By Mary DeTurris Poust
For one morning 15 years ago, I was privileged to serve alongside the woman featured in the video clip above. It was Thanksgiving 1995, the first major holiday Dennis and I would spend together as a married couple. We had moved to Austin, Texas, only a few months before and decided that since we wouldn't be at any big family celebrations, we'd try to do something for someone else. So we contacted the woman known around town as "The Egg Lady" and offered to help her distribute tortillas and hard-boiled eggs to hungry men and women on Thanksgiving morning down at the day labor corner.
Lynn -- “The Egg Lady” -- founded the Catholic Worker House in Austin, and she was out there with her eggs and tortillas and hot coffee not just on Thanksgiving but every day of the year. She drove homeless people to AA meetings, let them shower at her house, gave them clothes and offered them prayers. She reached out a hand where many would recoil in fear. She told us how one man she’d been helping stole her car. She said it without a hint of anger, without an ounce of regret. Then she boiled more eggs and went back out to the streets. What a powerful witness to what it means to live the Gospel in the radical fashion that Jesus challenges us to embrace. I am in awe of those who willingly take on that challenge not for a few hours once a year but for a lifetime.
This post is a thank you to all those men and women who will spend their Thanksgiving serving the homeless, the hungry, the forgotten. Your example is inspiring and humbling.
Please take a few minutes to watch the clip and catch a glimpse of true saintliness in our midst. Then use the comment section to tell us about the people who inspire you through their example of love and service.
