Friday, May 30, 2014

She's asking for money. What should I do?

In the city you see people begging for money.  The panhandlers.  Some people privileged enough never to have been in that position tell me they're liars that have their social security or veterans check waiting at home.  My uncle says you can tell they aren't poor because their shoes match.  Some people don't believe they are poor and needy.  I'll be honest, I don't know if they are.  Some may be, some may not be.

I'd say the first three months up here in Bean-town I kept ignoring all these people, but then I kept feeling guilty that I kept ignoring people that may be in need.  I've started to make it a point to acknowledge the panhandlers by saying hi, ask how they're doing and start a conversation.

I've seen personally, that a few are drunk, some sober, some have mental illness, some are just down on their luck, some are cheating the system, some just open up and tell you way more than you care to hear.  Most of them say it's embarrasing to beg like that.  Part of it's fun to throw them off by speaking to them, maybe even sitting down beside them, especially if I'm all clean shaven in my tie.  Somehow since they are seeking your attention it feels less awkward to talk to them than someone walking next to you.  But really, my thought is if they're on the street, they probably don't have a good support system, and since they're in Boston they get ignored by billions of people that pass without acknowledging them--most everyone here gets ignored by everyone else.

We're all part of God's body, the absolute least I should do is recognize another member of this body, right?    I'd even say we're called to feed, clothe, and take care of those without.  (Matthew 25 starting at verse 21) Lord when did we see you?..."When you do unto the least of these, you do unto me."

So why not start looking out for our brothers and sisters, especially those publicly claiming they need money?

Here is a story:

Wednesday walking to the train station from work a woman asked me very urgently, "Please tell me you got a quarter or something so I can get this bus"
I said, "I don't have any cash, but I can take you somewhere and buy you something to eat if you want."
"Can you tap me on this bus?  You going to Copley? Meet me at Back Bay." She rattled off as I almost walked away..  The bus pulled up and stopped.  I didn't even see it coming.

I didn't know what was happening, but the bus was going where I was walking, I had money on my bus card so I got on the bus with her, and paid her and myself.

She kept saying "I ain't got a dime to my name.  I just got back from burying my mother and the shelters aren't like they used to be around here."  She kept telling me she had 12 seizures in 7 days, she's been in the hospital for several weeks.  She showed me where she knocked out some teeth during her last seizure.  She's been begging for money but can't get enough to buy her seizure medicine.

I asked where she needed to go to get the medicine, she explained where the CVS was.  I said I'd take her there and pay for it.  She insisted I should just give her money.  I usually feel better buying something directly for someone than giving out cash.  Who knows what they'll spend it on, and the random times you give a beggar some hot Chinese food instead of a quarter, well it's interesting, ask someone if they need some food and go get them some if they do, you'll see--everyone likes food better than dirty old money.

I kept imagining what in the world I'd do if she had a seizure in front of me while I was helping her get to her medicine.  "Lord don't do that to me" I thought and maybe said out loud.

She kept saying she's been asking God to help her for days and nothing's happened. I said I go with her to buy the meds because I just have my card on me.  She said, "really?!" and kept reminding me of her situation and the seizures. I got a word in that I was sorry to hear about her mother, and she started to talk about how much she missed her mom. We found an ATM, she needed $13 for her seizure medicine so I withdrew a $20 and gave it to her.  While I was at the machine she kept pacing around the place saying "thank you Jesus" and offering praise.  She began talking on her phone to someone that seemed to be the pharmacy to see if the prescription was ready and it seemed to be.  She gave me a hug said thank you so much and walked away with my $20. That's a significant chunk of change as a YAV, but hey it's seizure meds and a reasonable meal if she spends it like I hope she does.

Part of my cynicism wonders if she was lying. I wonder if she'll spend it on booze, or other prescription drugs.  But maybe everything she said was true.  Maybe she'll get some seizure medicine and not loose any more teeth and maybe she found a place to stay tonight because it's cold.  Maybe I'm out $20, but maybe that's what I'd have spent on booze.  My job gave me the money and didn't ask me any questions on how I spent it, why does it matter how she spends it?

Sarah Miles has a lot of good things to say about urban ministry in California.  One thing I remember from one of her talks is, we see people in need, like this and we ask God to send some help, and we wait for someone to pick them up in a taxi, or money to fall from the sky, or whatever.  But maybe God sends us.  Maybe that's how God answers prayers, through us showing compassion. --That's my paraphrase of her in my memory.

Maybe that's what happened, or maybe I got scammed.  God only knows.  I know God's watching over me and this woman the same.

Do any of you readers encounter panhandlers on the street? What do you do? Do you have any certain way that you reach out as God asks us.  Does the idea that they might be lying bother you or hinder that call?  Let me know. I've got mixed feelings.



Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Eating Together

(modified version of what I wrote for my church's newsletter)


A very happy time over dinner on my birthday in Nashville,
2009 with VT and JMU spring break group.
This year has been full of experiences that show how important a shared meal is, and I share some with you here.  Most of these thoughts are inspired from reading Eat with Joy by Rachel Marie Stone (InterVarsity Press, 2013).  I’d recommend that for further reading.  She is very good at connecting her experience with food with her faith in Christ.  She talks all about her eating disorders, dieting, feasting, and fasting and references the Bible at least every 2 pages. It’s very good.


Stone says on page 67,  “Our English word companion comes from the Latin for ‘with’ (com) and ‘bread’ (panis)—a companion is one with whom you eat your bread.”

My church's companion Rod moved away, but two of my fondest memories were at a meal with him; one at his house, one when he met me at True North.  How many of your stories with your pastor involve a meal?  How many of your stories with other people?  I only have one with Rod that didn’t involve food in some form.
Rod and I at an international dinner celebrating
his retirement.

My home church's former associate pastor Reverend Otis always talked about the importance of eating together.  I remember learning from him that the kingdom of heaven is that shared fellowship around a table.  The conversation and sharing that happens at a meal.  Maybe that's why we ate so much at church in Virginia. Our current associate, Bobby Spurgeon pointed out that most of the stories family and friends told about Gus at his memorial services were about food.  Gus stressing over baked beans in the crock pot at the dorm, Gus struggling to cook a bear arm in his college apartment, Gus eating weird combos of leftovers late at night at camp, Gus telling me we could eat acorns, Gus falling down while salsa dancing in his socks at Tony's house holding a slice of pizza, Gus' emergency salami supply in the bunkhouse, Gus and Peter at the Christian bookstore and Long John Silvers.  It goes on and on.   I would guess many of your memories of family and friends both living and past involve food.  We remember these times because we need food often, and when we share it we realize how much we need each other; how much we need God.
Marcus and Tessa's wedding dinner.  Lots of good times
(left to right) me, Gus, Joe, Jonathan, Tessa, Marcus, Megan, Kathleen, Sarah

Bobby also pulled in scripture of how people didn't recognize the risen Lord until he ate a meal with them. His own disciples couldn't see who God was until they ate together.  God reveals himself during shared meals and shares the meal with us. Most of Jesus’ conversations were at meals with people of various economic and social statuses.  Eating with the “unclean” is mostly what upset the Pharisees.

YAVs and Master Chief Ana getting local seafood
Eating together has a special healing power.  After my cousin Sarah’s recent death, her husband Mark and my other family have identified making family dinner with her kids as a priority.  We all know that’s important.  Eating dinner with their dad every night can bring them closer in this tragic, sad time.  In Eat with Joy by Rachel Marie Stone there is an entire chapter on the healing power of communal eating.  For anorexia, family-based-treatment or the intentional act of eating family meals and making patients eat their food with others has had success rates around 90%.  Communal eating has healing power!
Sarah's kids Brook and Grant enjoying a delicious meal together
at a family reunion, June 2013
In March, I volunteered at “Hearty Meals for All,” where volunteers cook a healthy community meal from scratch with as many local ingredients as possible at the Somerville Community Baptist Church.  They open it up to anyone who walks in the door.  They don’t check to see if you’re homeless before you get food, or if you “deserve” it.  Anyone can come and dine together.  Eating there, I conversed with some volunteers and a homeless guy named Eliot, but there was something powerful about the table that put us all at the same level.  It was just as awkward to talk with the homeless man I didn’t know as the other volunteers I didn’t know.  We could all share something intimate trying to talk with a mouth full of food, and talking about the weather.  The same thing happens every day at the Women’s Lunch Place downtown on Newbury Street where another YAV, Audrey works.  No need to distinguish class, race, just come and get food if you need it, if you want it, if you’re hungry.  And when you sit at a table with other people you are all the same vulnerable people who depend on this earth and food and God for sustenance, nourishment, and survival.  We all share equally in that place of feeding and conversation.

Jesus’ table is open to us a lot like that, but better.  We are all invited.  We are all sinners.  We don’t have to show proof of income, check the box with race, and check if we’ve been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor.  He knows us, takes us as we are, feeds us and makes us whole; makes us who he created us to be.  We can remember our welcome place at God’s table when we eat with others, and we can get closer to them and to God when we break the bread. 

Justin, Gray, and I at Dairy Queen in College
Because it’s so important I have a challenge for you.  For the rest of this week or this month have more meals with other people than meals alone. Invite someone from your job or church out for coffee or for lunch.  Take a meal to a shut in and eat with them; or even to a neighbor who isn’t shut in.  Sit down with everyone in your family for dinner around a table.  We know it’s important. Let’s eat bread with our companions in Christ. We may even recognize him among us like the disciples.

Food Corps volunteer and former JMU classmate
Nick Joins the YAVs in Chinatown
For more on food and faith check out the Presbyterian Hunger Program website blog where the YAVs post regularly (http://www.pcusa.org/blogs/foodfaith/) , the YAV program website (www.bostonfoodjusticeyavprogram.wordpress.org) , or just ask me, Alex, to get a meal with you and we can talk about food and faith. I’ll even help you cook it!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Let it go

Many of you have had me and the families of the recently and too soon departed Gus Deeds and Sarah Johnston Defren in your prayers.  Thank you and keep praying for healing and coping for all of us, but for the most part we are surviving and doing ok.  It just sucks.  I want to just tell how wild the week has been.

On May 3, friends and family from Bath County gathered at the Millboro Elementary School for a memorial service for the dearly beloved Gus Deeds.  More friends of his gathered at Nature Camp that afternoon.  The newspaper has ALL the details here.

It was good.  I cried when they played James Taylor.  One time Gus got so mad I was playing Kansas in the car.  He just couldn't handle it, too depressing.  So he put in James Taylor (which somehow was less depressing).  Fire and Rain, "I always thought that I'd see you again"  Thanks a lot for keeping depression to a minimum Gus.

Anyway it was a day to celebrate his life, and we did.  We all told Gus stories which either involved shenanigans, music, dancing, his baked beans, or all of the above.  I got to chat late into the night (pretty deeply) with some of his past roomates friends, and a girlfriend who shared something special with Gus.  The parts of his life I didn't know about weren't as bad as I'd constructed them in my head.  We are all better people after knowing Gus.

After a delicious breakfast at camp, a bird walk, and a too-long goodbye that made me late for church in my watershoes, I met up with my family.  We were on our way to see my brother, Isaac in a play.  My Aunt Susan and Uncle Keith were going to come down to see us there too. 

On the way to the play they called to say they weren't coming.  Their niece, my cousin Sarah had collapsed from a heart attack at the finish line of her half marathon in Frederick, MA and they were babysitting her kids as her parents and husband went to see her in the hospital.

....[insert bad words]

She never really woke up.  Stayed in a coma-like state until she died on Tuesday the 6th.  Gus' birthday.  (makes for a good country song).  This article tells the story pretty well.  Some friends are raising money for her kids online here.

It hit all of us in the family differently.  For me it was wake up call that, as much as I want it to be, life isn't just about Gus.  Another reminder life is short.  Too short. God's timing isn't ours.  I was very thankful to be at home with my family hearing it.  Thankful she didn't suffer long.  Thankful she crossed the finish line with a smile on her face, she finished the race, even though she left us with tears on our face, to go live in Grace.

Weird how that stuff works out.  She didn't die on a back road in Shenandoah County, my sister saw the bright side.  She collapsed after finishing the race where the medics were with the machine to revive her.  Enough time that she may have heard her husbands voice, her parent's voices, her siblings, nieces and nephew's voices, and her kid's voices in the hospital before she was gone forever, and they saw her "alive."  Enough time for her daughter Brooke to sing her a song "Let it Go" from Disney's Frozen.  But not as much time as we'd like.  I am sad thinking of Mark and the kids, and the Johnstons going on without her.  But they still have each other and her love.

 


On my way back to Boston, my bus drove past John Hopkins hospital where she died.  I wasn't ready to see that.

I learned from all the Sarah stories that in her early days of running, her friend and running partner Matthew had a mountain climbing accident that left him paraplegic and unable to run.  Sarah said she'd run for Matthew because he can't any more and she'd always run if it killed her.  She finished the race.

2 Timothy 4:6-8:  the time of my departure has come.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, with the lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

One of the oldest of my 12 cousins, Sarah was 14 years older than me, and she always scared me a little.  She was mean in the sense that she told you how she felt, and growing up I never much cared for that.  She never fussed to make a fuss, just to let you know you were wrong when she was right. She was usually right.  I specifically remember one Christmas when she handed my two brothers and I each a present wrapped in the same size box. I guessed it was a shirt because I recognized the shirt size gift box.  I didn't want any shirts at the time, so I sat it aside ungratefully.  I didn't even say thank you, and promptly got back to my more important pokemon game boy game.  An argument with Sarah ensued about how ungrateful and spoiled we were that left me in tears--but she was right, I was being an annoying little brat.  She made me open it in front of everyone, and boy was I wrong about the shirt, it was a snickers bar!  She wrapped the snickers bar in  a t-shirt box!  Taught me a lesson.

Sarah wouldn't take nothin' off any one of us cousins, or anyone really.  She'd respectfully, (sometimes grumbly) listen to her parents (sometimes) and my mother (sometimes).  She was always strong willed and independent, and intimidating to me.  But she was never hateful in that intimidating, just the voice of truth (and the truth is what was scary I think).

Once I started running cross country I noticed her words to me were less abrasive.  But that was about the time I shaped up and quit being such a baby.  Her last words to me in January were about all the pictures of me in Boston with my long hair and all the lady YAVs.  She never messed around in what she wanted to say.  But she was full of love.  This is the last thing I heard from her in January:

" Hey Alex. If your facebook pictures are any indication of your future, I would think you were in training to become a fundamentalist Mormon, preparing for polygamy :) Hope you're having fun and staying warm! A house full of girls is a big change from a house full of Haneys. Good luck!"
My cousins, Elizabeth and Sarah at the family reunion June 2013


I heard her sassy undertones in all of her stories this week and I see it lives on in my cousin Kristi who is about her age.

Sarah, you inspired me to me start running again.  I never got to have a good conversation with you and Mark about how silly they talk up here in his hometown of Boston.  I know we all wanted to.  You left many others even closer to you missing things they wanted.  But I know that you know after your argument with God about how soon you left your family that He's got it covered and it's going to be ok. Give Gus a big hug for me up there will you, he was high school valedictorian just like you.

And St. Peter, when Sarah tells you not to let her Uncle John and the Haney's in, she's just kidding.

"Let not your hearts be troubled" from John 14 we heard at the funeral.  How true it is.  All the pain and loss does not compare to the glory about to be revealed to us.  God is working, he's building up his team of angels up there and doing far more than we can ask or think.  In hope we await the revealing of what is to come. And because of that hope we don't need to fear.  But it still hurts.

We don't know how short our time with our loved ones will be, so take care of that stuff that's bothering you with them.  Likewise, friends, sisters-in-law, colleagues all disappear as soon as they come, don't hold things against them.  Let it Go like the song.  Start with forgiveness and put up with their annoying political opinions for the sake of having known them as much as you want when it's all over.

Life is short, start running.
Sarah (front left in pink) finished her race on Sunday

Monday, May 5, 2014

Meet the animals that become your meat.

Our Daily Bread is an unscripted film that just videotapes typical daily scenes on the large scale agricultural operations that bring us most of our food.

If you watch it you will see workers picking fruits and vegetables, driving machinery, and eating.  Chicks riding conveyor belts, being thrown into bins, having their beaks clipped, scenes of life in the chicken house, and even the harvesting and cleaning details.  From the first seedlings to the final harvest, and from the calf, piglet, and chick all the way through the slaugher you see in short segments just how it happens.  It's simple, without commentary telling you if it's bad or good, just what it is. Granted it appears more biased toward, "it's bad"

Two things I gleaned from it were
1.  Not everything in industrial agriculture is innately bad, but it easily can be when the goal is ONLY profit, and
2.  maybe people in the agricultural system are just as mechanized as the animals.

1.  In my line of work, some colleagues, and I throw around terms like "industrial agriculture" and "factory farms" like they are completely terrible, but maybe not. I think we'd all have a hard time convincing a grain farmer not to plant the rows of monoculture year after year with the gas-guzzling machinery, or persuade a meat producer he's killing and cleaning his meat wrong because it's done by machine.  Were I to kill, clean, and slaughter every cow without the machine to pick them up and move them around dangling by their feet, I'd think twice about eating meat.  Were I  or anyone else to go out and scythe, rake and pile wheat by hand, then separate the wheat grains from the rest of the plant I may think differently about monoculture and machine harvesting. I spent a day bailing hay at a neighbor's farm a few years ago with my friend Gus.  Even with the tractor to cut, rake, and bale it for us, it was still the hardest day of work in my life.  Farming is work and technology can make it easier and more efficient.  That's why we make it. Maybe the productivity of a combine does help the world?  

However, most agricultural technologies ease the work of farmers, but the question is where do we draw the line?  What ag. technologies and practices make food easier and better for the consumer, for the environment, the animals?  Does the massive yield and lower price make things better for the customer?  With the obesity epidemic, and type 2 diabetes on the rise, I don't think so.  Even if the cheaper hamburger or corn syrup frees up some pocket change, you could pay for it in hospital bills when you're older.

I argue the problem with our food system is that the idolatry of money has focused the emphasis on technology on maximizing yields thus maximizing profits, yet this serves the wrong master. We need to and are slowly adding other values to the mix besides profit.  Perhaps good health, lower hospital bills, clean air, equal access to healthy food should all be worth attaining with food.  Don't stop with money.  Make the end result something valuable beyond dollars. It's not the industrial agriculture that's wrong, it's the way industrial agriculture only worries about money.

2.  The film also showed some scenes of farm workers eating alone, or driving a tractor, fig-tree-shaker, or other machine.  I wondered if they were drawing parallels between the farmers crammed into the box of a tractor doing a tedious job to the cows and pigs trapped in cages in side where it's crowded.  Neither one looked particularly excited to be there...

This is a little on how the film affected my day.  

Before we watched the film we had our "Salad Dressing Throwdown" where Maggie had us split into two teams and make our own three salad dressings from scratch.  And we ate a ton of salad.  Read about that here (Kathleen's post,)

After the film we went to Tavern in the Square for Libby's Birthday.  It's a restaurant with DELICIOUS Mac&Cheese.  Good enough to hit the person next to you.  Since we ate salad for lunch, I went crazy and ordered meat for dinner.  Come to think of it it was the first time I had beef since Ana and my parents visited in January! Woah.  Meat has become a special treat here.  On the local food diet, meat is expensive, or rather it is the price of something that gives the farm hands a fair wage and the animal a good life.  Plus it's not fed cheap excess subsidized corn, or grown up packed into a tight feedlot or poutlry house to maximize the yield and productivity of a space while damaging everything but the profit margin.  Our chicken CSA has been our main meat supply and it gives us enough for about a full chicken once a week.  That's a little less meat than a person in 'Merica eats I think.  But when you see (and actually pay for) the environmental and health costs it's worth it you won't mind that extra 50cents a pound.  Consider this:  All four of us on the local Massachusetts food diet did not get sick one day this winter (more than a brief stuffy nose)--None of us have ever spent winter in New England, and none of us got flu shots!

Since it was Libby's birthday, I ordered "Meatloaf Cupcakes"  They cut meatloaf in cupcake shapes and wrap it in bacon, and "ice" it with mashed potatoes and onion rings.  It looked like cupcakes, and reminded me of the "Bacon-wrapped Bambi" at a friend Jeff's house as he called it, which was way better than the meatloaf at the restaurant.  that's more like 'Merica!  (Bacon-wrapped Bambi was locally sourced venisin steak with bacon and cost a pretty penny).

It wasn't until about halfway through my second meatloaf cupcake when I remembered the artificially inseminated cows in the film, the castrated piglets from the film, and the mother pigs squeezed into cages so they don't roll over on top of the piglets nursing them for milk.  I was eating both of them the pig and the cow in my meatloaf cupcakes.  the old quote from Becca Deeds on the Baja trip, "how many animals are you eating today?" came to mind.  They tasted so good, but gave me the feeling that I was just perpetuating the system of the good bad and ugly from the film.  The restaurant claims to serve only grass-fed and free-range meats, but how much of  America's meat fits that category?

I used to say you know the true cost of heating your house in winter when you split, haul, burn, and clean the ashes from the wood yourself.  So maybe if every one of us were to raise, feed, slaughter, and prepare a cow instead of just have it wrapped up for us hidden between ketchup and bread at the drive thru, or wrapped beautifully in bacon on a fancy plate, we may understand the true cost of eating meat. A year ago at NuBeginning farm in Virginia I harvested quail.  I "did the deed" on 4 of them, watched them twitch, de-feathered, cleaned and packaged em up.  The whole bit.  It was a powerful time.  It felt like the movie Avatar, when he tells the animal "I see you and I thank you."  Audrey and Kathleen did this with chickens in the fall up here (Click here to read their stories:  Kathleen's and Audrey's)

 Some of my neighbors at home made their kids go to see a slaughter at least once in their life so they knew what has to happen for us to eat--something has to die so that we might live.  Life is given and sustained through sacrifice.  (hint: Jesus)

I'm not a dirty hippie, vegan, or vegitarian--entirely.  I'm a Food Justice YAV.  I still like a good burger, love me some bacon, some chicken fried chicken, and shrimp 'n grits, but I'm seeing now that it's worth paying for the quality, limiting my meat intake, and knowing where it comes from.  And beets and radishes aren't all that bad.  Lets face it there are 7 billion human mouths to feed and we're feeding all this grain and food to animals so we can have cheap meat at every meal.  Where is justice there?  So many people in the world don't get dinner on Libby's birthday, and I'm eating a cow wrapped in bacon shaped like a cupcake, and both of those animals ate enough to feed those hungry people for a long time.  Where is justice on my plate?  When we really see what's going on, it's clear that we have a lot of fixing to do.  Our Daily Bread shows us a little of what's really going on.  So stand with me and eat less meat and learn where your meat comes from.  See your food animals.  Know them and thank them for dying for you, like Avatar.

I challenge you to start going one day a week without meat--OR if you think that's easy, only eat meat once per week.  Can you out-do me and become vegetarian? How little meat do you eat?  What's holding you back? Leave a comment