SOUL FOOD:

When Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find,” he did not, I’m sure, have the Freecycle Network squarely in mind.

Nevertheless, every hour of every day, members of local Freecycle groups do seek and find, ask and receive. It works that way because others first offer and give.

In the words of the network’s mission statement, each local group is part of “a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources [and] eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”

That community is now nearly 6 million members strong.

Volunteers in the tens of thousands manage the grass-roots network of groups that span the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, Guam and more than 85 countries. Its motto is “changing the world one gift at a time.”

Eight months ago, I became the 3,242nd member of Freecycle Huntington Beach. I joined to see how it works.

Now I wonder what took me so long. I’d known about the group (dubbed FreecycleHB for short) for four years.

Back then it was known as FreecycleOC. Monique Theriault, a member of Sts. Simon and Jude Catholic Church in Huntington Beach and one of the group’s co-owners and moderators, brought it to my attention.

Shortly after Deron Beale started the first Freecycle group in Tucson, Theriault’s daughter, Angele McQuade, started the Orange County group in 2003, along with another for residents of Ithaca, N.Y., where she lived at the time.

Theriault recites her daughter’s adage: “If you haven’t used it in a year, you’re withholding it from the poor.”

Knowing Theriault as I do, I’d say this is a case of like mother, like daughter.

The Orange County group grew so quickly, McQuade soon asked for help. Her mother, who says volunteerism has “always been part of my vocabulary,” raised her hand. She and Kaci Christian, another member, became moderators, and later co-owners, of the local group.

For the 62-year-old retiree Theriault, volunteering was now part of her daily life.

“I find that Freecycle fits right in with my Christian sense of responsibility toward our earth and care for the poor,” Theriault wrote to me in an e-mail late in 2004, describing how the groups work.

Freecycle groups are members- only. But membership is free.

That which is offered — or asked for — must be tangible, something that will go to good use instead of going to a landfill. Items must also be free, legal and appropriate for all ages — no pornography, no alcohol, no tobacco, no drugs (street or prescription) and no weapons.

Via e-mail, members offer belongings they no longer need or use to the group. Members who want or need an item offered then request it — also by e-mail.

Or, members can make requests for things they need but don’t have and — in many cases — can’t, or find hard to, afford. Say clothing, cookware or an appliance.

If other members have an item sought and want to give it away, they respond to the request. Recipients privately arrange to pick up items from those who offer them.

The Freecycle Network website (freecycle.org) puts it like this: It’s a place to give what you have and don’t want or to receive what you need and don’t have.

It is not, says the website, “a place to just go get free stuff for nothing.” Even its aid to those in need remains, in a sense, a byproduct of its mission.

“Giving to the poor is not really part of the Freecycle lexicon,” says Theriault. “[Yet] we do really end up helping a lot of disadvantaged people, especially in this distressed economy. So many members, upon joining, admit to really struggling financially.”

I discovered that when I first offered some of my no-longer-needed belongings to the group late last year. I had a few small appliances, sports equipment and pieces of furniture.

Mostly, I had clothing to give. Some no longer fit me after I lost 20 pounds. Some trendier, designer pieces, purchased for my nieces at Tori Spelling’s garage sale last year, didn’t fit them.

In response to what I offered, I often got stories of personal hardship. There was the young woman whose family was financially ruined by a serious illness.

College graduates with loan debt and no jobs struggled to furnish their first apartment. A newly single mother of several children was searching for new ways to provide for them.

Three young roommates working minimum-wage jobs tried to make their paychecks go as far as they could, sharing one car, pooling groceries and taking shifts watching “offer” messages posted to the FreecycleHB group.

I replied to offers of homegrown fruit and herbs. Whether giving or receiving I sometimes made friends and also heard happier stories.

Just last week, I picked up geranium cuttings from Bev Lowe, who lives scarcely around the corner from me in Huntington. Yet without the Freecycle group, we likely would never have met.

Lowe’s daughter, who is now 34, had rooted one pink geranium with the help of her teacher when she was in the first grade. She gave it to Lowe for Mother’s Day.

“To think my flowers will be growing in other’s yards, just like you give a plant start to your neighbor,” Lowe said. “Well, this neighborhood is just a little bigger.”

It’s bigger because of the FreecycleHB group. By 2005, FreecycleOC had grown to more than 5,000 members.

To keep it manageable and effective, it was subdivided into nine city groups. Theriault became co-moderator and co-owner of FreecycleHB along with Jennifer “Phish” Ardinger, who first found the group through an e-mail list for Lava Lamp collectors.

She got hooked on helping to keep things out of the landfill. A Dianic Wiccan, neo-pagan, the 35-year-old Huntington Beach resident says, “My spiritual path is earth-based, and being environmentally conscious and working locally to help global issues fits me very well.”

Others, too, often discover a spiritual aspect to participating in the Freecycle group. In a couple of weeks, I’ll share some of those stories with you.

Meanwhile, to learn more about Freecycle Huntington Beach, or to join, go togroups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleHB.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].