At the High Street Food Pantry, it is common for volunteers to hear stories about unemployment benefits running out, chronic illness, an apartment sewage system inadequately repaired, schools that don’t help a mentally challenged young adult.

We give out food, purchased at 16 cents per pound or free from the Good Shepherd Food-Bank. That system works. Our church, plus St. Michael’s Episcopal, West Auburn Congregational and United Methodist, buy food for the pantry. We distribute it free on Thursday mornings to 35 or 40 families.

But it is the real-life stories told as we distribute the food that give purpose and pain to our mission. People do not tell their stories to hurt us or to dramatize their need for food. The stories just come out as we chat and fill the plastic bags.

There was the woman with seven foster kids who had just been “given” her eighth. OK for eight? she asked. In her records, (yes, we keep records), she had previously requested food for seven. Yes, we said, the eighth child can be fed, too.

When politicians talk about reducing benefits to poor people; when legislators argue about extending tax cuts to wealthy people; when I learn how few Mainers have an education and hear again that school budgets must be reduced, I think of our food pantry people.

I am trying to speak for them.

Sarah Andersen Lawrence, Greene