I work at a soup kitchen once a month. I've worked at this same soup kitchen for 24 years. It has been in the same location that entire time. The house is exactly the same as it was 24 years ago, with the exception of some new paint, a few new ceiling fans and an occasional cosmetic change. The stove is the same huge old gas stove that I was afraid to light as a 14-year-old. The paddle that we stir huge pots of pasta or soup with is the same wooden paddle that seemed so large when I was a smaller, younger girl -- I thought it was so cool to stand on a stool so that I could reach over the top of a cavernous pot of food and stir as if I was rowing on a choppy lake. The man who runs the soup kitchen is the one person (other than members of my family) who has known me consistently for 24 years.
Yesterday, I was wiping down a table in the front dining room in preparation for the evening meal, and the light was slanting in through the east window the exact same way it has at that time of day in the month of June ever since I was fourteen years old. How many times have I done that exact same task? How many times have I done that exact same task! And yet, month after month, year after year, I come back to do the same task again. Because there is value in knowing the names and faces of people who are poor -- poverty isn't some abstract concept out there, it is a condition affecting people I know. There is value in physical labor. At the end of a day of working in a college with fairly privileged students, I get up from my desk, my computer, out from behind the lectern and work in an un-air-conditioned kitchen and dining room to prepare and serve a meal made from donated food. And as I work with other volunteers, chopping, cooking, cleaning, I experience the meditative state that is created by physical labor. I let go of the academic concerns that keep my mind hopping all day long, and sink into a very concrete task, preparing food. There is a product at the end of my labor -- a meal.
As I reflected while working, it occurred to me that anything I do over years and years could profoundly shape me. Some of it for good -- like returning to my mat over and over for a lifetime (may I be so blessed as to do that!); and some of it for ill (like repeating habit patterns with food or relationships). There is little, though, in my changing life that has stayed so constant as the soup kitchen. And it has taught me deep lessons. I wonder what would happen if I started to stick with people, places and practices over the long haul? How deep could I go? How much more could I learn and grow if I didn't run off so quickly -- on to the next big thing?
Amazing what wisdom a wet dish cloth, a second-hand table and the slanting sunlight can uncover.
