Despictable Charity

The food banks in our cities and towns are increasingly called upon by those who have become unemployed, by single mothers, by the working poor, to help them in their time of need. They are separate and aside from the hundreds of homeless wandering the streets this cruel winter, seeking comfort over an outside grate, under bridges, huddling for warmth under anything that might protect them from the searing cold and falling snow.

Every community now has a food bank, where those who have, give to those in dire want. People from within the community who recall, from time to time, that there are others out there in need, and they respond by sending the occasional cheque, thus assuaging conscience, and thanking their good fortune not to have been assailed by that kind of sad fortune. And when food drives take place, they deposit foodstuffs.

Supermarkets also help, many of them setting out wire cages where shoppers may deposit non-perishables which accumulate there for pick-up by volunteers working on behalf of the food banks. And, it's possible that when the local newspaper or the local service club or an area school launches a food drive, that people rummage through their pantries for items to surrender to the drive.

It's entirely possible that people welcome an opportunity like this to clean their shelves out of food items that no longer interest them, that were purchased at one time and were never used. And, in the process, have become stale-dated beyond imagining or even notice. So that volunteers at the food bank handing out foodstuffs to their clients hand over a non-perishable item that is over a decade old.

It doesn't take all that much thought to remember that nothing differentiates the need of those in desperate straits having to turn to the good auspices of their community food bank, from their own needs. If a food item is considered not fit for one's own consumption, it stands to reason it should not be passed on to be handed over to people in need.

To harbour the opinion, a truly degraded one, that 'beggars need not be choosers' is to betray an uncharitable, miserable, cranky mindset. Expired goods should be disposed of and never thought to be 'good enough' for those whom good fortune has eluded. People who think they're being neighbourly and charitable by providing stale food items for others by passing on 'best-befores' badly outdated are deluding themselves.

They are, in fact, brutally uncaring for the welfare of others. Those others whom fortune has bypassed, however temporarily, and who need and deserve the civil consideration that society should and does direct toward them.