On washing dishes and being church.

I've been reading this book lately: Take This Bread by Sara Miles.  It's the first spiritual memoir I've read in a while that really resonates -- maybe in part because she doesn't try to gloss over anything or make church easy, and maybe in part because it's largely about food.  I could easily quote half of it here, although it's probably more worthwhile for all of us to just go read the original.  So instead, a story from the cantina -- and then Sara's words, better written than mine could ever be.

On Friday I made a giant tocaniță de cartofi for the cantina.  There were 17 hungry kids there, and they piled into the new upstairs room noisily, eagerly sniffing at the smell of stew wafting from the giant pot in the corner.  The other volunteers were late, so I started serving alone, trying to somehow maintain that delicate balance between authority and gentleness that seems practically impossible but desperately necessary.  I dished up stew and passed it out; I led the kids in prayer, trying to model reverence while keeping one eye squintily open to watch for punches and food-throwing.  I doled out scoops of sour cream and re-filled bread baskets, trying to fill everyone's plate and tummies while ladling out kind words and individual attention.  But mostly, I kept going back to Denisa and Emanuela to break up fights.  I'd turn my back to try and engage a shy kid who wasn't talking to anyone, and two seconds later hear a hollered, "Kelly! She threw bread at me!"  Needless to say, it was, well, only a few steps removed from anarchy.  And I was feeling far from cheery or reflective.

Eventually most of the kids were satiated and (amazingly) filtered out with little smiles and nods (or, in the case of two of the boys, by hurtling down the steps and jumping out the front door of the church directly into a big pile of melted snow-mud).  But Denisa and Emanuela stayed, picking slowly at their food and distractedly trying to get my attention.  I talked to them for a while as they finished eating their third helpings, and then said it was time to clean up.  "Can we help?" they asked.

I didn't want their help.  They'd been obnoxious and disrespectful and rude for the last hour, and I was ready to wash the dishes in peace.  But they had already run after the broom and the wash basin, so I sighed and said yes.  And soon we were tromping up the stairs, carefully balancing basins of warm water, bringing them up to the cantina room to wash the now-empty plates.  I washed, Emanuela rinsed, and Denisa wiped tables, the three of us settling into a soapy rhythm.  We chatted a little, not about anything important, and they lingered and lingered, not wanting to go home.

In Sara's book, she opens a food pantry at her church (St. Gregory's in San Francisco), and quickly people who come to the pantry to receive food begin offering to help serve.  The group is far from your stereotypical church volunteers -- mostly unchurched and poor, but faithful to this weekly Friday gathering.  Sara calls the pantry communion, the Table of Jesus, to which all are welcome to come and eat.  More than a "ministry" or "program," the pantry was church itself, God's people gathered to share and rejoice in the gifts of God.  And its magnetism was obvious, as one of her fellow volunteers said:

"... he insisted we had to keep giving people a chance to work if they asked, even if we had doubts.  'The thing is,' he said thoughtfully, 'a lot of people need to volunteer.  They want more than food.'   They wanted, in fact, church: not the kind where you sit obediently and listen to someone tell you how to behave, but the kind where you discover responsibility, purpose, meaning.  They wanted a church where they could bring their sorrows, their gifts, their entire messy lives: where they could find community."

The cantina is hard sometimes.  It's messy and cold and we still don't have a sink, or enough adults to help care well for the kids and also serve food.  I usually get exasperated and short-sighted about 10 minutes in.  But something in this caught my attention -- the sheer magnetic pull of church, for two little girls who don't step foot in Betel on Sunday mornings.  The desire to help, to give out of what they'd received, to find purpose, and to be known and loved: this is what the cantina is creating.  Imperfectly, slowly, haltingly... but truly.  Church.