I celebrated a milestone birthday on February 2. My birthday
tradition has been to go to my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas and serve food at
LINK (Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen) which serves the homeless
community as well as the working poor. My friend Greg is the coordinator of
this facility. Once in high school he teased me so relentlessly about my haircut
that I was practically cloaked in self-consciousness until it grew out. Before we began serving food on Saturday he
announced my birthday and age to the community, clearly little about him has
changed. However, there is something incredibly humbling about having the
homeless community sing happy birthday to you as they stand in a huge circle
with the kitchen staff holding hands. My
birthday tradition is not my charitable act for the year nor is really an act
of kindness on my part. I don’t help to prepare the meals and sometimes I don’t
even help clean afterward. I participate because I need to remember who I am.
The Lawrence community is a sort of an oasis of liberalism
in the red state of Kansas. Early settlers came from New England to get an
anti-slavery foothold on what was then new territory. The people of the nearby
state of Missouri wanted Kansas to be a slave state and because Lawrence was
the headquarters for the Free State party the area became a hotbed of
bloodshed. In 1864 Lawrence, Kansas became the home of the first university in
the Free State. It is because of this strong historical foundation of liberty
and equality that Lawrence maintains its liberal environment. LINK is able to provide
meals 4 days a week almost entirely with the help of volunteer workers and food
donations provided by the Lawrence community. Another Lawrence organization,
The Jubilee Café provides some meals on opposite days.
LINK hosts some community characters that warm my heart.
There is a man who might be 35 or could be 45. His face is a bit weathered by
the elements. When he smiles, which is often, his face is covered in beautiful,
craggy, lines. On Saturday he wore bright pink culottes but on occasion I have
seen him wear the sort of blue coverall that one might see worn by a garage
mechanic. He normally pushes a stroller with a large baby doll or sometimes pushes
a shopping cart carrying a manikin that he call’s Cheryl sporting a sorority
tee shirt and Jayhawk sweatpants. Although he is sometimes the victim of cruel
jokes played by college kids, Cheryl was recently kidnapped and held ransom,
the Lawrence community is a safe place for him.
The first time I served at LINK I was surprised to see that
some meal recipients were very much not what I expected. One recipient in
particular wore a clean, black logod polo type shirt and khaki pants. His blond hair
and sweet smile make it seem that he might have just popped in for lunch from
an IT job. However, the third and fourth time I saw him he was wearing what was
apparently the same khaki pants and black polo. Some of the recipients are what one would imagine. Their
dull eyes indicate a complete loss of hope, their fingers are stained yellow
and their clothes threadbare. One woman was clean and well groomed, her skin
and hair healthy but completely toothless and without any prosthetic teeth to
conceal that fact. Dentistry for the uninsured usually results in the removal
of teeth that might otherwise be treated.
I suppose that the most difficult to see are children who
don’t make eye contact as they choose their entrée. They are old enough to know
the social stigma of eating at a “soup kitchen” but hungry enough to find the
warm food appealing and experienced enough to know that this could be their
only meal of the day. I watched as those who served with me coaxed them using
warm smiles to have some vegetables, some bread or two desserts. I try to
imagine my own children’s faces in the same situation.
This morning as I clean out my refrigerator, I have an
awareness of the waste. I scrape the remains of last week’s fish into the
garbage, I find berries covered in a moldy fuzz in my produce drawer that were
purchased weeks ago and forgotten. I guiltily tip them into the trash and toss
their plastic container into recycling. I am surrounded by abundance, an
abundance of love, of my basic needs, I have a warm house, a car, health
insurance, a job that I love and that allows me to work from home and greet my
children as they return home school. My children don’t have to take their meals
with their eyes downcast, embarrassed to ask for just a “bit more”.
My birthday tradition helps me to remember what I think the
early Lawrence, Kansas Settlers knew when they chose the life of abolitionists. I
believe that they knew that regardless of our geography, our skin color or our
place in life, we are all connected and we are all one. I want to remember that
I am the man with the manikin named, “Cheryl”. I am the young woman with no
teeth, I am the man with dull eyes who self-medicates with alcohol to numb out
the pain, I am the single mother who sells sexual favors to make ends meet, my
child is the hungry child who is embarrassed and uncomfortable. I don’t want to
forget that.
