One of the great heroes of the AIDS Crisis in New York City died this year, 2021. Ganga Stone was the founder of the city’s well regarded meal delivery organization, God’s Love We Deliver (GLWD); a secular organization despite its name.

Pilgrimage to India

She was born Ingrid Hedley Stone in 1941 in the city. Of mixed heritage, her father was a Jewish immigrant from Warsaw, Poland and her mother’s parents were Norwegian Lutheran immigrants. Well educated but working odd jobs, she became a spiritual seeker who took a 2-year retreat at an ashram in India. That’s where she got her name when Swami Muktananda named her for the Ganges River. It suited so well that later some of her GLWD clients came to call her St. Ganga.

Called to Serve

Back in New York, she was selling coffee from a cart on Wall Street and volunteering at Cabrini Hospice when she discovered her vocation. She was asked to deliver a bag of groceries to an AIDS patient who was too sick to open a can of beans. Because he needed a meal she arranged for some friends to cook for him, then made her first delivery on her bicycle. With her roommate, Jane Best, they began delivering a few meals daily by bicycle. God’s Love We Deliver took off from there, with support coming from religious groups, government agencies and celebrities. This year the organization, with a $23 million budget, hopes to deliver 2.5 million meals to 10,000 New Yorkers with a variety of illnesses, disabilities and backgrounds.

Mindful of Self / Mindful of Others

Speaking about her personal spiritual commitments she said, “My sense of my own role in life was to share with people what I know about the deathless nature of the human self.” Also mindful of others, she added: “But you can’t comfort people who haven’t eaten.”

She is featured without an apron at right in the photo.

Sources: GLWD, Wikipedia, Daily Office Radio