Food is at the center of Thanksgiving celebrations.

This goes back to ancient harvest festivals as well as, more recently, the American story about European settlers sharing a feast with the indigenous people whose lands they came to occupy.

With the feasting comes gathering and joy.

These days, the problems of the world can overwhelm us. We can feel helpless in trying to make a difference.

We can see images of suffering around the clock from around the globe — all of it, in this digital age, brought literally home. Joy can seem out of reach.

I was recently in sort of a numbed stupor, scrolling through my email and reading one horrifying piece of news after another when I clicked on an email from a local pastor that jolted me awake.

Rev. Eric Reimer, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Altamont, wrote to tell us his church had set up a Free Little Food Pantry in the church’s parking lot on Maple Avenue.

“If you feel you can use an item in the Free Little Pantry, you are welcome to take it,” he wrote. “If you have an item that you feel others could use, you are welcome to place it in the pantry.”

I like this philosophy: Take what you need, give what you can.

I had an item I felt others could use so I went to the pantry — it perches on a post, ready for winter snow — and opened the hooked door to place it inside. The pantry was stocked with non-perishable foods like rice and canned soups and with paper products like toilet tissue.

Reimer told me, while he wasn’t in any way criticizing the Altamont Community Food Pantry or the Guilderland Food Pantry, there is no way they can offer 24-hour access.

Also, people who need food can now get it without making themselves known, he said, explaining that he had previously worked at a parish that ran a food pantry but some patrons disclosed after they trusted him that they could have used the food earlier but hesitated to make their need known.

With the Free Little Food Pantry, Reimer said, “No one will know if you are dropping food off or picking food up.”

I took a picture of the little pantry to publish in The Enterprise and felt light as I walked back to the newsroom in the crisp fall air.

Although I enjoy using the Free Little Library on Maple Avenue across the street from the church, I had never heard of a Free Little Food Pantry.

Back at my computer, I found a Washington Post story on the founder of the Free Little Food Pantry movement — yes, it’s a movement — Jessica McClard. She set up the first pantry outside her church in Fayetteville, Arkansas on May 12, 2016.

“There was something going on... and it seemed to have something to do with a need to reconnect with our neighbors,” McClard told The Post. “It wasn’t so much about what went inside the space as the space itself — and I just knew I was going to put food in it. I was determined to do it.”

Seven years later, it’s a world movement with its own website, displaying galleries of pictures showing little pantries across the country and around the world. I liked the guiding principles it lists and believe they could apply to many things in life:

— We work together, as together we can create something big from something “little”;

— We challenge assumptions, as we are interdependent;

— We practice radical trust, as we are inherently trustworthy;

— We feed neighbors, as we mutually benefit;

— We nourish neighborhoods, as our neighborhoods can make good change from the bottom up.

I also liked the prominently displayed quotation from Dr. Jane Goodall: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Last March, we wrote at length when New York’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, released a report saying that about 1 in 10, or about 800,000, New York households experienced food insecurity at some point between 2019 and 2021.

“Federal aid helped New Yorkers put food on the table during the pandemic, but some relief programs are ending as inflation and other pressures are pushing household budgets to their limit,” DiNapoli said as he released his report. “With all the challenges people are facing during these difficult times, we should ensure New Yorkers don’t go hungry. Our nation’s nutrition programs should be expanded to help those who are struggling to feed themselves and their families.”

He called for the expansion of federal programs to feed those in need and for state agencies to improve access to those programs. He also called for renewing the federal Child Tax Credit expansion, which reduced poverty — all of which we supported on this page.

The Enterprise has also covered the heroic efforts of our local food pantries to fill the ever-widening gap and opined as well on this page of the need to address the problem at its root — providing training and jobs to equitably pull people out of poverty.

Just this past week, we were pleased to report that Albany County is committing $250,000 to help close what County Executive Daniel McCoy called the “meal gap.”

The county’s announcement said that one in 10 people in Albany County is considered food insecure while one in seven children is going to school hungry. There are people in every community in Albany County that face food insecurity, from the Hilltowns, to the suburbs to the cities, it said. Sadly, we know this to be true.

Albany County’s numbers for food insecurity are roughly in line with state and national averages. New York state, for 2020 to 2022, had 11.3 percent of its households food insecure compared to a national average of 11.2 percent, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

So, maybe as you read these numbers, you are starting to feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the problem in this, one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world.

That’s where the Free Little Food Pantry comes in — the thought that you can make a difference, even a little one, which in turn can help with a seemingly insurmountable problem while at the same time bringing joy.

The joy we so badly need is not just for those who are receiving but for those who are giving.

On Nov. 14, scientists released an analysis of research from the Big Joy Project, largely out of Berkeley. The researchers found that people who do “micro-acts” promoting joy every day for a week experience a 26-percent increase in well being over the course of that week.

“The micro-acts are inspired by the documentary Mission: JOY: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times, which tells the story of the deep friendship between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu — but they are also supported by scientific research,” says the project description. “The Greater Good Science Center built Big JOY to offer people an actionable platform for increasing happiness within themselves, within each other, and worldwide.”

The ongoing project uses “citizen scientists” to take an online survey and then catalog their daily micro-acts, culminating in another survey to gauge their sense of well being.

The list of seven micro-acts that participants can choose from daily include doing something kind — “Think of people you might see today and list one thing you could do to brighten their day” — and celebrating another’s joy: “Talk to someone today and ask them about a story that made them happy.”

So far, over 22,000 people from over 22 countries have participated in the Big Joy project, the researchers report.

After a week, participants felt their relationships improved by 30 percent, and they similarly felt more in control (34 percent), that positive emotions increased (23 percent), and that they slept better (12 percent).

The researchers admit to the drawback that “the people giving these responses came to Big JOY voluntarily, which usually means that they were interested in and enthusiastic about the topic, which could bias them to report favorably on its impact.”

The work will continue as the researchers compare the effects of different micro-acts and look to see how the effects differ for different people based on personal characteristics, life experiences, and circumstances. Eventually, they plan to set up a control group.

The project is still open to anyone who wants to participate. We’ve made calls on this page for citizen scientists to participate in things like counting fireflies.

This, to us, is even more important. Even if you don’t participate in the study, committing these small acts may make you as well as those around you happier.

One of those micro-acts is perfect for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. “Make a gratitude list: Think, reflect, and list anything you feel grateful about in your life,” the researchers state.

As the Free Little Food Pantry adherents say, together we can create something big from something little as we nourish ourselves by nourishing others.

Let us give it a try in this season of Thanksgiving.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor