Care Pax -- Creative Service at its Finest
What do a small, Catholic bookstore,
an inner city Episcopal church, a suburban Buddhist temple, a reform Jewish synagogue and a Muslim community center have in common?
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Care for their neighbors - that's what.
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A program created by Song and Spirit Institute for Peace in Berkley, Michigan, called CarePax has each of these institutions agreeing to host a CarePax barrel. Each barrel contains at least 35 individually-packaged CarePax, which include a warm hat, gloves, hand and toe warmers, a pair of new socks, a snack and a list of metro Detroit area resources for the needy and homeless in the region. At locations around Detroit, you can pick up one of these and then offer it to a homeless person you see or someone holding a sign asking for help.
Items that fill the CarePax are donated by diverse individuals and groups throughout the Detroit area. Many of the warm items - including hats and scarves - have been made by hand. HatPax is one such item. This pattern for a simple, sewn fleece hat has been picked up by creative sewers all over town. Some people work on their own with scraps of fleece they have lying around. Others gather in groups, pool resources and make dozens of hats in one sitting!
A group from Troy, Michigan, has gotten together twice to make HatPax. The first time they had a group of about ten friends, scissors, patterns, multiple sewing machines and a mound of bright-colored fleece. That first session provided more than 40 hats in one evening and everyone had a grand time. When one of the group members brought the hats over to the Outreach room at Song and Spirit, they noticed that there were big gaps on the shelves that held the dark colored hats and asked Brother Al the reason for that.
“Well,” he replied, “A lot of people who live on the street - or even just spend a lot of time walking around the streets at all hours - don't want to call attention to themselves. When we go to a shelter or do outreach directly to folks on the streets, we've discovered that - when given a choice - the majority choose darker colors like grey, black, brown, navy, or camouflage patterns. They seem to want to blend into their surroundings. It's a safety issue.”
The next time the group got together they had the same great time - making over 50 hats in the dark colors they now KNEW were most needed by the people they would serve! It was as if - somehow - knowing a little more about what the recipient really would like or would choose for themselves, was a great motivator for these creative volunteers.
Brother Al says they are currently working on changing out the CarePax for Spring and Summer to include different items to coincide with the weather. These would include things such as rain ponchos, baseball caps, moist towelettes, chapstik and the other non-weather related items.
For more information contact Song & Spirit Institute for Peace.
To download the pattern to make the hats visit HatPax.
Bro. Al Mascia, OFM, is a Franciscan Friar of the St. John the Baptist Province. The Franciscan heritage is a veritable treasure trove of poetic, imaginative and lyrical ways of preaching and living the Gospel. As Brother Al travels from place to place singing old melodies as well as his own story-songs, he has the joy of ministering as did his Franciscan ancestors of old when they went about as ioculatores Domini, or minstrels of God! In this way, he stays wonderfully connected to an ancient spiritual narrative. Brother Al is currently in residence at the newly re-established Duns Scotus Friary at the Song and Spirit Institute for Peace.
