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Looking For Flowers In The Dumpster
May 17, 2007
I am still running the Center for the Working Poor
(aka the Burning Bush Community), delivering food to families of the
working poor, writing and speaking about issues of poverty, and
supporting local living wage and immigrant rights campaigns. In the last
seven months, there have been some big changes at “the Center.” Then
again, the whole journey thus far has been a whirlwind. It was just a
year and half ago that I left my professional career at a labor union
(running boycotts and organizing workers), donated my money to the
common good, and started living in voluntary poverty. The result was the
start of this intentional community, based on Gandhian principles and
the lessons of the Catholic Worker movement. Shortly thereafter a new
immigrant rights movement erupted, opening the minds and hearts of the
union leadership to a vision of bigger protests for living wages.
Finally, some of my dreams of massive non-violent civil disobedience
were actualized. Only a few weeks later a good friend of mine flew me to
her wedding in India. It was an honor and an adventure, and I could not
have anticipated what all it would involve. In the end, I talked with
the Tibetan prime minster in exile. Two months later, I was back in LA.
We moved into a larger house of hospitality to accommodate our growing
community. We serve a growing number of families that have been fired
from their jobs for being whistle-blowers of one sort or another. All this kept us very busy. But the biggest change
for our community has come from the trash. We started collecting from
grocery store dumpsters, and now we have more incredible food than we
can eat. If you are willing, we will share it with you. Until recently, I sustained myself on a diet of
primarily rice, beans, and spinach. I was touched when people wrote to
me to express concern about my diet. When an older couple sent me 20
dollars a month with the expressed wish to expand my diet, it felt like
my grandmother lovingly scolding me. Well, they don’t have to worry
anymore. My life has been transformed by a harvest of food from the
trash. I am serious when I say that 95 percent of all the food I eat now
comes from the trash. Once a week we go to dumpsters at a few, mostly
organic gourmet grocery stores. Having eaten rice and beans every day
for so long, the first time I went to the dumpsters I was eager to
expand my diet to include bread and more vegetables. I had modest
expectations. They were wildly exceeded. In just matter of hours
we had crates and crates of food. More than just a wide variety of
vegetables, we found tons of gourmet food: Crates of breads pastries,
pies, vegetables—even expensive vegetables like eggplant and
portabella mushrooms—plus cheese and tofu eggless salad. Last but not
least, we found endless amounts of frozen fruit; soon I would have the
makings to fuel a full-on smoothie addiction. I know many of you must be thinking that this stuff
is repulsive. You’d be surprised. Our society’s system is so
wasteful. The globalization of our food supply, combined with the rise
of processed food, has created a system where food is wasted at every
level. So much of it is perfectly good by any reasonable standard. Take,
for example, Trader Joe’s (a gourmet grocery chain, also known as
dumpster diver heaven). This chain processes and pre-packages everything
in saran wrapped packages--everything from sandwiches to fresh fruit and
vegetables. If it is not selling fast enough, taking up too much space
on the shelves, or, God forbid, is approaching too near the expiration
date, the food gets tossed. For us to pick up the mostly air-tight
containers, then wash and inspect anything we want to throw into our
fridge, is easy as can be. There is nothing better for the environment
than dumpster food. Instead of consuming a massive amount of energy to
produce more unneeded food, we are instead eating the discarded excess
of the system. We are like environmentally friendly, human-sized
bacteria processing some of the waste produced in putting food on
America’s tables. I’m not such a picky eater by nature. But it
feels all right to be choosy when I am saving food from the trash. These
days I am a dumpster snob. I want more than carefully packaged whole
grain bread, pomegranate juice, and flourless chocolate cake. That stuff
is easy to find. These days, I want pretty flowers. To my amazement, the
dumpsters will provide an occasional score of cut flowers--dozens of
bouquets with only a few bent flowers in the bunch that apparently make
them unfit for sale. In a short time, I cultivated a bourgie interest in
arranging flowers around our house, and on a few occasions I have been
able to surprise the families we serve with beautiful bouquets. I cannot
tell you how much having so many flowers around—not to mention an
infinite supply of gourmet organic food from the dumpster--has changed
my life. I am constantly cooking, eating, and organizing big dinners. We
always advertise: “food fresh from the dumpsters.”
Going
to India
Soon after the major civil disobedience I helped to organize on
September 28th, a good friend asked if I would go to her
wedding in India.
Aware that I did not have any money, she offered to fly me there,
making use of her immense accumulation of airline miles from her
corporate job. I realized that this trip might seem like a total
contradiction to me living in supposed “voluntary poverty.” Her
offer provoked me to reflect on the nature of voluntary poverty in the
light of my new life. “Voluntary Poverty” has
given me a nice (although crowded) communal house, tons of gourmet
food, flowers from the dumpster, and, last but not least, “a free
trip to India.”
True, voluntary poverty is an act of profound renunciation. It means
letting go of our will, our plans, and our ideas —even our survival
instinct to do as Jesus said when he told us, “do not store
treasures here on earth.” But in doing this we receive the grace of
God; we enter into the abundance of his kingdom, which is expressed in
a beloved community of sharing and in countless acts of spontaneous
generosity.
Imagine that in the heat of the moment you donate your brand new 2007
Ferrari Testerrosa to charity. It’s a great feeling, but
you soon find yourself stuck on the side of the road. But if you keep
your eyes, ears, and heart open, you’ll probably soon hear a whistle
blowing—it’s God’s train coming around the bend, and this is
your chance to jump on board. We often cry like little babies because
God’s train leaves at weird hours or doesn’t go where we want it
to. But boy it is sure a fun and wild ride, and it will take you
places the Ferrari never could.
One of the most horrible aspects of the involuntary poverty of the
workers we serve as compared with our voluntary poverty, is the
horrible immobility that confines them physically and psychological to
urban ghettos. In contrast, within my voluntary
poverty I have found a strange new freedom. This confirms that
experience of the early Christians and Franciscans who took seriously
Jesus’ explicit order to his disciples to travel far to serve
“without payment” as well as “take no gold. . . in your belts,
no bag for your journey, or (even) two tunics. . .” It
was their willingness to own nothing and ride God’s train that made
it possible for them to spread their beloved community all over the
globe. In fact, Saint
Francis made many international trips. These included his
famous effort to single handedly end the world war of his time by
making himself a human kamikaze bomb of pure love headed for the
Muslim Sultan in midst of the Crusades. As for me, the freedom still
feels scary. My faith remains so limited. I sometimes find it hard to
be at any peace when my bank statements show that my community will go
bankrupt in 10 months. However, spending some time in prayer, I
discerned that this was all part of God calling me to jump on his
train.
When I accepted April’s invitation to attend her wedding and
departed on my travels, I was still committed to living on only the
$200 monthly stipend that each volunteer living at the Center
receives. But when I arrived in India,
this turned out to be a fortune. April was marrying into an amazing
Indian family. Because April career had moved her all over the
country, I was one of her only friends from Iowa
(where we grew up) to meet her Indian family. She was so excited to
have some old friends to represent her in what would be a small Iowan
cultural delegation amid the hundreds of Indians that would show up to
the wedding. I was literally and figuratively
adopted by April’s in-laws in India.
I lived and ate with them, and I ceremonially played the role of
April’s older brother at the wedding service. I sincerely love
April, her husband Bunny, and their Indian family. The hospitality
they offered was deeply touching. At times, I wanted to cry because I
was so grateful to receive their hospitality. It truly felt like an
expression of God’s grace.
Visiting Samdhong Rinpoche
I arrived in India
3 weeks before the weeding, so I decided to go to Dharamsala, a place
renown as a center of spiritual practice. It is home to dozens of
prominent monasteries of different religious traditions including the
Dali Lama’s. It is also the home of the Tibetan government-in-exile
and the Tibetan freedom movement. I rented a room at a Tibetan
Buddhist Monastery and settled into a strict early morning schedule of
long hours of meditation, broken up by a late afternoon visit to the
cafés. Although I consider myself a contemplative Catholic, I went to
India
expecting immersion in my religious practice; I pictured myself
mediating for weeks, sitting half naked on a mountain top next to
long-haired swami. But instead, I was surprised to find myself being
born once again into the life of a political non-violent warrior,
spending hours at loud bars drinking Tibetan butter tea talking
strategy all night with a dozen young activists who had just gotten
out of jail after serving two-week sentences for protesting the visit
of a Chinese official to India.
Because my college had an exchange program with a Tibetan
university, I knew a few Tibetan activists. Owing to these contacts, I
was quickly adopted into their scene in Dharamsala. It was amazing to
be half a world away from Los
Angeles, thinking “these people are just like me.” But
there was one person that I had impractically dreamed of meeting:
the Venerable Samdhong
Rinpoche.
As you may know, I am a Gandhi nut. I read Gandhi’s work as often as
I’m able. In India,
he has become such a cultural icon that almost all politicians claim
Gandhi as their own. Yet few share Samdhong
Rinpoche's dedication to Gandhian ideas, which, if followed
with dedication, will leave you poor and might just get you killed.
A word about Samdhong Rinpoche.
Maybe my admiration is a bit naive, but I feel like a screaming girl
at a Beatles concert when it comes this guy. Why? Well, he is one of
the most prominent Gandhian scholars alive, having written and spoken
widely about nonviolence. He is a high-level incarnate Lama and very
respected religious leader in Tibet, and many suspect the Dali Lama is
grooming him to replace him in his politically role after his death.
But what I love is that he is an amazing political radical, regularly
challenging Tibetans to maintain their non-violent resistance and
their spirituality. He has advocated going to non-violent war with the
Chinese government and has volunteered to be the first to sacrifice
himself as a human kamikaze bomb of pure love to likely death at the
hands of the authorities in order to create massive non-violent
protest in China.
In other words, this guy is hard core.
Before he started forming his “non-violent army,” which was to be
made up primarily of monks, the overwhelming majority of people in the
Tibetan community voted for him to be their highest elected political
leader: the prime minister in exile. He now is responsible for all the
schools, cooperatives, and institutions of the Tibetan government in
exile, and he runs them with open dedication to doing so as Gandhi
professed.
A few activists I knew put in a good word for me, so I could get a
meeting with him. Just as I had dreamed, a week later, we were sitting
together in his office and having an intense conversation about
non-violence, Satyagraha, and his vision of a non-violent army.
For so long my own visions of a nonviolent army kept me up at night,
got me in lots of trouble in my professional career, and gave me a
sort of “crazy Paul” reputation. This developed an insecurity
within me, a kind of dam around my heart. Sitting in the presence of
such a wise and respected man, listening to him share a non-violent
vision almost identical to mine, I felt that insecurity washing away
at long last. I know now that it might take years, or decades, to
realize this shared vision of non-violence, for which the. The Center
of Working Poor is a vehicle. But I believe that God has put me here
to make my humble contribution to making a vision
of a community of non-violence and love a reality. For so long I have
been wondering alone for this place of my dreams. But I have faith
that, although the pathways may be long and windy, this place is a
sure destination on God’s train.
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About the Burning Bush: Center for the Working Poor We are an interfaith intentional community in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement that specialize in addressing the issues of the working poor. Our goal is to provide a variety of services and advocacy in solidarity with the working poor. We live in voluntary poverty and publish a monthly newspaper to educate people of faith about the causes and remedies of poverty. We are urgently looking for help, prayers, donations, and volunteers. Send a donations or comments to 820 Laveta Terr. Apt. 5 LA, CA 90026 Contact Us |
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