 I had another dream... As you might recall, a few days ago I wrote about a dream, a dream that deeply moved me to remembrance... Once more, I have been so challenged...
In this dream, my sons Donovan and Devin were with me (aged around six or seven) and we were visiting with Joan Baez. Most of you are certainly unaware of my nearly life-long love for Joan: I have loved her music, her great and grand voice, her political activism, her personal witness and commitment to nonviolence, and last but not least, her exceptional beauty... Many years ago, I shook her hand and we spoke briefly about my work in starting a Catholic Worker House and Soup Kitchen... What we didn't talk about on that occasion was the conversation we had in my dream. As the boys looked around her house and wandered off outside, Joan and I wandered about as she showed me her home: I noted its warmth, simplicity, along with an appealing "raggedness". (I have no idea as to her real home!) As we were walking about, and with another friend of hers suddenly present, I took the time to explain the impact and importance of her book Daybreak in my life and in my spiritual and political development... Right off the bat, she dedicated her book with love, admiration, and gratefulness to the men who find themselves facing imprisonment for resisting the draft. The line I went to jail for doing civil disobedience at the Army induction center compelled a youthful boy to consider the consequences of a radical faith... Not easy stuff with a war raging in Vietnam... Joan blew me away with her chapter on Ira. I met Ira when I was sixteen... He talked a lot about Gandhi, and something called nonviolence, and we read from a book by a Chinese philosopher named Lao-tse... I began to grow very fond of the bearded guru with the goat laugh... As Joan, her friend, and I continued to wander and talk, I reference the importance to me of one certain line in her book, "Gandhi, the rat!" (said Ira) "He ruined my life!" Right there: there it all was, all nice and neat in a nutshell! Exactly so for me as well... I read Joan's Daybreak at break-neck speed! When finished, I rushed to the library and read everything I could on Gandhi. When summer came along, a friend invited me to go to a Carmel Valley bookstore. His mom kindly bought me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita (although now that I think about it, I think instead that I got a copy of the Tao Te Ching by, of course, Lao-Tse... "Well," I said to Joan, "Gandhi the rat! He ruined my life, too!" There was the obvious war resistance, but like Gandhi, that was sort of like a flower: the plant was always ashram or intentional community, and the roots were always spiritual practice. Resistance is futile: without what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the strength to love... If only in a dream, I was able to acknowledge the impact that Joan Baez has had in my life and to say thank you! And what of Gandhi? Come the last years of his life, he reckoned himself a failure: sure, he liberated India, but his vision was denied and his heart was broken... and me? It is true enough that I instigated, agitated, and organized for some thirty years: assumed responsibility for serving over two million free meals to folks in need, but in the end, I walked away: exhausted in the continual battle over a vision that hungered for serving and finding a mutual liberation with the homeless, something so much more than feeding "them"... To my Board of Directors who insisted that "our mission was feeding the hungry" I could only reply "Ah, but the food is just to get them to come in the door. That's when the real work begins..." Now, on any given day, I might listen to Beautiful Joan, a CD or on the radio... I search for poems... I ponder our garden and little projects... I write... I read... I drink my tea... I revere my family... and as opportunities arise, I teach what I can... And you know what? Time is an illusion: nothing more than an organizing principle. At the very same moment in time, a river is at its source, in its flow, and in its self-emptying, whether into a larger river, or directly into the sea... We are as a river: at all times, source, flow, and self-emptying... the one real reality are the opportunities and the moments in which we simply disappear into our choosing to love... May it be so. Thank you, thank you, thank you Joanie... (and you are still a rat, Mr. Gandhi!)
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 Last night, I had a dream that I would like to share with you...
Rose of Sharon and I were at some sort of refuge for animals (probably a zoo). In leaving through a gift shop, I picked up a t-shirt that was for sale, noticed the price (fifty dollars) and quickly set it back down. The next scene that I remember is that of her and I going to a small diner for lunch. As we entered, right there on the counter was the very same brown t-shirt that I had looked at earlier, except this time I was told the price was only ten dollars. I thought "sweet" and said that I would get it... Rose of Sharon took the t-shirt and ran out the door to play. Meanwhile, I ordered a lunch of enchiladas, rice, and extra salsa. After a short while, I could see that my plate had just been served up by the cook and placed on the glass shelf for the waitress to bring to me. But right then, a ragged old man took the plate and turned to bring it to me... As the ragged man began to walk through the dining room towards me, he began to notice people that he knew sitting at other tables and so began to give them all food off of my plate! All of a sudden he had a big soup ladle in his hand: there went most of the rice... salsa went here and there as did the enchiladas... Finally, he made it to my table with a radiant, nearly toothless grin, on his face. There was only a very small portion of the food that remained on my plate... I looked at the food and then up into his face, all dirty, creased, and nearly toothless simply beaming at me. I said, "Wow, you sure have a lot of friends." It seemed that his smile got even larger. I remember thinking (in my dream) exactly this: St. Francis called his favorite place of refuge and prayer "a little portion" (Porziuncula). St. Francis still lives in a little portion! Then I decided to leave (before that old man could give away my remaining food). At the counter, my ticket said that the t-shirt was really fifty dollars and my enchilada dinner twelve... "Ah well" was my next thought in walking out the door... and there was Rose of Sharon (four years old once more) running around with the brown t-shirt draped on her back like a super-hero cape... Normally, I give very little thought to my dreams (only a few have been worth remembering) since its those "awake dreams" that really count. But this one... and the grin on that old man's face... and it's not because I also gave away a lot of food to hungry folks... rather, it's about the little portion that matters: and not just a little bit. Each of our little portions mean everything: it is the sum total of our lives. And not that there is some Almighty Accountant in the Sky tracking everything for which we will have to pay... Rather... it's the portion and the grin... we receive the gift of breath and we continue to live so long as we give it back to where it came from, right? All that we ever really "have" is our next breath and even that hinges upon our giving it away. We all complicate everything: with our perceptions, constructs, theologies, economics, and politics: with our fears, hurts, doubts, questions, and memories: when the truth is always the same and always for everyone: the Home of the Beloved (the Kingdom of God) is within you / us... in our little portion of life... and it is always an absolute miracle... |
AuthorRobert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is a poet, artist, writer, and long-time Companion of the Way still dreaming... Archives
May 2022
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