A Tribute to Bob Randels, Founder of Food Bank of So. Central MI.

Bob Randels/Courtesy Randels Family

I had the privilege of working with Bob Randels, founder of the Food Bank of South Central MI, for twenty-eight years. It's now called the South Michigan Food Bank, and is still going strong with the same purpose of getting food to families and individuals in need.

Sometimes people are defined by what they do. But, to me, Bob Randels was defined by who he was.

Patient beyond belief.

Always kind.

Smart and quick with a quip.

Remarkably encouraging.

Funny.

Bob was a visionary and his vision was birthed out of a deep commitment to alleviating hunger, especially among children, which he found deeply unacceptable.

He was also an excellent networker, although he would say he found that word annoying. What he liked to do was simply extend invitations to come join in the "good idea of foodbanking."

Those invites took the form of forging seamless working relationships with food manufacturers, farmers, funders and individual donors - thousands of them.

He took public events and places and turned them into hedgerows for alleviating hunger. So, Battle Creek's Cereal Festival soon included an Empty Bowls activity that captured the attention of hundreds of school children who created bowls to help end hunger among their peers.

To Bob, the possibilities were endless. 

Scene Magazine

The local mall became an art gallery for a couple of weeks with sculptures made of cans of food lining the walkway. Battle Creek's Fort Custer Industrial Park became the scene of the Fort Food Challenge where, at one point, 25 different manufacturing plants joined together to collect food.

And so it went.

And so the "good idea of foodbanking" eventually spread across eight counties in South Central Michigan, distributing millions of pounds of food to over 200 agencies that had emergency feeding programs.

Bob oversaw this growth.

He was the spark for it.

As the years rolled by, certain sayings he coined remained in my mind.

Like, trying to make effective use of time. If you were headed for a meeting, Bob encouraged you to do something else along the way. He called it creating a "two mints in one," type of situation.

When the holiday season rush began - from early October through December - he would often pause in the middle of the busiest of days - to remind us of the reason we were so busy, remarking "patience is a virtue."

Battle Creek Enquirer

Truth be told, Bob wasn't fond of meetings that didn't seem to have a direct purpose. He would often report that he "did a cameo" at some of them - meaning he went in, offered insight, and then left as quickly and discreetly as he could.

He was focused. 

But he was also preternaturally empathetic.

[I left the Food Bank on two occasions. One to live in Northern Ireland for four months, helping out a group doing reconciliation work. Another time, shortly after 9/11, I was gone for 14 months to work with a group ministering to kids in Brooklyn, NY.

Both times he welcomed me back and had new assignments that made use of what I had learned.]

Bob had a knack for taking the best in you and building upon it to bring out something even better.

The Food Bank grew because Bob grew and he invited everyone around him into that creative process.

During Bob's tenure at the Food Bank, there were three economic recessions. He kept the Food Bank moving forward through all of them, inspiring others to care that their neighbors got fed.

He had an almost shy smile that came out slowly but often.

His voice was always calming, especially when encouraging us to keep going in the middle of difficulty.

His presence was encouraging, inviting, uplifting and full of hope.

And now that Bob Randels is (physically) gone from this earth, I can still hear him gently reminding us to be kind to each other. As he often said, "all to a better heart."

Bob also helped found the Food Bank Council of Michigan.  And he was responsible for connecting the Food Bank with Feeding America, the national network of foodbanking. 

A Review: Inventing Hell - Dante, The Bible, and Eternal Torment, by Jon M. Sweeney

As a former Catholic and Evangelical, I spent a lot of time wondering about Hell.

So has Jon M. Sweeney.

His book, Inventing Hell: Dante, TheBible and Eternal Torment does a deep dive into the quintessential pit.

Sweeney begins by explaining that most of the Christian concept of Hell came from Dante (author of the Inferno) who was heavily influenced by Virgil and used him as his guide to the underworld.

Sweeney writes that Dante had high esteem for Virgil “because he believed the myth Virgil created some thirteen hundred years before Dante was born… the ‘Myth of Empire’ the notion that the city of Rome, the Roman Empire, its emperors, and by extension Christianity itself, were all created by divine ordination. It wasn’t unusual for Dante to believe the Roman Empire was God’s favored way of governing the world; every proud Roman of the Middle Ages did.”

“These elaborate legends were supposed to explain why and how Rome had become so adept at empire-building. Whereas the Greeks had valued discovery and beauty, the Romans valued power and consolidation… [T]hey treasured their heritage as God’s new chosen people. The Christian Church would be born into this Rome and their empire…”

Of course, when Dante was alive, the Roman Empire had been in existence for over a century. As Sweeney sees it, around 312 Christianity began to rapidly spread, piggy-backing on Rome’s strong infrastructure. “As the empire conquered more lands and people, Christianity marched in behind them, and even after Rome’s collapse, Christianity expected and demanded the hegemony that they believed was theirs by divine right.”

Dante was heavily influenced by a strong sense of empire (political power) linked to religion.

And he was also influenced by Greek myths, Socrates and Plato to believe in an afterlife, including an immortal soul, which all predate the Bible. Hence, his keen interest in Hell. Sweeney makes the point that the idea of Hell didn’t originate in the Bible but with human beings.

Sweeney contends that St. Paul and Plato would have believed “the soul is a pure spiritual essence It contains nothing material, nothing that is essentially of this world. It is uncreated and eternal. After death, the soul once again belongs to the world of the invisible.”

Along with the belief in an afterlife, the Greeks, through Plato, introduced the concept of justice after death. And the beginnings of a belief in Hell.

Jon M. Sweeney

Sweeney points out that the Hebrew Bible “offered a picture of human beings possessed of body and soul, connected by life that comes from God; and when God took that life away the entire person went to Sheol to lead a shadelike existence. Plato sees something else. Plato separates the human person into two very distinctive halves, only one of which [the soul] truly matters.”

All of this to say that the idea of Hell predates Jesus and the Bible, but Sweeney makes the case that it was Dante, not Jesus who perpetuated the idea.

“When a Christian preacher threatens his [or her] audience with Hell, it is Dante’s Inferno that he’s [she’s] most often depicting, whether he [she] realizes it or not. We must not forget that the Inferno is an allegory… In that case, is Dante’s Hell still useful? Yes, great art brings things to life. Is it real? Yes, it can make sense in people’s lives. But is it literal, historical, or geographical? No.”

Sweeney makes three complaints against Dante’s work.

First, “the Inferno is more the stuff of Greek and Roman mythology and philosophy that it is the Bible. Old Testament or New. And all of that myth and legend would be fine in and of itself… except that Christians have adapted Dante’s vision of divine justice and used it to threaten for centuries.”

Secondly, Sweeney takes issue with the Inferno for “the virtues that it extols. Homer, Ovid, Cicero and Virgil were more interested in heroism and courage than they were in peace and humility, and it is those latter virtues that Christianity and Christ were all about.”

Thirdly, Sweeney disagrees with Dante’s politics. “Church and state were one in his worldview. He couldn’t conceive of them apart… Politics interested him, as did affairs of state and the repair of Rome as ruler of the world – more than the message of the Gospels.”

As Sweeney wraps up his discussion of Hell, he writes “I became a Catholic at the age of forty-two for a number of reasons, and one of them was the official teaching of the church that a person does not know what will happen to him [or her] after death. ‘Faith combined with good works’ is the old mantra of what it means to be a Catholic, as opposed to the view of the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century who argued that salvation was about faith alone. The principle of ‘faith combined with good works’ means that there is rarely ever a triumphant tendency among Catholics to proclaim any certainty about life after death.”

“We need more than Hell as a deterrent, for ethics is not the same thing as loving your neighbor. Virtue is not borne out of fear.”

Sweeney concludes: “[O]ne of the things I’ve learned as I’ve grown older is that there is no single image or description of God that is the unvarnished truth… I’ve also come to accept that that Christianity holds what seem to be contradictory images of God almost simultaneously. That’s why I’m convinced that each of us has to choose.”

But Dante, to Sweeney’s mind, offers up only one image of God. “All we have is a vivid, sad vision of a God who judges, punishes, tortures and abandons… Ultimately, I choose not Dante’s vengeful, predatory God who is anxious to tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates and sustains us, who is incarnate and wants to be with and among us, and the God who inspires and comforts us. That God is the real one, the one I have come to know and understand, and that God has nothing to do with medieval Hell.”

Final Thought: Sweeney's book reinforces the importance of separating truth from tradition. Especially in the religious realm. Most especially as we are living in a time of 'alternate facts' and tall tales masquerading as reality.

Loving Well in a Broken World, Discover the Hidden Power of Empathy by Lauren Casper: A Review

Lauren Casper

In her book, Loving Well in a Broken World, Discover the Hidden Power of Empathy, Lauren Casper takes on the challenge of indifference.

She starts with the premise, as did Elie Wiesel, that “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

Casper approaches the dilemma from a Christian perspective, but actually most major religions will work just as well.

She uses the example of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. She notes that the Samaritan in the story, himself branded as an outsider, was more willing to help a Jewish man who had been beaten and robbed, because, “[T]his man would have known what it felt like to be despised, tossed aside, and ignored. Instead of seeing only costly inconvenience in a heap of bloodied flesh, the Samaritan saw a physical representation of how he had been treated all his life. He saw more than what was readily visible. He saw a person… a neighbor.”

Wiesel was himself a victim of Nazi persecution and had spent time in a concentration camp. This experience caused him to devote his adult life to the issue of discrimination. He said of indifference: “The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that’s being dead.”

Casper suggests that “[I]f indifference is the disease, empathy is the antidote.”

Casper gives us the example of a trip to the emergency room with her infant adopted son. It was a life and death situation and she felt totally helpless. Ironically, just a few days before, she and her husband had come across a similar situation and walked by, for the most part, unemotionally unaffected.

“Our experiences over that twenty-four hours taught me two things: First, no one is immune to tragedy. And second, we actually have no what we’ll do when our turn comes.”

“The self-righteous idea that we’ve somehow set up our lives in ways that protect us from certain kinds of crises, implying that those who are experiencing said crises have not, is what keeps many of us from entering into the painful places in another person’s life… Our own pain might be the one thing that causes us to stop closing our eyes… It’s easy to ignore or judge suffering when we naively assume it will never be us… I may be a slow learner, but pain is an effective teacher.”

When we center on our own experiences, writes Casper, the experiences of others “seem far away, uncommon, and not part of our world.”

Casper continues, “We miss a lot when we center our experiences by assuming they are the norm.”

She writes about the experience of Daniel, one of the Lost Boys, displaced during the bloody civil war in Sudan. Daniel and three of his friends eventually make it to the United States. Two of them eventually adjust to the new culture. But not Daniel who points out that Americans don’t seem to look out for each other.

“’You’re born for others, and others are born for you,’ Daniel says, trying to make sense of a culture that makes no sense to him – and implying that maybe American culture doesn’t offer as much as we might think it does.”

For Casper, the ability to listen is an important ingredient in empathy. She gives the example of her autistic young son, who, during a church picnic, asked several times, to go home. His request went unheard and he simply walked to the family’s van to get some peace and quiet.

For a few panic-stricken minutes, Casper and some of the picnic attendees searched for her little boy before they found him.

“Are we willing to hear what our neighbors are trying to tell us, even when it makes us uncomfortable? Or are we determined to remain in the comfort of our echo chambers… that’s a choice we get to make every day. We can choose to listen and learn and ask rather than point and accuse.”

Casper uses her own life experience to offer hard-earned wisdom, which includes the importance of emotions. “If we are brave enough to honor our emotions, they can point us toward our hurting neighbors and help us to love them well. When we’re honest, our feelings can show us what’s missing in our neighborhood and where a need might be waiting that only we can fill. A world without emotions is a world without grace and compassion. A world without feelings is a world without understanding and care.”

Casper points out that there is a balance to the emotion equation. Being honest doesn’t include ripping open emotionally broken hearts to reveal the source of the pain publicly.

Another roadblock to empathy is fear.

“The challenge this poses in our current culture is that our affinity for similarity has led to polarization and, subsequently, fear. It’s the fear of others that causes us to act in ways that are apathetic or even hateful rather than loving. That fear is often because we simply don’t know each other. As a result, our social fabric – locally and globally – is unraveling… Research has shown that our empathy is diminished to the point of being virtually absent when the suffering person is a member of a different social, racial, or cultural group... If we want to love our neighbors, we have to break out of our bubbles.”

Midway through Loving Well in a Broken World, Casper gives an example of how to do this. She describes Project Connection, started by a teenager living in Charlotte, NC, who had a heart to connect acceptance between high schoolers and children with special needs. With some initial trepidation, Casper signed up her own two special needs kids to be part of a local PC network of teenagers in Lexington, VA.

Another way of gaining empathy is through developing friendships among people who don’t look, think or act like us.

For Casper, this happened when an Afghani woman who moved to the US became a close friend. Through her friend, Casper writes, “I learned what it was like to grow up under the Taliban and the challenges faced by girls seeking education in that environment… When the news reports that bombs have exploded in Kabul, I no longer change the channel but grieve that destruction of my friend’s hometown and the loss of her former neighbors. When refugees are vilified in the news or in conversation, I am resolute in my defense of them.”

Another motivating factor for Casper is her faith.

“I have been afraid of so many things: the mental and emotional toll that justice work would take, the discrimination and dangers that await my children, the attacks and judgment from peers, and the list goes on… My fear is nearly extinguished by the light of the gospel and Christ’s example of turning toward, rather than away from, the brokenness of the world.”

Casper advises, “Don’t turn away from whatever it is that makes your heart break and your eyes well up with tears. Sit with it a little longer and see where your heart might take you… Where is empathy leading you to love? You might be scared, I know I am, but the next right thing is simply showing up – and we can do it.”

At this point, Casper puts down a challenge, specifically to those of the Christian faith.

“It may seem uncomfortable, unnatural, and awkward to step out of comfort zones and challenge the status quo, but maybe that’s because we Christians have forgotten that’s what we’re made to do. We weren’t created to live up to society’s standards and remain comfortably in our bubbles; we were made to be misfits and rebels and to embrace the unexpected. If we claim to follow Jesus, there is no other way to live.”

Another part of the empathy equation is repentance.

“One of the most necessary and inevitable acts of love that empathy naturally leads us into is that of repentance… It’s the recognition of how our words, or lack thereof, and our actions, or lack thereof, have impacted our neighbors. It is the experience of true remorse for that impact and the decision to no longer behave in a way that brings pain to those around us… Repentance requires empathy because we cannot stop our harmful behavior and life differently without it… Repentance screams humility and empathy.”

Casper contends that empathy should lead us to consider people living on the margins. Bringing us to a much fuller understanding of life around us. “When tales of conquests of land and resources are only told from the colonizers’ perspectives… they become the hero of the story, and the voices of those who were oppressed and enslaved and stolen from are excluded from the narrative. We learn an incomplete history, which prevents us from understanding the struggles some nations and communities face today. So instead of understanding and even repentance, we offer judgment and ridicule.”

Crucial to the growth of empathy is the ability to receive criticism.

“When I am criticized or rebuked, pride can push me to believe I’m being persecuted, but humility and love usually reveal areas for growth, for being more considerate of others – and if I stay with the discomfort long enough, I’m thankful for it. This is how we allow criticism to increase our empathy.”

Casper concludes: “The in-between – the interval between where we came from and where we’re going – may be long, hard and painful, but we started from perfect love and to perfect love we will return. So, we press on, hopefully ever after.”

Loving Well in a Broken World offers a template for a way out of our divided, wounded and troubled world.

Laura Moulton: Bringing Books to the Streets

Laura Moulton

Laura Moulton writes, teaches and does projects in Portland, Oregon. Her work has taken her into public schools, prisons and shelters and out onto the streets. Participatory projects have featured postal workers, poets, immigrants and women incarcerated at the Coffee Creek Correctional facility. She teaches for Lewis & Clark College, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology and for Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program. She earned an MFA from Eastern Washington University.

In 2011, Laura founded Street Books, a bicycle-powered mobile library serving people who live outside and at the margins. It was supposed to be a three-month art project, but at the “end,” a library patron named Keith (who lived in Forest Park) checked out books and said, “See you next week.” Laura realized if she didn’t show, he wouldn’t have a place to return his books. Now it’s 10 years later and Laura is the Executive Director and there’s a whole crew of really stellar people keeping the street library in operation. Laura is co-writing a book about Street Books with Ben Hodgson, a former library patron who now lives indoors and works as a street librarian in Old Town.

Would you explain the basic concept of Street Books? And why you started it?

Street Books is a bicycle-powered mobile library serving people who live outside and at the margins in Portland, Oregon. Bikes carry about 40-50 titles (mostly paperbacks) of all genres and set up the same time and place each week, so that our library patrons know where to find us. Street Books was initially started as a 3-month summer art project after I got a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council. I think the initial seed for the idea was planted after a conversation I had with a guy named Quiet Joe, who lived outside. We had a favorite author in common (AB Guthrie) and I wound up gathering a few books for him and giving them to him. Years later, I decided to do a participatory art project that invited a group of people who I figured rarely got included in these sorts of projects. That’s when Street Books was born. I launched it with some trepidation – would people living with so few resources really want a book? But of course, they did. At the end of the three months, I had library patrons asking where they would be able to find me, and I realized that I had to keep it going. I had no idea that more than 10 years later, we’d still be operating, but I’m very glad we are.

 

A New York Times article about Street Books, published in 2014, mentioned that one of the aims of Street Books was to break down the barrier between “us” and “them.” Can you elaborate?

Part of the original concept of the art project that first summer was that I wanted to document with photographs the library patrons with their books of choice. Whatever narrative existed about people living outside, (that they were lazy or using drugs, that it was wholly their fault they were on the street, etc.) I wondered if seeing a library patron holding a book of poetry or say, a novel by Thomas Pynchon, might offer the opportunity to re-think assumptions about people living without shelter. Practically speaking the library has also created opportunities for housed folks to stop through and talk to people who don’t have a fixed address, and some of those conversations are really powerful. We have an annual fall celebration that gathers our library patrons together with the larger housed community for a meal and entertainment and those have also been powerful opportunities for people to talk to one another. Literature and conversation about books have served as a bridge in the Street Books project. Since the very beginning, I’ve never used the term “homeless,” not out of any effort to be politically correct but instead because I felt like the difference between the average library patron and myself was more about access to a house or apartment and a shower. It felt to me that it’s too easy to label a person and discard them, when there is always a more complicated story going on.

 

You’ve been doing Street Books since 2011. What lessons have you learned? What keeps you going?

Man, it’s been such an amazing journey with the Street Books project. So many lessons learned. I think first of all, I’m struck by the resilience and good humor of so many of our library patrons, who face daunting challenges just to survive. I learned early on that if you build something, good people will show up and offer their help and talents. There is no way Street Books would still be in operation if it weren’t for the stellar folks who showed up to be librarians, to volunteer to be on the Board and to help us create a vision going forward. This sense of family in the Street Books team and a solidarity with our library patrons is what keeps me going.

Photo Credit: Christian Science Monitor

If you were to offer one or two pieces of wisdom to someone reading this interview who is thinking of starting their own version of Street Books, what would it be?

I would first tell them that we have a book coming out that touches on this very question! Loaners: The Making of a Street Library is the story of how Street Books came to be, and it documents the friendship between myself and a man named Ben Hodgson who co-writes the book. We met at Skidmore Fountain in 2011 and have been friends ever since. At the time he lived outside in Old Town, but he’s since moved into an apartment and we were able to write a book together that features alternating viewpoints. He is a great writer and I’m glad we were able to capture these stories on the page together. The book features a How-to guide to starting your own street library. More information here:

https://www.perfectdaybooks.com/shop/loaners

I would say that if people are interested in starting their own library, I’d recommend first getting to know their city and what efforts are already being made – sometimes there are solid collaborations that can be created. I’d also emphasize giving folks plenty of space who are living outside – just because I had something to offer didn’t mean they wanted to immediately talk to me or participate. A friendly greeting and curiosity go a long way, but it’s vital that folks are given space and respect. Last thing I’d say is just that it’s important to show up pretty regularly so that people know they can rely on you, so that they have a place to return a book and can check out something new, (one note: during Covid we have stopped with the card/pocket system we were using to reduce contact – now we invite patrons to take a book and have them return it if they’re able, or pass it on to someone who will enjoy it).

 

Street Books targets folks living outside. What have you learned from individuals living without a home?

I’ve been thinking of this a lot because during the pandemic and especially when we were quarantining in our home with our teenagers, we started watching “Alone,” the series about people dropped off in the wilderness (often British Columbia) who have to craft their own shelters and create whatever tools (and food) they can. It struck me that as a culture, we were obsessed with watching people try to survive harsh situations, but when it comes to appreciating the grit and resourcefulness of the folks in the encampment down the block, it’s harder to love the story. I’ve learned that people are tremendously resourceful, despite a system that often fails them from very early in their lives. And I’ve seen the ways people look out for one another when they live outside, extending kindness and assistance despite their own challenges. My biggest takeaway (and this may sound obvious) is that we have a major shortage of affordable housing in Portland and on the west coast. It’s true that there are factors like mental health and addiction that can contribute to a person’s struggles, but our first step should be to ensure that all people have a safe place to call their own.

 

You’re also a college professor at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. How has your experience with Street Books influenced your teaching? And vice versa.

I love teaching and it’s been very cool to combine my work at the university (and sometimes high school level) with the Street Books project. I developed a course called “Writing & Service: Documenting Lives in the City” in which students were able to visit the Street Books library in action and talk to library patrons. Their final assignment asked them to interview and document someone’s story and this led to some compelling conversations and final projects. I remember that a Lewis & Clark student was particularly moved after hearing Ben Hodgson read from an essay about his time living outside (which became part of our book Loaners) and the student said, “Now when I see a woman pushing a shopping cart on the street or a guy setting up a tent, I just keep thinking ‘What if they are as funny and smart as Ben Hodgson?’” And of course, the answer is, they are like Ben Hodgson, (whether or not they are as funny or smart). This student saw people living outside in a new light and he couldn’t set them aside as easily as he may have done before. I had a very talented writing student at Marylhurst University who had fought addiction and overcome challenging circumstances to be able to attend college and he was particularly engaged in the Writing & Service class because he knew the streets very well and he wrote very movingly about those experiences.

 

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Thanks for this opportunity to talk about Street Books and about our new book. This project has taught me to approach people with curiosity and has offered opportunities to extend kindness when I’m able to. The world (and our country) feels extra amplified and harsh right now, and sometimes I think the only thing left for us to do is: Try to be curious and try to be kind.