is also true. If you don’t give, you don’t receive. I’m reminded of an old Bruce Cockburn song when he sings, “I’ve got this thing in my heart I must give it today. It only lives when you give it away.”

On a further note we give thanks to another successful Yuletide Session produced by Emmanuel Church which raised a $1,000 to help us keep the heat on, the water hot, and the food frozen (we bought a new freezer) in The Men’s Shelter, on Phinney ridge.

This is Ben Paul