My Single Mom Life

This weeks topic is:

The charitable cause that is dearest to my heart…
I don't have just one. I am often reading up on various medical conditions like MS, spina bifida, and scoliosis. I donate money to all of these causes when I see requests for donations, and I have donated my time and DNA samples to help for finding a cure for scoliosis. I have no idea if they will find that cure, but they have pinpointed the genetic markers that cause it. That's a step in the right direction.

The one charity that I always give to is the Salvation Army.
Unlike most churches, the SA is the only one that consistently gives back to it's own communities.
The church leaders don't live in huge houses and drive nice cars, the churches don't expand and get gold plated pews and bibles, they take the money that they get in every single week at services, and give it back to the people where they are located in many ways. Homeless shelters, food pantrys, clothes closets and job training. They help people pay utility bills, buy their medications, pay rent, and give out food vouchers. They also do a toy drive at Christmas for needy children.
It is the only one that always gives back, and the workers work tirelessly to make sure they have helped every single person that comes through their door day in and day out.

My sister and I were just talking about this the other night on the phone.
We both found it funny that here we are, atheists, who think the best charitable organization is a church.
It is the church we grew up in, it's the church neither of us ever want to step foot into again, but it's the only one that we both donate money to without question.
The Salvation Army is just that, an army. They wear military style uniforms, their church flag is the fire and the blood, they are very organized yet, they never stood on the pulpit on Sunday mornings preaching hatred of any kind.
They never discussed gays in a bad way, I don't ever recall them discussing it at all. They had no problem with women as church leaders, in fact they encouraged it.
They never turned any one away. It didn't matter how you came dressed to Sunday service, no matter where you were in your life, rich, poor, down on your luck, drunk, they were always glad to have you there. They would shake your hand and smile, welcome you in. They didn't pressure you into giving tithes, it was if you could. If you ended up needing something, they made sure that when you left, you had it.

I remember a Christmas when a local families house burned down, and the church opened it's doors in the middle of the night within minutes of hearing about the families total loss. They brought the family there, gave them one of the church houses to stay in on church property. Fed them, clothed them, and then called upon their flock to help out.
In the middle of the night, all of us kids donated some of our unopened Christmas presents to this family, my mom started baking immediately, closets were dug through for coats and clothes for the kids.
The whole church community did this. The church was packed with it's congregation bringing in whatever they had to help out this family who just lost every thing.

It's funny to me how much I've turned against the idiocy that I feel the bible is, how much I despise it's words and it's hell to those who don't believe, but how much this act of giving whatever you had stayed with me.
This is something I have passed onto my sons. Whenever we see those red kettles, we dig out change and bills and give it. I know the good this church does and I support it.
I support their work, but not the religion that started it.