05/16/2026
NourishMKE - May 16, 2026
He’s about my age which means that he was about my age long ago when I was a young soldier in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. He was there then, too, as were several people who volunteer here now. He would have been behind the wire though in one of the refugee camps down around the airport just south of that city. We may even have seen each other through that wire.
Those camps were and still are some of the most densely populated and poorly resourced acres on earth. When I think back, I can still remember the smells and sounds of that city at war with itself. People died in those camps every day of treatable diseases, of dysentery, of sepsis, of malnutrition. Those things scar souls.
He volunteers here now. He has for years. He still bears the scars of coming of age in a refugee camp…especially those refugee camps.
He is warm and joyful, but the trauma of extreme poverty and violence is still shoved down into his muscles and bones. Most of us here don’t know what it means to not have enough to the point of starvation. Most of us here don’t know what it’s like to not have access to clean drinking water. Most of us here don’t know what it’s like to watch a child die when there’s a doctor who could prevent it on just the other side of the wire. He does. And though it may have been long ago, his body has not forgotten, even if his rational mind has.
It takes a very long time and a great deal of unconditional love to overcome a person’s scarcity mindset. Fortunately, he is in the right place. This place couldnt be more different than that. Here theres always enough if share. Here, we look after one another. We are each other’s keeper.
Here, he is treated with patience and kindness even if hard things need to be talked about about taking too much or secreting things away. No more rifle butts, billy clubs, and machine gun towers. Ive learned some things since those days long ago. One of those things is that there is always a “why” behind every dysfunctional behavior. And the “why” is almost always trauma. We get that. Our question is not, “Whats wrong with this person?” Our question is always, “What happened here?”
There are many people here who lived their whole lives before this year or this week in refugee camps in Africa and in Asia. They have come here hoping for freedom and a better future. To love them well sometimes means patience. It means laying down our biases and condemnation. They are beautiful and hard-working people in a vicious world that has damaged them in undescribable ways. The food is food, but it’s also the bridge across which we can walk to pour ourselves out on people so they can heal.
None of this is easy. All of this matters. This is our community.
