The Mystic Christian Reader

Photo from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

For Thanksgiving this year, my wife, four friends, and myself decided to expand our sense of thankfulness, or sense of community, and get out of our comfort zone. After a small meal together in the afternoon, we spent the evening feeding the poor in front of the Salvation Army and the alley behind Loaves and Fishes Shelter in Sacramento. My wife and I prepared for this by going to Safeway and buying enough bread, lunchmeat, and sliced cheese to make 60'ish sandwiches. Our friends Neal and Penelope made a huge pot of potato soup. The effort, for us, was twofold.

First, it was an exercise in extending our sense of who we included in our definition of "community." For many people, community is their family, their school or work friends, members of their church or spiritual group, and for some, their neighbors. While the poor and homeless are a visible part of our urban landscape, most wouldn't consider these people a part of the "community." We have a sense that community means those we socialize with, those who vote, those who make "positive contributions" to the economy of our city. I too, was paralyzed by these closed concepts of community. While I am aware of the homeless in our neighborhood, and sometimes give food or money to those who live near the shopping center where we work, I hadn't given that much thought to their part in the community. While I gave them money or food, I never really placed myself in a situation where I would be forced to recognize these people as people... as a part of my community. Until Thanksgiving.

As we handed out the food, Penelope led the way in getting us to break down the barriers still separating us from the people who were right there in front of us, out in the cool Sacramento night. She dove in, and used the food as a opening, for dialogue, and for her heart and mind. She began to probe them, engage them in questions about their lives, their friends, their feeling of community. As I listened, I began to see what community really is, and how intimately we are all connected to one another.

At the Salvation Army, Nicole began talking to a guy in a wheelchair who had separated himself from the group, who were waiting in line for a free movie which was going to be shown later in the evening. His leg was held upright and straight in a brace, and he said that he'd already had one surgery on his knee, and was waiting on a second surgery, which he hoped would come before Christmas. He said he was a truck driver, and that since his injury prevented him from driving, he was forced to live on the streets till he could work again. He also said "I'll NEVER go without medical insurance AGAIN!" This was a pretty normal fellow. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't crazy or a drug addict. He was just a regular guy; a guy that had a piece of bad luck and was now stuck. What struck me about him was his sense that he was a "short-timer." He didn't plan on being there long, and sincerely felt that he'd be back on his feet (both literally and figuratively) before the year was out. Talking to this man made me realize how close to this life so many people are. If something were to happen to me that prevented me from working, I could very well be right were he is.

The other lesson gained from this experience was realizing the preciousness of my ability to choose what kinds of food I eat. I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan. I found myself laughing at how buying ten pounds of cold cuts and a tub of mayonnaise must have thrown off my Safeway Club Card customer profile (and they thought they had me all figured out). Handling meat is not something I'm keen on, but it made me appreciate my power of choice. I don't consider myself wealthy by most American standards. I'm working-class. I have a "white collar" job, but make "blue collar" wages, and don't drive anything near a new car. But, I can choose to be vegetarian, and even vegan! That's not just a choice toward health (as I usually see it), but also a choice toward cutting out the staples of caloricly dense foods. Top that off with my usual abstinence from bread, and I've pretty much eliminated the majority of Americans' caloric intake. What is left are expensive, nutrient-dense (but caloricly light) foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables (organic if we can afford them), meat alternatives such as Seitan and Tofu, and filtered water. All these things I take for granted, but being able to choose and afford a diet such as this puts me in a very exclusive club! I have SO MUCH to be thankful for.

So, I started off talking about our Thanksgiving trip to feed the poor and ended up talking about my own diet. What's the point? The point is that while we were supposedly serving others, it seemed that the ones doing the serving were given an enormous gift in return. Being out there in the cool night air, sharing the company of those I would've never had the opportunity to meet otherwise, I felt so blissful. It wasn't a sense of self-righteousness, or of pride. It was a feeling that THIS was what human beings were put on the earth to do... To Love and Serve each other.

So, I advise all who read this to take an opportunity to serve those in your community who have no place to live and no consistent source of nutrition. I KNOW, I KNOW. You can't afford it. What little you could do wouldn't really make a dent in the problem. The truth is, if you can afford to take your family out to dinner and to a movie once in a while, if you can afford to lavish each other with gifts on Christmas, then you can afford an experience like this now and again. We plan on doing this more often, and at a time OTHER than Thanksgiving, as all the people we talked to had eaten pretty well in the days leading up to that one. They were most grateful for our chicken sandwiches, as they said they couldn't possibly eat more turkey! We spent a total of about $75, and with it, we were able to give a sandwich to every single person we met who wanted one (some even got two). Perhaps this didn't put even "a tiny dent in the problem," but for us, it was $75 very well spent on an amazing experience in unconditional love and gratitude.