Bridge Builders: St. Joseph's Day

Recently we celebrated St. Joseph's Day in Rhode Island on March 19th. I took the opportunity to use it as a Bridge Builder with the people in my office.

Being a state with a large Italian Catholic population, the local bakeries and the supermarkets stock a special pastry that can only be found around the holiday called zeppole (zep`-o-lee). Zeppole are kind of like a cream puff, and come in "regular", which is a vanilla flavored type, and "specialty" which are flavors like Irish Cream and Amoretto depending on the creativity of the baker. The bakery up the street from me only sells them the week before St. Jospeh's Day, and they make 10,000 of them! They also make sure that the entire staff is present to wait on the customers, since a long line forms early in the day. I arrived at 6:30 AM and needed to wait a half hour.

What I did was to purchase a dozen of them and bring them to the office. I placed one of these on each person's desk with this note:

Happy Saint Joseph's Day!

Italians in Rhode Island share these pastries to celebrate the holiday. They're called zeppole, and are similar to a cream puff.

I added a piece of clip art showing Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus. As people thanked me for the pastry, they inevitably mentioned something about Joseph, of catechism class, or their time or absence from church, giving me a great opportuinity to talk about Joseph's willingness to serve God no matter what the cost. It opened some doors in a safe way, allowing me to share one more piece of my faith.

While I'm not Catholic, and never have been, this was a great opportunity to use a tradition to build a bridge.